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My favorite poem is “Good Bones” by Maggie Smith.
There’s a decent chance you’ve heard of it — if not by the numerous times it’s gone viral since its publication in 2016 or its occasional glowing references in popular media, then certainly by following my Twitter feed, where I can’t help but re-share it every four months or so.
Smith’s sobering reflection on how she wants to teach her kids about the world is equally startling in its brutal honesty and brave optimism. It firmly rejects the laziness and pointlessness of nihilism and ironic detachment but refuses to gloss over the darker bits of our collective reality. It is nakedly gritty and deeply hopeful.
In directly acknowledging the especially shitty facets of life on earth but daring us to create a more beautiful world, anyway, even with all the horror that saturates our surroundings, it does something so rarely seen in all the television shows and films and podcasts and books that are generally (and rightly) regarded as high art but seem to luxuriate in dark grittiness without directly challenging us to do better by each other.
When “Ted Lasso” premiered in mid-August of 2020 on Apple TV+, I didn’t take notice. My mother had just unexpectedly died and there was a global pandemic raging and the country (and the world) was navigating the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder by law enforcement and oh, yeah, there was an upcoming election that felt like a potential catalyst for the apocalypse.
I was perpetually not in a good place. I was hurting pretty bad. I was grieving. I consistently felt like shit. I felt lonely and unmoored. I was deeply uncertain if there would be a better world in 2021, much less my place in it as a trans woman. It all just seemed relentlessly bleak.
I would say the last thing I wanted to do in that moment was watch a show about what I had assumed was some college football coach who apparently never feels sad and asks why other people don’t just choose to be happy, too.
That year felt like I was stubbing my toes every goddamn day, and in my humble opinion, when you stub your big toe—I mean, when you really slam that sucker into something hard, bereft of socks and shoes, life flashing before your eyes through the searing pain, nerve endings aflame—the most unhelpful response is some jackass offering “have you tried smiling through the pain” and believing themselves to be helpful.
I would like to believe I am not a cynical person, but that year was so rough that I was not about to waste energy on what I perceived to be some quirky new show asking us to smile through the pain.
No, I am hurting, and smiling isn’t going to fix that. This hurts. Do you not understand how much this hurts?
But I kept hearing about this damn show — from friends, from colleagues, from random folks on Twitter, even from conversations I would overhear in public.
You gotta watch this show. There’s nothing else like it.
So, one day, in the midst of all that chaos and pain, I began watching it, and I’ll admit that I was initially skeptical. The premise felt like a bit much. You’re telling me an NCAA Division II football coach—not even Division I—is tapped to helm an English professional soccer team, despite having zero expertise about the sport?
Even for what I had initially assumed is an intentionally silly comedy, it felt dangerously close to being derailed by its own silliness. Is this just gonna be ten episodes chock-full of countless variations of some midwest dork making English sportswriters roll their eyes by calling it “soccer”?
Well, it wasn’t. Not even close. I was completely wrong. It immediately felt effortlessly clever and interesting and authentic. I laughed constantly. I was taken aback by Lasso’s unapologetic earnestness, which contrasted so richly with the understandable skepticism of his English counterparts, mirroring my own.
By the pilot’s end, when Lasso, full of warmth and generosity, listens painfully to his child’s voice over the phone, half the world away, and then tells his wife he loves her and she can’t say it back, indicated only by Lasso—superbly played by Jason Sudeikis—comforting her with “No, no, that’s okay. You don’t have to,” I was hooked.
This is not a show about an oblivious man gliding through life and telling others they just need to smile. It’s a show about a man deeply in pain and all-too-aware of his own shortcomings but having the courage to acknowledge them, and choosing to stay in the arena, not to do Teddy-Roosevelt-like battles with those around him but to insist on building community through shared struggles.
When Lasso is wronged, he responds with empathy. When Lasso does wrong, he is quick to recognize it and make amends. He is imperfectly human in the best sense imaginable: cognizant of his own flaws and graceful with the flaws of others, feeling his own pain and using it to bear witness to the pain of those around him.
And the best part? He’s hilarious throughout.
This past Tuesday, I attended the Season 3 premiere of “Ted Lasso” at the Regency Village Theatre in Los Angeles, where a packed, enthusiastic audience watched the first two episodes of what is widely assumed to be—but not yet definitively confirmed as—the final season of the show.
Sudeikis and co-creaters Bill Lawrence, Joe Kelly, and Brendan Hunt (who also plays the immensely likable Coach Beard, Lasso’s second-in-command) have long said the original story was only intended for three seasons (and have stuck to that), but there have been various hints the Ted Lasso universe might extend beyond this newest season.
Perhaps the most telling clue: despite undeniably being the most successful project to date for Apple TV+ (and that’s saying something given their deeply impressive stable of acclaimed shows and films), it is not being marketed as embarking on its final season.
And yet, here’s another clue: based solely on the first two episodes, it is apparent to your humble reviewer that this is shaping up to be the best season yet, which may provide more than enough incentive for Sudeikis and gang to go out on top instead of risking a decline in quality with a narrative extension that feels awkward and forced.
Let me repeat that: this is likely to be the best season of the series, judging by how much I found myself laughing and unexpectedly crying only two episodes in.
