Better Off Ted analysis: Low-key humor recycling

This show is unlike any other I've seen. It took me at least 10-15 episodes to figure out the formula it has established.

It isn't the normal bad sitcom formula, where jokes that completely fall flat are answered with deafening laughter (The Winner, Romantically Challenged, etc.), and I don't mean to say that this is a bad sitcom (though it is far, far from great).

This is totally different, and mostly unique. This show almost never tries jokes that aren't funny at all, but in more than a dozen episodes, I never heard anything that was laugh out loud funny. Not once, and that's odd. You get that at least once or twice or even several times in a single episode of 30 Rock or Arrested Development, two shows that are somewhat like this one (single camera, no laugh track, offbeat humor).

The jokes in this show are all roughly the same. Each one is funny, to some degree, but not even laughing funny, just mildly amusing in a clever (usually) way. Each one makes you sort of smirk along with them. At best that is, no laughing, just smiling along knowingly.

It is almost as if they collected a thousand jokes, then eliminated all the ones that just plain weren't funny, then eliminated all the ones that were hilarious, and used all the ones in between that keep it on an even keel, with that smug, Better Off Ted sniftiness. This has a very low key humor style that I've never seen before (and I can assure you that it won't catch on).

The second part of this formula is humor recycling. In most any episode, they will make a joke, some joke that is funny, but not really funny, sort of 2010 Leno funny, then a few minutes later, use the exact same joke again, then force that once-is-plenty joke into being a running joke. There are many instances of multiple jokes being recycled in the same episode.

One example is the one where Ted explains how he can motivate and get the attention of the scientists:

He says he does this by using the caramels he keeps in his pocket.

Drum roll! Not really.

Then they proceed to reuse that joke ten minutes later when someone else reveals that they are now using caramels to manipulate the scientists. That isn't even a joke, really, but they throw it in anyway, then beat it to death.

Another one that really outlines the humor standard is the one where the employees go to Ted's to hatch a plan (to undo whatever it was the evil corporation was doing, I can't recall, the story lines are forgettable and I've just watched ten of them in three days) but his daughter does not approve because it involves lying.

So, they all agree she is right and say they won't do it, then send her to bed...so they can keep working on the plan anyway!

But wait, there's more... Then Ted throws in that they...wait for it...can also use this opportunity to play with her toys!

Ha! Get it? They're old and they are scheming to play with toys that belong to a child! A lot of them, even the scientists!

See, that isn't even a joke, but they'll play that as the punchline of a scene.

This show is based on an incredibly thin premise, that corporations don't care about people. Yes, that is the whole plot, the whole situation of this situation comedy.

I have to say, incredibly, is that a plot which is a thousand times better is one where a guy can't afford a place in a tight renter's market and is forced to pretend he is gay so that he can live with two women under the management of a guy who doesn't want to do it with his wife or a guy who is always eavesdropping and misunderstanding what he is hearing and hilarity ensues.

Instead of having a song and graphics to start the show, as with every other show in the past 60 years, they have a fake TV commercial from Veridian Dynamics, where they unintentionally show that they don't understand people or value life. The message here is that not only are corporations evil, but they are stupid, too.

The title of the show is very consistent with the low key humor that is repeated forever. The first time you hear the name Better Off Ted, you think about it, and realize that it is a play on words. You didn't laugh, I can assure you of that, but you got the joke. Then you heard the title 50 more times. It makes it a very, very stale joke that wasn't a real zinger in the first place.

Another problem that makes a weak show weaker is talking directly to the camera. In my view, any time a show resorts to talking to the camera as a normal practice, it makes it a lot less funny.

In the first season of Malcolm In the Middle (you remember it, the only good one), it didn't kill the show, but it didn't really advance it.

On Modern Family, it really does almost kill it. It is a recurring thing, never funny, and is never the best part of the show. Modern Family picked up, though, I think, in that it doesn't do those lame jokes while talking to the camera then rub your nose in the lack of laugh track by pausing ten seconds while you squirm on that one joke (Modern Family, The Office, etc.). Now it keeps moving along with more jokes and less pausing to talk to the camera to be clever. That is a big premise hole, as there is no context for each member of this very extended family to be telling a stranger their problems and innermost feelings.

Does anyone else see the formula of this show in a different way or am I missing a big part of what is supposed to be funny about it?