Better Off Ted Cancelled - Damn You ABC!!!

This is the first of a new series of posts about TV shows that should never have been cancelled. It really pisses me off when an amazing show like this gets scrapped before it has time to find its audience. (Usually because the network didn't really give it a chance anyway!) TV has certainly improved in the last decade with bigger budgets and better actors, but it's rare to find a comedy show on a mainstream network that's intelligent, pushes boundaries and is still hilarious. However Better Off Ted met all those criteria and more. The dialogue was excellent and as quotable as any episode of Glee. The wide range of characters, acting and storylines were great too.

The show centered around a group of employees in the research and development department of Veridian Dynamics, a fictional evil corporation with the typical faceless bureaucracy and ethos of profit before ethics. Each episode included a fake commercial for the company with genius taglines such as "People lie. Companies protect their interests. It's different."

Many of the plots focused around the company's attempts to increase profits, including my personal favourite episode where they gave one employee each day a red lab coat instead of a white one. The employees speculated endlessly as to the meaning of this, and switched back and forth between thinking it was a reward or a punishment depending on who received it each day. But regardless they worked harder to earn or avoid it, which is exactly what the company planned. It turned out the assignment of the red lab coat was totally random, it was just because they did a study that proved any change in the workplace increased productivity. I just hope none of the managers at my work saw this one!

Another great episode featured a new automated system for the whole building including doors and elevators that operated using sensors to detect people, however it couldn't see black people. Instead of reverting back to the old system at great expense, the company's answer to this problem was to pay white people minimum wage to follow around the black people.  The black employees tried to rise up against this, but ended up stuck in an elevator on the way to the boss's office.  It was classic!

So anyway, in an effort to spread the word about this show (and hopefully help the DVD sales so they reconsider cancelling it), here are some clips for your enjoyment. The first one is an outtakes reel from an episode where a typo in a memo led to all employees being forced to swear at each other (so beware there is some objectionable language in that one). And the others are some of the Veridian commercials I mentioned earlier.

A couple more of my favourite Veridian commercials that I didn't have permission to embed:
Veridian Dynamics: Competition. It makes everything better.
Veridian Dynamics: Family. Yay.

Rating: 10 out of 10, TV comedy doesn't get much better than this!