Nate Shelley (played by Nick Mohammed)—the bullied, former equipment manager turned assistant coach for AFC Richmond (under Lasso’s generous tutelage)—has left the club after being hired as head coach for powerhouse West Ham United and betraying Lasso by revealing to a sportswriter, Trent Crimm (James Lance), that the head coach left the pitch during a match due to a panic attack instead of Lasso’s publicly stated reason of food poisoning.
The opening episodes primarily revolve around Nate turning into the kind of bully who once tormented him, and as he continues to betray Lasso with a vicious mean-spiritedness in public, it seems everyone in Lasso’s world is urging him to punch back, particularly Lasso’s boss, AFC Richmond owner Rebecca Welton, played by the brilliant Hannah Waddingham.
In the first season, Welton had originally hired Lasso in an attempt to sabotage AFC Richmond into oblivion to get back at her horrible ex-husband, the original owner, but Welton unexpectedly finds herself won over by Lasso’s relentless kindness and the two become close friends. Now, she is aghast as Lasso rebuffs her call to publicly strike back at Nate and his new boss, her ex-husband, who has just bought West Ham.
Both episodes are quite excellent, but there are two specific scenes that are beyond exceptional and show “Ted Lasso” at its very best. I promise not to spoil them for y’all, but I will say this: the first scene involves a press conference, and honestly, it shouldn’t work, but by its end, I found myself tearing up and praising the writers for having the guts to take a risk that pays off beautifully. The second scene involves Legos, and I definitely cried during that one.
Without spoiling anything, here’s what I assume will be the dominant theme of the third season: people are enormously complicated, far beyond our own limited understanding of the individual, private struggles of others, and separating people into dueling categories of “good” and “evil” is profoundly foolish.
The show has given us every reason to root for Lasso and every reason to despise Nate, and yet, through Lasso’s vantage point, it also seems to insist there are no true heroes or villains here. All are imperfect people in different trajectories of growth (and, yes, sometimes, lack thereof) — responsible for their actions and whom certainly should be expectant of accountability, sure, but none are perfect.
Without being preachy or pandering, Lasso communicates this with remarkable effectiveness, not only in the vulnerability through which he owns up to his mistakes but in the grace he consistently centers in how he approaches the mistakes of others.
I have no idea what the rest of this season entails, but my hunch is that we’re going to learn things about Ted Lasso’s journey that bring his own imperfections into greater clarity and illuminate how his empathy is derived from navigating his own past mistakes, most likely related to his ongoing anxiety with family back home.
In 2021, after the premiere of the second season, I wrote a review that praised the show’s honest approach toward mental health, particularly among men. I also proposed, as a concept for reviewing film and television, the Lasso Test: “at least two men talk to each other about their mental health or emotional wellbeing in a frank and vulnerable and loving way without needing to involve women as vehicles or guides for their self-improvement.”
I am pleased to say, unsurprisingly, that this season’s opening episodes pass the Lasso Test with flying colors, as well as the famous Bechdel Test, from which I took the inspiration. It is wonderful to see the men of this show engage with each other so thoughtfully and the women support each other as strong individuals without needing the conversations between them to hinge exclusively on what Lasso and his players are doing or thinking.
Alright, that’s a lot of serious stuff, and I don’t want this to get lost: the show remains hilarious and fun on all fronts.
Roy Kent is still the charming and profane curmudgeon we’ve come to know and love through Brett Goldstein. Juno Temple has me hoping for a future spinoff series with her ever-glowing performance as public relations pro Keeley Jones.
I’m eager to see what the writers will do with Dr. Sharon Fieldstone (played by Sarah Niles), the sports psychologist whose professional presence is an especially potent foil to Lasso’s irrepressible personality.
Leslie Higgins, Hannah’s lovable righthand, played delightfully by Jeremy Swift, is also someone I can easily see leading a spinoff, and Jamie Tartt (the rising superstar on the pitch played by Phil Dunster) continues one of the most interesting character arcs in the show.
The charming trio of Sam Obisayna (Toheeb Jimoh), Dani “Football is life!” Rojas (Cristo Fernández), and team captain Isaac McAdoo (Kola Bokinni) lead a cast of players that have every scene making me wish I could attend one of their games in real life.
In fact, at the post-premiere party, I was pleased to relay to Mr. Bokinni that his character’s deft deployment of the word “fuck” is one of the more underrated aspects of the show, and on his behalf, I relay to y’all that he takes great joy in that duty.
I firmly believe that “Ted Lasso” is currently the greatest Trojan Horse in pop culture, a show that invites the audience into a fun premise that doesn’t take it itself too seriously and then offers, without any self-congratulatory fanfare, a vision of interpersonal relationships that prioritize grace and growth and good faith over all else.
Lasso and friends are having a hell of a lot of fun, but they’re doing it whilst simultaneously telling us, in a spiritual echo of Smith:
“This place could be beautiful, right? You could make this place beautiful.”
Believe.
The third season of “Ted Lasso” premieres on March 15th on Apple TV+.
Hi, I’m Charlotte Clymer, and this is Charlotte’s Web Thoughts, my Substack. It’s completely free to access and read, but if you feel so moved to support my writing, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription: just $7/month or save money with the $70/annual sub. You can also go way above and beyond by becoming a Founding Member at $210.
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