Better Off Ted

Getting back to the beloved subject of standard TV plots, last week’s episode of Better off Ted used one of the most indestructible of all sitcom stories: a computer error declares that a character no longer exists. Even though everyone can see that the character is still there and that the computer made a mistake, bureaucratic/corporate rules require that the character be treated as dead, nonexistent or unemployed until the computer error can be fixed. Often nobody has the authority to fix the computer error, thus necessitating some kind of Wacky Scheme to correct it, cf. Portia Di Rossi’s Wacky Scheme to crash the company’s computers and reboot the system.