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“Ted Lasso” debuted almost a year ago on Apple TV + during the hot summer days. If this timeline seems offbeat, it’s because it only found its audience in mid-fall. In fact, it is more accurate to say that it took a few months and a controversial and stressful presidential election and its horrendous consequences, for its people to flock there – out of curiosity, yes, but also out of intense need.
Aside from the outpouring of love, series co-creator Brendan Hunt has demonstrably managed his expectations heading into Season 2. “I hope at least that ‘because the world was on fire’ isn’t there. only reason for show, ”he told Salon in a recent interview. “I hope people would have thought it was good no matter when it came out.”
Multiple Emmy nominations, bubbly valentines on social media, and the overwhelming emotion that erupts when one person mentions the show’s title to another should have allayed Hunt’s concerns. Maybe not, however. Hunt, like his character Coach Beard, is the resident football fanatic on the American side of the writers’ room. He was the one who introduced the phrase “hope that kills you” into the series’ narrative.
It was his way of contrasting the British stoicism with the American optimism of the main character “we can do anything”, an attitude captured in a sentence that describes the vision of the American sports fanatic: “Do you believe in miracles? This sets up the first season finale in which Ted and Beard’s football (i.e. football) team AFC Richmond is relegated from a Premier League side to the level. championship. Through this loss, Hunt sought to prove something else. If “Ted Lasso” followed the setup of a regular sports movie, the main character’s guiding mantra, “Believe,” would be enough. But it was not. Now what?
“Ted Lasso” was billed as the story of a Kansas yokel moved to Britain, with Jason Sudeikis playing Ted as the kind of man who is aware of the assumptions people will make about him. He knows that people see his gigantic mustache, hear his cornpone accent and his predilection for bombarding everyone with folkloristic figures and underestimating him. He’s a fascinating actor in American history, part of the reason the show has nestled into our hearts so suddenly, so later than expected.
Ted’s singular means of seduction, like the show, resembles the figurative photography that the general American public carries in their psychological wallet. We all have a version of it – that family photo showing us off on our happiest Sunday, all smiles. Such images make us look like sympathetic, helpful and optimistic engines of ingenuity. Good guys.
Suction is the cornerstone of this show, a siren call drawing audiences in at a time when the world was exhausted. To address Hunt’s concern, it would have been the case under any circumstances, but given how badly we were at the end of 2020, it seemed particularly healthy.
But while every significant TV show tells us something about who we are, Season 2 challenges our long-held narrative of defining our goodness as an extension of our greatness, and of showing only the positive while hiding our truths. darker ones, featuring sports psychologist Dr. Sharon Fieldstone (Sharon Niles). Dr. Sharon, as Ted calls him, arrives to advise players on the psychological blocks that may be holding them back. His focus in these new episodes is quite specific, especially to the arcs of the main characters. His arrival brings out a nervous energy in Ted for reasons that are not immediately clear.
Sudeikis, in a separate interview, explains that by adding Dr Sharon to the AFC Richmond team, he wanted to show people that “sometimes the best way to help others is to help yourself. “.
Dr. Sharon is also something else: a challenge to the tale Americans tell about ourselves. She doesn’t believe in exceptionalism. In fact, she suspects Ted’s American charm offensive is, to use a favorite term of President Joe Biden, sheer awkwardness.
Dr. Sharon doesn’t smile easily – certainly not at Ted’s jokes or his efforts to be liked. He tries to seduce her by offering her a box of cookies intended for his boss Rebecca (Hannah Waddingham); she gives them back, but only after asking why he’s so devoted to disarming new people with over-the-top humor. His entire manner throws Ted out of his game.
This is because the doctor is a keen observer of behavior. Viewers of the first season know that Ted has panic attacks. although he managed to hide them from everyone at AFC Richmond except Rebecca. But Dr Sharon is also playing a version of the skeptical view the rest of the world may have on America after the past five years. . . and the many decades that preceded it, stretching back to the end of World War II.
Hunt describes it by recalling the time in his life when he, Sudeikis and their fellow executive producer Joe Kelly were doing comedy in Amsterdam. “It was a time when we started to see America from the outside and the way others looked at America,” he said. “The main way they looked at us was like this really big fat guy. But, you know, another difference is, you know, the cuteness… that friendliness, that you know a lot of people in Britain find wrong. . “
Ted is really nice, which baffles everyone in the football club and in the UK in general. His kindness is contagious enough to turn a fractured team into a tight-knit family unit, from the man of the kit to the top of the board.
Dr Sharon accepts this, explains Hunt. “I don’t think she is questioning her authenticity. I think she is questioning the reasons for it. She is wondering what is going on inside that would make her want to disarm everyone and make her want to. to charm people instead of talking about himself. “
Hunt said the current season’s Therapeutic Arc is meant to inspire all who watch Ted and the rest of AFC Richmond fight their internal battles as they fight on the pitch to realize we could all benefit from talk therapy.
Its larger metaphor emphasizes the need to take a long, critical look at the culture we live in, and perhaps reconsider our place in an interconnected world as part of it. The pandemic does not exist in the world of “Ted Lasso”. This is intentional, it is part of his strategy to allow the story to play on a field of idealism and to emphasize its higher messages of self-knowledge and “yourself, be real.” “.
“Sometimes it seems a little selfish,” admitted Sudeikis. “Globally, and even more recently in politics, we’ve seen that if we believe that the only way to survive is to be selfish, we lose touch with the need to heal within. spilling out and finding a place within your own home, within your community, your country, the world, is really the one thing you have absolutely control over. “
Hunt agreed. “The fact that Americans have this ingrained optimism, even against a lot of real information about how things work, isn’t such a bad quality. You know, I think it’s one of our best. qualities.”
At the same time, he added: “We should all take a long and serious look at ourselves and determine what we are and how we have become what we are. And make sure that we at least do something to make it happen. goes inside a little better. “
Hunt referred to each of us as individuals. But it’s also good training for the nation.
New episodes of “Ted Lasso” air Fridays on Apple TV +.
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