-Why Ted Lasso Jumped the Shark-
Did Ted Lasso lose its way – and is the problem that it changed or we did? Ted Lasso was always a surreal show that owned its over-the-top positivity, however absurd many of its moments would feel in the real world. But as the seasons go on, having almost all of the characters evolve to a state of such emotional health and to be guided in all their decisions by kindness and self-sacrifice, feels disconnected from human nature and how almost everyone we know acts. So how did it all go wrong?
In 2020, people latched onto Ted’s Light Side energy as a breath of fresh air amidst 2020’s early-pandemic fear and isolation; he was virtually bringing us all together. And sure, when it came time for seasons 2 and 3, we were collectively in a less emotionally needy, and less earnest place. But it’s not just that – the show’s writing also went from cutely saccharine yet lovable, to just a little too unbelievable. There were structural story problems too: the narrative setup of season one benefited from the brilliant twist of Rebecca being out to secretly sabotage Ted. In a show that’s this upbeat and optimistic, it’s crucial to have some antagonism to avoid descending into a parade of non-stop sugary sweetness. And what was so great about Rebecca plotting against the show’s hero in the first season, is that Rebecca herself is entirely lovable (and has been treated horribly by the husband who betrayed her). So this created a difficult tension for us, the viewers, as we were encouraged to root for both hero and antagonist. When Rebecca finally comes around to “The Lasso Way,” we’re given the satisfactory happy outcome we’ve been made to long for.
But after this point, there’s a surplus of kind, healthy characters, and the show increasingly has to rely on Rupert as its long-term villain – the problem is he’s a cardboard cutout of evil, with no humanity left in him, which actually starts to feel confusing given that seemingly everyone else in this entire show is capable of redemption. Even Jamie’s cruel dad is briefly seen at rehab. Season 2 grapples with its excess of happiness by turning on Ted a little – interrogating his unfailing smile as a form of toxic positivity and putting him into therapy for panic attacks that stem from all that he’s bottled up. It’s a good way to make a point – that the answer here isn’t just to put on a happy face and repress what’s bugging you – and it wouldn’t work to have Ted feel like some kind of superhero forever. But the shift also means that (in addition to losing Rebecca’s sabotage) the second season also loses Ted’s pure joyfulness. And the result is a little more lifeless. The series almost gets its footing back at the end of Season 2 with the, again inspired, twist of Nate turning to the Dark Side. Nate’s gradual descent throughout the season culminating in his dramatic betrayal works and feels real because it hinged on all the valid-feeling complaints about Ted’s way that many of us, if we’re honest, might have to confront if working with this guy in a professional context.
Yes, he’s inspiring, but he doesn’t really bother to get that knowledgeable about the sport he’s coaching, and he ends up getting the credit for other people’s more arduous work. Nate’s biggest complaint about him is that, as a father figure, he shows up and gets everyone excited, but then might disappear and not remain present. Yet while Nate’s turn to the dark side is a great moment, the third season squanders it. Nate pretty quickly realizes his mistake and abandons all his vanity and ambition; it’s just a question of when he’ll get back to working for Ted. Mannion is so obviously abhorrent that Nate can easily see through Rupert’s attempt to screw up Nate’s relationship with Jade (a hostess just like Rebecca was when Rupert met her). And while there’s one episode that shows Rebecca briefly breaking through Rupert’s evil by recalling the person he used to be, after she rejects his advances he reverts almost right away back to being a cardboard sleazeball.
Ted as Star Wars
Ted Lasso tries to be the modern Star Wars, applied to real life – or, something like real life. Ted embodies The Light Side. He’s entering a sphere that’s governed in large part by Dark Side forces like status, cynicism and aggression. And while at first Ted’s ideas strike people as a little silly, they’re also infectious and winning, turning the little ecosystem around Richmond into a utopia of mentally healthy, kind, enlightened friends. Just like the little chairs all flipping over to match Ted’s color in the title sequence, all the other characters around him illustrated that, when you started to live more like Ted, you felt better about what you were contributing to the world. Over the seasons, this Star Wars analogy becomes even more explicit: the football world’s Dark Side equivalent to Emperor Palpatine, haughty Rupert Mannion is seen in dark robe-like clothing befitting a sith lord, amidst intimidating interior designs like his Office that’s modeled on the Emperor’s throne.
