Would you go as far as saying that there’s a football subtext?
Football is the maguffin, the backdrop. It’s what the real story drapes itself over. Which is the character journeys.
This, right here, all day long. It’s never been “about football.” It’s about its characters and their relationships and how those change over time, and it uses many different settings and devices for that purpose. The first season used the football context more heavily because Ted had to prove himself in this new world. That’s been accomplished, so any further storytelling there would be repetitive and redundant. Now the relationships are being explored and tested on other fronts. This has always been the show’s method.
For anyone who is no longer connecting to the show, it’s fine if that’s not what you want out of it. But it’s a mistake to accuse the show of failing to tell a story it’s never been interested in telling.
A mistake? Seriously? Give me a fucking break.
Obviously I love the characters or I wouldn’t bother but I also enjoy the sports storylines which to me is a huge part of the character development. As examples, Nick’s rise to becoming a coach or Jamie having to humble himself. It’s no different than wanting to see more Keely and Roy content. But, yeah, sports is lame and people who enjoy that are one dimensional troglodytes who are incapable of recognizing subtlety.
I just caught-up on the last two episodes. The one that focused on Beard’s weird night out and the other with the funeral.
Gotta say the series is starting to lose its charm. Getting weirdly dark in places. Setting up love triangles which you know will not end well and so on (e.g. Rebecca and eschewing her lover).
It’s like the writers have lost sight of why people liked the show so much.
Of course it is. It isn’t solely about football, but football is an incredibly important setting and a driver of the narrative and a major focus of character development (it’d be like saying Major League, which S1 of Ted Lasso seems very influenced by, wasn’t a movie about baseball). At least it was.
And I guarantee you that it will be an important part of one if not both of the last two episodes.
And I wouldn’t be shocked if S3 revolved around Ted Lasso’s Richmond in competition with Rupert’s new team managed by Nate Shelly.
One could make this argument about literally every TV show and movie that has ever been made. You could say, with every bit as much logic and evidentiary support, that The Godfather isn’t about the mafia, Black Swan isn’t about ballet, and Saving Private Ryan isn’t really about Operation Overlord. Jaws wasn’t REALLY about a big fish that eats people, and Star Trek isn’t REALLY about space exploration, right?
At some point, though, you do have to admit that a story IS affected by its choice of setting. Ted Lasso being out of place as a soccer coach sure seemed like a big part of the story to me, and the central importance of soccer in English life was a big part of the show. To suggest that soccer is an element of the story the show “has never been interested in telling” is absurd. Changing that would unquestionably change the story.
Exactly. I have never seen such petty gatekeeping.
Of course it is. But that doesn’t mean it has to be central to every plot point throughout. Football obviously drives the story in particular directions, and it will have a fundamental part to play in certain character’s plots. But it’s not what the show is about, therefore there’s going to be a few episodes that won’t advance the football factor.
You’ve both moved the goal posts and created a strawman. Literally no one is asking for or wants it to be central to every plot point. Some of us would like a bit more if it shown in the story. The last couple of episodes had effectively zero to do with football. I just happen to be curious how the football team is doing in a show about people who manage, play for and own a football team. That’s hardly missing the point of the show.
??? I don’t believe I went off-piste of the thrust of this discussion. No goal posts were moved in the effort to explain why we think the show isn’t ABOUT football.
…I’ll guarantee you something even further: not only will football be an important part of one if not both of the last two episodes, I’m going to put my neck out here and predict the outcome of the game. They are going to win in the final episode this season, get promoted, which will set them for a final season where will probably " Win the *whole fucking thing."
The football part of the show is almost entirely predictable. We know how it’s going to play out, beat for beat, like any other “underdog” sports movie or show. They might subvert expectations along the way (like when they got destroyed in the FA Cup match earlier this season) and they might even not win the whole fucking thing at the end of it all.
But the show isn’t about the game. It’s about the journey.
I mean, setting it in outer space would unquestionably change the story. But Ted’s journey in the first season was about being a “fish out of water.” Football is just a backdrop. Keely’s story was about finding a purpose and Roy’s story this season has been the same. and neither story needs football in order for it to be told.
It’s a show about football. But it isn’t really a show about football. Football is life. But when you think about it long enough…it really isn’t.
There isn’t any gatekeeping going on. Its just that the writers really aren’t that interested in telling the story you seem to want it to tell. Football is an important part of the show. But it isn’t a show about football. At its heart the show deals with toxic masculinity, and football is a great backdrop for this. But as the characters change, learn and adapt, the football fades to the background.
But it wouldn’t surprise me at all if next season, football becomes a central figure in the story again. Because the game won’t have changed. But the character’s relationship to the game is fundamentally different. The people that we saw in that first episode, bullying, suppressing emotions, class distinctions, hiding trauma, they aren’t the same people any more.
