Better Off Ted

This show came out in 2009, unfortunately this spectacular series was cancelled after it's second season. Each season had 13 episodes, and each of these 26 episodes was about 21 minutes long.

The series follows Ted Crisp, the Head of Research and Development at one of the largest companies in the world Veridian Dynamics. This comedy shows Ted's boss relationships toward Phil and Lem, who are both genius' who have little to no person skills. His boss played by Portia de Rossi, who is a relatively soulless director. And finally a tester of new products who tends to have an odd love/not-love/worker with Ted. 

Ted every so often breaks the 4th wall by talking directly with the audience as he narrates pieces of his life working at the company, or his own personal life as a single father. He helps guide us through the interesting, disturbing, and possibly highly useful inventions that Veridian Dynamics is creating. Some examples are a scented lightbulb, but unfortunately after a 3 days it starts to smell like rotted meat. Beef grown in the lab entirely free of cows, but tastes like despair. Toothpaste that accidentally created a parasite that grows hair on any and all surfaces including on a desk.

My personal favorite part of the show (other than the Dalek found in the robot graveyard) is the commercials that come up in every episode that are produced by the company to keep up business for the company. Some of these commercials are actual commercials produced by real companies just with new voice-overs. 

Finally I must say I loved the show, but like many others I discovered it after it was already cancelled and subsequently over. But in the end I give it a 10 out of 11 because I laughed repeatedly during almost every episode, and as such thought it was a fantastic show people should definitely watch.

Cheers & Frasier

This is a double review because Frasier was a spin-off of the show Cheers. Also it was kind of a continuation for the fanbase and so on.

First we shall start with Cheers. It started back in 1982 and ran for 11 seasons into 1993. The cast changed a little bit here and there due to the beloved actor Nicholas Colasanto's death in 1985, and the actress playing the main female role deciding to leave after season 4. The character Dr. Frasier Crane joins the show in season 2 and eventually becomes a regular. Each episode was about 22 minutes with a total of 275 episodes.

Cheers takes place almost entirely in the bar in Boston known as Cheers. Sam Malone our main character is the owner of the bar, he is a recovering alcoholic, and highly successful womanizer. The show revolves around him and the relationships that flourish and/or flounder in the environment of this bar. There is the waitress who is constantly getting pregnant, the dumbwitted bartender, the overly intelligent(usually too smart for their own good) waitress(and/or manager depending on the season) that Sam is constantly trying to seduce, the mailman who knows all of the useless trivia(some of which is completely false), the psychiatrist whose advice is never fully acknowledged in the bar, and finally NORM! the man who spends all of his time in the bar and has a tab that could probably pay for the bar ten times over. If you ever hear someone yell NORM! it is most likely a reference to this show.

I thoroughly enjoyed the show for the first 8 seasons or so, then honestly I found it to get extremely boring. The jokes became very basic, or stretched as if the writers were trying too hard to show new material. There were moments of course that were still funny or entertaining throughout. But I felt it more of a chore and a challenge to actually finish the show. Sam is constantly getting stuck in the same situations, Frasier wants sex from his wife, Norm is avoiding his wife as well as work, Cliff is either talking about some random fact(that may or not be true) or talking about the pride of his job of mother, Carla complains about her kids and money problems, and the main female character complains about life or does something that Sam finds attractive. These come up most episodes, especially by the end. 

Then came along the spin-off simply titled Frasier to take place in a Seattle, Washington. 

Frasier started up in 1993 and continued until 2004 with an additional 11 seasons. The episodes were also 22 minutes long with a total of 264 episodes. This show follows Dr. Frasier Crane who has moved to Seattle to be an on-air radio psychiatrist. He also is to take care of his father. He has an assistant at the radio station named Roz, and hires Daphne to care for his aging father at home. Frasier's brother Niles also lives in Seattle and is also a psychiatrist. For quite a few seasons Niles was chasing after Daphne, but from a distance so as not to make things awkward between them, and to avoid rejection. However everyone but Daphne knew. The show revolves around these 5 characters and generally takes place in 2 locations, Frasier's living room, or the radio studio. Later on they also incorporate a coffee shop fairly often.

Now there are some inconsistencies between what Frasier tells us in Cheers and what is revealed on Frasier. But for the most part you can ignore them. Frasier is a much more intellectual type of comedy than Cheers was. Frasier is a higher class and standard than the lower-class of Cheers. And in the end I think I enjoyed Frasier more, especially because it didn't seem to drag by the end. 

In the end I give Cheers an 8 out of 11. And Frasier receives a 10 out of 11.