‘Ted Lasso’ Is Officially Out Of Its Depth
Ted Lasso’s has been lauded as one of the best shows of the decade, with its cast and crew showered in Emmys and honoured with trips to The White House. So what in the world happened?
To be fair, Ted Lasso Season 3’s production was always somewhat cursed. Production was delayed due to everything from pay disputes, to Russian trade sanctions, and a stack of rewrites.
Plenty of shows are haunted by production chaos, though, and still manage to pull through. Production complications suck, but outstanding writing will always shine through. Sadly, though, Ted Lasso has never been so dull.
Ted Lasso Is Now The Worst Part Of His Own Show
I’m probably not the first person whose enthusiasm for Jason Sudeikis’ long-time character is wearing thin. Such is the fate of most perennially “nice” characters whose flaws operate as methods of endearment more than actual challenges to overcome. As a character, Lasso is without true conflict or complication, and even his more questionable actions are framed as affectionate quirks.
When we meet him in Season 3, Ted has fallen into a routine where he manages his team, has his therapist on speed dial, and flies his son back and forth between the UK and the US. His biggest problem is that after his fallout with Nate, he lacks a strategist: and his team’s all the worse for it.
As always, Ted is out of his depth with the actual mechanics of the game, but three years into the show this no longer feels like an OK explanation for his lack of understanding of the game he coaches. One cannot be a fish out of water when a fish has not called water home for entire Olympic cycle, and that’s just science!
There’s always been a degree of “do as I say not as I do” comedic irony to Ted Lasso. After all, for two seasons the man preaches therapy while pointedly avoiding it himself. But Season 3 pushes the boundaries of Ted’s hypocrisy to dizzying new heights.
In Episode 7, old nudes of Keeley’s are leaked online, and in classic Lasso fashion the team gets an overly clinical lesson on the importance of respecting privacy and bodily autonomy. Meanwhile, this same episode sees Lasso attempt, without a hint of irony, to hire a private detective to follow his ex-wife and her new partner so Ted can find out if they’re planning to get engaged.
The ethical dubiousness of Ted hiring a PI to stalk his long-time ex goes unmentioned by the show: instead, we get a heart-warming discussion between him and Rebecca about moving on from the past. Ted Lasso, both the character and show, have been well established as being relentlessly forgiving and compassionate. Forgiving, it seems, to a fault.
The show is incapable of holding the character accountable for something genuinely shady and obsessive in an episode all about respecting women’s autonomy. It is not wonder, then, that Ted Lasso insists on forgiveness as a fix for systemic racism.
The Show Never Equipped Itself to Deal with Homophobia or Racism
Despite the racism and misogyny that permeates the real world of professional soccer, Ted Lasso’s mostly avoided depicting that reality. To be fair, it has acknowledged the cultural backgrounds of the players and how it impacts their lives. Mexican player Danny Rojas often speaks in Spanish and talks fondly of home, and Season 2 sees Sam Obisanya open a Nigerian café. Prior to Season 3, these scenes were the extent to which the team’s cultural backgrounds were acknowledged — only as far as they could contribute to the show’s utopian sense of camaraderie.
This camaraderie is maintained as a focus when portraying racism in Season 3, after Sam is targeted by racialised hatred online and and his café is vandalised. The whole thing climaxes with the team helping Sam repair the trashed restaurant, as if hate crimes are a nice way of bringing people together. But the episode’s most baffling mishandling of the issue lies with Sam’s father who reminds Sam to forgive the racist vandals and not to “fight back, fight forward.”
It’s a pretty irritating tautology — flattening the symptoms of systemic discrimination into a matter of individual will power, as if victims of racism should simply take it on the chin.
Of course, non-white people deal with racism in different ways, and not everyone has the capacity or resources to fight back. It’s also not fair to expect those on the receiving end of racism to also fix it.
But after nary a lick of bigotry in two seasons of Ted Lasso, deciding that racism does in fact exist while endorsing stoicism and restraint as a way of dealing with it was a deeply ignorant choice.
