That's part of what I like about Ted. He's a goofy, friendly down-to-earth knucklehead, but then occasionally he'll effortlessly reverse engineer a piece of alien tech, or find a way to modify one of his gadgets to knock out enemies capable of fighting Superman, or a telepathic alien warlord will off-handedly mention that his mind is the only one other than Martian Manhunter's that he's having difficulty breaking or something. He's this joke-y, fun character who secretly has a lot of potential while also being pretty relatable.