Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Ted’ The TV Show On Peacock, A Prequel Featuring Seth MacFarlane’s Cursing Teddy Bear (But No Mark Wahlberg)

Seth MacFarlane’s film Ted was a hit in 2012 because, well, who wouldn’t want to watch a CGI cursing, bigoted teddy bear? But it also had a good story, which is what we hoped for when we heard that MacFarlane was developing a prequel “event” series for Peacock. Was he able to recreate the success of the film series?

TED: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: As we see pictures of Ted (Seth MacFarlane) the teddy bear become an instant worldwide phenomenon after he came to life in 1985, the voice of Ian McKellen says, “But now it’s 1993, and like every phenomenon, eventually nobody gives a shit.”

The Gist: “Framingham, Massachusetts, 1993.” After his worldwide fame and hobnobbing with movie stars, Ted is back living with his best friend John Bennett (Max Burkholder), who is now 16. Also in the house is John’s parents, Matty (Scott Grimes) and Susan (Alanna Ubach), along with his cousin Blaire (Giorgia Whigham), who is staying in a room over the garage while she goes to college.

At the dinner table, Ted keeps trying to get Susan to curse, Matty assumes an Asian driver damaged his car because he was parked outside an Asian buffet, and Blaire calls him on his racism while pointing out that Ted has used two slurs already today, so he’s not a great example. But Susan points out that Blaire used to cut the hair on her Black Barbie before cutting the hair of her white one when she was a kid.

Blaire tells Ted that he wouldn’t be so ignorant about, well, everything, if he just went to school with John. Ted, though, doesn’t want to miss watching Plinko on The Price Is Right, so that’s out of the question. But one day when he’s alone, he finds Matty’s rifle and a Slip ‘n’ Slide, and… well, eventually he shoots a hole in the window and the TV, and Matty is ordering him to go to school with John.

Of course, Ted hates it there, just as much as John does — though Ted does get the best of John’s bully by mentioning he’s hit John in the penis twice. So Ted’s plan is to get expelled. But no matter what he does, the principal (Penny Johnson Jerald) won’t evict him; she’d rather make him an example of a student who turned things around and did well. So John and Ted come up with a plan: If Ted gets caught with drugs, the principal will have no choice but to kick him out.

When they see a local college girl named Sheila (Charly Jordan) that John has a crush on smoking a joint, Ted encourages John to ask where she got her supply — Ted also thinks her name is unfortunate, given how good looking she is. When Ted goes to Sheila’s pot connection, she’s surprised to see that it’s Blaine, who sells it with her friend. She doesn’t want to sell to Ted, but Ted promises that John won’t smoke any. She and her buddy need the cash so Blaine gives in. But, of course, the weed doesn’t stay unsmoked for very long.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Ted is a prequel to MacFarlane’s movie series of the same name that starred Mark Wahlberg as an adult version of John.

Our Take: If you’ve seen the 2012 Ted movie and its 2015 sequel, then you know what to expect in the series. MacFarlane writes and directs the first episode, and it doesn’t shy away from the whole “teddy bear drops f-bombs” gag from the movies. Ted curses as much if not more than he did in the film, and his ideas about the world are certainly more in the Archie Bunker vein than anything else.

What we saw from the first episode is a lot of that, and most of it didn’t land. Anyone who know MacFarlane’s style from Family Guy and his other cartoons know that he is the king of extended bits that stop the momentum of the story of an episode, where he stretches things out until the length itself becomes the joke. The problem with that style is that when the gags don’t land, they’re painful to watch. And most of those extended gags — like a bank manager extolling the virtues of modern adult diapers — absolutely don’t work.

Where the show does work is when MacFarlane concentrates on the actual story of the episode, which is Blaire getting in trouble over selling weed to John, and Blaire telling John and Ted why she decided to live with her aunt and uncle during college. When MacFarlane and his writers give that story a chance to breathe, and when gags come out of that story and the characters’ personalities instead of just f-bomb gags, things are much better.

Given the episodes are in the 42-to-50-minute range, there was a whole lot of opportunity to cut a lot of the usual MacFarlane indulgencies, tighten the storytelling, and still keep Ted and company the group of cursing Massholes that MacFarlane designed them to be.

Sex and Skin: None, though there’s talk of masturbating to the image of Lori Loughlin, which leads to one of the biggest laughs when we see that John has a poster of her in his room.

Parting Shot: After promising Blaire that they wouldn’t take drugs again, they leave her room and say to each other, “besides pot.” Then we see them taking bong hits in John’s room.

Sleeper Star: Alanna Ubach’s Susan feels like she’s got a lot of Edith Bunker in her, but just like Edith, there’s more to her than what’s under that seemingly simple persona.

Most Pilot-y Line: The bit we mentioned above about the bank manager overpraising adult diapers is one of the more egregious MacFarlane-style gags in the first episode.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Ted had the potential to be a heartwarming show with good coming-of-age stories — at least as heartwarming as a show about a pot-smoking, cursing, bigoted teddy bear could muster — but the episodes are drawn out by Seth MacFarlane-style gags to the point where we got bored.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.