A few weeks ago, thanks to the almighty Netflix, I found a new love: Better Off Ted. It's a show that aired on ABC in 2009-2010 about workers in a research and development department in megacorp Veridian Dynamics, appropriately named in the great bland businessy-utopian tradition. It's not the sort of show where there are many overarching plot lines that matter very much, but that's not a problem— BOT makes up for it by being clever as pretty much anything I've seen on TV and by doing some amazing satire of office culture. And it's weird in the best sort of way. It doesn't rely on that awkwardness that programs like The Office and Peep Show are good examples of, the type that conjures up this horrible second-hand embarrassment that I personally can't handle without getting squirmy. (I love Mitchell & Webb, but haven't managed to get past the first season of Peep Show because of that. It's just too painful.) Instead, BOT is full of delightful/disturbing moments like the following:
(Linda places her hands on Phil's cheeks)
Phil: "Now I know what a beard of fingers must feel like... it's just as I had imagined."
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Phil: "I've never been this close to your neck before. Which is the perfect flesh pedestal for your head."
FLESH PEDESTAL. I can't get over this phrase. I had to pause the show for a good minute while I took it in, and then stop it several times afterwards when those words came back into my head and I started giggling uncontrollably.
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Veronica: "A female mentor would have been very valuable for a young Veronica, bursting with potential, yet vulnerable, like a fawn in the woods, but tough, like a fawn in the woods with a machine gun."
Linda: "So you're saying you, or this terrifying, murderous fawn, could have used some guidance?"
Veronica: "Yes, we would have liked that. We're going to raise more money for this charity than it has ever seen before. The forest will run red with the blood of woodland creatures who doubted little Veronica and will now pay with their furry little lives."
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Aside from these amazing individual moments (which each episode is full of), the premises for the individual episodes are fantastic. The AV Club did a nice write-up of the episode where the new motion-sensor system installed in the building has a glitch: it can't see black people. And then there's the episode where a man that dies on the job is turned into a messiah-like figure to increase productivity, complete with complimentary company-provided WWJD (What Would Jenkins Do?) wristbands. And there's Medieval Fight Club.
In most of the episodes, there are these little promotional segments for Veridian Dynamics, which in a lot of cases are hilariously (uncomfortably?) close to their real-life counterparts. For example:
So. I'm not sure that I had a real purpose in mind when I started writing this post; it's really just an outpouring of my love for this show that was taken from this world far too soon. I suppose my point is: you should watch it if you could potentially see the humor in a company trying to weaponize pumpkins. Because that happens.
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