Ted 2

There is lit­er­al­ly one joke in Ted 2. With­out giv­ing away the actu­al punch­line, it occurs about 20 min­utes in when Ted dis­cov­ers his bud­dy John’s (Mark Wahlberg) sub­stan­tial, metic­u­lous­ly cat­a­logued porn stash. It’s the only time in the entire movie that writer/​director Seth Mac­Far­lane con­structs an orig­i­nal gag around an appro­pri­ate expo­si­tion­al set­up. Then again, Mac­Far­lane doesn’t real­ly do jokes. At least not in the con­ven­tion­al sense. He’d soon­er spend five min­utes indulging in a self-con­grat­u­la­to­ry show­tunes num­ber or drench a grown man in sev­er­al gal­lons of semen than reward his audi­ence with a well-earned pay­off. If only a low laugh count was the worst of Ted 2’s problems.

Ever since Fam­i­ly Guy first aired back in 1999, MacFarlane’s see-if-it-sticks approach to com­e­dy has been large­ly pred­i­cat­ed on him being an equal oppor­tu­ni­ties offend­er. Yet there’s one per­son Seth Mac­Far­lane appar­ent­ly doesn’t see as fair game: Seth Mac­Far­lane. Fans of the self-styled king of low-brow com­e­dy may argue that his inse­cu­ri­ties are there for all to see – his curi­ous pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with the male repro­duc­tive organ is the dom­i­nant recur­ring theme here – and besides, there isn’t much room for intro­spec­tion or self-dep­re­ca­tion in a star-packed sum­mer movie like Ted 2. But that’s an undue amount of slack to cut some­one effec­tive­ly mak­ing a gay pan­ic movie in 2015 that also man­ages to be lazi­ly misog­y­nis­tic and will­ful­ly igno­rant towards numer­ous hot but­ton issues affect­ing America’s cur­rent sociopo­lit­i­cal climate.

MacFarlane’s whole schtick is serv­ing up polit­i­cal incor­rect­ness on a mass con­sumer scale, and Ted 2 again finds him invit­ing the largest slice of his tar­get demo­graph­ic pie (i.e. any­one with a white penis) to bask in their own per­sist­ing suprema­cy. To that end, Mac­Far­lane makes no apolo­gies for try­ing to cram as many cheap shots at var­i­ous eth­nic minori­ties and mar­gin­alised social groups into a two-hour main­stream com­e­dy as pos­si­ble. That the fin­ished prod­uct isn’t par­tic­u­lar­ly big or clever shouldn’t come as surprise.

At this stage in his career, the major con­cern for Mac­Far­lane is that the novelty/​shock fac­tor of his ear­li­er work has worn off, so too his abil­i­ty to mine humour from ran­dom cut­aways that typ­i­cal­ly have no bear­ing on the plot. The ques­tion for him now is whether to stick or twist. Because whichev­er way you slice it, we live in a world where mock­ing some­one based on their class, gen­der, race or sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion is an increas­ing­ly del­i­cate busi­ness. Not least when you’re doing so from a posi­tion of white male privilege.

The first Ted – a spo­rad­i­cal­ly fun­ny, deeply flawed work – won audi­ences over with its dis­tinct brand of ston­er-based bro­man­ti­cism, although any­one pre­pared to look a lit­tle deep­er would have found a tiny beat­ing heart beneath its filthy, fuzzy exte­ri­or. MacFarlane’s pre­dictably crude sequel cen­tres around Ted’s desire to be treat­ed like a reg­u­lar cit­i­zen, yet this time around his glar­ing lack of dis­cernible human traits nul­li­fies our invest­ment in his plight.

To bring you up to speed, new­ly­weds Ted and Tami-Lynn (Jes­si­ca Barth) are going through a rocky patch and rea­son that a baby is the surest rem­e­dy. After dis­cov­er­ing that Tami-Lynn’s ovaries are shot as a result of her pre­vi­ous drug addic­tion, the cou­ple apply for adop­tion only to be reject­ed on the grounds that – in the eyes of the state – Ted is a piece of prop­er­ty, not a per­son. Humil­i­at­ed and under­stand­ably aggriev­ed, Ted and John enlist the ser­vices of an inex­pe­ri­enced but will­ing junior attor­ney named Saman­tha (Aman­da Seyfried) to fight for Ted’s rights.

It’s telling that smart, dynam­ic young Saman­tha ends up break­ing her pro­fes­sion­al eth­i­cal code by hook­ing up with John (because a weed-smok­ing thir­tysome­thing porn addict with no fixed income who counts a stuffed toy as his best friend is a real catch, eh ladies?). Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Mac­Far­lane liv­ing vic­ar­i­ous­ly through his alpha pro­tag­o­nist while mak­ing clear his atti­tude towards women in the work­place is just the tip of his film’s nar­cis­sis­tic delusions.

