Tonight I just caught the pilot episode on ABC of the new comedy series “Better off Ted”. Those of you who didn’t have the chance to see this may want to check out this link to catch some clips.

Essentially, Better off Ted is a comedy show about a soulless R&D company, where no idea is a bad idea if it means a profit. The main straight man character is the R&D head (Ted) and the laugh track actually comes from the scientists.

We start with a R&D meeting prompted by Ted’s boss who demands “We want to weaponize a pumpkin”. The roundtable discussion decides to mutate pumpkin fungus into human eating fungus; “spores in uniforms”.

The show is interspersed with faux adverts for the R&D company (Veridian Dynamics) on their products; a focus on food which boasts of producing “lemon flavored fish”, “chicken that lay 16 eggs per day” and “organic vegetable, chock full of anti-depressants”. In an obvious nod to the whole in vitro meat idea, the company decides to focus on growing meat in the lab. Unfortunately, apart from the emotional attachment of the lab scientists to the chunk of meat they name “blobby”, the company’s food taster classifies the lab meat as tasting like “despair.”

Whilst interpreted by the media as a workplace sitcom, this is definitely one for the scientists out there. Talk about connecting science to the masses…