TVSquad

(S02E06) Now that was more like it. This was easily one of the best episodes of Better Off Ted this season. We got a wonderfully bizarre and fruitful setup, a funny B plot for Phil and Lem, and quotable lines up the wazoo. It was just the thing I needed to kick off the new year right and wipe away the memory of last Tuesday's so so outing. All that was missing was a Veridian commercial (What's going on there, ABC? Are you guys saving those for the Web or what?).

It's good to see BoT back on track again. Sadly, though, the outlook for a third season isn't good. This might be one of the funniest and brightest shows on network TV, but that doesn't keep ABC from treating it like a redheaded stepchild (or like In the Motherhood, either metaphor works here, really).

Framing an episode around a sexual harassment claim was a brilliant idea. This is Veridian Dynamics, after all -- a place where people have sex on desks, in supply closets, and flirt with their bosses until the clock strikes five. But it was Linda's weird touchy feeliness with a co-worker that got her in trouble. And Ted only made things worse by trying to fix the problem. And then things got really crazy after Veronica got the company to classify sexual harassment as a disease. (Oh Veronica, if only you used your powers for good instead of evil.)

As Ted and Linda were stuck in sensitivity training with the "League of Extraordinarily Perverted Gentlemen," Phil and Lem were having trouble with another co-worker. Of course, the co-worker in question was a cute and tiny robot programmed to clean up spills around the lab. Oddly, the company found that hiring an actual human being to clean up spills was less expensive than maintaining the robot. But robojanitor was headed for the scrapheap and not the fictional "technology farm" Ted had promised. But the boys got over the loss when the robot tried to kill them after they brought it back from the dead (haven't they seen Pet Cemetery?). Thankfully flesh and blood janitor showed up to mop the robot to death.

Back to the, er, sexier plot ... Veronica's genius came through in the end when she sucked all the sex out of the air with a parade of children. (I guess she does use her powers for good sometimes.) Children, they make everything better, don't they? Well, except when they're smashing you on the head with a phone.

We've only got a few more episodes left. I hope they're all as good as this one.

Five - and only five! - quotes:

- "My God, what kind of world are we living in where machines can be so easily cast aside for people?"

- "Why will nobody in this building ever smash anyone with a phone?"

- "My cat was named 'Meow is the Time for All Good Men to Come to the Aid of Their Country.' I just called him 'Meow.' And meow he's dead. He loved puns."

- "I feel like my heart has been kicked in the testicles!"

- "Great news, you both have a disease!"