Streaming on: Sky / NOW
Episodes viewed: 7 of 7
Do you remember the year 2012? It was a happier, halcyon, pre-pandemic age, when the only thing we worried about was whether the apocalyptic predictions of the film 2012 would come true. And so it was in 2012 that Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane — riding on the success of three popular animated sitcoms, with an Oscars hosting gig just around the corner — wrote and directed the film Ted, a mostly funny stoner comedy film about a grown man (played by Mark Wahlberg) and his talking teddy bear (voiced by MacFarlane) who spend their days drinking, getting high, and talking about girls in a Boston accent.
A decade and a bit has passed, and we’ve all since grown up a bit — but Ted is still here. This prequel series to the film, depicting Wahlberg’s character John as a 16-year-old (played here by Max Burkholder), is set in 1993, but it feels distinctly 2012-ish. There’s no sense of evolution or invention. It’s MacFarlane’s same stock-in-trade, bro-y, ultra-ironic sense of humour, and it has never felt more dated.
The chief problem here is that the jokes fundamentally just aren’t that funny.
The central joke that just about sustained two feature-length films — imagine if a cute little teddy bear had a mouth like a sailor! — is stretched to breaking point across these seven episodes. Bad-taste comedy, if wielded with a surgeon’s blade, can be gloriously funny, but this sort of thing feels made exclusively for, and by, teenage boys, or at least someone for whom naughty words are still a new and exciting concept. Talk of blowjobs, midgets and racial slurs can be heard within the first five minutes of Episode 1. Okay! Fine, great, have at it. But is that it? Is that the best you can manage?
The chief problem here is that the jokes fundamentally just aren’t that funny, try as they might. A teddy bear jumping out of a box of sausages to say, “I’m the king of the wieners!” is weak stuff. “I jacked off a dog!”, as the grand culminating punchline of a 43-minute episode, is weaker still. MacFarlane’s obvious love for classic network television means the series follows the structures and staples of sitcoms of yore, with a nuclear family and a catchy theme tune. But in the streaming era, the one trope it doesn’t adhere to is runtime, with interminably long episodes that often last near an hour. That leaves it all feeling baggy, careless and imprecise. It lets all the air out of the comedy.
What keeps Ted from being a complete disaster are the production values and the performances. It is actually a good-looking, well directed, well put-together show, and the visual effects required to bring Ted to life are seamless (no small feat on the small screen, as other shows have found to their cost). On a technical level it can’t really be faulted. And the cast is solid. Burkholder isn’t much of a Wahlberg-alike, and clearly isn’t attempting an impression, but he’s decent value. More impressive still are Alanna Ubach and Scott Grimes as John’s none-more-Massachusetts parents; Ubach in particular may be the series’ stealth saving grace.
But it is horrendously slim pickings otherwise. A lot has happened since 2012. The film M3GAN was released, and we all agreed as a society to no longer trust talking toys. Some things, perhaps, are best left in the past.