Just finished watching Ted Lasso the other day, and I'm left with The Feels, to a certain extent. I'll be talking about plot points from all over Season 1, so consider this your spoiler warning for anything after the break:
The first thing is that I'm glad Season 2 is coming in a couple of months, because I'm interested to see how the characters continue to develop, particularly given the team's relegation and Jamie Tartt's recall to Manchester City. It's a little bit of a hackneyed story to have the central character's optimism win over the jaded assholes surrounding him, but it feels relevant given the European Super League debacle of a few weeks ago - it's hard to imagine anything further from the concerns of the European football elite than a small, local club and its fight against relegation, while being buoyed into better people by a coach whose optimism can't be dented.
It wasn't necessarily the funniest show, but it was charming, and Jason Sudeikis carried it well, even if I disagree with him about tea (surely a guy like that grew up on sweet iced tea?). I also like some of the broad characters, like Page 3 Girl Keeley, aging star Roy, and young-hotshot-with-a-lesson-to-learn Jamie. Keeley was a particularly nice reference to all the wives-and-girlfriends who hover around the world of football and are famous for almost being famous (as Keeley herself puts it at one point).
The other thing I appreciate about the show is how it provided an entry-level view of English football for Americans. Most immediately, it was good that my girlfriend liked it from the start, so that we could watch it together (most of my TV viewing time these days is with her), and this accessibility is what made that happen. And the accessibility also came from engaging characters, especially Ted.
In fact, the moment I knew my honey was into it was in the first episode, when he talks to his wife back in the US on the phone, and says something about giving her space. My girlfriend was surprised Ted's marriage was on the rocks, because he's so nice, and it's clear that she was hooked.
(Also, she fell in love with the cute neighborhood that Ted was living in, which I was trying to figure out if that was actually Richmond).
So my verdict on Ted Lasso is that it's a perfectly nice show, with some fun characters and just enough football (depicted more or less accurately) so that I wasn't offended by it taking liberties with my beloved game. And Coach Beard is reading Jonathan Wilson's Inverting the Pyramid in the first scene, so you know they did some homework.
On to season 2!
I enjoyed season one of Ted Lasso quite a bit as well.
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