Which is, again, exactly the same as saying Jurassic Park isn’t really about dinosaurs.
Of course Ted Lasso has at its heart the characters and their relationships, but ALL movies and TV shows have at their heart characters and relationships. Good shows, bad shows, ones in between. What a show is about on the surface is still important, though. It frames the narrative, sets the atmosphere, and connects the characters logically. None of these people would have their relationships or even know each other (aside from Ted and Beard) if they weren’t connected to AFC Richmond. The general story about an American coach taking over an English football team is certainly part of what the show is about.
The story that one frames the characters in is what keeps every show from being just a series of melodramatic speeches. I guess we could make every show be “This Is Us” but what would the point be? Art isn’t fun if everything is that on the nose.
Indeed, I thought this episode was one of the weakest ones so far because it lacked much story at all. Once Rebecca’s father dies it’s almost entirely people resolving emotional issues at the church; Ted has a panic attack, that’s your only major plot issue. There’s nothing wrong with the resolution of emotional issues, but it’s vastly more interesting to watch if it’s woven carefully into an actual story and to see the characters show who they are the way human being usually do, which is NOT big, tearful, resolving blocks of dialogue. Most of the iceberg should be underwater.
You know what you get if you forget to give primacy to the actual story? You get Star Trek Discovery, God help us all, which in ten episodes will have maybe, at least, three episodes’ worth of plot development and seven of tearful, emotion-resolving speeches. Sooner rather than later you start thinking “so… why do I care if these people resolve their emotional issues? Is there a story?”
I don’t agree that it lacked story. We learned the details of how Ted’s father died, which seems to influence his current behavior, like he constantly tells people, “I appreciate you” because he didn’t get that from his father and why he tries so hard to be a good father. And we learned about why Rebecca was estranged from her father.
…yeah but: I absolutely LOVE Star Trek Discovery. I love the characters. I love Michael, I love both Georgiou’s, Saru is now my favourite Captain, I love everything about the “found family” of Culber and Stamets and Adira and Gray.
Its my absolutely favourite incarnation of Star Trek I’ve seen, outside of the classic Kirk/Spock/McCoy dynamic from TOS. And I’ve seen them all.
So if you are seeing parallels between Discovery and Lasso then, I think that’s a great thing then? Its my kinda thing, and might not be your kinda thing?
Because there really isn’t an objective measuring stick at play here. You “can’t see the story” in Discovery, where I think that the Season 2 Red Angel arc was one of the greatest stories Trek has ever told.
Its like the Lost debate all over again. I absolutely loved Lost, even the final episode. But its absolutely fine to not love Lost, and to hate that final episode as well. My TV watching experience is entirely different to what yours is. And that’s fine.
But the writers aren’t writing a show about football. Football works in services to the plot, in services to the characters, in service to the story. Its an important part of the show, and the show would be a completely different thing if football wasn’t there. But football being pushed to the background doesn’t mean the story isn’t progressing.
That’s just a logline.
Here’s the logline for the TV show “Person of Interest.”
OPEN SPOILERS FOR PERSON OF INTEREST BELOW
What Person of Interest actually is an extended meditation on the surveillance state, its also a science fiction show featuring the birth and the rise of the worlds first Artificial Intelligence. The logline “sells the show.” And CBS would likely not have even considered buying the show if the logline matched what was actually produced. They got a science-fiction show to five seasons on prime-time television by pretending it was a crime procedural. Stealth loglines are an actual thing.
Ted Lasso is a show about toxic masculinity, trauma and grief. But that isn’t the sort of logline that gets a network to pick up a show, let alone get thousands of people to watch. It is a show about an American coach taking over an English football team. But it is about much more than that as well.
The game is an essential part of the journey. And treating as if it’s just a background macguffin is not doing the story any favors.
…its not a macfuffin. Not IMHO. It’s more than just set dressing. What the story “is” and what the story “isn’t” isn’t something we appear to agree on. So I don’t think the story is being hurt at all. I think the writers are telling the story they want to tell, at the pace they want to tell it. That doesn’t mean we can’t debate those writing choices. But those choices are intentional.
It didn’t actually make any sense and the writers forgot things they’d written in previous episodes, but to each their own.
I think we’ve found the disagreement. I loath ST Discovery. I hate how the plot (and rational direction of plot - like how the fuck does Michael keep getting promoted? And why is the crew tearfully remembering the evil emperor of a different dimension? ) constantly gets sidelined in favor of desired character or relationship development rather than having it organically grow out of the plot stories.
Though that’s better left for the STD (an apt acronym I now realize) thread.
Ted Lasso is about a football team in the same way Brooklyn Nine Nine is about a police station. The precinct is an integral part of the show and informs much of the characterization, but I don’t really need to know the details of the weekly crime stats. I want to see the characters interact with each other, and it doesn’t matter whether or not that happens within the context of a police station.