Ted Lasso

“Ted Lasso shows how much work goes into maintaining mental health, revealing it to be the ongoing journey it is.”

Title: Ted Lasso
Episodes Reviewed: Seasons 1-3
Creators: Jason Sudeikis 👨🏼🇺🇸, Bill Lawrence 👨🏼🇺🇸, Brendan Hunt 👨🏼🇺🇸, and Joe Kelly 👨🏼🇺🇸
Writers: Jason Sudeikis 👨🏼🇺🇸 (34 eps), Bill Lawrence 👨🏼🇺🇸 (34 eps), Brendan Hunt 👨🏼🇺🇸 (34 eps), Joe Kelly 👨🏼🇺🇸 (34 eps), Phoebe Walsh 👩🏼🇬🇧 (12 eps), and various

Reviewed by Ishmeet Nagpal 👩🏾🇮🇳🌈♿

Technical: 4/5

Everyone loves an underdog story. Good-natured misfit Ted Lasso (Jason Sudeikis) and Coach Beard (Brendan Hunt) arrive in England to lead the flailing Richmond men’s football team owned by Rebecca Welton (Hannah Waddingham). Little do they know, Rebecca is intent on seeing the team fail as revenge against her controlling ex-husband Rupert Mannion (Anthony Head). Still, Ted approaches the challenge with the utmost sincerity and eventually teaches everyone to believe in forgiveness, kindness, and the power of friendship.

The series begins impeccably, but Seasons 2 and 3 grow more inconsistent. Ted’s and Rebecca’s stories are wrapped up into neat little bows, but the same can’t be said of other characters like Coach Beard and wunderkind Nathan (Nick Mohammed), whose arcs feel rushed and somewhat anticlimactic. PR consultant Keeley Jones (Juno Temple) also gets a muddled storyline, but her friendship with Rebecca is a highlight. Overall, Ted Lasso is well-constructed, watchable, and wholesome. But without the show’s affable quotes and Ted’s charm, cracks in the story quickly become visible.

Gender: 3.5/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? YES

Though the show revolves around a men’s football team, Rebecca and Keeley’s relationship stands out as an excellent portrayal of female friendship and professional camaraderie. These women don’t simply exist to talk about the men in their lives; rather, their dynamic evolves from mutual admiration to nurtured sisterhood. They’re three-dimensional as well. Rebecca shows her flaws when sabotaging Ted, or scheming to drive a wedge between Keeley and Keeley’s boyfriend, Richmond star player Jamie (Phil Dunster). But in a satisfying development, this conflict dissipates when Rebecca comes clean, takes accountability, and redeems herself. She encourages Keeley’s professional aspirations as her boss and later, as an investor in Keeley’s own PR firm.

The show also explores Rebecca’s fraught relationship with her mother, whom she blames for not leaving Rebecca’s toxic and controlling father. But when she realizes that her own marriage to Rupert mirrored her parents’ dysfunction, Ted Lasso provides a healing look at a mother-daughter relationship that, through honest communication, has the potential to overcome generational cycles of abuse.

Unfortunately, other female characters aren’t afforded the same level of nuance. Rebecca’s—and by extension, the show writers’—disdain for Rupert’s young fiance is quite evident, with the woman presented as a gold digger. Meanwhile, Nathan’s girlfriend Jade (Edyta Budnik) gets the sexy lamp treatment, someone we never get to know or understand.

Perhaps it’s a better fit for Ted Lasso to tackle gender issues through its male characters, especially given a writers room that’s predominantly male. On that front, the Richmond football players do embrace some aspects of modern masculinity, be it their choreographed dances, Nathan’s sparkly shoeboxes, team pillow fights, or the usually gruff Roy’s (Brett Goldstein) kindness towards his young niece, Phoebe (Elodie Blomfield). And in one of the most tender displays of male friendship in the series, when Jamie’s father publicly berates him, former rival Roy gives Jamie a long hug to comfort him.

Still, there are aspects of the team’s approach to gender that leave much to be desired. In particular, Ted Lasso flubs its attempt to comment on privacy and sexism in Season 3’s “We'll Never Have Paris.” When the players realize that their friend Keeley has had her nudes leaked by hackers, they leap to the idea of individual responsibility, overlooking the inherent misogyny of revenge porn. As various team members share their views, only Jamie briefly brings up the hacker’s culpability. Over the course of the episode, the overall takeaway seems to be that women shouldn’t take such pictures in the first place, and the solution is for men to delete them. There’s no indictment of rape culture or acknowledgment of the players’ victim blaming, making the subplot’s conclusion deeply insufficient.

