Apple’s TV streaming business reflects much of what shareholders love about the company: even when they start out good, products keep improving. Initially, Apple’s movie productions wouldn’t have caused any sleepless nights at market leading competitors Netflix, Disney and Amazon. But they’re very clearly on an upward trend. For proof, watch Ted Lasso, a brilliant series about an American Football coach recruited-to-fail by a vindictive owner of a fictional English Premier League soccer club. It’s top of the pops with The Wall Street Journal’s sports and humour columnist Jason Gay who, like millions, is waiting expectantly for Season Two. If you haven’t discovered Richmond AFC, you’re in for a treat. – Alec Hogg
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The importance of being Ted Lasso
A mild-mannered show about an inexperienced soccer coach feels like hopeful therapy.
Jan. 15, 2021 10:09 am ET
Amid these calamitous times, here’s a modest self-care habit I’ve picked up: “Ted Lasso.”
Debuting on Apple’s streaming TV channel last summer, “Ted Lasso” chronicles an American football coach recruited to manage a woebegone soccer club in the English Premier League.
The show got loads of early praise, but I’d held out, citing dubious excuses: I don’t have enough hours in the day; I sit through enough TV already, most of it terrible NFL games; I should spend my time more productively, like learning new languages, or speaking to my children. Instead what I usually do is morbidly doom-scroll through my phone for infuriating tweets—a terrible idea, always.
But mostly I held out on “Ted Lasso” because to my jaded modern heart, it seemed a little bit, well, corny.
I was wrong. “Ted Lasso” turns out to be the ideal television distraction for these times, almost a salve, simply for the fact that it radiates a rare commodity in a deeply toxic moment: Optimism.
That’s really it. It’s optimistic.
If you haven’t watched, I promise there won’t be spoilers. When Ted Lasso, played by the former “Saturday Night Live” cast member Jason Sudeikis, is installed on the sideline of this fictional English club, AFC Richmond, the heavy expectation is he will fail miserably. Folksy, thick-mustached Ted is a man out of his element, who’s never coached soccer, who barely understands its traditions or terminology, or even the direction of U.K. traffic. He struggles. He walks into things. His players mock him to his face. Richmond fans take to calling Ted a word you definitely cannot print in the Journal.
Here’s the twist: Ted stays upbeat. Even when he loses, even when he’s ridiculed in the media, even when he misses his wife and child back in the States, Lasso greets each day with a sunbeam of hopefulness. Initially, Ted’s good cheer is presented as comical naiveté: What is this Yankee so happy about? Over time, we learn Ted’s no buffoon. He’s someone who thrives on being underestimated, has learned to parry negativity with bullishness (and more than a few Dad jokes). To be Ted Lasso is to believe things will get better—and if it doesn’t, well, he’ll have some fun trying.
You know where this is going. Over time, Ted begins to win over even his harshest critics. Skeptics are charmed by Ted’s optimism—even the most jaded columnist for the local newspaper can’t help but be disarmed. The team slowly buys in. Lasso-mania stirs.
I’ll stop there on the plot. You can check out the rest, if you choose.
“Ted Lasso” is a strange bit of TV subversiveness. Sweet and sanguine, Ted is a heretical character for a medium still in thrall to Tony Soprano and a generation’s worth of edgy characters. It helps that Sudeikis, who originated Ted for an NBC Premier League ad campaign a few years ago, avoids the easy caricature, rendering Ted with depth and even some flashes of pain. Ted is inveterately goofy but more than he appears (a key scene finds him in a hostile pub, quoting a phrase attributed to Whitman: “Be curious, not judgmental”). Similar heart propels the entire show, which wades gamely into earnestness without growing syrupy or saccharine.
I’m grateful for earnestness right now, to be honest. I’m far from the first observer to note how the warmth of “Ted Lasso” makes it an ideal escape at a time when merely glancing at the news makes anyone want to climb back under the covers. Not long ago, a Vanity Fair headline instructed “Bring Ted Lasso Energy Into Your Life”; The Ringer’s Miles Surrey wrote the show made him “want to be a better person.” Over this last appalling week, a few minutes of Ted has felt like prescription medicine. I don’t need to tell you these are not times of abundant positivity. Self-interest and cynicism abound.
Sometimes, you just want someone to say it’ll be OK. That’s why I’ve been turning to Ted Lasso, American optimist, soccer neophyte, who always sees a better day ahead.
Write to Jason Gay at [email protected]
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Appeared in the January 16, 2021, print edition as ‘The Importance Of Being Ted Lasso.’
