Don't Miss Better Off Ted, tonight on ABC

Last Tuesday, Scrubs returned to ABC with a double-episode premiere of its new "2.0" format, set in a medical school. The ratings, unfortunately, were abysmal.

Tonight, following Scrubs, is the return of my favorite new show of last season, Better Off Ted. If you haven't yet sampled the show, set in the hilariously amoral corporate offices of conglomerate Veridian Dynamics, you're missing some of the edgiest, most pointed and yet silliest writing to be found in today's TV comedy. And some of the best performances, like standouts Portia DeRossi, as the driven and icy blonde boss Veronica, and Andrea Anders as the neurotic and moral underling Linda.

Yesterday, on Sirius OutQ's The Frank DeCaro Show, another of the show's stars, out gay actor Jonathan Slavin, who plays the hilariously put-upon lab researcher Phil, noted that ABC hopes that the pairing of Scrubs and Ted will click, since they both have such a smart comic sensibility. (I would also add that if you are/were a fan of either Arrested Development or 30 Rock, you should check in tonight with Ted.)

Personally, I wish ABC had given Ted the berth in its more successful Wednesday lineup which used to be occupied by Kelsey Grammer's now-cancelled Hank, and which now temporarily houses repeats of this season's best new comedy, Modern Family. Let's hope that Scrubs and Ted, two shows worth watching, can cause some uptick in the numbers at ABC -- although with CBS' combination of NCIS, NCIS: Los Angeles and The Good Wife catching fire this season, it's going to be a tough battle.

So check out the following clip from last season's finest half-hour, entitled "Racial Sensitivity" (in which Veridian's new automatic light sensors are unable to sense the presence of black people, effectively locking them in dark rooms at work) and then, if you still can't miss your LL Cool J fix -- and who could blame you? -- set your DVRs for a season pass of Ted.

Better Off Ted
Tuesdays at 9:30 Eastern
ABC

Is Ted a Mad Man?

This morning in Los Angeles, I had the pleasure of stopping by the set of Better Off Ted, aka "the best new show you may not yet be watching." For a few hours, I was happy to step into a lab deep within the bowels of the Veridian Corporation, where Phil and Lem -- aka the hysterically funny Jonathan Slavin and Malcolm Barrett -- fretted over a small cosmetic change in their premises which I can't tell you about.

From Victor Fresco, the creator of the cancelled-too-soon Andy Richter Controls the Universe, Better Off Ted films at the LA Center Studios on the edge of downtown, a complex I'd frankly never heard of before visiting the set of Mad Men there last year during the Television Critics' Convention. Turns out, CBS' Numb3rs is shot there, too, as will be The Station, the new comedy pilot for FOX from producer Ben Stiller .

But here's the fun bit of trivia I discovered today: while the lab and other sets like Ted's apartment are constructed on soundstages, Veridian's main office setup, cubicles and all, is filmed on a converted, formerly real office floor within the complex (which houses not just TV and film productions depicting corporate types but real corporate types as well, in fields like advertising. )

Mad Men's offices are also constructed on a floor within the same building. So watch Better Off Ted, then watch Mad Men, and then compare. Apart from the cosmetic changes in set dressing, the two office floors will look eerily similar. They have the same bones, because the Veridian Dynamics of the 21st Century and the Sterling-Cooper ad agency of the 1960s are located mere floors away from each other.

Better Off Ted debuted with a short run this past spring, and then returned to air 7 new episodes over the summer. Unfortunately for Ted, not a single broadcast network show in any genre -- comedy, drama or even reality -- which aired this summer got any kind of decent ratings. So I hope when Ted returns to ABC as a replacement for midseason (or earlier, depending upon the health of the network's other shows), execs will show some patience

for this so-far undiscovered, but worth discovering, gem.

Better Off Ted returns TONIGHT!

For some reason, when ABC launched Better Off Ted at midseason this year, they planned only for some of its first season episodes to air, and inexplicably held back another 6 installments, which they would stockpile in case the show was granted a second season.

Luckily for fans of this smart, hilarious and critically hailed show, Better Off Ted will be returning for season 2, sometime in the late fall.

The even better news is, though, that ABC isn't going to make us wait that long. Starting tonight, the network is airing those 6 originally held-back episodes. Which means a rare chance for us to see some smart, original comedy during the dog days of summer -- normally the time of year when the only original episodes we get to see of anything on a broadcast network are burned off episodes of already-cancelled shows (see: Pushing Daisies et al.)

In tonight's episode, Linda (Andrea Anders) wonders whether a boss can be a friend when Veronica (Portia de Rossi) starts sharing way too much about her personal life. Meanwhile, Ted (Jay Harrington) horns in on Phil (Jonathan Slavin) and Lem's (Malcolm Barrett) Medieval Fight Club.

Tune in tonight at ABC at 9:30 Eastern/Pacific -- and be ready to laugh out loud!