The New ‘Ted’ Series Is as Filthy, Offensive, and—God Help Us—Funny as Ever
It’s been nine years since we last saw Ted, the plush teddy bear who, courtesy of a wish upon a shooting star, was magically brought to life as the racist, sexist, and all-around profane best friend of Mark Wahlberg’s thirtysomething Massachusetts schlub John. That prolonged absence is rather surprising given that 2012’s Ted is the second most successful R-rated comedy in Hollywood history (and its 2015 sequel did pretty well in its own right). Nonetheless, it’s less shocking to discover that time has not altered the cute-and-crass animated toy, who’s once again voiced with impudent inappropriateness by creator Seth MacFarlane in Ted, an eight-episode Peacock prequel series that rewinds to Ted’s early days with best pal John (Max Burkholder) in the Boston suburb of Framingham—and, in doing so, earns quite a few more chuckles than its big-screen counterparts.
As with its predecessors, Ted, which premieres Jan. 11, is as scattershot as they come, with Ted and John dispensing all manner of politically incorrect—if not outright prejudiced—comments about Blacks, women, Jews, and anyone else who happens to stroll into their crosshairs. In this endeavor, they’re joined by John’s dad Matty Bennett (Scott Grimes), a working-class Vietnam vet Masshole who hates the Clintons, gays in the military, and every other liberal facet of the United States. He’s also a rampant chauvinist whose wife Susan (Alanna Ubach) is a vacant-eyed (and occasionally empty-headed) housewife who’s expected (and willingly accepts her duty) to serve. In this closed-minded enclave, they’re joined by John’s cousin Blaire (Giorgia Whigham), a college student who serves as the clan’s conscience, chiding her relatives for their backwards viewpoints and acting eye-rollingly exasperated when they choose to ignore her advice.
This happens often, since Ted and John are a duo who can’t help but behave horribly, as occurs at the outset of Ted when the furry stuffed animal goes on a winding rant about “midgets” and “Polacks” and is joined in this ugliness by Matty, who makes cracks about Asians being bad drivers and, for it, is dubbed by Blaire “a classic Boston racist.” Matty denies this since he loves Rocky—in which a Black man triumphs—and eventually turns the tables on Blaire for being a hypocrite for favoring her light-skinned Barbie over her dark-skinned one. This is par for the show’s course; it’s frequently a veritable free-for-all of intolerant wisecracks. However, to a greater extent than in either of his prior features, MacFarlane is modestly successful at straddling that South Park-ish line between reveling in insensitivity for cheap chortles and using it to mock those who are spewing it, so that Ted, John, Matty and the rest are also the butts of their own jokes.