Why Nobody Watches Better Off Ted (Maybe) Even Though They Should (Definitely)

Better Off Ted is all sharp edges and pointy barbs. Lots of folks have claimed that this is why it's had such a hard time grabbing, well, any audience to speak of. And that may well have something to do with it. It's not meanness, per se--Two and Half Men is far meaner, maybe the meanest sitcom ever--but it is a particular kind of cold and calculating satire. There are relationships there, there are even lessons, but those relationships and lessons are always butting up against and being consumed by a show that is on the whole distant and harsh.

That is intentional, of course. The feel of the show is the feel of the company at the heart of it. The American version of The Office dabbles in satire, but its focus is on the characters, making it a much warmer show. In Ted, the characters are secondary to the absurdity of the system. (It would, in fact, not be outrageous to say that the show's actual main character is, in fact, Veridian Dynamics.) So while in The Office little victories are celebrated, in Ted those same little victories are immediately sucked back into the system and spit back out in perverted (but hilarious!) ways. So, yeah, some people might find that a bit off-putting.

But I kind of think a bigger problem the show has is that now's not really a great time to be mocking office jobs, what with the way lots of people would kill a goat with their bare hands* for just such a job right now. It's not a coincidence that Dilbert, a comic strip that specializes in a similar type of sharp-edged satire, rose to fame during the 90s, when the economy was going swimmingly and everybody had jobs they hated. Now most people are just thankful to have a job, absurdities and all.

The Office has been better able to deal with this shift in attitudes precisely because of its heavy focus on characters. When the show started, most of the characters seemed to despise their jobs. As the show's gone along, however, we've come to see that some of them have a more nuanced outlook on their employment situation, while others have come to appreciate their jobs more. Even Jim takes his job seriously now. (Jim!) There are plenty of times the characters get frustrated, but at the same time, the office in The Office isn't such a bad place to work. And as the real world economy has worsened, the show and the characters have reflected that.

Ted's tunnel focus on office mockery doesn't really allow for that kind character-based nuance or the kind of archy-plot devices necessary to make that kind of transition. That doesn't mean it's necessarily a worse show. It just means it's a different kind of show. Possibly the kind of show that's not well-suited for this particular cultural moment.

Of course, it's also possible that nobody's watching Better Off Ted because, how did my brother put it? Ah, yes. "What the heck's Better Off Ted?"

*This is no doubt part of the Veridian Dynamics application process.

How I Met Your Mother: The Leap

How I Met Your Mother sometimes overreaches on the sentimentality. It's a flaw, but it's also part of the show's charm, and it happened towards the end of last night's season finale. “The Leap,” written by series creators Carter Bays and Craig Thomas and directed, as usual, by Pamela Fryman, rolled along quite nicely until then, though.

Specifically, everything involving the goat was gold. There are, of course, those who believe it didn't live up to the hype, which is fair enough, I suppose. But that's why it's best not to measure quality by hype. (Which, incidentally, is why I almost universally hate backlashes.) And Ted fighting a goat to the delicate strains of “Murder Train?” That's funny.

Also funny is the budding romance between Barney and Robin. Though I think the show probably should have built up to their confrontation a bit more quickly, their fear of commitment and of their own feelings for one another make the dallying seem honest. And now that we've gotten the confrontation, it's hard for me to say that it could have been handled any better, really. Whenever Ted's relationships come to some sort of head, the show generally drops the comedy, strikes up the background pop song, and goes for straight, if slightly absurd, sentimentality. Not the case with Barney and Robin, at all, and that's how it should be.

As indicated in the lede, the show's melodramatic tendency did, however, rear its head at the end of the episode, when Ted infiltrated the Marshall and Lily storyline and turned Marshall's leap over to the neighboring rooftop into a somewhat strained metaphor for letting your life take you where it will. Which is sort of a nice sentiment.

And sort of a sad one. Because implicit in that leap is the harsh reality of giving up on your dreams; whether it's, in Lily's case, being an artist; or, in Marshall's case, saving the environment; or, in Barney's case, being a violinist; or, in Ted's case, being an architect. To its credit, the show is pretty upfront about this. None of these characters have accomplished their dreams, and in this way it is similar to The Office, which is a show about people who often fail and the small victories they do manage to achieve. Where the shows differ is mostly in style; whereas HIMYM embraces melodrama, The Office eschews it. So The Office gives us a scene wherein Pam finds out she's pregnant and hides it in silence behind a window, while HIMYM stages the leap in slow motion with voice-over narration.

What's most interesting about “The Leap,” though, is the way it plays the acceptance of failure as a victory in and of itself. And it is! We each have to accept our limitations. Despite what our parents told us when we were growing up, we can't actually be whatever we want to be. But we can be something else, even if that something else seems a little less spectacular to us. And maybe we can achieve slightly smaller dreams, like making the leap over to the roof next door. It's a bittersweet sort of victory.

The Office: Company Picnic

The fourth season of The Office wasn't bad, but it also wasn't up to the standards the show's second and third seasons had set. It did, however, end on a positive note, with the arrival of new HR representative Holly Flax, played by the always awesome Amy Ryan. Season five picked up where the tail-end of that fourth season left off, and hasn't really had a bad episode all year. “Company Picnic,” the fifth season finale, written by Jennifer Celotta and Paul Lieberstein, directed by Ken Kwapis, and featuring the return of Ryan's Holly, just continued the excellence.

It's really nothing short of remarkable how much Michael Scott has grown as a character. Actually, what's remarkable about it is that it all seems so natural and unforced. He still has all the passive-aggressive tendencies and poor judgment he displayed in the early seasons, as illustrated by the less than polite way he treats Holly's new beau; but those traits have been tempered by experiences he's had since then, mostly having to do with his tortured relationships with both Jan and Dunder-Mifflin. He is now brave enough to stand up for himself, as well as just self-aware enough to realize when he doesn't really have to.

Holly, after all, is not Jan or David Wallace. She was being neither sadistic nor dismissive of Michael when she decided to break up with him; she was just being realistic. Moreover, Michael doesn't have to tell her that he loves her, because she already knows that. And when they sat there on the grass together at the end of this episode, discussing the disaster that was their SlumDunder Mifflinaire skit, Michael actually got that. And probably for the first time in his life, he didn't push. He just accepted the situation, and decided to enjoy the little bit of time they got to spend together.

Equally lovely was Jim and Pam's scene at the end. Even though Pam's imminent pregnancy had been foreshadowed a few minutes before, it nonetheless takes some guts to write a scene entirely reliant on the physical reactions of the cast. But it just shows how much confidence the show is working with right now, and Jenna Fischer and John Krasinski (who just maybe doesn't get enough credit for what he does) were more than up to the task.

Also showing just how much confidence the show has right now is the writers' decision to introduce a baby, which is one of those plot developments that has a reputation for eating shows alive. Given how well the show has handled the Jim and Pam coupling, however, I'm not too worried. The Office seems to take a certain pride in taking the things other shows have done wrong and doing them right.

Other stuff:

• Pam's good at volleyball! I have no idea why that's funny, and yet it is.
• SlumDunder Mifflinaire was evidence that even when The Office is at its sweetest, it can still make you cringe.
• Stanley should get drunk more often. Just because I like seeing him happy.
  
• Phyllis sitting down in the middle of the volleyball game is precisely the sort of passive-aggressive thing she would do. She is more like Michael than she would probably care to admit.
• We need to see Rolf and Mose get together and hang out.
  
• I'm liking the new receptionist. And so is Andy. But he really wishes she didn't suck so much at volleyball.