MinotDailyNews.com | News, sports, business, jobs

TV is the New Reading

POSTED:Sat, July 4, 2009 @ 10:16PM

Print | Email | Read comments | Post a comment

Bringing the funny

In this week’s topic, hits and misses in the comedy world.

Who knows ever what’s funny? Comedy strikes everyone differently. What one person finds droll another finds dry. A blonde joke is hilarious to one and offensive to another. One person’s slip on a banana peel is another’s crass and mindless nonsense, and when you add political leanings, well, let’s just say former “Saturday Night Live” comedy writer Al Franken’s election to the U.S. Senate brought both smiles and frowns.

The funnies I want to look at this week include “Better Off Ted” on ABC, which I deem to be the funniest show no one is watching, and HBO’s new serio-comic “Hung,” which I feel is destined to be a little bit one-note.

"Better Off Ted"

In this past midseason ABC added an office comedy, “Better Off Ted,” that just made me laugh. It’s a relatively seamless combination of single-camera mockumentary and conventional sitcom -- largely because there’s no way Ted -- the only cast member to address the camera directly with his inner monologue -- can be everywhere in Veridian Dynamics for all the wacky disasters.

Yes, Ted Crisp is a human resources manager for the R&D department of an industrial conglomerate that manufactures biocomputers and chemical foodstuffs and weapons systems, occasionally in combination. When you’re working in such a cutting edge environment and testing these advances out in the workplace, lots of things can go wrong.

For instance, a security system was somehow incapable of reacting to anyone darker than a sheet of paper and Veridian’s black employees were getting trapped in their offices and in one hilarious sequence, in an elevator. Initially, a helper was assigned to each of them -- a white helper -- and then because of fears of racial discrimination a black helper was hired for every white helper until all the black employees had this entourage and the corporate model threatened to employ everyone in the world mostly to stand around making sure employees could get in and out through doorways.

Most recently, a biocomputer was leaking an acid that was eating through everything and forced all the employees on Ted’s floor to share office space. Ted was paired with a marketing person who he had feelings for and they got on each other’s nerves, so Ted moved to his boss’s office and managed to get on her nerves. Other hijinks have included medieval fight club in the basement among the geeky lab techs and a vocal projector that can make you think you are hearing the voice of God, and at higher levels, can make you throw up.

Since my initial reaction to this show back in April, it left the airwaves briefly, and has since returned for a summer run heading into its status this fall as a returning series. The next episode airs in about a week, and you should absolutely catch it if you can.

"Hung"

See, I will never be able to get enough “True Blood.” As I discussed last week it’s this sort of serial vampire saga in which gorgeous Southerners are portrayed running about in varying states of deshabille. Now it’s been paired on HBO with “Hung,” in which actor Thomas Jane … well …

Jane as high school varsity basketball coach Ray Drecker outlines the economic collapse in his home and in Detroit in a way not dissimilar to the opening credits of “The Full Monty,” a not-dissimilar story in which down-on-their-luck Irish mine workers seek to turn their situation around by running into bars and taking all their clothes off.

In the opening sequence in fact that’s step by step what we see from Ray Drecker before he jumps in the lake. Following his divorce Drecker let his insurance lapse on his folks’ home which promptly burns down. His kids -- he’d had custody of his kids -- but after the fire they move in with their gold-digging mom and her charmless new husband, a wealthy dermatologist, and now his wealthy neighbor, a lawyer no less, is on his case through the homeowners association about making repairs. Ray, for his part has pitched a tent out front and his kids are still asking him for money. He’s a high school teacher on summer hiatus so he doesn’t have any, and Detroit’s not otherwise bursting with economic opportunities.

Or is it?

Well, he joins a seminar on maximizing his potential and reconnects with Tanya, a former poet. That is, she’s still a poet but isn’t employed as such by the school system, where he met her. They’d shared a night together at the time and he never called her again because she was let’s face it, a little annoying.

Anyway, the seminar gave him the idea to market the one attribute uniquely his own, implicit in the title of the show. Tanya gives him some tips on marketing himself and signs on as his marketing adviser or, in more conventional terms, his pimp.

And now I guess we’ll see how this avoids becoming a series-length "Deuce Bigelow" knockoff. Drecker is a sufficiently fleshed out and sympathetic character and his situation is a bad one, he wants to provide for his kids and by the end of the pilot, his new vocation gives him the means of doing so. That is, his first client was too shy and sad to let him into her hotel suite -- couldn’t even open the door, poor thing -- but she gave him $50 for his troubles, which he in turn handed off to his son for concert tickets.

I imagine he’ll have to work a little harder for it as this not-at-all family friendly series continues.

“Better Off Ted” airs Thursdays at 7 p.m. on ABC. “Hung” airs Sundays as a half-hour comedy at 10/9c on HBO and is available in that channel’s on-demand lineup.

Share: