Ted (stylized as ted) is a 2024 live-action/animated hybrid comedy television series created by Seth MacFarlane based off his 2012 film of the same name. MacFarlane reprises his role as Ted and is joined by Alanna Ubach, Scott Grimes, Max Burkholder, and Giorgia Whigham.
Serving as a prequel to the films, the series follows sentient teddy bear Ted as he grows up with his best friend John Bennett and his family in the suburbs of Massachusetts during the '90s. The series premiered on Peacock January 11, 2024.
Ted includes examples of the following:
- Abusive Parents: Matty is a straightforward example of this, being racist, sexist, homophobic, and irate towards practically everyone around him. And Blaire stills stays at his house despite this, due to the fact her parents are outright drunks and insane.
- A God Am I: "Loud Night" features Ted believing himself to be Jesus since they both suddenly came to life one night.
- Aesop Amnesia: "He's Gotta Have It" has John learn that he himself is ultimately responsible for his life decisions and he can't just pass the blame off to Ted being a bad influence, a lesson he will forget by the time of the first film.
- Biting-the-Hand Humor: In the teaser, when writing to his future self, young Ted predicts that his new series will be on the most successful streaming service ever. Present Ted acknowledges he has a series… and says nothing more.
- The Bully: Clive torments John and Ted in the first two episodes. He gets better after they help him in school and come clean about imitating his dad.
- Call-Forward:
- The last scene of the finale shows Ted and John coming up with the “Thunder Buddies” song.
- John had a crush on Lori Loughlin (aka "Aunt Becky with the Bad Hair" from the Varsity Blues scandal), in a nod to his relationship with Lori in the first film.
- In the first Episode, Ted is caught with sex workers in someone else's house, just like in the first film. Just like that film, it's the point at which the other characters demand that his behaviour change.
- Casting Gag: Possibly - the narrator is changed from Patrick Stewart in the movies to Ian McKellen here, and both men are famously frenemies in fiction and good friends in real life.
- Deadly Hazing: Discussed when Ted asks Blair a long winded question about if she's going to participate in any college hazing which might go horribly wrong leading to everyone involved needing to cover it up and living with it as a dark secret until someone starts to get panicky and they'll have to be dealt with before it becomes a problem.Blaire: What the fuck are you talking about?!Ted: I'm just making conversation.
- Disappeared Dad: Clive from episode 2 grew up without a father. Ted and John try to prank him by calling him pretending to be his dad, but quickly realize they went too far and become fully-fledged father figures.
- Everyone Has Standards:
- In Episode 2, Ted and John gleefully prank call their bully Clive and pretend to be his long lost father but immediately change their mood when they see one of their calls leaves the poor boy running in away in tearful hysterics. When they learn he attempted suicide, they spend the rest of the episode trying to help him in life.
- Susan loves Matty and is happy to side with him a lot of the time but draws the line at him charging their niece rent or his homophobia, though the latter is more due to the fact it ruins the family Christmas dinner.
- John gleefully hucks ostrich eggs at trick or treaters, but draws the line at one boy dressed as an Olympic figure skater.John: Oh, geez, you're gonna have enough trouble, keep movin' kid!
- Fanservice: While Blaire wears neutral clothing throughout the show, the Halloween and Prom episodes have her in a very flattering Michelle Pfeiffer Catwoman costume and a gorgeous dress.
- Foreshadowing: At one point in the Christmas Episode, Ted and John mention that “it’s always the homophobes that turn out to be gay”. Later in the episode, Dennis, who turns out to be so homophobic he makes Matty look like a bastion of tolerance, reveals he’s gay.
- Gay Aesop: In the Christmas episode, Blaire is revealed to be bisexual and in a relationship with another woman. After Matty makes a series of homophobic remarks during dinner, Blaire comes out and angrily leaves the house with her girlfriend. Matty tries to sugarcoat his homophobia but is quickly offended by Dennis, who is a card-carrying homophobe who deeply upsets Blair. Although Matty insists that he's not like Dennis, he soon realizes that this is the demographic he's going to be part of if he keeps up his homophobia. He then chooses to apologize to Blaire and her girlfriend, while also helping Dennis accept his own sexuality as it is revealed Dennis is a closeted homosexual.
- Gosh Dang It to Heck!: In comparison to the rest of the foul-mouthed cast, Susan never swears. Ted even loses a bet to John over it.
- It Will Never Catch On:
- After a bad experience with a porno VHS, John swears he'll never watch porn again "Even if there's, like, a weird little device in my pocket that can show me porn at any time so I can jerk off at a moment's notice".
- While watching a New England Patriots game, Matty gets frustrated by their lackluster play and wishes he was born in Buffalo so he could root for the Bills. As of 2024, the Patriots have won six Super Bowls while the Bills have won zero, with the team Matty praises losing four consecutive from 1991-1994.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Matty may be an Abusive Parent but he has every right to get mad at the fact that Blaire kicked off a series of events that led to John smoking weed.
- Kids Are Cruel: Clive and Erin are two of the biggest examples but are deconstructed by showing that they both have their own struggles that affect their behaviour with absent parents playing a role to both as well as a murdered sibling specifically for the latter.
- Monochrome Casting: Ted lampshades the fact that John's classmates at school are almost entirely white, which John explains is the result of living in a Boston suburb. Apparently there was an Indian kid the year prior, but they got him.
- Narrator: Sir Ian McKellen replaces Patrick Stewart as the fairy tale-sounding narrator.
- Noodle Incident:
- John tells Ted that an Indian boy who was really cool used to be in his class, before "they got him". Whoever "they" were or what they did to this boy isn't elaborated on, and John never brings it up again.
- Whatever happened to Matty in Vietnam that he's afraid to accidentally talk about during his colonoscopy. Subverted in that later we find out that he jacked off a dog. Which just raises the question of why.
- Pac Man Fever: The very first scene of the show features Ted and John playing what is explicitly stated to be a Super Mario Bros. game on what appears to be a NES, despite the footage shown looking nothing like any Mario game.
- Remember the New Guy?:
- John's cousin, her friend/girlfriend, his first girlfriend, and his old bully are all new additions that were never mentioned in the films.
- Oh, and what about the toy truck that John’s father wished to life?
- Retcon: John's parents briefly appeared in the prologue of the original Ted film, where they were portrayed by Alex Borstein and Ralph Garman, and were named onscreen as Helen and Steve, respectively. For their more prominent roles in this series, they are renamed Susan and Matty, are portrayed by completely different actors (Alanna Ubach and Scott Grimes, respectively) and look and act nothing like their previous counterparts.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Ted helped his school basketball team win their game (keep in mind Ted is roughly 24 inches tall).
- Self-Deprecation: In the teaser, young Ted predicts a future of flying cars, normal weather, and new TV characters that aren’t rehashes of old stuff. Like this show is.
- Shout-Out:
- in "Just Say Yes", action figures of Optimus Prime and Megatron and Splinter, minus his robe can be seen on John's shelf.
- In "Subways, Bicycles and Automobiles", Ted dresses up as an Ewok. It’s Seth MacFarlane. Of course he’d include Star Wars references. Blair also dresses up as Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman from Batman Returns. She gets mistaken for Batman though.
- Shows and movies from the 90s are frequently shouted-out to the point where they'd be hard to all name here.
- The title of Episode 7 (He's Gotta Have It) is a reference to the Spike Lee film, She's Gotta Have It.
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: Much like in the original film Ted and John swear up a storm. They are now joined by Blaire, who swears slightly less, and Matty, John's father who pretty much uses cuss words in every sentence. The only one who watches their language is Susan.
- Used to Be a Sweet Kid:
- While 1993 Ted is still as foul-mouthed and perverted as he is in the films, he's more full of optimism and joy at what life and the future will bring compared to his jaded attitude in adulthood.
- The same goes for John, who's far more active and engaged in his family's lives compared to his adult self, who is consistently called out for being a Manchild.
