The show has always been defined by low levels of conflict and an overall veneer of happy-go-lucky optimism, to the degree that when I wrote about its rise earlier this year and thought I was being mildly critical of it, many readers quoted my story as though I had written glowingly about how Ted Lasso serves as a bastion of kindness in a dark and weary world. Studies have even found that when you binge-watch a show, you’re less likely to remember details about the story than you would if you watched one episode per week.Īgain, the flaws people are now finding in Ted Lasso were already present in season one. In a binge, episodic flaws recede to the background. The vast majority of people who watched Ted Lasso’s first season binge-watched it, and a binge-watch is necessarily a very different experience from a week-to-week watch. VanArendonk also suggests, however, that what some fans are truly mad about is serialization and the way season two’s Christmas episode seemed to stop the season in its tracks. Also, this happened.Īs Kathryn VanArendonk astutely notes at Vulture, the reason this fight has grown so heated is that a lot of fans are essentially debating the value of goodness in art. The discourse around the show just didn’t make as much of them at the time. Others (including myself) would argue that Ted Lasso’s second season isn’t actually very different, and that all of its current qualities - positive and negative - were already present in season one. Many fans are furious that anyone could be furious with such a cute, unassuming TV show. These complaints all have counterarguments. There are also ongoing conversations - largely driven by women of color and trans people - about the limits of Ted Lasso’s good-guy nature, when his societal privilege as a nice-guy white guy means he isn’t really risking all that much being good. Six episodes in, season two has yet to really establish an overarching story, where season one had a strong sports movie core. Instead, at least some of those fans have found themselves irritated by a season that feels like low-conflict froth, where nothing much happens and, as the Christmas episode suggests, Santa Claus literally exists. So as it returned for its second season in the middle of a very, very difficult 2021, a lot of fans were hoping that Ted would light the way forward, with kindness and a twinkle in his eye. The series became an unlikely sensation, and just last month it raked in 20 Emmy Award nominations. Somewhere in the middle of a very, very difficult 2020, a lot of people discovered that Ted Lasso was a great comfort-food watch. Its most salient qualities are its big heart and its sneaky charm, perhaps best reflected by Ted himself (Jason Sudeikis), a US football coach who is hired to run a UK soccer team. Ted Lasso is a solid television program, but it is also an unassuming one. It is frankly baffling that Ted Lasso, of all shows, is prompting such heated discourse. The discussions aren’t just happening online, either - even my personal trainer recently filled me in on why he thinks season two has been a disappointment. The Ted Lasso discourse has hit, and it is a torrential downpour of hot takes, over-the-top tweets, and impassioned arguments for and against the AppleTV+ comedy.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |