Love Blurts

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Veridian Dynamics starts up an employee matchmaking service, pairing employees based on genetic compatibility in order to avoid imperfectly bred children. While Ted and Linda find themselves instantly attracted to their potential mates, Lem grows worried when he is paired with Veronica.

The review for "Secrets and Lives" can be read here.

Already navigating a tenuous friendship due to their mutual attraction for one another, Ted (Jay Harrington) and Linda (Andrea Anders) are challenged once more when their employers tell them they would be better suited to other people. Initially reluctant to believe in the service, Ted and Linda find trouble relating to one another when they come to realize that they really might have better luck with someone else.

Linda's match Greg (Taye Diggs) is absolutely hilarious, stating that his way of acting out, due to stress created by the company, is to dress up in a hyper-realistic bear costume and hang out in the park, not to scare people, but to do 'bear stuff,' like root around for berries and push on campers. His quirkiness outmatches even that of Linda, and the reason that it works is Diggs' delivery, completely oblivious to the fact that he's incredibly insane, believing that his activities are completely within the norm. Later it's revealed that his second date with Linda came to a quick end due to his being tranquilized while pushing on a van full of teenagers, and while it's a funny joke in the moment, I'm incredibly saddened at the fact that he's not likely to be a recurring character, as he brought a lot to this episode and it would be nice to see him pursuing Linda and getting in Ted's way.

Ted has proven himself as very capable in almost everything that he's done in his life, and here, on his first date with Danielle (Virginia Williams), he proves that he's not as perfect as he likes to imagine when he blurts out, during sex, that he loves her. It's really fun to see Ted off his game, forced to continue a ridiculous lie with Danielle in order to hide the fact that he said that he loved her, and it goes a long way toward making him seem like a much more real person and not just the personification of what every man wants to be.

At the start of the episode both Ted and Linda are visibly bothered by the fact that the company doesn't think that they're compatible with one another, lamenting the fact that there's another hurdle stopping them from being together, but there's no mention of Ted's previous rule that kept them apart in the first place. The only reason that they aren't dating, and haven't been dating for quite some time now, is that Ted used up his one office affair, claiming that he can't date a second person within the office lest he become 'that guy.' Unfortunately, what Ted does here is date Danielle, breaking his office romance rule, and Linda doesn't even call him on it, and it becomes very clear that there's no longer anything stopping Ted and Linda from dating outside of a rule that Ted's readily willing to break in order to date a woman he has only just met. In the end, after both romances fail, Ted and Linda share a moment, stating that "[Veridian Dynamics] can take out loneliness when they pry it from our cold, sad hands," with both parties realizing that they may be alone for a while now, but they very clearly could just date each other, as both have stated they want, and it's infuriating that neither of them bring this up.

As the previous season had ended, Ted was planning on asking Linda's friend Rebecca (Rachelle Lefevre) on a second date as Linda watched on regretting the fact that she had set them up in the first place. Despite this storyline that had been hinted at, there's no mention here of Rebecca, how her relationship with Ted ended, or the fact that Linda had broken up with her previous boyfriend in the hopes of eventually hooking up with Ted. Both of them are still clearly interested in one another, and it's just a strange confluence of events that the writers create in order to keep them apart, and it's distracting and poorly executed.

The main cast is largely split up in this story, everyone playing into their own stories, and it really affects the chemistry among these people. Certainly, most of the actors do their best with what they're given, but there's something largely missing from this episode that I can't quite pinpoint, and it also seems as though de Rossi (as Veronica) is phoning it in here, which is unfortunate as she usually is the standout of the bunch.

Directed by Michael Fresco, this premiere has a very different feel from most of the episodes of the previous season, utilizing a lot of camera tricks and very little of what made the show distinct from other shows in the last year. There is a lot of alternating blur during conversations, directing focus to whoever is speaking, as well as quick swoops across the room to act as the punchlines to jokes, and, most notably, there is no fourth-wall breaking narration from Ted here, robbing the story of much of the soul that the series had had.

Jon Hoberg and Kat Likkel team up to write a script where most of the main cast is doing their own thing, and while each storyline is, in itself, entertaining, as a whole the episode suffers because the characters aren't intermingling with one another as they have in the past. Phil (Jonathan Slavin) worries that there is something wrong with his sperm when the company offers him a free vasectomy, only later to learn that his family is just very plentiful with a sperm count miles above average, while Lem (Malcolm Barrett) has to deal with Veronica's insistence that he give her his sperm to create a genetically perfect offspring.

Not much progress is made here in the relationship between Ted and Linda, and it's an unfortunate choice that neither of their dates worked out, as it would have been nice to see at least one of their pairings continue on, at least for another episode or two.

The review for "the Lawyer, the Lemur, and the Little Listener" can be read here.