Race: 3.5/5

Ted Lasso centers the viewpoint of its titular character, who’s white. It’s also a show created and written by mostly white people, with no main characters of color. With this baseline, it’s difficult to deny the “white savior” undertones of positioning Ted as an inspirational figure to a diverse supporting cast.

In “Carol of the Bells” (Season 2, Episode 4), Team Manager Leslie Higgins (Jeremy Swift) helpfully toasts to the various corners of the world the players come from—“Lagos, Guadalajara, Groningen, Cordon, Montreal, Benin City, Harare, Kingston, and Santa Cruz de la Sierra”—but out of all these characters given a brief nod, only Nigerian player Sam Obisanya (Toheeb Jimoh, who’s British Nigerian) gets his own story arc. (When his restaurant is destroyed by racist mobs, his teammates come through and make the repairs for him in an exemplary show of support.)

Ted Lasso also teeters on a fine edge with its casting of a Black Lady Therapist. Dr. Sharon Fieldstone, played by British Barbadian Sarah Niles, arrives as the no-nonsense therapist utterly unaffected by Ted’s charm. Per the Hollywood cliche of using Black supporting characters to enlighten white protagonists, she eventually leads Ted to achieve closure in his personal life. On the plus side, writers give Dr. Fieldstone a life beyond the role she plays for Ted and the Richmond footballers: She loves biking, she goes to therapy herself, and we even get a glimpse into her romantic life. She breaks through Ted’s happy-go-lucky artifice and ultimately brings depth to the show’s message on mental health.

LGBTQ: 3.5/5

While Ted Lasso does briefly include two gay men, Colin Hughes (Billy Harris) and Trent Crimm (James Lance), as well as a bisexual woman, Keeley, their stories lack complexity. This doesn’t mean they aren’t positive—as familiar as Colin’s narrative is about being in the closet as a pro athlete, it’s still warming to see Trent, the reporter shadowing the team, comfort Colin upon discovering his secret. Trent reveals that he’s also gay and the both of them commiserate and dance the night away at a club, giving viewers a wonderful depiction of queer joy.

But that positivity is cut short when focus quickly shifts to the opinions of straight people. When Richmond team captain Isaac finds out about Colin’s sexuality—by forcefully snatching up Colin’s phone and invading his privacy, no less—Isaac simply walks away and stops speaking to him. Given Isaac’s position of power as team captain, stonewalling a player for any reason, especially one related to a player’s sexuality, is blatant discrimination and the show avoids calling it out as such. Eventually, Colin’s teammates come around and when Colin finally gets to kiss his boyfriend the way other teammates kiss their girlfriends, the moment feels joyous and wholesome, but rushed. Their entire relationship amounts to a few seconds of screen time.

Keeley’s lesbian relationship with her boss, Jack Danvers (Jodi Balfour), also lacks adequate development, and it’s extra disappointing that the series’ only queer relationship of narrative significance is also abusive. But to its credit, Keeley and Jack’s relationship does help us understand that just because a couple is same-sex, power differences don’t just go away—economic and workplace inequities persist.

Bonus for Disability: +1.00

The show portrays mental health issues with care and consideration. When Ted’s panic attacks are disclosed to the media without his consent, they demonize his struggles, calling him weak and unfit to lead a football team. But rather than deny his struggles, Ted confronts the press with the truth and asks for more sensitivity.

Nor does the series simply stop there. It shows how much work goes into maintaining mental health, revealing it to be the ongoing journey it is. Dr. Fieldstone provides therapy to the Richmond players and slowly gains Ted’s trust as well, allowing him to open up about his father’s death by suicide and the reasons behind Ted’s relentless positivity. Ted, like many people in the real world, has had his doubts about therapists and their motivations. But he manages to build trust with Dr. Fieldstone and works on his deep-seated issues. The show does a good job of showing that therapy can be very helpful when you find the right therapist.

Mediaversity Grade: B 3.88/5

Ted Lasso is an impressive show that focuses on redemption, second chances, and healing from our traumas. It tries hard to check a lot of diversity boxes—falls a bit short on those fronts—and a self-congratulatory tone thrums just below the surface as we wade through the many tangents of Season 3. But in the end, the show is wholesome and entertains while delivering a positive message.

Like Ted Lasso? Try these other feel-good sitcoms that tackle deeper issues.

Grade: BLiNovember 15, 2023Great for: Disability