Ready, Teddy?

I don’t know why I started watching Better Off Ted. I hadn’t really marked it as a “gotta give that a look” show. The star looks like the love child of George Clooney and Milo Ventimiglia (and I don’t really heart either one of them). And it’s a work-based comedy. And I find those kind of dicey. The Office, in both its Brit and US incarnations, makes me want to curl into a little ball and make a small keening noise until the pain goes away. Not ready to laugh about that yet.

But regardless of the setting, I’m glad I got sucked into this one. It’s smart. It’s funny. It’s a little twisted. It may actually be too good to make it on network television. But I’m going to ride this one till the wheels fall off.

Ted’s basically a decent guy who works for a basically indecent food company. They conduct experiments on the employees. They can’t seem to keep straight the concepts of office day care and office day labor (the kids are painting the stripes in the parking lot and performing janitorial services). They are trying to make “cowless meat” (don’t ask). Ted’s slept with his immediate boss and wishes he hadn’t because he would like to sleep with his immediate subordinate and can’t because he’s used up his “office affair”. He doesn’t want to be that kind of a boy.

And there you have the outlines of the first 3 episodes. But the show is really about more than the outlines. There are all sorts of small subplots and quirky details that make it feel more fleshed out than the average sitcom start up. The dialogue is sharp, and they’ve hired actors who deliver it fast and tight. The snappy patter flies more like something out of a 40s comedy like Philadelphia Story than most of what you hear on the tube these days. If it takes smart to play dumb, these actors must all be dumb as a box of rocks in real life.

Which, in the end, is why I’m kind of thinking that this show may be too smart for its own good. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe years of cable shows that have found core audiences that they didn’t have to play down to has prepared the way for a smart comedy on network television. Either way, go take a look. You may be catching a good thing before it disappears, or you may be in on the ground floor of next year’s must see TV.