We want Ted Lasso’s characters to “Do The Right-est Thing,” but that comes with consequences
Sam's shirking of a sponsor seeds seismic shifts, and Sassy Smurf's spawn is seriously smitten
TV Reviews Ted Lasso
Technically speaking, the central “goal” of Ted Lasso’s second season was established at the end of its first: relegated by their loss to Manchester City, AFC Richmond’s obvious path is to get promoted back to where they belong and eventually win a championship. Easy, right?
Thus far, the second season has made clear that this won’t be a simple task, but it has done so without any external pressure: eight straight ties isn’t going to get you promoted, but Ted and the rest of the club have been framing this problem as more of an existential crisis than a professional one. “Do The Right-est Thing” is the first episode where the front office are shown grappling with the reality of relegation: the same salaries at lower revenue levels, with the team needing to hold onto their existing sponsorships in order to stay afloat financially. Sam’s Dubai Air campaign isn’t just a great opportunity for the team’s young star: it’s a key endorsement during a pivotal moment in the team’s financial future.
“Do The Right-est Thing”—with a script from Ashley Nicole Black—is a great example of the ability to use the various layers of a professional sports team in order to tell stories. In this way, it reminds me of what co-creator Bill Lawrence’s Scrubs—which I also wrote about here at The A.V. Club—would often do with its power hierarchy. At any given time, stories in Sacred Heart would be anchored in the day-to-day work of the interns/residents (J.D., Turk, Elliot), the attendings who supervise them (Cox), and the administrators who run the hospital (Kelso). While they were all technically working together, each group would have a perspective the others couldn’t necessarily share, and faced challenges the others didn’t even know were part of the situation.
Ted Lasso works the same way: the front office (Rebecca, Higgins, Keeley) is focused on business, the coaches (Ted, Beard, Nate) are looking ahead to their next opponent, and then the team have to figure out how to communicate amongst themselves in order to meet the expectations placed on them by everyone else. Each group is working to help the others, but they’ll never fully understand their perspectives, and oftentimes find themselves playing a game the others don’t understand.
That’s what happens throughout this episode, as Sam’s revelation regarding Dubai Air’s parent company Cerithium Oil and their role in the environmental destruction of the Niger Delta sets off a chain reaction that solves some of the team’s problems while complicating many more. The story is a riff on the controversial relationship between sport and activism, as Sam follows his principles into canceling the campaign and taping over Dubai Air’s logo on his jersey. As noted last week, it’s great to see Toheeb Jimoh given more material to work with, even if there’s a bitter irony in it happening without him being promoted to series regular as he deserves. To see Sam follow his principles and for it to become the thing that brings the team together despite Jamie’s disruptive presence is a feel good moment, and it’s thrilling to see him standing up for what’s right.
However, it’s also dread inducing, given what we learn about the team’s finances in the other parts of the story. Because right now, none of the levels of AFC Richmond are fully aware of what’s going on in the others, and it’s created a moral victory with potentially disastrous consequences. When Higgins and Rebecca explain the team’s financial struggles to the latter’s goddaughter Nora—who’s staying with Rebecca with Sassy busy at a conference—they admit that she grasped the situation faster than Ted, and we shouldn’t be shocked that the front office dynamics of a football club and the tiered system of the Premier League isn’t front of mind for Coach Lasso. Ted was hired to coach the team, and that’s where his focus is, which is why as Rebecca is dealing with Sam’s request to exit the campaign Ted is transforming himself into the cruel “Led Tasso” to try to give the team a common enemy. It’s a silly story—and frankly too Michael Scott for my taste—but that’s sort of the point: it’s never actually worked, but Ted’s spending time on it, because he doesn’t realize that there’s more dimensions to the story that make his efforts mostly futile.