The show’s handling of homophobia doesn’t fare much better. Early in Season 3, the show reveals that Colin is gay and has a boyfriend, neither of which he has ever revealed to the team. Trent Crimm comes out to Colin to reassure him that he will not out Colin to the team, and the pair connect on their desire to exist without scrutiny for their sexuality, sharing a beer on the Homomonument in Amsterdam, which was built in 1987 to commemorate the gay people and lesbians who were killed by the Nazis.
Complete death of subtlety aside, the audience is also greeted to a sympathetic montage across multiple episodes of Colin gritting his teeth through the team’s “that’s gay, bro” jokes and half-heartedly partaking the boys’ discussions about hooking up with women.
Never mind that the characters in this show have been praised for many years as shining examples of a positive masculinity — apparently, they’ve been secretly homophobic and misogynistic this whole time. Colin’s storyline crescendos in Episode 8 where he comes out to the team after a heckler calls the team a homophobic slur. In the subsequent scene, Sam claims the comment is, “nothing they haven’t heard before.” Except it isn’t. At least, not in the world established by the show, where even hecklers are wholesome pub patrons who watch Bake Off.
Much like the series’ writers acknowledging racism insofar as using a hate crime to bring the team together at Sam’s restaurant, previously non-existent homophobia is used as the catalyst for the team’s heart-warming acceptance of Colin. At best it is an issue of consistency in the show’s central ethos and at worst, it’s glaring evidence of the writers’ cluelessness about discrimination in sports.
The Show Has No Idea What To Do With Keeley
Keeley is in her girlboss era, and it sucks. After Roy breaks up with her and she establishes her own PR firm, Keeley has spent much of the series siloed off from the other characters. Most notably, she began dating her fellow girlboss boss, Jack.
Much like Colin being gay, Keeley’s bisexuality has been hugely underdeveloped until now. Nevertheless, the bulk of the series has been dedicated to showcasing Keeley and Jack’s whirlwind office romance. While the actors have lovely chemistry, it was clear the writers did not want the audience investing in the relationship too much.
From the beginning, the relationship between the two women wasn’t presented in good faith. It is established early on that the prior owners of Keeley’s office was a pervy bloke who had blinds and adjustable frosted glass installed so he could have sex with co-workers. Keeley almost exclusively only uses these accessories when hooking up with Jack, visually equating their relationship to the prior owner’s sexual harassment.
Even if the office blinds situation can be waved off with notions of privacy, nothing explains the show’s use of the phrase, “love bombing” in relation to the pair; a term used to describe abusive behaviour. Rebecca even draw parallels between Jack’s behaviour and Rebecca’s ex, Rupert perennial Ted Lasso villain. Rebecca does this despite neither Keeley nor Jack providing any reason for the comparison, but Rebecca continues to frame Jack as untrustworthy.
Then, in Episode 7, Keeley’s nudes are leaked online after a cloud hack and the show decides to give Jack a mask-off moment that is nothing short of bizarre. Despite being a queer woman herself and Keeley being a victim of privacy violation, Jack spends the episode shaming Keeley for the initial photos by denying their relationship in public and trying to convince her she needs to apologise for taking them. Their relationship does not survive the conflict.
There is something so utterly disappointing the Ted Lasso writing team decided to portray their only romantic relationship between two women with such misogyny, shame, and distrust. While no romantic relationship in Ted Lasso has stood the test of time, to portray only gay relationship between two women in such bad faith reeks of homophobia.
It also aligns with toxic depictions of bi women’s relationships with other women as less meaningful than relationships with men. Biphobia against women stems from the misogynistic idea that relationships with men are superior. Ted Lasso, knowingly or unknowingly, disseminates this harmful ideology, ending the episode with the entire debacle driving Keeley back into Jamie’s arms.
Ted Lasso is often touted as a “comfort” show, but comforting for who? Comforting for those who wish to believe bigotry can be blighted by politeness? Repeatedly, Ted Lasso Season 3 muddles through a series of failed attempts to have its cake and eat it too. But a show that establishes itself as a comforting escapist dramedy cannot suddenly decide to tackle reality. The writers’ desperation to create a purely escapist narrative is admirable but has left them all but ill-equipped to create meaningful depictions of marginalised experiences. At best, it is all too little too late.
Merryana Salem (they/them) is a proud Wonnarua and Lebanese–Australian writer, critic, teacher and podcaster on most social media as @akajustmerry.