Yeah, I know, I know. Where the fuck have I been?
Well, life sucks. It sucks a lot. Sometimes in-between all the sucking, some good things happen. In 2017 I was placed on a three week mental health hold as my bipolar spun out of control for the first time in a decade- job I hated, broken heart, aging kids, aging self (I had just turned forty). Since then I have been straightened out mostly. Kids are all adults now. I’m forty-four. Still think about the one who broke my heart, but cut him completely out of my life to preserve myself. Started a new job that is supportive and healthier for me over all. But I also then ran up against COVID and quarantine and all the other God awful things that happened in 2020. To top it off, my 2021 has been hammered by transverse myelitis, where I lost the ability to use one of my legs and am now on the long, painful, exhausting journey to try and get back to what I used to be- or at least a middle aged version of it.
So I haven’t written much at all, except for the rarest of posts (2020 Eurovision pick was Iceland, 2021 pick was actually Ireland, but I’m perfectly fine with Italy winning it all- and apparently everything else in the world. Italy’s having a grand 2021). I admit work took up a lot of my time and the early symptom of TM were wearing on me without me even realizing it. But now I have a brand new shiny green iMac and a new set of obsessions, so I just feel it’s time to return.
I’ve done occasional long form essay type pieces on this blog before, but usually I have a plan and stick to that plan. Some of the planned pieces from four years ago are still in draft form. I might finish them, I might not. I am pretty sure I’ll be writing more piece like this, long form essays that hit on something very specific. They’ll be mediocre and I’l be reminded pretty much daily why I’m an office manager instead of a professional writer. Believe me, I’ve written a lot of essays for you guys in my head over the past couple of years. I’m not gonna write those, they were all terrible and not the vibe I want here. See, 2020 was a watershed year for me. My youngest turned 18 and graduated from high school. I am mom but not mom now. My politics became even more galvanized and I began to slowly change who I wanted in my life. I’m a liberal in a place where liberals are eaten alive by the ravenous libertarian minded folks who think speed limits are just suggestions and viruses have political agendas. Fortunately as an introvert, I was better equipped to never leave my house ever again than some. The people I think are the coolest ever still live with me despite their adultness. My job was now from my home, and I’m doing my damndest to do it well. I’m aware how lucky I am and that who I work for is so accommodating and continues to be so. I’ve done a lot of reading and watching this past year as well. I finally started watching all those MCU movies- I saw Iron Man on TV ages ago, but superhero movies are not my thing in general. But Wandavision was on and it was incredible, so I needed to see what I was missing. Chris Evans is Captain America always and forever. Fight me.
I watched a lot of TV. Everyone has. I purchased more streaming services as they rolled out. I finally watched Brooklyn 99, and am glad that I did. I watched New Girl waaaaaaaay too much. Scrubs, because the first eight seasons are still something incredibly special and not appreciated enough. Criminal Minds multiple times because I still remain me. Amazon Prime Canada began steaming all the Law & Orders-I still love Criminal Intent more than most, and they only added the last ten seasons of the mothership. I still can’t watch SVU, though. I bought a new iPhone last year and got the free year of Apple TV+. I watched the documentaries and Oprah shows, because again- I am still very me. I wasn’t taken with their early offerings, though people keep insisting I need to finish The Morning Show as it does improve as it continues. I splurged on DAZN so I could watch my beloved Manchester United, as the matches are no longer aired regularly on Canadian TV. $150 a year for my United- bloody bargain (it helps that MLB TV is included on DAZN- Cubs games!)
I have also returned to Final Draft and am writing, writing, writing. And rewriting. And more rewriting. I’m rewriting this right now. You know I am. It will likely never see the light of day. Why? Because I’m still an insecure writer in need of an editor. This is life and I accept it. But this is not the point of this essay. Or is it? Follow me here.
So, there is a lot of television. If you thought the Oughties was peak TV, or the early 2010s, you would be very wrong. The cable evolution has turned into the streaming wars and there is simply not enough hours in the day. I lean toward comedy, I always have. If it isn’t murder shows, it’s funny shows. I hit up the viral shit- Tiger King, The Queen’s Gambit, The Crown (I started that late). I’m a sports nut- so I would naturally be drawn to a comedy bout a fish out of water in the EPL starring a former SNL cast member who I best remember as a second banana in many sketches. Apple is crazy, man, to think this would somehow work.
Yeah, how Apple managed to take an early 2010s commercial and turn it into the most perfect television show ever created is a miracle.
