Seth MacFarlane’s foul-mouthed bear returns as a peacock – The Hollywood Reporter

Bad news about peacocks Ted Prequel, also called Ted, is that his worst instincts appear from the jump. For one thing, it premieres at 50 minutes — not an inherently unreasonable running time, but a confusing amount of time for a television outing that otherwise unfolds like a half-hour sitcom. On the other hand, that near-front hour is loaded with the show’s most self-consciously “offensive” material: old jokes about derogatory terms and racial stereotypes, all delivered with a smirk that dares you, just… boldness You can get angry at anything from him.

But if you can get past the initial boredom, there’s good (or at least less bad) news. Ted is that the following episodes represent a marked improvement. Sometimes, like when a movie leans toward the silliness rather than the abrasive, or the goofiness rather than the saltiness, we could make a good comedy buried in there somewhere. If only creator and star Seth MacFarlane was the only one who could get out of his own way.

In fairness, TedThe Unawakened Zingers haven’t had much removed from the source material. As in the 2012 film and its 2015 sequel, Ted (again voiced by MacFarlane) is a teddy bear brought to life – on screen through impressively tactile-looking computer graphics, and in the story through a wish on a shooting star. By a lonely little boy. child. As in the films, the central point is the contrast between Ted’s gentle, likeable appearance and his rude, gruff personality. The biggest difference between the films and the latter project is that the latter picks up two decades earlier, in 1993, and finds John Bennett, Ted’s human best friend, not as a middle-aged man played by Mark Wahlberg, but as a 16-year-old. The old boy is played by Max Burkholder.

This shift comes with a corresponding change in the subgenre. Where the features suit man-child romances such as Very bad And Remnants, the prequel is an updated version of the 80s and 90s sitcoms. It’s not too shy about its influences either: Halloween Chapter has characters you watch like Roseanne, The Simpsons And Married with children. (The show also often refers to strict hygiene Full house – but mainly as silly material for a Lori Loughlin John fan.) The main difference is that while Roseanne People like her were bound by the strict standards of decency and time limits of television broadcasting, Ted It is a streaming title where you don’t have to worry about any of these things.

This proves to be a severely mixed blessing. On the one hand, TedThis product’s no-holds-barred rawness is its signature. There’s practically no void in the conversation that someone, usually Ted, isn’t trying to fill with a penis joke or a sex joke or a masturbation joke, and it’s hard to imagine them hitting quite the same if the characters have to resort to coy euphemisms (although there are plenty Of these too). And the fun running times, at least in theory, allow the series to push its characters and humor even further. For example, the story about John’s father Matty (Scott Grimes) reconsidering his anti-gay ignorance after an encounter with a deeply bigoted sentient toy truck seems too dated to be shocking. or As heartwarming as it sounds – but it’s essentially a very special ‘issues’ episode presented in a way that is nothing but admirable Ted could.

Although each of the season’s seven episodes averages 40 minutes in length, it has become increasingly clear that the downside of… TedFreedom is its confusion. Condensing each segment to the standard 22 minutes for broadcast would not have made this a masterpiece, but it might have forced MacFarlane to trim some weak lines, or spend less time insisting on its crudeness. It certainly would have forced him to reconsider the repeated attempts at the Sideshow Bob light-fire thing where it goes on a little too long so that it becomes unfunny and then becomes funny again. It’s a difficult trick to pull off, ever since Ted That never happens, all it accomplishes is adding bloat.

It is possible, amidst all this chaos, to imagine the tighter, brighter series it could have been. Burkholder has great chemistry with MacFarlane (or at least the latter’s voice coming out of an animated creature). Giorgia Whigham imbues Blair, John’s liberal college cousin, with a skill that keeps her from completely turning into a self-righteous punching bag; Likewise, Alana Ubach, who plays John’s mother, Susan, with such sincerity that she almost transcends the film’s type of reckless, perverted wife. Kevin was fucking himself. And when the stupid jokes hit, they hit. Some of the dumbest ideas here are also the most memorable, like the subplot in which Ted decides that there must be another Jesus Christ because he too was “born not of human stock, but of divine stock.”

The problem is that for every item that clicks, there are six that don’t. In a sense, TedSelf-absorption is entirely in keeping with Major Bear – after all, Ted never bites his tongue or questions his motives, and no one who enjoys his light-hearted brand of sexy humor would ever want to do that. But what can be charming for a TV character is a drag for a TV show. Ted It was better to leave the lack of self-control to Ted, and limit himself to the best of what he had.