Better Off Ted
Better Off Ted's logo
Genre	Satire[1] Science fiction[2] Dark comedy[3] Sitcom[4]
Created by	Victor Fresco
Starring	Jay Harrington Portia de Rossi Andrea Anders Jonathan Slavin Malcolm Barrett Isabella Acres
Narrated by	Jay Harrington
Composers	Chris Alan Lee Scott Clausen
Country of origin	United States
Original language	English
No. of seasons	2
No. of episodes	26 (2 unaired in the U.S.)
Production
Executive producer	Victor Fresco
Producers	Marc Solakian Skip Beaudine
Production locations	Los Angeles, California
Editors	Lisa Bromwell Robert Bramwell Peter Beyt
Camera setup	Single-camera
Running time	21 minutes
Production companies	Garfield Grove Productions 20th Century Fox Television
Original release
Network	ABC (episodes 1-24) Network Ten (episodes 25-26)
Release	March 18, 2009 (2009-03-18) – August 24, 2010 (2010-08-24)

Better Off Ted is an American satirical sitcom series, created by Victor Fresco, who also served as the show's executive producer. The series ran on the ABC network from March 18, 2009, to January 26, 2010.^[5]

Better Off Ted focuses on the protagonist, Ted Crisp (Jay Harrington), a single father and the well-respected and beloved head of a research and development department at the fictional, soulless conglomerate of Veridian Dynamics. Ted narrates the series' events by regularly breaking the fourth wall and directly addressing the audience on camera. Supporting characters include Ted's supervisor Veronica Palmer (Portia de Rossi), co-worker and love interest Linda Zwordling (Andrea Anders), his daughter Rose (Isabella Acres), and laboratory scientists Phillip Myman (Jonathan Slavin) and Lem Hewitt (Malcolm Barrett).

The series received critical acclaim, with particular praise going towards its witty and satirical humor. Its second season holds a score of 84 out of 100 on Metacritic. However, despite such positive feedback, the show's debut drew in only 5.64 million viewers and continued to have extremely low ratings.^[6] Although many expressed skepticism that it would return, it was renewed for a second season.^[7] On May 13, 2010, ABC officially canceled the series due to low viewing figures.^[8] Two episodes that went unaired in the United States were broadcast in international markets and are available to view on Hulu, digital stores, and home video.^[9]

Plot

Better Off Ted is a satirical workplace comedy, centred around the employees of a stereotypically evil megacorporation of Veridian Dynamics.

Veridian Dynamics experiments on its employees, twists the truth, and will stop at nothing to achieve its goals. It has been mentioned that Veridian has swayed presidential elections, created killer pandas and robots, and weaponized pumpkins, and that there are only three governments left in the world more powerful than Veridian. Although not promoted as such, and rarely the focus of storylines, the show's frequent references to futuristic technologies, killer robots, sentient computers, etc., places Better Off Ted partly in the science fiction genre.

Most of the characters are fully aware of Veridian's nature, and often try to manipulate the system in order to stop bad things from happening to them (and sometimes to mitigate the evil effects of some of Veridian's projects). They are also all susceptible to the potential rewards the company can offer despite the consequences of their actions, such as the company's attempt to hire Lem's mother, or the company's introduction of scented light bulbs with known flaws. Much of the comedy of the show comes from the characters' navigation of these morally ambiguous areas.

Jay Harrington, who plays Ted Crisp on the show, serves both as a main character and as an on-camera narrator.^[10] Throughout the show, he breaks the fourth wall and speaks directly to viewers, offering inside information and observations while the action continues around him. Another plot element involves the use of mock commercials for Veridian Dynamics, thematically related to individual episodes and placed at the end or beginning of actual commercial breaks in most episodes.^[10]