Before 2020, Jason Sudeikis was just a guy from the same SNL era that brought us Kristin Wiig and Seth Myers, Vanessa Bayer and Will Forte. He was funny. Solidly funny. But honestly, when pressed to remember him on the show, I mostly remember him dancing on Kenan Thompson’s “What Up With That” sketches. He gave me Bud Abbott vibes- funny guy, but lands in the straight man role often. I haven’t seen any of his films, aside from Booksmart, and he was not the focus of that film as we all know. But I did see those damn NBC sports ads advertising the EPL television rights acquisition. There was something wondrous about them. They were funny and charming, for sure, but they were also respectful to a game I love and take very seriously. I did mention I’m a Man United fan, right? We take it very seriously. But TV ads don’t always make for a great show concept (see: Cavemen). So why an upstart streaming service like Apple’s would make this one of their first year offerings was perplexing to me, as a TV and pop culture historian. Could Sudeikis sustain it for multiple episodes? What stories would they tell? Are they gonna do every sport cliche in the book and expect it to be good or revolutionary? Is this going to be an American in London making bad jokes about lifts and boots and lorries and spotted dick? Seriously, what the hell, everyone? Bill Lawrence was involved- as we know, I am a huge fan of Scrubs (second mention!) and I think that the ninth season and subsequent Zach Braff backlash unjustly hurts its standing in TV history. There was nothing like it when it debuted and remains the standard for doctor shows of any genre and it’s actually aged pretty well condsidering it’s now twenty years old. So that gave me hope that somehow Ted Lasso would be subversive in some way.
So Kid One and I sat down and watched it.
So I’m just adding my nonsense to an already noisy conversation. There has been much written about Ted Lasso in the past year, most of it really good. I’ve seen detractors, but they are few and far between and most of them are on internet comment sections being cynical and dark all the time, so I’m not surprised that this show doesn’t appeal. In one episode Ted mentions his wife is exhausted by his unflailing optimism, and some people are. I thought I would be one of them, but it turns out I am, in spite of myself, an unflailing optimist. The show is subversive in that it exists in this time, in this day and age, in the death knell of the anti-hero, being a salve for troubled souls.
Sudeikis is absolutely winning as Ted, he nails that folksy uplift, and it appears that Sudeikis himself appears to be pretty much the same as Ted in real life. He also nails the subtle darkness of someone like Ted- every time he comes across Sarah Niles’ sports psychologist Dr. Sharon Fieldstone in season two, he maintains the exterior charm while his eyes darken just enough to show he is not really okay with this person observing his team, and more specifically himself. She has him pegged and he knows it. Ted is uneasy with psychotherapy. His history with it is uneven and unsupportive. I completely related to the Liverpool episode’s panic attack, as someone who suffers from crippling panic attacks. The season one scene where Ted escapes the karaoke bar only to collapse against a wall freaking out was all too familiar and real. The whole clenching and unclenching of hands is precisely how it begins for me, with the tingling and numbness soon to follow. There is that sadness of a middle aged man ending his marriage and uprooting his life to try and escape his own demons in Ted as well. But Ted is a sunny thinker, not in a way that is fake. He genuinely likes his players, his staff, his boss, his friends. He is very much interested in them, their lives. Ted feels things, and he lets himself feel them. Sometimes it’s in private (see season one- he got weepy eyed a lot). Sometimes in public- few show joy like Ted Lasso when surrounded by people. It battles the notion of male toxicity- Jamie Tartt (Phil Dunster) has made significant progress since episode one, though he has much to still learn. And last weeks episode showed a beautiful moment where Ted, the boss of the team as the manager, literally throw out to the gathered press that what happened on the field had his full support and that he was not going to be the one to tell the story of why it happened, and turned the room over to Sam Obisanya (the delightful Toheeb Jimoh). The acknowledgement of privilege and allowing the story to be told by the person living through a life that Ted knows is not one he understands is radical storytelling in an era of extremes. It’s also not being preachy, and it’s wonderful to see unfold on the screen.
The show’s other radical storytelling is in it’s handling of abuse. Jamie Tartt is an asshole, but he grew up with an asshole for a father who used his son’s talents for his own purposes and would diminish him when expectations were not met. Jamie’s desire for approval from his father eventually hardens him to the point where he is borderline abusive himself- to team mates, to the women in his life. This story is still unfolding as Jamie returns to Richmond FC and begins to try and build healthier, if still flawed, relationships with those he wronged in the past. This is not a typical story told in sports, where more guys then I can count fail to meet their father’s expectations and suffer greatly for it. I’m curious how the writing staff are going to continue to evolve Jamie. But the real radicalism is in the story of club owner Rebecca Welton (the luminous goddess herself, Hannah Waddingham). The set up during the pilot is that Rebecca wants to take the team her ex-husband loves so much and destroy it. This is not a new concept- Major League had a variation where the female owner wanted to make the Cleveland team so bad she could move them elsewhere, and many a rom com has destruction of bad boyfriend’s/husband’s property as a plot point. What was new is that she really is reluctant to do so. She hires Ted not knowing that he is a curious mind and genuinely nice person, and is disarmed by his shortbread and random thoughts. And we see how she is affected by the tabloids running story after story about her ex and his lifestyle post divorce, where he is celebrated as a bad boy and ladies man, while being portrayed as a shrew. Specifically, an old shrew. As we know, women are guilty of many crimes in this world, and aging is the greatest sin of all. The radicalism comes in that yes, Rupert (Anthony Head, a very different Rupert than the one he played on Buffy)is scuzzy. He’s just a classic 70 year old wealthy white man who has ever been told no and tosses his aging, though still beautiful wife aside for a younger model. But Rebecca finds herself surrounded by people who genuinely care about her and helping her move on. And one of those people is another woman.