Like Darth Vadar, Nate briefly turns to the Dark Side. And the three seasons loosely echo the original trilogy - with the Darth Vader figure’s redemption arc, the darkest moment at the end of number two that the show creators said was modeled on the Empire Strikes Back, and an overall feeling of scraggly rebels rising against unlikely odds and more polished, richer teams.
But at times these contrasts between West Ham as the dark side to AFC Richmond’s light get heavy handed, cartoonish and repetitive. At the beginning of season 3, at Rupert and Nate’s press conference, the grandiose language and disdainful attitudes are intercut with Ted’s decision to take the Richmond team down into the sewers supposed to exemplify his humility - but is this strange choice really a better use of their time than practicing? Then, In Ted’s own press conference, instead of bragging about his team or fighting back as Rebecca wants him to, he praises Nate and makes fun of himself. It again drives home the point of Ted’s dogged nonviolence and lack of arrogance, but it also just gets tough to buy. And are we truly seeing something we can model in this now-predictable behavior from goofy Saint Ted?
We often hear a lot about how charming Rupert supposedly is, though, and in real life, the dark side can be incredibly charismatic and seductive. Things like money, status, winning, dominating others and proving them wrong, acting out some petty grievances or spite – we might not like to think of ourselves as being driven by these things, yet most of us are to some extent. And hyper successful people perhaps most of all (there are statistics that CEOs are far more likely to be psychopaths.) Some of the most successful premier league coaches – like Jose Mourinho who Nate seems to recall when he’s working for West Ham – have been known for being openly arrogant, grandiose and aggressively competitive. If we’d even watched Nate live out a more fleshed out, longer Darth Vader arc at West Ham, still ending in his redemption, this would have resulted in more emotional reality and a better reflection of the social world we all confront day in day out.
Maybe one way to think of the Light Side or Lasso Way, versus the Dark Side or Mannion way, is really interior life versus exterior life. When we put external things first like dominating, being the best, or proving everyone wrong, the show argues that that makes us empty and miserable. Meanwhile a key tenant of the Lasso Way is that you can’t get hung up on the external result. The team gets relegated at the end of Season 1, and in the finale although they win, they come second in the league. Yet Lasso still scores because winning comes second to making the players their best selves. The New York Times writes that, contrary to sports movies’ usual redemption arc of “winning in order to overcome your problems — “Lasso” suggests the reverse: You can’t win if you aren’t right within.” At numerous points the show does make us feel that by becoming your healthiest self you become more successful professionally. In certain ways this can be true - take examples like Jamie taking on a rigorous training regimen, Keeley growing up and focusing on her own plans more than men, Rebecca building a supportive ecosystem around her team and giving them the space and time to build progress on solid foundations.
Ted repeatedly references John Wooden’s pyramid of success, which is all about these values. And Richmond’s third season success on the field is based on implementing Total Football, which Ted “reinvents” in Amsterdam –and is the football embodiment of everything he’s been teaching them off the field.
Yet in real life, there are also times where just sticking to the Lasso Way and always putting this teamwork first could mean you won‘t come in first, because unfortunately, sometimes there’s a conflict between success and being a good, mature person. Sometimes making a big professional win requires working so hard you make unpleasant sacrifices in the rest of your life. Hiring employees based on friendship and emotional health isn’t always going to yield the most talented candidates. And while this disconnect is sort of underlined in Richmond not winning the league, most of the time when they do succeed it’s portrayed as a result of emotional maturity, rather than at odds with it.
Nate’s return and his coming back to the team as assistant kitman teaches him his lesson and has poetic justice for this previously overambitious and status obsessed manager. But Nate is also a genius, as his father acknowledges - just as Ted evidently didn’t either.
