Better Off Ted

Please help improve this article by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page. (December 2009)

Better Off Ted
Genre	Situation comedy, science fiction
Created by	Victor Fresco
Starring	Jay Harrington Portia de Rossi Andrea Anders Jonathan Slavin Malcolm Barrett Isabella Acres
Country of origin	United States
Language(s)	English
No. of seasons	2
No. of episodes	24 (List of episodes)
Production
Executive producer(s)	Victor Fresco
Camera setup	Single-camera setup
Running time	30 minutes (with commercials)
Broadcast
Original channel	ABC
Original run	March 18, 2009 (2009-03-18) – present
External links
Official website

Better Off Ted is an American single-camera situation comedy, which premiered March 18, 2009 on ABC.^[1] The show deals with the day-to-day absurdities at a heartless technology company, Veridian Dynamics. Creator Victor Fresco is also executive producer for the series.^[2] It is produced by 20th Century Fox Television. After a first season of 13 episodes, it was renewed for a second season of 13 episodes, which premiered on Tuesday, December 8, 2009, at 9:30PM Eastern/8:30PM Central, following Scrubs.^[3] In 2009, the series was nominated for the Ewwy Award for Best Comedy Series.

Jay Harrington, who plays Ted Crisp on the show, serves as both a main character and as an on-camera narrator. 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. Veridian is presented as an impersonal large corporation that twists facts, lies to its consumers and spins negative aspects of the company to its own benefit.

Premise

Better Off Ted revolves around the concept of all the characters working for a stereotypical evil company, of which all the characters are aware of. The company, Veridian Dynamics, tests things on its employees, twists the truth to its customers, and will stop at nothing to achieve its goals, hence the company motto "Money before People". It has been mentioned that Veridian has swayed presidential elections, created killer pandas and robots, and that there are only three governments in the world left that are more powerful than Veridian. The characters will often try to work the system to try to stop bad things from happening to them, however they have also been shown to be susceptible to the system, as in doing things for rewards, despite the consequences of the things that they do, like trying to hire Lem's mother, or introducing scented light bulbs knowing that they don't work. Overall the characters go with the system, despite knowing what the system has done.

Cast and characters

This section requires expansion with: basic character information and conversion from a list into prose format.

• Jay Harrington as Theodore Margaret "Ted" Crisp
• Portia de Rossi as Veronica Palmer
• Andrea Anders as Linda Katherine Zwordling
• Jonathan Slavin as Dr. Philip "Phil" Myman
• Malcolm Barrett as Dr. Lem Hewitt
• Isabella Acres as Rose Crisp

Episodes

U.S. television ratings

Season 1

Season 2

DVD release

20th Century Fox Home Entertainment released the first season of Better Off Ted on Region 1 DVD on December 1, 2009.

References

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Better Off Ted

• Official website
• Veridian Dynamics website
• Better Off Ted at the Internet Movie Database
• Better Off Ted at TV.com