Episodes

Cast

• Jay Harrington as Theodore Margaret "Ted" Crisp: Ted is the titular character, and also the show's narrator. He is the senior vice-president of the Research and Development department at Veridian Dynamics,^[1][11] and is well respected and loved by most of the employees – and even members of the otherwise difficult upper management. He balances his desire to maintain his position at the company with his feeling that he must demonstrate a moral center to his daughter. He has had sexual relations with his immediate supervisor, although she remains emotionally distant. He also has interest in Linda, who was a new hire to Veridian Dynamics at the launch of the series.
• Portia de Rossi as Veronica Palmer: Veronica is Ted's boss and immediate supervisor at Veridian Dynamics.^[1] She maintains a fierce and unapproachable workplace demeanor, and many employees have a deep fear of her.^[11] She seems cold and calculating, but it is also clear that she has more than grudging respect for Ted, and often recognizes what moral action is necessary to maintain balance in the workplace. An ongoing subplot touched on sporadically in the first season but more frequently in the second sees Veronica becoming a mentor to Linda and, to a lesser degree, Rose.
• Andrea Anders as Linda Katherine Zwordling: Linda is a tester in one of Veridian's departments.^[12] She finds herself very attracted to Ted, but maintains other relationships and reminds Ted repeatedly that he has rejected the idea of a workplace romance with her. She seems to be a bit of an outsider to the corporate culture.^[12] Often she demands that Ted consider the horrible ramifications of the company policies or activities. Her relationship with the scientists is strained by her rejection of the weird things they do in the name of science. Despite this, she finds herself increasingly looking at Veronica as a mentor as the series progresses.
• Jonathan Slavin as Dr. Philip "Phil" Myman: Phil is one of the laboratory scientists in Veridian's Research Department.^[11] He is usually working or hanging out with Lem, who works with him on almost every project. He generally does whatever he can to be accepted and avoid conflicts. He is married, and makes frequent references to his wife, who seems to hate him. In season 2's episode 6, "Beating a Dead Workforce", we learn she was a member of Mossad.
• Malcolm Barrett as Dr. Lem Hewitt: Lem is one of the laboratory scientists in Veridian's Research Department.^[11] He is best friends with his lab partner Phil, who works with him on almost every project. Lem is just as conflict-averse as Phil, and seems just as willing to roll over and take whatever abuse the company has to offer. He grew up in the shadow of his mother (Khandi Alexander) a renowned scientist.
• Isabella Acres as Rose Crisp: Rose is Ted's daughter.^[13] She attends the Veridian Dynamics daycare program when her nanny is not available, but prefers to stay at home. According to Ted, "her mom ran off to Africa to go save the world." She is often the voice of reason on the show. When Ted talks with her about work she points out the terrible choices the company makes, and often helps Ted focus on what needs to be done to set things straight. She attends Eugene Debs Elementary School. In season 2, she tells Veronica that she's 8 years old.

Production

Casting

Fresco was convinced Portia de Rossi (pictured) was perfect for the role of Veronica.

In casting his crew, Fresco and his team worked fairly quickly.^[10] "You don't have a lot of time to cast, unfortunately, and it's the most important thing in the show, I think." says Fresco, "Good casting can transcend mediocre material but the best material in the world cannot transcend the mediocre casting. It's all about casting and I think we got really lucky in all five of these regulars."^[10]

Fresco approached Jonathan Slavin, with whom he had previously worked on the sitcom Andy Richter Controls the Universe, about playing the role of Phil. Being a fan of Slavin's work, he thought he'd be great for the role.^[10] Andrea Anders, whom Fresco previously enjoyed on The Class, and Malcolm Barrett were cast for the roles of Linda and Lem respectively.^[10] Portia de Rossi met with Fresco about the role of Veronica. Fresco assessed during their meeting that de Rossi was completely convinced that the role was perfect for her and that she was born to play it. He thought de Rossi nailed the role and cast her.^[10] When asked what drew her to the role, de Rossi replied, "I'm really attracted to strong women."^[16] De Rossi further went on to say, "I kind of had to throw myself at [Fresco]. I told him I'd played this character who had similar qualities, very work driven, strong, insensitive, slightly chilly. I had to convince him I could play this character well and could play a character of this nature."^[16] Jay Harrington was the first person Fresco met with when trying to cast someone as Ted Crisp. Although Fresco really liked Harrington, he decided to see more people before casting the role. After five weeks, Harrington was cast.^[10]

DVD release

Reception

Reunions

In mid-2011 series co-star Malcolm Barrett released his first single, "Revenge of the Nerds" under his alternate performance name, Verbal. The official music video for the song, released in June 2011, reunited all the major cast members of Better Off Ted, although only Barrett, Slavin and de Rossi reprised their original series characters (Harrington and Anders appear as a high school jock and a cheerleader, respectively, while series creator Victor Fresco also appears in the video).^[53] Barrett's recording is also included on the soundtrack of the final episode of Better Off Ted, "Swag the Dog."

In 2020, the cast virtually reunited for a table read of an episode and moderated discussion to raise money for Feeding America.^[54]

References

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to Better Off Ted.

• Better Off Ted at IMDb