TV is the New Reading

‘Ted’ better off than

‘Sam Who?’, ‘Motherhood’

My high hopes for new comedies this season have been dashed a little, but there’s definitely some bright spots on the grid, and some good-looking prospects in the offing.

First, the brightest point of all, which is Jay Harrington as Ted Crisp in ABC’s “Better Off Ted.” I knew from the previews that I was going to like everything about this show, mostly because Portia di Rossi is playing a grown-up version of her character from “Arrested Development.”

In fact, there’s a lot of “Arrested Development” in “Better Off Ted.” You have wild corporate excess, wacky projects that go terribly, terribly wrong, single-camera presentation and self-referential narration. And at the center of it, holding it all together, you have a mild, likeable single dad – in this case, Ted Crisp, head of research and development at Veridian Dynamics.

Although he’s extremely capable of directing every project he’s asked for by his boss, di Rossi as Veronica – a beautiful, demanding woman not given to overthinking things – Ted should really be in charge of marketing. His irrepressibly upbeat attitude keeps the personality conflicts at bay in his department.

So when Veronica asks him to find a use for a piece of fabric they developed, his reseachers Lem and Phil – Malcolm Barrett and Jonathan Slavin – turn it into a chair that is so irritating it actually increases productivity until its users go insane and kill themselves – Ted is still able to ship out the orders.

And when she demands the development of an artificial meat to replace Veridian’s “fun fun fun” macaroni and cheese – a product that tastes fantastic but turns consumers blind if eaten more than twice in one week – Ted once again gets together with his researchers. They come up with an artificial meat product that can grow in a lab and doesn’t require any animal slaughter, but which testers say tastes like “despair.” They work on it some more until they get it tasting like meat. The final product is a huge hit for the company, but at $10,000 a pound, it’s not flying off the shelves.

In the meantime, corporate rebellion is afoot, in the form of Linda Zwordling, played by Andrea Anders. Currently, the marketing maven has focused her frustration with the corporate culture on stealing coffee creamers and paper towels, but is all the more interested in pursuing a relationship with Ted. Sadly for her, Ted has already used up his one office romance – with Veronica, in fact – but he’s also quite taken with Linda, so I guess we’ll see where it goes from there.

Developing amnesia

ABC has been kicking around the idea of cancelling Christina Applegate’s “Samantha Who?” for awhile but it looks like they’re at least giving it a chance in a new timeslot on Thursday night. And to be fair, there’s so much quality programming slated for Monday nights that even with a DVR you can’t record all the good stuff, and the show had basically fallen off my radar.

I caught it last Thursday and I guess I’d forgotten myself what it was that drew me to this show in the first place. Applegate’s title character Samantha Newly’s amnesia was barely a factor and her roomie/would-be boyfriend’s angst was uninteresting. Usual hole-in-ones Tim Russ as her doorman and Jean Smart as her mom were decidedly underutilized in favor of her father and her friends Andrea and Dena. Even guest star McKinley Freeman as Andrea’s sexually ambiguous boyfriend, pro basketball player Tony Dane, fell flat.

I get that after two seasons the amnesia premise is no longer enough to drive the show, but this is a sufficiently wacky bunch of characters to propel this comedy into the stratosphere. Instead, the writers relied heavily on “Three’s Company”-style “who’s gay?” throwbacks, awkward moments and pointless sideplots that went nowhere.

I’m still going to watch, but if hack writing gets it canceled I won’t miss it.

Speaking of disappointments, I was expecting a lot more from Megan Mullally’s “In the Motherhood.” The episode drew inspiration from mommy-blogs and touched on revealing to kids that there is no Santa Claus (inciting a riot in the child’s classroom), a woman faking a pregnancy to get free coffee and a woman who is caught mid-fling in her workspace with her supervisor – immediately following a sexual harrassment workshop – because they were on their third date and she had to wrap things up quickly so as to get home and relieve her nanny, played by “Saturday Night Live’s” Horatio Sanz, who was impossibly underutilized in a vaguely exploitive role.

My guess is that some women will manage to relate to three fabulous-looking, pencil-thin women bemoaning the trials of motherhood from week to week, but my guess is that the moms most immediately in the trenches aren’t going to find the time for this show, and the others aren’t going to find it especially funny. If you can imagine Felicity Huffman’s Lynette Scavo from “Desperate Housewives” circa 2004 curled up in a fetal position surrounded by four screaming kids, contemplating suicide and worrying that every move she makes makes her the worst mother in the world then ...

... yeah, it’s essentially as light-hearted and hilarious as that.

The landscape isn’t entirely bleak, however. Along with ABC’s terrifically funny “Better Off Ted,” NBC is putting something together with SNL alumn Amy Poehler called “Parks and Recreation,” premiering April 9, that looks like it’s going to bring some serious funny as well.

Until then, “Better Off Ted” airs Wednesdays at 7:30 p.m., “In the Motherhood” airs at 7 p.m. Thursdays and “Samantha Who?” airs at 7:30 p.m. Thursdays, all on ABC.

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