I never reviewed ABC’s new comedy Better Off Ted, it being a casualty of a busy week. Created by Victor Fresco (Andy Richter Controls the Universe) and set in the vaguely sinister R&D department of a megacorporation, it continues this TV season’s theme of abused science (Dollhouse, Fringe, Eleventh Hour) in the form of a sitcom. (Well, I suppose Testees did that first.)
Ted is still on probationary status with me; it’s funny, often very funny, but I have a hard time connecting with it, largely because of the lead character. In a show this broadly satirical, it helps to have some human attachment at the core, but Jay Harrington plays Ted like he’s doing a spoof infomercial, which, in the two episodes I saw, left me a little cold even when the show made me laugh. (On the other hand, I was happy to see Jonathan Slavin, an Andy Richter alum.) But it did make me laugh, enough to wait and see where this experiment goes. Did anyone here catch it?