The reaction within AFC Richmond to Sam’s decision to extend his protest of Dubai Air and Cerithium Oil into the game itself is honestly a fantasy, and thus totally in line with the optimistic worldview the show has cultivated. Rebecca is totally supportive of his withdrawal from the campaign, refuses to release him when the head of Cerithium asks her to, and ignores the CEO’s call after the team’s collective protest is revealed. Despite the fact that Richmond loses the game, Ted emphasizes that Sam’s voice is more important than any game, and gives over the mic to let him explain his actions to the press. And perhaps because of his chat with Dr. Fieldstone, or because he wasn’t able to get his hands on those PS5s, Jamie is the first player to join in with the Nigerians to tape over the Dubai Air logo, winning Sam’s respect and helping the team come together to—much as he resented early in season one—celebrate a loss as though it’s a win (because they finally broke the streak of ties). Outside of Higgins briefly noting that the protest might represent a problem, no one else in AFC Richmond treats doing the right thing as anything but logical, and it’s refreshing in a climate where this is so often not the case.
But even if the episode hadn’t made a direct reference to the dreaded “cancel culture,” it feels likely the “stick to sports” crowd is going to be all over this, and the loss of a major sponsor is going to create problems that won’t be easily fixed. Ted tells Sam that “doing the right thing is never the wrong thing,” but that is emblematic of how Ted’s worldview straddles the line between optimistic and naive, and it feels like the other shoe will have to drop eventually. The episode doesn’t emphasize this, allowing the ending to be about the team celebrating Sam’s activism, Jamie giving a toast, and Nora getting her photo taken with the team. The show has introduced its first major external conflict, but there’s an insulated quality to this world and its characters that means it doesn’t necessarily register. And although that’s going to help morale, and result in a happier workplace, it doesn’t feel like it’s sustainable given the business realities that this episode laid out before the characters chose to ignore them. Rebecca might be a “Boss Ass Bitch,” but she won’t be able to ignore that phone call forever, and that hangs over the celebration of a loss that will further set AFC Richmond back on their ultimate goal of promotion back to the Premier League.
By introducing more conflict, “Do The Right-est Thing” is the most substantive episode of the season thus far, in part because newly introduced elements like Dr. Fieldstone and Jamie’s re-arrival naturally fit their way into the story. Ted Lasso has a great way of threading stories through episodes: Rebecca running into Roy gets us an update on her dating life which Keeley’s promotion of “bantr” reinforces, while Jamie’s attempt to talk to Keeley brings him into Dr. Fieldstone’s office as though it’s just part of the workplace. And while I was originally concerned that Nora would lean too hard on the “precocious teen used to disarm characters” trope, integrating her into the Sam story was a good way to deal with necessary exposition, and her nervousness around Sam disarmed her enough to let her still be a teen despite also being a “teen written by TV writers.” And while Led Tasso felt too sketch-like for my taste, I understand that the rest of the episode is leaning more into the show’s dramatic side, so I see the instinct even if I wasn’t sold on the execution, and am curious how that balance will continue to play out as AFC Richmond faces even more external pressure as the season continues.
Stray observations
- My original headline for this article was “Ted Lasso reveals the risks of righteousness in relation to the realities of relegation for Richmond,” but lucky for you Led Tasso wasn’t in charge of the copy desk this week and good sense prevailed.
- Full disclosure: I tried looking up how relegation/promotion work, but I got more confused the more I read, so I’m going with the “the bottom teams in the Premier League season are relegated and the top teams in the Championship League season are promoted to replace them” explanation I read first and no longer trying to understand the calendar of the season. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.
- “Did he talk like that the whole time?”—Rebecca made the mistake of asking for more information about Ted and Sassy’s sexual encounter, but it was Sassy’s cut-off suggestion of why timing isn’t the only reason Nora couldn’t be his child that scarred me a little, to be honest. And to think I remember when Apple was allegedly trying to only make PG-13 content!
- On the note of calendar, Sassy and Ted had sex roughly six months ago, and it’s clearly getting to be winter, but as previously established I have no idea how the football schedule works so whether that makes sense is unclear to me.
- Beyond his run-in with Rebecca at the Dolls of England Shop with Phoebe in tow, we get a brief glimpse of Roy’s appearance on Soccer Saturday to discuss Jamie, which is a nice way to keep him involved. I’m curious how he continues to integrate into the show beyond that, as we move forward.
