{"id":37,"date":"2010-03-18T15:06:57","date_gmt":"2010-03-18T19:06:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mdlake.net\/?p=37"},"modified":"2010-07-14T14:27:19","modified_gmt":"2010-07-14T18:27:19","slug":"rip-ted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.mdlake.net\/?p=37","title":{"rendered":"RIP: Ted"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>That didn&#8217;t take long.  Beating the odds for an intelligent sitcom, <em>Better Off Ted<\/em> got itself a second season.  If scutlebutt is to be believed, the network executives&#8217; real belief in the show might have something to do with getting a second season, though it never saw a complete airing.<\/p>\n<p>Sadly, that real belief wasn&#8217;t substantiated by the ratings.  I don&#8217;t know why people didn&#8217;t tune in.  <em>Ted<\/em> was novel and clever enough to deliver real laughs\u00e2\u20ac\u201dspecial thanks to Portia DiRossi&#8217;s role as Veronica\u00e2\u20ac\u201dbut not so weird or experimental as to confuse a general audience.  The dynamic between lab geniuses Phil and Lem was new material, too, grounded in a widespread re-evaluation of the nerd that began with the computer billionaires of the &#8217;80s but is only now approaching humorous accuracy.  It was satirical enough for the jaded palate of generation X yet cutsey enough not to feel threatening and uncomfortable.  But people just tuned out.  Too busy enduring the pointless tease of <em>Lost<\/em>, I guess.<\/p>\n<p>So, like <em>Firefly<\/em> and <em>Middleman<\/em> before it, <em>Better of Ted<\/em> developed a core of fanatically loyal fans and not much else, the kind of show that could be a big hit in the niche markets of cable, but simply couldn&#8217;t meet the block-buster-or-bust demands of network television.<\/p>\n<p>Someone ought to do a Veridian Dynamics spoof ad explaining how this kind of disappointment happens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>mourning the cancellation of Better Off Ted<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mdlake.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mdlake.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mdlake.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mdlake.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mdlake.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.mdlake.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mdlake.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mdlake.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mdlake.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}