Ted – Season 1 Episode 5 Recap & Review

Episode 5

In Ted Episode 5, the plot line centers around something we have sensed brewing for some time. We needed to explore Matty and Susan’s relationship and the baggage in their marriage. Johnny’s parents look and act like any baby-boomer couple would. The father is a Vietnam vet who was brought up to be hardened and tough, and the mother is brought up to be a housewife and tend to the needs of the home. Eventually, that causes a clash.

Blaire initiates the idea that Matty needs to go see a therapist, or even better, they need marriage counseling. Matty’s temper is the worst by this point in the show. Although there has not been a linear plot line strung together among the episodes, there are still minimal character arcs explored.

Matty doesn’t want to talk to a stranger for $80 a session (wow, $80 to see a therapist in the 1990s). Matty and Susan go to one session that does not seem to go well. So, they decide they’d rather talk to someone they know, and that’s Ted.

Ted fills their therapy session with witty and raunchy humor, but Blaire seems to want to get to the roots of her aunt and uncle’s problems. In return, she discovers some personal things about Susan. Susan had passed all her exams and gained all the credentials needed to be a teacher in the state of Massachusetts, and just as she was about to do that, she didn’t go through with a job search because she met Matty, and the rest is history.

Episode 5 is titled “Desperately Seeking Susan,” and this title lines up perfectly with how an opportunity falls right into Susan’s lap. In the episode’s opening scene, Ted and Johnny’s English teacher have a meltdown in front of everyone because he is going through. divorce and has had to move back in with his mother. The scene establishes the character Erin, a mean girl who pokes fun at the teacher.

Ted and Johnny have a vacancy with their English teacher being gone. Johnny decides to go to the principal and recommend his mom, who is qualified to do so but has been out of the game for some time. Susan gets hired to be the substitute teacher for the rest of the school year.

Erin critiques Susan’s wardrobe within seconds of her coming in on her first day. You hate to see it happen, as Susan looks thrilled to be back at work again and out of the house. Before Erin can really go off, Ted chimes in and drops some brutally hilarious insults on her, making her run out in tears.

But rather than us sticking by Ted, we do realize that he has crossed a line with his insults. Even Susan goes out and consoles her, and in doing so, Susan has an epiphany. When she returns home that night and Blaire asks her about her day back at work, Susan says she’s not going back.

Her situation with tending to the home is what it is, and she finds happiness in it. She stands firmly on this idea, firm enough so that progressive-thinking Blaire stands down and lets her aunt be at the end of Ted Episode 5.

The Episode Review

As the season has gone on, there seem to be mature topics on Ted wrapped in immature comedy. It makes for a great blend of the two things. Seth MacFarlane has not missed a step in having a really good story to tell through a foul-mouthed teddy bear and the family that has taken him in.

It’s nice to see Susan get an episode that really defines her character arc. In the episodes prior to this one, you do feel like there is a buildup to her arc as a bored housewife and that she deserves to have some of her identity back. But then we realize maybe she likes the idea of taking care of her family, for better or for worse. Some people just want that in life. It is an interesting message in Ted Episode 5.