EEEK! THE WHOLE WORLD BLACKS OUT FOR 137 SECONDS AND THEN HAS VISIONS OF THE FUTURE. HIGH CONCEPT DRAMA, FLASH FORWARD, STARTS FEB 2 ON AMERICA PLUS. MAHB TV CORPORATE MAN’S LAUGHTER The sharpest corporate satire on television BY MATT POMROY CRIMINAL MINDS’ JOE MANTEGNA iven the times we ON THE INCREASE live in, you’d think OF TALENT MOVING there would be TO TELEVISION. more corporate When I was starting out in satires on the business, there was a real Gtelevision, but there just aren’t. delineation between people Aside from Jack Donaghy’s who worked in fi lm, the capitalist musings in 30 Rock people who worked in theatre and the odd episode of The and people who worked in Offi ce television. That’s changed , big business is overlooked immensely now and television in sitcoms. That’s why Better Off is drawing a lot better talent Ted has become not just a fi ne than it used to. comedy, but the perfect comedy As a kid I saw certain for our times. people on TV and then certain people in movies. My kids see Aside from the lame title, someone on Nickelodeon almost everything about the and the next thing they show captures the zeitgeist. The single camera But they are forced to hire another round of know that same person is and no laugh track is de rigueur for the modern black men to follow the white men after they get making a movie. It makes no 30-minute comedy, but here it’s mixed with an sued for discriminatory hiring practices. They diff erence to them, they don’t care what medium they’re in; occasionally surreal edge that brings to mind only scrap the plan when they realise how much they’re just going to watch it. the heyday of Scrubs, with titular Ted Crisp all the extra staff are going to cost the company That’s happened with talent (a very dapper Jay Harrington) breaking the in health insurance, all the while forgetting that in terms of the actors and fourth wall and talking to camera. He guides us the problems stemmed from their own penny it’s also happening with the through the working life at Veridian Dynamics, pinching in the fi rst place. If you’ve ever worked writers. Writers get a much a huge, amoral, multi-national chemical company for a big company then the core motives of greater opportunity to see their stuff done in television that makes everything from “organic vegetables corporate culture will ring true. than they do in fi lm. If you talk chock-full of antidepressants” to “a new Among the meaningless awards in lieu of pay- to some great writers they’ll generation of hurricane-proof dogs”. rises and Kafkaesque demands for better results say, “I’ll write a fi lm script and We follow his working life, which is mostly with fewer staff, you also see fake adverts for the try to sell it for three years. spent dealing with a wonderfully unethical boss, company, which merge into the real ad breaks. Finally it sells, it gets made, it gets released and it gets Veronica (Portia de Rossi), and her pursuit of These spoofs are increasingly indistinguishable slammed. Then I’m back to ever-bigger corporate profi ts; upholding the from the medical adverts that run across square one, looking at another corporate motto, “money before people”, and America. This verisimilitude is a middle fi nger three years.” In television, dealing with put-upon scientists Phil and Lem to the real companies whose dubious adverts writers have to produce every who are charged with inventing whatever it is punctuate the show. It’s a handy reminder that month and it keeps them on their game, just as it does with the company needs. Rebellious Linda provides in 2010 it’s not just the politicians who need the actors. “Products include the heart of the lampooning but also the big conglomerates The playing fi eld has organic vegtables story and Ted’s whose interests they pander to. changed. It’s always been that chock full of moral compass. The writers are alumni from some of the way in places like England anti-depressants The lunacy of better American sitcoms (Cheers, Frasier, Family where there was not quite that and hurricane delineation of doing one thing proof dogs ” corporate America Guy, Malcolm in the Middle) and the result or the other. Everybody did is cut open with a feels like a corporate Arrested Development. everything, and I think it’s fantastic touch that Unfortunately it also carries the same “critically a healthier environment. hasn’t regularly been done this well before. In adored but rarely watched” tag that meant Luckily the entertainment the “Racial Sensitivity” episode, in order to cut Arrested Development was perpetually on the system seems to be a little bulletproof in terms of the down on wasted worker time they install motion verge of cancellation. Catch it while it’s here as economic times we are sensors on the drinking fountains, but Ted will probably be canned too before long, living in. People always a fl aw in the design means they can’t detect given the low viewing fi gures. Because after all, turn to entertainment. black people. The idea of separate “blacks it’s about the numbers and bottom line – just ask Because television is free only” water fountains doesn’t go down too well, anyone at Veridian Dynamics. entertainment, it’s a bargain. so they hire white people to follow the black Criminal Minds new season

workers to activate the motion sensors for them. Better Off Ted starts Sunday Feb 7 at 8pm on OSN Comedy starts on Feb 7th on America Plus DISNEY/ABC PHOTOS:

16 ESQUIRE FEBRUARY 2010