There was a joke on a Family Guy episode in which they did some Seth MacFarlane self-parody with the line is “Yeah, he watched TV in the 80s. We get it.” When Family Guy burst on the scene in 1999 after the Super Bowl, it reflected a growing change in movies and TV that decade where pop culture was being referenced more in plot lines. Quentin Tarantino and Kevin Smith were making movies where people talked about comic books, TV shows, movies and music and people liked it.
And maybe in the era where people were just getting used to the Internet, the idea of searching for a TV show or movie you might have forgotten from your childhood was what the Internet mostly was. Family Guy may have rubbed some people the wrong way. It was canceled twice and critics hated it. But it made money on DVD sales and Cartoon Network Adult Swim viewings were high. So it came back in 2005 on Fox and has been on ever since with no signs of slowing down, even though MacFarlane has mostly passed the reins to other people.
And that’s because he’s been working on other TV series. The Orville, despite some criticism, is actually a great show. And if there is a fourth season, hopefully, it will be just as good although the third season subtitled New Horizons has some type of finality to it. His latest series Ted, is a prequel to the 2012 movie of the same name and its sequel with only MacFarlane returning as the voice of the titular stuffed teddy bear who comes to life.
Just like Family Guy and A Million Ways to Die, it has a sophomoric style of humor that is funny despite its crudeness. What makes MacFarlane’s material so funny is he isn’t trying to win any awards. He knows the critics don’t like him and so do those who pass out awards. He just wants to entertain his audience. The 2012 movie, his directorial debut, was a surprisingly funny fantasy comedy with Mark Wahlberg showing how funny he could be. His role as John Bennett was unlike anything Wahlberg had done before. Now, he’s more relaxed in comedic roles. But John was the type of guy Wahlberg would’ve probably beaten up on the streets of Boston (and might have given his checkered youth).
Max Burkholder steps into the role for John when he is 16 and unpopular at his Framingham, Mass. school. His father, Matty (Scott Grimes replacing Ralph Garman from the movie) is your typical New England blue-collar father of the era. He talks in a thick accent about manly things and doesn’t fully understand his son. His mother, Susan (Alanna Ubach replacing Alex Borstein from the movie) is a naive and timid stay-at-home mother who tries to avoid confrontations. The parents are obviously send-up of sitcom style parents of the era, but I don’t doubt MacFarlane saw a lot of parents like this. He’s often been a critic of the people of upper New England.
Added to the family is Blaire Bennett (Giorgia Whigham), who is John’s cousin and liberal-minded as she attends Emerson College. Naturally, she argues a lot with Matty who has more conservative Republican ideals and believes a family man’s duties end at paying the bills. Grimes does overplay the character at time to parody but Whigham manages to keep Blaire from becoming the Marilyn Munster/Cousin Oliver type. She goes to a Halloween party and gets drunk wanting Ted to be the designated driver. And she does deal cannabis.
But Burkholder and Ted are the central part of the series. And Burkholder, who is in his mid-20s, but looks like he can’t even get in the X-rated section of the video rental place, which is the plot of one of the episodes. Mostly, the series looks at the life of being a teenager in the 1990s. The Internet wasn’t popular yet. People still watched movies on VCR and you didn’t want a porno to be stuck in the machine.
Some of the jokes about Bill Cosby and O.J. Simpson obviously seem to mocking how foolish we were 30 years ago to believe they were great people. Some of the better episodes involve the Halloween one and another in which Ted and John try to rent porno movies. The Christmas-themed episode seems a little pointed in trying to drive home some liberal points that are still controversial now as they were in 1993. The second episode where John and Ted get back at their bully, Clive (Jack Seavor McDonald), takes an unexpected turn that is creative.
However, the episode that focuses on Matty and Susan’s relationship is the weakest. I did find the seventh and final episode in which John tries to woo a classmate, Bethany (Charlotte Fountain-Jardim) to work great because of how Burkholder plays the foolishness of a young boy ignorant of how to really treat the opposite sex, which is what many young men were like back in the day and are still.
It’s unknown at this time if there will be a second season. MacFarlane, who directs each episode, said he will only work on a second season. Reviews were fresh at a 71 percent aggregate on Rotten Tomatoes. So, hopefully they will be another season and more.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 