It was the end of the summer in Atlantic City – sun blaring at all turns, skin sticking and air-conditioner needing – when I sat down to watch the first episode of Ted Lasso. The name didn’t mean much to me back then, plus I only did it because my boyfriend, and lots of people, said it was good. First episode in, my reaction was “Okay, it’s not bad.” Second episode in, my face lit up as the show quickly climbed up my internal show rankings. Third episode in, and yes, you need to watch three episodes before forming an opinion about a particular show, I was sold, my summer was finally wholesome. You can imagine my slight disappointment then when I learn that only a few SLU people know about the show. Hence, the title. We need to talk more about Ted Lasso, everyone.
The Apple TV+ show was created to give to the dreadful, dark, and uncertain year called 2020. In it, American football coach Ted Lasso (Jason Sudeikis – 30 Rock, anyone?!) is hired to coach a professional Premier League football club called AFC Richmond, despite having no experience coaching football, or since it’s England, soccer before. Interestingly, the entire premise of the show is based on a 2013 NBC Sports skit that Sudeikis himself starred in. Originally, I thought the show would follow what its 5-minute sketch set out to do 8 years ago: rely heavily on mockery American football and, well, football everywhere else, heightening the tension between tea drinking or coffee drinking (I honestly have no opinion on this – I hate both), accent and vocabulary jokes, et cetera. Basically, all the culture and sports jokes that you can think of. It turns out, even though the writer’s paid homage by bringing a good number of jokes from the skit over, the show itself rejects the original mockumentary style. Instead, it focused on character development to tell a compelling story about humility and decency in a chaotic world.
Co-creator Bill Lawrence in an interview with The Wrap recalled Sudeikis’ proposing, “what if we completely made the guy three dimensional and had some emotional pathos in his life.” Lawrence suggested that this iteration of Lasso was meant to be “dumb like a fox.” The three-dimensional aspect here is crucial. Ted’s cluelessness and his lacks were not the entirety of his character. It’s also made up of humility, curiosity, compassion, and, of course, a series of one-liners. When combined, all those traits made for a very believable character; you can see yourself in their shoes. Thus, when they succeed in the face of adversity, you feel an indescribable sense of happiness and triumph as well. I sure was when I reached the end of Season One.
Ted Lasso also doesn’t shy away from difficult topics like adapting to a strange new environment, the aftermaths of divorce, toxic relationships, mental health, and in Season Two, toxic positivity. There’s not a lot of shows that give you the roll-on-the-couch-laughing feels good while simultaneously making you stay up late at night thinking about the messages behind it. Plus, these are all important topics that we need to bring into discourse, especially on SLU campus. How are we dealing with mental health crises on campus? How can we make the campus more inclusive to the international community? What are toxic positivity and its consequences? And if you are, like me, about to depart SLU campus and head towards a post-grad life, what are the ways to cope with moving from a similar place to this giant uncertain world called the future, and how can we take care of ourselves while doing so? Even though I’d argue that Ted’s one-liners help somewhat, still we can’t answer all these questions with the show alone. The least we can do, however, is to start thinking of the answers while adding a few laughter along the way.
P.S. There’s no way for me to share aloud my takeaways and answers without spoiling the entire thing for you, so watch it! Watch it!