BlissFullU

This past week, our lives had a big win and a big loss and an interesting aside from a sit com perspective. Let’s start with the loss, which is Sit Com #1. (I will discuss the other two sit coms in posts in the next two days.)

This week we got the ending to what is, in my opinion, one of the best sit coms of modern times, Ted Lasso. It’s a huge loss for me because it is the first sit com I’ve watched, not just in years, but in decades.

Seriously. I haven’t had a TV in my house since I moved into my own place sometime in the early ’80s. In the ’80’s and ’90’s, I occasionally saw TV shows when I went to other people’s houses, but that was it. One friend was a big Dynasty fan, so I saw that on a somewhat regular basis. In the early 2000s when my son was a toddler, a popular Moms Night Out activity was to gather at someone’s house to watch Sex and the City, and escape our issues with toilet education and weaning our children off of sippy cups by watching a community of women with a lifestyle 180 degrees from our daily reality. But I don’t think I ever watched a single life episode of Friends or of Seinfeld. I did watch one season of American Idol when the son of a friend of a friend was competing and we were supporting him, but I’ve never watched a single other “reality” TV show or competition– no Kardashians, no Bachelors or Bachelorettes, no dancing competitions, no Real Housewives, no whatever the show is where you get voted off the island, and CERTAINLY no Apprentice. And I don’t watch sports at all, either live or through media. Even with the Superbowl, I only come for the party, not the game or the ads or the halftime show.

So then, you might ask, why would I devote myself to this single TV show about an American who comes to England to coach a losing soccer team? Well, the obvious answer is that it isn’t about soccer. I first tuned in because it debuted during the horrible no good very bad 2020 election season, and I was looking for something to support my positivity and optimism. And that show definitely did that. So I signed up to Apple TV for three months, watched the season, and then signed off again. Until the next year, when I did the same thing. And the next. I’ll be canceling my subscription next week.

I thought it was a great, great show. Wonderful characters, well-developed plot lines, lots of symbolism and pop culture references (which as a literature teacher, I seek out like vampires seek blood). Loved the positivity, loved the philosophy, loved the actors and the acting, and loved the storytelling. But most of all, I loved Ted Lasso because I thought it was unique.

To me, Ted Lasso was all about men developing their Emotional Intelligence. And when, if ever, has there been a TV show devoted to that?

Again, in my perspective, every episode contained one or more examples of men trying to explore, figure out, improve, and even discuss…GASP!…their FEELINGS! Now, that’s something that seems to feel more natural to many women, both in real life and in fictional stories. But among men…in my experience, not so much. I think that is what drove the storytelling in Ted Lasso, and I think they did it brilliantly. Plus, they set it in the hyper-macho environment of a professional sport. If these men, who live through their athetic abilities and revel in the … let’s just call it, male pleasures of celebrity, can actually talk about and work on their feelings, then any man should be able to, right?

SPOILER ALERT: I’m going to go into a few specifics of the last season/last show, so if you haven’t watched the series yet, I recommend you stop reading here. But please come back tomorrow for more June Sit Com posts.

OK, SPOILERS AHEAD

There has been a good bit of criticism about Season 3 having lost its way, but I disagree. I think we needed to have patience. After their excellent work on the first two seasons, I trusted the writers were doing what they were doing for a reason. And to me, it paid off.

I think this last season was all about other male characters learning how to step up and provide the surrogate healthy dad role that Ted played for almost all of the men on the team. In that way, they gave Ted the ability to return to being the physically-present dad that his own son needed. Or, the men, particularly Jamie and Nate, learned how to create a healthier relationship with their own dads.

I loved Roy Kent becoming a mentor for Jamie. I loved Trent becoming a mentor for Colin. I loved Higgins being a mentor for kitman Will. I loved that Colin confessed to being gay not for himself, but to protect the reputation of his best friend, McAdoo. I loved that McAdoo was thrown out of the game for protecting the reputation of his best friend, Colin. I loved that Nate discovered that he could be powerful without losing his values and rejecting the kind of surrogate father Rupert represented. I loved that Dani made up with Zoreaux/ Van Damme/Zorro. I loved that Ted just allowed Coach Beard and Roy to discover that using anger and revenge was not an effective technique without making them wrong. I loved that the team, on their own, decided to support Sam when his restaurant was vandalized and to accept Nate back into their community. I loved that Coach Beard stepped up to replace Ted so that he could return to his family, and that Ted supported Coach Beard in staying in England to marry the woman he loved. I loved that Jamie and Roy tried to resolve their conflict over Keeley through a traditional male response (fighting) and then realized that in the end, the choice was up to Keeley (plus the end spoiler that seemed like Roy was finally going to psychologist Sharon to become the man that Keeley would choose). And I really loved that the horrible no good very bad men/surrogate dads–Rupert and Ghanian Edwin Akufo–didn’t get what they wanted.

But maybe most of all, I loved the scene where each team member revealed that they each had been keeping a little bit of the torn-up BELIEVE sign with them. I loved that metaphor that just as the sign had continued to inspired them even after it no longer existed, so would the team continue to keep Ted’s lessons in their heart even when he returned to America. That was a bawling moment for me.

All that is to say that Ted Lasso has wonderful, wonderful lessons for us all. But to try to teach those lessons to resistant men as well as to perhaps-more-receptive women is, in my mind, a gift to the world.

So thank you, Ted Lasso. You will be missed.

PS

I forgot to say what a PERFECT final song Cat Steven’s “Father and Son” was for this show. The final YouTube video is below.