- I presume that we’re supposed to read Keeley’s eyebrow raise when Colin notes that bantr is spelled/stylized like Grindr to mean that he is queer, but I would like to make the suggestion that somebody knowing that Grindr exists and is spelled that way does not actually make them queer (not that I wouldn’t appreciate the representation). Anyway, we’ll see if I’m reading too much into Keeley reading too much into that.
- I’m curious how much Apple is actively requesting the show work in mentions of products like iCloud – Coach Beard’s digital intimacy joke also works to keep seeding his chaotic relationship with Jane, which means it isn’t a waste, but it always stands out.
- Speaking of Apple, I’m wondering how much it costs to use “She’s A Rainbow” as Higgins’ ringtone.
- Sam compares his emotions preparing to see his ill-fate Dubai Air campaign to driving with Colin in his Lambourghini, so I guess he had a spare set of keys other than the one he tossed in the fire in season one.
- I don’t know where the show found young Kiki May to play Nora, but she really managed to match the energy of both Sudeikis and Waddingham, so kudos to her and casting on that one.
- Lots of fun seeing the team go off on Jamie—who is honestly trying so hard, and whose one misstep was joining in on making fun of Sam’s campaign when he wasn’t welcome—but I think my favorite was Jan’s “I don’t know you, but I don’t like you.”
- Is anyone else rewatching season one concurrently with the second season? I’ve started it with my parents this week, and it’s intriguing to see the small details you catch. I’ve watched the pilot at least four times now, but this was the first time I noticed that we see Ted’s hands shaking as he’s preparing to begin his first training session, as though a panic attack is about to trigger. I’m also noticing some small details that will be more relevant as we get deeper into the season, so the lesson is there’s never a bad time to rewatch season one.
101 Comments
Just one thing to add the the regelation/promotion thing, the top 2 teams in the Championship automatically get promoted back to the Premiership but the 3rd slot is decided via play-offs between the 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th place teams. I mention it because my theory before S2 started was that Richmond would struggle a bit so wouldn’t finish 1st or 2nd and then have to face a couple of really tense play-offs. As it stands right now with their draws and now loss they face a real uphill battle to get into the play-offs! But this is Ted Lasso so I’m sure it will work out in the end.
Yeah, there’s no way that they don’t end up in play-offs, both given their current standing and the dramatic potential therein.
Plus the playoffs are at Wembley and we’ve seen them there in the trailer. So they are in the final of the FA Cup, the League Cup, or in the Championship Playoffs.
Of course on a technical note everything else aside, the Championship has a long season and as a newly-relegated club, Richmond would have more money than basically anybody else so the playoffs would still be a totally reasonable goal if they got on a run.
Yeah, the thing that WASN’T mentioned, to ramp up the tension, is that because premier league relegees face this budget problem every year, there are now sizeable ‘parachute payments’: you actually get paid a bonus when you get relegated, to keep you from having to instantly sack all your high-paid staff. But as a result, it’s very common to “bounce back”, since you have both more money and better players than your rivals. On the other hand, this would actually INCREASE the pressure Ted is under: your first couple of years after being relegated are much more high-stakes than your relegation itself, because you desparately need to make it back into the premier league again before your parachute payments run out…
Yeah, they absolutely make the playoffs to get back. No way they take 1st/2nd.
The trailer indicates that the big football related suspense for the season will involve Richmond competing for the FA Cup.
My bugbear about Ted Lasso’s depiction of Championship football was highlighted in this episode – their sponsor. I’m pretty sure it’s an official FA ruling that ALL championship teams have to be sponsored by dodgy online betting sites.
There are 46 matches in a Championship season – 1 home and 1 away against each of the other 23 teams.Richmond would need about 75 points (based on recent seasons) to make the promotion playoffs.At 0 wins, 8 draws, and 1 loss, they’re at 8 points after 9 matches, meaning they need something like 67 over the remaining 37 matches. This 1.81 points per match is roughly what a 3rd-place team plays like over the course of a full season – again, using recent seasons as a guide.There’s still plenty of time to turn it around, but they need to play very well.
You hit the nail on the head with how promotion and relegation works. At the simplest level, top 3 go up from championship to premier league, bottom 3 go down from premier to championship.
A football/soccer season in england is late August to May. So it being 6 months later and starting to snow is good continuity!