I admire how the Ted Lasso writing staff handles their female characters. Rebecca is learning to live as herself again- we learn that her marriage to Rupert was isolating and filled with awful psychological abuse. He manipulates her even now, sabotaging her fundraiser to appear the hero when he cuts a large cheque. Anthony Head as Rupert makes my skin crawl. Juno Temple’s Keeley Jones is a breath of fresh air- starting off as an influencer who falls into a job with the team and friendship with Rebecca, and a rare female friendship that is supportive and loving without the primary focus on the men in their lives (does it pass the Bedchel test? Not really, but it’s closer than most). Rebecca and Keeley are never in competition with each other- they’re far too different from each other to be rivals for anything in their lives. But they compliment each other beautifully, and it’s a refreshing sight to see a relationship between two women on TV that is healthy and respectful to each woman as an individual. Even Ted’s ex-wife, Michelle (Andrea Anders), is treated with humanity and care. She loves Ted, even now, but it’s clear that love is different than it was and it’s leaving her unhappy. It could be easy to vilify her, but the show never does. I greatly respect the writers and producers for not falling into easy tropes- even the second Rebecca gets some sympathetic treatment from the writers and the characters.
There are other wonderful characters- Coach Beard (Brendan Hunt) is the stoic yin to Ted’s exuberant yang. Nick Mohammad’s Nate Shelley is currently battling assholishness that was only hinted at in season one, and believe me Ted and Beard have noticed. The now retired Roy Kent (Brett Goldstein) is off trying to find himself post football and struggling with it. Sam is a soft bean who must be protected at all costs. Dani Rojas (Christo Fernandez) is his own magic on screen, the living embodiment of football being life. The show touches on football fanaticism, American exceptionalism, activism, influencers, and sports culture in its stories, and handles all these topics with care and empathy . But it views it’s world through a main character that is actually a bit of an anomaly.
Do men like Ted Lasso really exist? Certainly. But could they really succeed in today’s world in the way Ted has? That’s a bigger question. Sudeikis has suggested that the character is based on a real coach he had growing up, and I believe him when he says it. But could Ted Lasso really get a college job, even in Division II? That’s a little harder for me to believe. I know coaches. I’ve seen the Bobby Knights, Lou Pinellas, and their brethren. I know of some “nice guy” coaches, but they seem few and far between and frequently bashed by fandoms for being too soft or too peculiar (see: current Blue Jays fandom). So I need to buy the premise, and I do to an extent. Ted knows nothing of the sport he currently is paid to coach, and he relies on Beard’s skills as a tactician and technician to help him through the first season. There is a genius to this, as Ted acts as the audience surrogate and his naive understanding about soccer give the show time to explain some nuances. The biggest one being relegation. Soccer is frequently mocked for being ninety minutes of men running back and forth on grass and it ends up nil-nil. But relegation is the brutal practice of dropping the lowest teams on the table a the end of the season, and bringing up fresh teams to try and make a go among the elite. Legendary teams have ended up in relegation. I have spent time in the last few years wondering if my team, who has struggled since the retirement of Sir Alex Ferguson, will end up there. Some matches I am convinced that will be their fate. This is more brutal than the U.S. idea of straight up wins and losses. There is no punishment for being the worst. In fact, you tend to get a top draft pick. It’s very democratic that way. If you suck so much and you are the worst team in the league, you get to choose among the best new players coming up! And its universal among the major four sports in North America.
So there is a fantasy element to Ted Lasso. I mean, it exists in a COVID free world. It is warm and gentle but has a darkness hiding under the shortbread in the pink boxes on Rebecca’s desk. It’s created and developed by Americans but has a streak of Britishness that is undeniable as a longstanding fan of British humour (I’m Canadian, the balance between the motherland and the neighbour is what makes our humorists so fucking great to begin with). It’s beyond charming, and treads the line between saccharine and sweetness better than most. Even its Christmas episode is full of knowing pop culture references, moments of genuine love, and one very hilarious reaction from Brett Goldstein when his Roy Kent smells his niece Phoebe’s breath. And one can never fault a television show that has a discussion about the best Gin Blossoms song versus a personal favourite Gin Blossoms song.
The correct assessment, however, is that yes, “Hey Jealousy” is the best Gin Blossoms song, but everyone’s favourite should be “Allison Road”. I didn’t know I lost at the time, after all, until Ted Lasso showed me that I can no longer hide in my misanthropy and cynicism. Mostly because I’m less those things than I am a *shudder* optimist. I blame Jason Sudeikis. He’s got that dimple when he smiles and that’s just not very fair. It makes Ted so fucking endearing. You want to join him in the positivity and potential he sees.
It took a show like Ted Lasso to bring me back to writing, something I did every day for decades before losing my way. My own frustrations and insecurities kept me from doing the one thing I loved most. I have no idea what this will actually look like in the future. But the lasting lesson I am getting from this show is that long term plans may go awry, so try to live in joy as much as possible
From a Mess to The Masses 