TED LASSO’s main problem this season was its star
if you’ve spent some time online in the last three years, you’ve probably noticed that the usual open-arms hug that was waiting weekly for TED LASSO transformed into a reluctant chillness during the show’s third season. what was once the feel-good series that helped viewers at the start of the pandemic (it premiered in the summer of 2020), it has become a series of questionable choices that lead nowhere, characters that feel like parodies of themselves, and football players offering up 80s family sitcoms quips and resolutions.
ignoring the show’s fans who preach kindness all the while attacking anybody who dared suggest that creator and star jason sudeikis might not be a saint or a good showrunner (a move reminiscent of what fans of recent best picture winner EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE and harry styles have done), it seems as if most viewers were upset w the direction that show took in its third (and maybe final?) season. after a stellar first season composed of ten half-hour episodes, season two divided critics and viewers due to the romance between club owner rebecca welton (hannah waddingham) and football player sam obisanya (toheeb jimoh) all the while increasing the lengths of its episodes. season three, on the other hand, has been the subject of many, many, many pieces that mourn what used to be a wonderful show.
here’s the thing: TED LASSO’s first season is good. while many are second guessing their pandemic memories, i’m of the opinion that the first ten episodes actually were delightful and not just because i watched it at the start of 2021 when we still took the pandemic seriously. the second season was less successful, but i only lost my patience w it after the funeral episode and its bizarre equalization of suicide and an affair. season three *was* bad. there’s very few redeeming qualities (and they lie in trent crimm’s wonderful hair and jamie tartt’s thighs). the characterizations fall flat, the writing feels preachy, the recurring characters come and go too quickly, the redemption arcs don’t feel earned, and it’s hard to take its stance on kindness seriously when you know the drama from sudeikis’ personal life.
sudeikis has always alleged that the show was a story for three seasons, but watching this season and in particular what should be the home stretch, it’s hard to believe that. the longer episodes brought more screentime to the football team while taking away from ted’s. the funko popization of the show, brought by the way it pierced through pop culture like very few works have done, practically promises that if the series has just aired its final episode, the world of TED LASSO will still live on through spin-offs. don’t you want to see more of the team put on choreographed dances*? don’t you want to see keeley** be a pr girlboss? don’t you want to see the continued adventures of zava, jack, or shandy***?
*the positive masculinity displayed by the show just makes it into a punchline. watching the show through fantasy feel-good lenses would be fine if the scenes wouldn’t feel highly unrealistic and like public service announcements. we’ve all seen that locker room talk about why women should be respected and looking at their nudes w/o consent is bad.
**keeley, once a bright spot in the show, has had nothing to do this season. juno temple is good in the role, but the show wastes her talents.
***if you’re wondering who, they were the plot devices from the first half of the season that only had the role to evolve the main characters’ storylines before leaving for good.
TED LASSO seems to be proof of one man thinking of himself as god and thinking he can get away w murder. it would be easy to blame sudeikis just because he’s the face of the show, but this show has been his baby ever since the nbc sports ads that ran back in 2013. as the show has progressed, he’s become more involved w it, taking reign of the showrunner duties from bill lawrence (a move lawrence always considered should happen)*. w the show becoming such a cultural touchstone, receiving twenty emmy nominations in its first season (a record for a freshman series), and getting in the driver’s seat, it wouldn’t be surprising if sudeikis allowed the success to get to his head. the show’s continued winning streak (including for season two) probably only made things worse; even if the reviews were polarizing, who cares about that when you’re walking away w multiple emmys?
*sudeikis’ writing resume includes SNL sketches, the 2011 mtv movie awards, and TED LASSO. lawrence setting up the field before sudeikis could take on the lead would have been a good idea had it not been obvious that sudeikis needed more prep and therapy. even from interviews he doesn’t really come out as someone who Thinks about his craft much. compare him to bill hader, cocreator and star of BARRY, who comes off as a big movie fan who had always dreamed of directing more than acting (whose writing experience was SOUTH PARK and some SNL eps not to mention that his interviews are filled w love and respect for filmmaking) or amy sherman-palladino, whose father was a comedian and who herself has spent time w other comedians and on various writing staffs before creating her own shows.
now, i’m getting ahead of myself. to blame every decision of sudeikis seems like i have a vendetta against him. i do not! i’ve been a fan since he was on SNL (i’d rank him in my top three fave cast members honestly) and he was good in this role early on before ted became a parody of himself. but w him taking control of the showrunner duties, it’s hard to not blame him. what’s more, the biggest problem of the season has been the hypocrisy that i can only assume is his fault.