The wider issue here stems from the notion that Ted (and by exten­sion Mac­Far­lane) has become a vic­tim of con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly sanc­tioned dis­crim­i­na­tion. By repeat­ed­ly draw­ing com­par­isons between his cause and the Civ­il Rights Move­ment, Ted 2 goes out of its way to triv­i­alise the kind of sys­tem­at­ic inequal­i­ty that has for too long been allowed to fes­ter away inside Amer­i­can soci­ety. ​“Amer­i­cans have fought for free­dom and equal­i­ty for all many times in the past,” booms the film’s offi­cial Twit­ter page. ​“Now we must stand togeth­er and #Legal­izeTed.”

It’s not only the sen­ti­ment behind this faux moral grand­stand­ing that stinks but the impli­ca­tion that the film it’s endors­ing is one for the lit­tle guy. That some­one might look at Ted strik­ing a states­man­like pose on Twit­ter and think, ​‘Now there’s a car­toon bear I can believe in.’ That Ted is in some small way emblem­at­ic of the kind of adver­si­ty faced by mil­lions of Amer­i­cans every day. It’s not so much offen­sive as plain stu­pid. Espe­cial­ly giv­en that no mat­ter how much he tries to per­suade every­one he has the capac­i­ty for com­pas­sion and empa­thy, as well as some­thing to con­tribute to soci­ety, Ted’s actions are almost always moti­vat­ed by self­ish inter­ests. Mac­Far­lane wants us to love Ted in spite of his short­com­ings, so why does he insist on hav­ing him behave like such a jerk?

Both Ted films and the flat­u­lent van­i­ty project that sep­a­rates them, A Mil­lion Ways to Die in the West (a film that dis­proves the dic­tum that the meat is always in the mid­dle of the sand­wich), have so far enabled Mac­Far­lane to sat­is­fy his urge to per­form aut­ofel­la­tio in pub­lic are­nas. Trou­ble is, his rou­tine is becom­ing increas­ing­ly hard to swal­low. In the wake of Charleston and the Gamer­gate con­tro­ver­sy (to name just a cou­ple of inci­dents that have sparked furi­ous nation­al debate in recent months), the con­ver­sa­tions around racial prej­u­dice and gen­der inequal­i­ty have tak­en on greater urgency. And yet there’s Ted, slumped on the sofa, bong in paw, glibly liken­ing his strug­gle to that of LeVar Burton’s plan­ta­tion slave in the sem­i­nal 1977 minis­eries, Roots.

Exam­in­ing his antipa­thy towards Sein­feld (and Sein­feld) in a recent arti­cle on maison​neuve​.com, the writer and film crit­ic Adam Nay­man prais­es The Simp­sons and Louie for pre­sent­ing ​“a gallery of human types.” The bril­liance of Louis CK’s com­e­dy is that his onscreen alter ego is ground­ed by an unmis­tak­able human fal­li­bil­i­ty. In oth­er words, like Homer Simp­son, Louie is an endear­ing ass­hole. By con­trast, MacFarlane’s unre­lent­ing hubris is staler than the pot-stained air in Ted’s apartment.

It’s hard to tell what, if any­thing, Mac­Far­lane set out to achieve with Ted 2. It’s not a polit­i­cal film by any stretch, nor is it chal­leng­ing or provoca­tive in the way that great satire can be. It doesn’t push bound­aries or take risks. All Ted 2 is real­ly good for is celebri­ty cameos and tired stereo­types – that and keep­ing Sam ​“Flash Gor­don” Jones in work. Anoth­er seri­ous over­sight on MacFarlane’s part is that his film feels tai­lor-made for teenage audi­ences while at the same time being lit­tered with pop cul­ture ref­er­ences that will car­ry no nos­tal­gic val­ue for any­one under the age of 30. Which adds an addi­tion­al, unin­tend­ed lay­er to the film’s alien­at­ing discourse.

Watch­ing Ted 2, it’s hard to shake the feel­ing that Mac­Far­lane is a spent force. In an ear­ly court­room scene, Saman­tha clos­es her open­ing state­ment by implor­ing the jury not to become a foot­note on the wrong side of his­to­ry. It may be pre­ma­ture to deliv­er a final ver­dict on Mac­Far­lane, but there’s enough evi­dence here to sug­gest he’s got noth­ing left to offer as a live-action director.