View Full Version : How Better Off Ted predicted our present


TMC
05-28-2022, 08:06 PM
https://newsletters.theatlantic.com/deep-shtetl/628e74a4582ffb002081db32/better-off-ted-abc-sitcom/

Victor Fresco's short-lived ABC sitcom (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fvkr8AFqEBM), which ran for two seasons between 2009 and 2010, "perfectly anticipated our debates today," says Yair Rosenberg. "If I told you that there was a TV show about an amoral corporation that treated its employees like disposable peons while pushing dubious technologies onto an unsuspecting public, you’d probably assume that the show was a recent invention," says Rosenberg. "And if I told you that it was a sitcom that satirized subjects like institutional racism and the way companies led by white men use a patina of diversity to cover for their problematic practices, you might even think it was trying too hard to be relevant, pandering to our present. Except Better Off Ted came out in 2009. The ABC sitcom ran for just two short seasons during the Obama presidency, but it often feels as though it could have aired yesterday."