Also, I have absolutely love Sam being more and more to the forefront, I also greatly appreciate Isaac being the first to join in. Captain Armband continues to fit him very well!
I also greatly appreciate Isaac being the first to join in. Captain Armband continues to fit him very well!
I hope we see him break a tv at some point this season, and I hope Roy is there to see him do it.
i hope that hot welsh player who mentions “grindr” in the episode, is gay!
As someone explained above, the Championship uses a hybrid League/play-off system to determine promotion – the top two teams go up, teams 3-6 enter the play-offs to find the final promoted team. In the Premier League it’s simple, the bottom three teams go down.As for the calendar, the football league starts in August (the Championship starts tonight in fact, the Premier League will follow in a week or two) and continues until May. I think Lasso and Sassy slept together towards the back end of the season, April or May probably, so six months later would be Autumn. For memory there were only two named games after the Everton game – Arsenal (when Kent scored the own goal) and City on the last day of the season, but the series skips forward sometimes so it’s not always easy to tell.On the Grindr thing, hook-up and indeed dating apps aren’t my thing at all but a mate of mine was an early adopter of Grindr, so after Tinder came out I just think of it as ‘Grindr for straight people’. So I was definitely fully aware of Grindr despite a) being straight and b) never using any apps of that nature.
Season-wise, the promo card for next week’s episode indicates Christmas; some time might well pass before then, though.
Since I’ve seen next week’s episode, I can confirm it is set at Christmas AND offers more clarity about where they are in the season in direct relation to that. Which was helpful.
Amother thing that might be helpful: The English Football League and the Premier League are two separate entities. The EFL runs the Championship and all the leagues below, while the Premiership was created in the early 90s as a breakaway league for all the top teams that wanted to sign bigger sponsorship deals and sell their TV rights for more money.
That’s why the Premiership season starts at a different time to the whole rest of the lower leagues, and why the Championship is named as such despite being the second tier league (its technically the highest tier of the EFL)
Draw. Football teams draw.
If I have one complaint about Ted Lasso (and truly, it’s only the one) is that they keep saying “tie.” The show is clearly written to American audiences, which is fine, but then they do stuff like use actual tv presenters on the show, none of whom Americans would ever recognize (I only do because I’m married to a Brit and we have a VPN to watch BBC and ITV). So it’s an odd mix of being very very faithful to their setting in some ways and then just flubbing it in very easy ways.Like, definitely Ted and Coach Beard should call it a tie – that’s what we call them here. But Rebecca and Nate, etc, should not.
And to make it more confusing, the word “tie” is used over there, but it means something else; a “cup tie” is the matchup between two teams for a tournament such as the FA Cup.
A little more general: every match is a tie. It’s also a fixture! You’re right that it’s more commonly used of cups, though. Conceptually, a tie is, as it were, the appointment between teams, and the match is what happens at that appointment. A match is also known as a fixture, particularly more formally – you watch the match, but if you look up what happened in a match you’ll find tables of “today’s fixtures” and their results. A quirk is that while a tie is a specific event, a fixture is conceived of as eternal, something that’s returned to again and again: “the last time this fixture was played…”, for instance. Everton-Villa is the most-played top-flight* fixture, having been played 205 times – but you’d never say that the match was played 205 times!For added confusion: in cricket, both ties and draws are results, but they’re not the same result! [a draw is very common, and occurs when one team run out of time to dismiss the other; a tie is extremely rare and occurs when both teams finish exactly level in runs]*A flight is a division or league. The term “top flight” is extremely common, both to allow aggregation of records across the Old First Division (1888-1992) and the Premier League (1992-) and to compare the best leagues in different countries. While we’re at it: the English top flight was officially called the Premiership between 1993 and 2007, but the Premier League in 92-93 and since 2007; but the Premiership and the Premier League are just different branding names for the same thing and both terms are widely used as synonyms. By contrast, the Premier League is a different entity from the old First Division, formed by a breakaway of the top clubs. This is why the league below the Premiership is the Championship (which used to be the First Division): it’s the top league within the Football League, and the Premiership is a separate entity with different management, that just happens to have agreements with the Football League about relegation and promotion.
