[It’s been another year, that’s for sure. So for my annual Year in Review series, I wanted to highlight a handful of things that have made me happy this year—and, yes, to complicate and analyze them, because I yam what I yam. I’d love to hear your year highlights and takeaways as well!]
On one obvious
and one more subtle way the megahit show challenges our current narratives.
I was late to
the party when it came to watching Apple TV’s super-smash
show Ted Lasso, and so am
likewise late when it comes to writing about the show (at least in this space,
but I didn’t even share many of my thoughts about it on Twitter, which really
puts me behind the times; even Ted
himself has a Twitter presence!). Indeed, with season 2’s dozen episodes
dropping weekly this past summer and fall, it felt at times like every pop
culture and journalistic outlet and website,
and even every individual
writer about such texts
and topics, was responding to Ted,
often with compellingly
unique angles and takes
on a show that rewards such multi-layered attention to be sure. (Seriously,
I could spend hours finding additional worthwhile articles and conversations
to hyperlink in this first paragraph; I look forward to the inevitable,
competing collections of Ted Lasso
essays that will certainly be published in the not-too-distant future.)
So what on earth
could I have to say about the show that hasn’t already been said (and said and said
and said), you might ask? Or, more exactly, why am I dedicating one of this
week’s five posts to such well-trodden ground? My answer to the second question,
and perhaps to the first as well, is two-fold. For one thing, Ted was a hugely important part of my
year, and for a reason that, well-covered as it might be, remains well worth
highlighting: Ted’s
deceptively simple optimism. As someone who has thought and written a great
deal about critical
optimism, I would say that I have found very few contemporary cultural
works that really embrace and model that perspective, but Ted Lasso most definitely does. There’s been a lot of talk about
how the second season’s various twists
and revelations challenge or undercut
Ted’s and the show’s optimism, but I would argue that’s because we mostly
define optimism as the blandly and superficially cheery variety, rather than
the hard-won,
critical type that Ted has clearly worked to model and still is at Season 2’s
end.
(NOTE: Serious
Season 2 SPOILERS in this parargraph.) That’s why Ted meant so much to me this year, and why I knew I wanted to
include it in this week’s series. But I do also have a take on one of the most
complex and controversial Season 2 plotlines: the shocking evolution of
fan-favorite Nate from beloved Season 1 underdog to bullying Season 2 villain.
I’ve written a good bit in this space about one of the most central trends and
tropes in 21st
century TV (and cultural)
storytelling: the anti-hero.
Hell, one of the most acclaimed
21st century shows is entirely focused on how a nice guy becomes
such an anti-hero. Yet whatever individual viewers think about the Walter
Whites and Dexter Morgans of the world (and I’m not
much of a fan), they are clearly the protagonists of their respective shows,
and so there’s at least some degree of built-in empathy in how we watch their
anti-heroic exploits. Whereas Nate the Great seemed like a straightforwardly
heroic character in Season 1, and then gradually in Season 2 that rug was
pulled out from under us and he was revealed to be at best an anti-hero (and
perhaps again a villain, although eye of the beholder and
all). That’s a really interesting way to both use and yet challenge a familiar
TV trope, one more reason why Ted Lasso
is worth continuing to watch and write about!
Next review post
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? 2021 stories you’d highlight?
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