Nowadays, we have thousands of TV shows to pick from but only a few that really make our hearts melt when thinking about scenes we have just watched. One of those is the Apple TV original “Ted Lasso”, a series about an American coach that goes to England to train a professional football team in a very unconventional way, and that‘s where the whole difference is.
Keep reading to find out why Ted Lasso is one of the shows you should be watching now.
A week ago, my best friend back home asked me if I have watched the show that won 7 Emmys the past 20th of September, including one for Outstanding Comedy Series and another one for Jason Sudeikis -who interprets Ted- as Leading Actor. The truth was that I have never heard about it, so I decided to give it a try.
Now, I am one of those people who cannot stop talking about something they love because I feel truly enchanted by the plot, the characters, the football references and all the simple but complex topics that the show presents.
Get into the Lasso Way!
The plot is very simple: an American coach (Ted Lasso) is hired by a professional football team in England despite possessing very little knowledge of the game… or, actually, none at all. The team, AFC Richmond, plus the football fans -and everybody else-, do not understand what is going on. Why would Rebecca (Hannah Waddingham), the president of the club, put her team in the hands of somebody so inexperienced as Ted, it is something that we will soon find out.
Throughout the first season, we will get to know the characters and their own personal struggles, and learn how to connect and reconnect with ourselves and everybody around us through kindness, empathy and self-love. And here, my friends, it’s where Ted Lasso makes the difference between everything that we might have seen before and the reason why it’s practically impossible not to like the show itself.
In the beginning, you just want to figure out how he is going to survive as a coach of a Premier League team, but after a while, you redirect your focus to something else: his personality and the contagious optimism that characterizes him. Because the truth is that Ted Lasso is like a human version of Flanders, from The Simpsons, who makes you feel a little bit awkward with his extremely nice personality, and absolutely touched after spending a few minutes in his company.
For instance, there is this moment when Ted asks Sam -one of the football players- what’s the happiest animal on Earth, totally out of the clue, after Sam missed a block during practice and started to feel way too frustrated about it. “The goldfish”, the coach says. “You know why? Got a ten-second memory. Be a goldfish, Sam”. That sentence moved me in such a powerful way that I’ve been trying to be a goldfish myself since then.
Embrace change; be brave.
In a world where we lose ourselves whilst trying to please everybody else, “Ted Lasso” is an ode to be unique, exceptional and a good person day by day. We understand that we are all a little bit broken, and that’s ok because we can also make art with our own pieces, and change the world and ourselves if we dare to be kind and brave.
For me, this show is a bit of an eccentricity because it looks like a simple comedy, but there’s absolutely nothing “simple” about it. The script is complex but easy to follow, whilst the leitmotiv of the whole production is just “believe”. Believe in the impossible, believe you can change, believe you can move forward, believe in yourself.
The romanticism in the words of Ted Lasso and his constant high spirit make you think how feasible it is to live a life like his, so rose-coloured and optimistic. When you are about to give up on that possibility, because “it’s not that easy”, the show proves you right: it is never easy, but it’s up to you to make it happen or not, at least by trying.
It’s a very transformative and encouraging show, made for and by dreamers who believe in a better world with its ups and downs, where the downs include some of the most mainstream topics of therapy and human existence: relationships with parents, mental health issues, self-esteem, and unexpected changes of plans.
The good thing about it is that noticing that the characters are not superheroes but normal people -with traumas and struggles as everybody else- gives authenticity to the plot and hope to the audience to become the best version of ourselves, to get some of that Ted Lasso’s Effect.
