No one expected that back in 2024, we were going to get a prequel series to Seth MacFarlane’s Ted movies, especially after the second movie didn’t do too well. Thankfully we did, because Ted’s freshman season was an outright laugh, and it proved itself to be one of the funniest comedy shows we had received in a long while, reminiscent of MacFarlane’s early days on Family Guy.
Ted Season 2 brings just as much laughter as the first season and packs a ton of heartfelt moments to help strike a balance. The Bennett family are exactly like we left them; John (Max Burkholder) is still the same hormonal loser he’s ever been in high school. Within the same span of 8 episodes, we witness John constantly talk about masturbating and calling sex lines and also being supportive with Blaire’s (Girogia Whigham) abortion that comes up later in the season. Max Burkholder does a magnificent job portraying John; he has great comedic timing that makes for some of the show’s best jokes, and it’s going to be hard to say goodbye to him as John.
Ted (Seth MacFarlane) is still the joke of the show. Whether it’s seeing him high on shrooms or sporting a purple strap-on dildo, he never fails to make you laugh and is ultimately the core of the entire show. It goes without saying that Ted has some of the best dialogue in the show, with some of his best line deliveries leading to cutaways which give you room to laugh until you can no longer breathe.
Alanna Ubach gives one of the best performances this season as Susan Bennett, the mother that we all need. She continues to do everything for this family, no matter how much they put her through. We get to see her go to prison in place of John, and it’s in this episode that we don’t only get to see how protective she is but also how she affects the people around her positively, changing their lives. There’s no doubt about it; if she were in that prison any longer, everyone would be reformed.
Matty Bennett is a character that I wholeheartedly wouldn’t want anything to do with in life and I would happily help in making his life a living hell, but Scott Grimes makes that a struggle with his performance. Matty is a character where every little inconvenience against him is funnier than it should be. “You’re the blackest white man in Boston” shouldn’t have been as funny a line, but seeing Matty immediately go into having a heart attack almost made me have one myself.
Finally, the voice of reason in the Bennett family, Blaire. Giorgia Whigham does an excellent job portraying Blaire, as she’s one of the few characters that goes through a lot of changes this season. Full props have to be given to both her and the writers who handled not only a queer breakup well but also an abortion storyline. The latter easily could’ve been mishandled, and that’s not to say it’s a perfect storyline; there are still certain aspects of the episode, such as Matt’s handling of the situation, which could’ve been dealt with better, but for a show in which a teddy bear is involved in an affair, it wasn’t the worst.
One of the best episodes this season is where John, Ted and Blaire go over to his classmate Chris’ (Brennan Lee Mulligan) house to purchase weed off him, but he refuses unless they win a quest in Dungeons and Dragons. What makes this episode the funniest and most entertaining yet is the inclusion of Dimension 20 and, currently, Critical Role’s own Brennan Lee Mulligan. There isn’t a better person you could get to portray a dungeon master in an episode all about Dungeons and Dragons. Seeing the entire Bennett family partake in roleplay, seeing them dressed up on an adventure, it was a change of pace for the show.
One of the more disappointing factors with Ted Season 2 comes from a moment where Matty meets the president, Bill Clinton, but instead of Seth MacFarlane with a lot of prosthetics or getting an actor who looked similar to Bill Clinton, they opted for the use of deepfake technology and AI, which Seth MacFarlane openly admitted to. Unfortunately this just seemed like the lazy option, and for a scene that still remained funny, it would’ve been ten times funnier if the makeup/prosthetics looked bad.
There’s a reason why Ted 2 ultimately failed personally for me, and that’s just because the jokes ran stale. That’s a fear that I had with the Ted prequel series, but I think the show’s great balance between crude humor and genuine emotional beats is what helps keep it refreshing. I’d easily watch dozens of seasons of Ted if I had the opportunity, but I’m more glad that Seth MacFarlane knows when to pull the plug, which prevents this show from running into its grave. Although it’s due to budget restraints, I do hope we still get the odd season here and there when they can afford it, but if this was the end of the Ted prequel series, then it was a satisfying and pleasant end.
Ted Season 2 proves that it has the magic to be one of Peacock’s best shows and that it wasn’t just a fluke that the first season was as funny as it was. It’s going to be hard to say goodbye to the Bennett family, who bring laughter with rolos stuck up assholes and piss in eyes but also know how to settle down with heartfelt and hard-hitting topics such as abortion.
It may be the end for now, but hopefully one day we can get another season with Ted.
