Ted Season 2 TV Review: Seth MacFarlane is back and cuddlier than ever

Plot: It’s 1994, and senior year of high school is underway for Ted the foul-mouthed teddy bear and his best friend, likable but awkward John Bennett. Together they live in a working-class Boston home with John’s parents and cousin. Matty is a blustering, blue-collar Bostonian who sees himself as the unequivocal boss of the house and frequently clashes with his liberal niece. Susan is kind, selfless, and almost pathologically sweet when it comes to caring for her family. Blaire is an outspoken college student who often finds herself at odds with her more traditional-minded relatives.

Review: While it has been over a decade since directing his last feature film and four years since his underrated science fiction series The Orville went off the air, Seth MacFarlane has found a balance in his trademark brand of humor showcased in animated projects like Family Guy and American Dad, with a heartfelt nostalgia for 1990s sitcoms with Ted. A prequel to his hit movies starring Mark Wahlberg, the first season of Ted was a hit for Hulu despite the hefty cost of creating a series with a CGI lead character. Back for a second run of eight episodes, Ted is just as hilarious as ever and continues to combine the cutaway gag approach of MacFarlane’s animated shows with a hefty dose of classic sitcom shenanigans. This season of Ted is every bit as good as the first season, with some fun surprises along the way.

Ted follows a very loose narrative about young John Bennett (Max Burkholder), a high school senior living in Framingham, Massachusetts, with his best friend Ted (Seth MacFarlane), a teddy bear that John wished to life. After a Hollywood success came crashing down, Ted moved home with John and his parents, Susan (Alanna Ubach) and Matty (Scott Grimes). The Bennett family also took in Matty’s niece, Blaire (Giorgia Whigham), who is a liberal college student who often butts heads with Matty. Aside from appearances by some family members and the dynamic amongst the Bennetts, most of Ted is episodic, with each half-hour working as a standalone that can be watched in any order. This season features episodes about 900 numbers, adultery, sexual incontinence, and lots of weed. Ted himself gets to have a sexual relationship this season, along with multiple complex schemes that get John and Ted into all sorts of trouble at school and at home.

In almost every way, Ted the series plays like a live-action Family Guy. Each episode features at least one scene of John and Ted one-upping each other with profanity-laced pop culture jokes, as well as an increased use of non-sequitur cutaway jokes. The gags always start with someone making a reference before it happens on screen. While Family Guy tends to take these to an extreme, Ted incorporates them into the real world a bit better. Something new this season is also my favorite episode of the show to date: the third episode, “Dungeons & Dealers,” which centers on John and Ted playing Dungeons & Dragons alongside their family. The episode shifts between the characters playing the role-playing game in their basement and a full production of the characters in fantasy regalia fighting monsters and elements from the iconic game. Like Seth MacFarlane’s animated odes to Star Wars, this is a fun twist on the comedy formula and shows the potential for what a crass comedy could look like with swords and sorcery.

This season includes guest stars from other Seth MacFarlane projects, including a mini-reunion from The Orville. While Scott Grimes starred on the FOX series, his co-stars Penny Johnson Jerald and Peter Macon appeared as characters at the local high school. Everyone continues to hit the high notes for their characters with Grimes playing Matty as an Archie Bunker-esque lout, Alanna Ubach as the sweet but naive Susan, and Giorgia Whigham as the smart and independent Blaire. Max Burkholder continues to portray John Bennett as a lovable dork with his stoner attitude and teenage hormones, allowing his escapades with Ted to feel more juvenile and fun than they did on the big screen, with Mark Wahlberg aging out of such shenanigans. But Seth MacFarlane remains the scene-stealer. Ted is just as realistic on the small screen as he was in the feature films, and MacFarlane’s skill as a voice actor allows him to nail each and every joke. The use of profanity and sexual content is more blatant than in animated fare airing on network television, but Ted manages to push close to the line without crossing it.

Written by Aaron Lee, Dana Gould, Chelsea Davison, Julius Sharpe, and the showrunners, Paul Corrigan and Brad Walsh, Ted covers a lot of material spanning John’s senior year of high school. The flow of time is often irrelevant in this series, but there is a loose arc that follows the characters through the school year, with the last season set during John’s junior year. All eight episodes are directed by Seth MacFarlane, who also co-wrote a couple of episodes. There is a heavier dose of the 1990s this season with jokes referencing everything from Bill Clinton and O.J. Simpson to the Pizza Bagels jingle and more. For anyone who grew up in the mid-90s, Ted is a love letter to the commercials, songs, and trends of the era, and struck me as far funnier than those younger than I am. You don’t have to be a product of the ’90s to appreciate this season, but it definitely will help you understand some of the deeper cut jokes. Nevertheless, Ted is chock full of jokes and references that will land for the majority of viewers, and I found myself laughing harder at this show than I have at any other Seth MacFarlane series in a long time.

What sets Ted apart from Seth MacFarlane’s other film and television work is the heart at its center. Where the Ted movies were about the eternal bond of male friendship, the series is more about family and growing up. While Family Guy and American Dad are also about family, Ted serves as a parallel to iconic sitcom families throughout the decades, told through the crass wit of Seth MacFarlane. I like spending time with these characters and knowing that they do not grow or evolve or permanently change after each half-hour is up, and they go right back to being their ridiculous selves in time for the next wacky situation. Ted is a funny series that should have been stupid, but, like the movies, it defies expectations and delivers a show that cannot help but make you laugh, shake your head, and occasionally recoil in surprise before laughing a lot more.

Ted‘s second season premieres on March 5th on Peacock.