you probably know all the details from the aftermath of his very public break-up w olivia wilde; if not, there’s a link embedded a bit higher that i recommend clicking on only to understand the situation i want to explore (i would never recommend learning about this annoying subject otherwise*). for months, it seemed as if sudeikis was the guy wronged in the relationship; this gq profile is one very good example of getting the audience in your corner. but as time passed, sketchier details came out mostly not about wilde (or her ex-boyfriend, harry styles), but about sudeikis himself. if you believe some journalists, there’s an expose coming about what a creep he is! he allegedly leaked wilde’s nudes shortly after her relationship w styles went public! he apparently tried to prevent her from leaving to see styles by getting under her car! he served her w custody papers which he either knew or didn’t would occur in a very public place! while none of these rumours are confirmed, they should not be ignored, especially not when there’s so many of them. if anything, this proves that we should not put celebrities on a pedestal just because we like them.
*i would also like to say that the situation is very complex and delicate and the audience will never know the full story which is fine. speculating and jumping to choose a side — which i am not doing — is weird. that’s also why i am talking about rumours/allegations and not going ahead and saying ‘oh, this definitely happened’.
but honestly, these rumours — real or not — do combine w some of the show’s plots to create a very weird mixture while also validating a lack of faith in sudeikis. ted’s ex, michelle is painted as the bad guy. since showing a female character moving on from a relationship is no longer a considered a crime, we instead have her dating the couple’s marriage counselor, a disgusting development no matter how you try to frame it. how else could the series show that ted is a victim is michelle a monster if not by having her breach an ethical boundary*?
*i’d say that this is also somehow related to the keeley x jack (jodi balfour) relationship; after keeley’s nudes are leaked, jack distances herself from her. it’s a weird reason to get these characters to break up.
the other female storylines are weird to watch knowing the rumours. yeah, it’s nice to see men — footballers, even — take a stand against misogyny, but when you watch them preach about how they shouldn’t look at women’s nudes w/o consent, it’s hard not to remember the allegation that sudeikis may have breached wilde’s privacy himself. ‘treat people w kindness’ is the slogan of harry styles which TED LASSO also follows, but when there’s rumours about your star and showrunner being a dick, it becomes uncomfortable to watch the show*.
*i recommend this article as it delves more into the subject of ted being a bad ex husband.
SPOILERS FOR THE SERIES FINALE
before i finish off this piece, i do want to talk a bit about the series finale which was, quite frankly, unreally bad. i was team ‘ted x rebecca should be friends’, but i did find the ending to be mean-spirited in a way i did not ever expect from this show. what’s more is that it stains everything that came before it. back in season two, during the funeral episode, when ted and rebecca both recount the most traumatic day of their lives (which happened on the same date), the scene cuts between his ‘my father killed himself’ speech to her ‘i found dad in bed w another woman’ talk. the intention is clear: they’re connected on an universal level. coupled w the various parallels (‘same time, same place, next year’ which revealed truth bombs), the fake outs (the bantr edit in season two, the green army man, the matchbox), and the romance cliches (which includes even an airport scene), not getting these two together felt not cowardly, but kind of vicious. that she ends up w the dutch guy from the amsterdam episode, w the suggestion that she’s going to become the mother of his daughter (she already is the team’s mother) could have worked if only done well. the ending left a bitter taste in my mouth that i’m still feeling after almost twenty-four hours. it’s hard to imagine that *this* was the ending sudeikis had planned; it felt like a joke to insist this is a romantic sports comedy and put in the work only for what? no endgame? do you know how bad it has to get, on a nartative level at least, for even someone who doesn’t ship ted x rebecca to dislike the ending even tho she got her wish*?
*had the show cooled down on the romantic cliches, i would have been content w their ending. but like this, it feels like a bad joke pulled on the fans and like everything that came before it was narrative bullshit.
no, TED LASSO wasn’t always bad. the problem w it now is that it flew too close to the sun. if the show does come back for another season or w a spin-off or two, its credibility has taken a toll. maybe a sudeikis-less season might be as good as the first one but rn the main problem is the star himself. as shamira ibrahim tweeted: ‘TED LASSO’s decline is what happens when your star is too busy using a show for reputation management that they forget that they actually need to make good television’.
TED LASSO season three can be watched on apple tv+.
