Season 1 was charming. Season 2 was just something different and I did not like it as well.
I am fine with shows that tackle mental health and whatnot but that was not how I thought of season 1. It’d be like watching “Leave it to Beaver” and then showing June Cleaver suffering depression and Ward Cleaver having an affair and Beaver getting into drugs. Or watching the “Andy Griffith Show” and having an arc showing Barney Fife is an alcoholic at home. Who wants that?
Ted’s struggles with the townsfolk and media was much more interesting. I get they want to make Ted a little more “real” as a human who has his own struggles but it undid much of what made season 1 charming.
I think exploring what made someone so relentlessly cheerful was a natural evolution to the story. I also liked that, despite feeling natural, it is not typical to explore mental health in a sitcom format. And lastly, I expect season 3 to delve into a different thorny subject again as its overall theme, and will also stick the landing.
But then it is no longer really a sitcom. Maybe a dramady at most.
My issue is not with shows that deal with these subjects.
My issue is a show that changed course in how it plays out. Its character changed in a fundamental way. Like I was eating ice cream and then given some broccoli. I like both but don’t change my bowl of ice cream into broccoli part way through.
Season 1 was lighthearted and whimsical. Season 2 was angsty and weird (where is Beard’s night out come from?).
Not the same thing. Not the same show I loved in season 1.
I think the change in tone is absolutely true, and I can see why some that were attached to the more light-hearted(?) tone of S1 would be unhappy with the transition.
But honestly, how much more can you do with the “relentlessly positive character softens up all of those cynical people around him” trope? How much of S1 could the viewer really take? How many more manufactured crises do we want to see Ted’s earnestness overcome? I don’t have any answers to those questions, but I think the writers had some concern that the well was running empty.
So they transitioned to: “why is Ted like this?”. Clearly he truly is, deep down, a kind an friendly person. His conversations with Beard and others show that he has given quite a bit of thought to his technique and his skills with people. But the over-the-top quirkiness and chipperness is a mask of sorts, and it’s at least somewhat interesting to dive a little deeper into his character.
I think Season 3 (if they end it there, which they probably should TBH) could focus on getting a few of these characters that have had a turn (Ted, Nate, Roy, Rebecca, maybe Jamie) to try to work out the reasons they act the way they do and find some sort of peaceful balance between their before state (chipper mask, overly unassertive, angry, cynical, egotistical twat) and their current state (panic attacks, aggressive asshole, softer but unsatisfied/unappreciated, happy but unfulfilled, better teammate but not the alpha performer). Not sure they can pull it off but it could be interesting.
As mentioned upthread, Beard’s night out and the Xmas episode were late additions after Apple asked for two more episodes. I liked them both well enough (especially Beard’s one) but they were clearly outside the season’s plot arcs.
“Leave it to Beaver” ran two seasons but back then that was 39 episodes each. The “Andy Griffith Show” ran for eight seasons of 30 episodes each. “Friends” ran for 10 seasons of 20(ish?) episodes each.
I think there can be a lot there if they want to. If people wanted 240 episodes of Andy and Barney can’t the writers of Ted Lasso manage more than 10 episodes of Ted being “relentlessly positive”?
Well, to be fair, there was a relatively straightforward conflict there if the showrunners wanted to tackle it - and that was this was a team that was relegated and was trying to achieve promotion without their captain. And you probably could have leaned a little bit more into Rojas trying to regain his confidence after killing the mascot, and Jamie trying to work his way back (not just re-entering as a changed man). It seemed to me that the Roy coming back to Richmond as a coach was the most S1 Ted Lasso moment. Ted won him over by appealing to his better nature - by helping his replacement at captain realize what was important.
Probably also could have leaned more into the Dubai Air subplot - and maybe have Ted have a slightly bigger role in that as opposed to just being a Sam centered idea, which was wholehearted embraced by Jamie in an instant.
Yeah, I think all of these ideas would have worked. And I take @Whack-a-Mole 's point that a show can certainly “stay in its lane” for a very long time and be good and successful. Maybe that’s the path they should have taken.
S2 was obviously a bit disjointed (and not just the two tacked-on episodes). So maybe staying with what worked for S1 and keeping the conflicts a bit “smaller” could have worked better. Then if they wanted to go deeper after the team fought back to promotion, for example, they could have had some of these bigger twists (Ted’s panic attacks, Nate jumping ship) in S3.
For example, maybe West Ham gets bought out by Rebecca’s husband at the end of S2 and the first part of S3 shows Nate eyeing a bigger role and doing his heel turn because he feels he didn’t get the full credit for promotion. Rupert could undermine/recruit Nate, and that could lead to some of Ted’s panic/doubt creeping in.
I wasn’t as down on S2 as some, and I actually enjoyed the Beard episode (but not he Christmas one), but I agree they could have maybe stayed a bit truer to the concept and still had some growth. They clearly didn’t think that the sports framework was what they wanted to focus on, or at least wasn’t where they wanted to get their conflict from.
I actually like this a lot. I did feel S2 tried to deal with way too many storylines without letting any of them really sink in and breath a bit. Nate stewing because he’s the ‘wonderkid’ and gets overlooked as the team gets promoted (and have everyone assign credit to Roy… actually that could have worked this season if they showed a few more press conferences).
Yeah, I love this. Because we already saw that Nate feels demeaned by Roy not caring that he kissed Keeley. Maybe the big conflict should have been between Roy and Nate, not Nate and Ted. Ted could have just been a helpless bystander, with his panic exacerbated by his usual methods of defusing situations not working.
Just caught up. To recap: I liked Season 2, including the Christmas episode.
I thought the Ghanaian billionaire’s disappointment was hilarious – didn’t expect that.
The jubilant post-game celebration lifted something directly from the movie Major League. While the Cleveland Indians are jumping around and cheering, Corbin Bersen cheers with Charlie Sheen (who had just shagged his wife), then punches him in the face, then hugs him and resumes cheering.
There was certainly drama in Season 1. But after quasi-binging through both seasons, it was my personal, subjective impression that there was a distinct shift in the comedy-drama balance from Season 1 to Season 2.
I think it was always a dramedy. And individual episodes had different blends. But Season 1, overall, really played to me like a comedy with dramatic elements, while Season 2 played to me much more like a drama with comedic elements. And the dramatic elements in Season 2 seemed significantly darker. I personally enjoyed Season 1 more.
That breaks the season’s theme. Season 2 is about fathers. It’s about Nate’s father not ever giving him credit or respect, and how that has affected him. It’s about Ted as Nate’s substitute father figure, and how Ted missed the signs. It’s about Rebecca and her father, about Jamie and his father, about Sam and his father, about Roy dealing with becoming a father figure, and ultimately Ted’s relationship with his father and how he strives, succeeds and sometimes fails at being a father to everyone he encounters.
That comment makes me wonder that how all this is resolved (and one that will anger some of the fanbase I’m sure) is by Ted reaching out to Nate to apologize for not being there when he needed him.
Hopefully it’s not a Jamie-esque, Nate gets fired for being a shit manager and comes hat in hand to Ted and after a 5 min conversation he’s a completely changed man.