So in the end when Roy becomes the manager because he’s apparently making therapeutic and emotional progress, it leaves us wondering about Nate. Sure the plot with Nate’s dad ends up implying Nate didn’t really want success aside from his dad’s pressure, but this arguably feels like a copout. Is Nate’s true karma to just remain an assistant for years when he’s the most talented coach maybe in the whole league, and is there no way for him to care about reaching a high level in his field that’s still in line with the Lasso Way? Likewise the ending for Keely’s romantic triangle with Roy and Jamie feels a little like an afterschool special reminding us a woman doesn’t need a man, rather than a choice grounded in emotional reality. True, there are good reasons for her turning down both men - one broke her heart in part because he couldn’t handle her success, and the other she dated so long ago it might feel like regressing to an earlier version of herself. But instead of processing any of that, the scene is a cutesy rejection of the guys’ unevolved male impulse to fight like neanderthals for her and her shutting the door in their faces, while they immediately accept she’s right.
Perhaps the most surreal part of Ted Lasso is its portrayal of soft masculinity – the cornerstone of this enlightened update to the sports comedy genre starring mostly male characters.The Lasso Way showed countless “tough” football players opening up, getting in touch with their feelings, and being there for each other – whether through the coaches Diamond Dogs’ informal sharing sessions, men benefitting from therapy, or the locker room scenes that are pretty much the exact opposite of what we assume most “locker room talk” often sounds like: As the New York Times observed, masculine icons in real life are more often preaching toughness; but “the men of “Ted Lasso” are sensitive and horrified by revenge porn. They are thoughtful and sympathetic.” And in 2021, the series scored a Peabody award for “offering the perfect counter to the enduring prevalence of toxic masculinity, both on-screen and off, in a moment when the nation truly needs inspiring models of kindness.” At times it’s just a little too hard to buy much of this portrayal, but arguably, as the Times writes, “the show’s greatest success is making an alternative, soft masculinity seem possible and worth pursuing, even if it remains a fantasy.”
Finding Family
In the end Ted returns home like Odysseus, having been victorious overseas in battle but stayed away too long. He turns down an amazing offer and leaves this new home he’s built for himself, because his son and former wife (who’s, like Penelope, plagued by unworthy suitors) need him back, and that’s where his heart is. The final episode is all about this concept of home, as each of the characters find their version of family. Rebecca finally feels her prophecy came true as she decides to stay with Richmond and become known as the club’s “mother” while at the last second it’s also hinted she finds a literal family when she reunites by chance with her flame from Amsterdam, via his daughter. Kelly finds a way to spread the impact of her and Rebecca’s friendship by proposing that Richmond start a women’s team. We see friendly barbecues, Nate at his favorite restaurant, Sam getting to play for Nigeria. Even as the writing quality could vary, there are some beautiful ideas in this dogmatically earnest show, like that the process matters more than results, lasting motivation is unlocked not through hating someone but through accepting yourself, and that whatever you’ve done, you are worth forgiving. It’s a world where good behaviors are always rewarded and bad ones punished, not necessarily in external results but in a person’s own soul. The finale episode lands on telling us the answer is a mix of self-acceptance and the will to change.
Ted gives Trent the one note on his book that it shouldn’t be called the Lasso Way, because it was never about him (and Trent obliges by renaming the book the Richmond way). It’s fitting because only the first season really felt about Ted - after that he faded more into an ensemble and the other characters got to shine more, and the point is that by living this Light Side way, any of us can become a Ted with a positive impact on others around us. And while a lot of the writing as it wraps up feels awkward and a step down from the series’ high points, Ted Lasso has always left us with love and respect for its large cast of characters, and appreciation for any human’s attempt to make the world better. The show that’s the epitome of a “feel good ” comedy was determined to be itself both when that was more in vogue and even when it isn’t. It had a mission to put something positive into the world - to spread the Light way or Lasso Way or Richmond Way or whatever you call it. And while that doesn’t make it the most believable show, and the quality could be deeply uneven, that’s a legacy to be proud of.
Sources
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