[The Football League covers the next three layers – the Championship, League One and League Two – and the remainder of ‘The Pyramid’ (not to be confused with the pyramid in ‘Inverting the Pyramid’ the classic tactics book Beard was reading in the first season) are collectively ‘non-league’, although paradoxically they still form leagues, just not The League. In total there are more than 480 divisions forming over 140 leagues (with around 7,000 teams) in the system, all joined by promotion and relegation. Now ask someone European about the Superleague and watch their faces literally spontaneously combust with fury…]
Agreed – the most egregious was in (I think) the first episode where he says “win or lose” in a press conference and an English sports journalist interjects “or tie”. I know it’s stupid to get upset about such things, but I felt physically sick. The only thing that rivals it is somebody expressing a team’s failure to score using a word other than “nil” (or, occasionally “nothing”, but never “o” or “zero”). I’ll even happily accept “soccer” above either of those football-linguistic abominations.
I see this complaint last week, along with people saying Jamie shouldn’t have said “blocks”, but I mean… If the British actors don’t default to saying it the way people expect them to be, it could just be that different people say things differently, even in the UK? Especially in the melting pot that is the UK.
I’m not sure how much freedom the actors get to change their dialogue, because this was an issue with The Haunting of Bly Manor, with British actors using Americanisms in a show set in England.And the damn crickets at night!
Briton, just watching the show now after years of youtube snippets. I’m more annoyed by the British characters saying “parking lot” and “garbage” instead of “car park” and “rubbish”.
I suppose the show’s argument is that Ted/Beard using it has been infectious? Because the commentators do still use draw consistently, for example, and thus tie is only ever used colloquially (to my recollection).
This is true; Arlo White would never lower himself to saying tie.
Yes, kind of an important piece of terminology.
my very not analytical, basic take on this episode is that it was very sweet and wonderful to see the team come together(also, my warmest condolences to the doll whose parents got canceled)
I find myself wondering what the doll’s parents did to get cancelled, and how the doll’s tie-in book handles it.
Anyway, we’ll see if I’m reading too much into Keeley reading too much into that.I do think it was a seed to be explored later. Aside from Keeley, it didn’t look like anyone else picked up on it (or deliberately did their own ‘don’t ask’ type of thing).I am sure they will pick up that thread of sexual orientation within the dynamic of a football team.
Frankly, even if we accept her questionable inference, Keeley’s taken-aback reaction to Colin maybe being queer is a bit interesting/concerning. The show generally presents Keeley as being very kind and open-minded, so it would be a bit odd for the writers to have her react that way. Hard to tell if it was an intentional choice to add a bit of complexity to her character, or if it was just an example of the show being a bit off-the-mark about how one is supposed to react to that piece of information.
I disagree. She started as the classic, one dimensional “model girlfriend of the star player”That she would be the only one in the scene to pick up on it shows the growth of her character and illustrates the insight that they have shown her character to have when she has helped other characters.The surprise likely comes from her character having been around footballers, inside locker rooms for a long period of time and never having heard a player openly mention something with that implication before. While the show doesn’t seem (to me) to be leaning hard into “macho male ego”, it is a theme.I don’t know how (or if) they will continue that thread, but I would suspect Keeley will not be surprised by the eventual revelation and will be supportive.
I agree that she’s had growth in this show. I never suggested otherwise. By the end of the first season, she was depicted as a kind, smart, perceptive person. My point is that the Keeley the first season showed is not the type of person who would not act all taken aback by someone potentially being queer. Which is why this reaction was surprising. But, you do make a good point about how her reaction could just be a reflection of macho locker-room culture. Keeley’s probably aware that soccer locker rooms have a bit of a reputation for homophobia.
Yeah I read her reaction as entirely being tied into awareness of homophobia in football (there’s only two openly gay UK footballers) along with essentially being the team’s PR and thus realising she might have to deal with this as a news story at some point.
Honestly, I read her taken aback expression as more like “wow, Colin’s being super open about this so I guess the whole team knows.” Which makes me wonder if she accidentally outs Colin to Roy or something, thinking that Roy obviously already knows since Colin seems to be comfortable enough to make a reference to Grindr in the locker room.
I took Keeley’s reaction to be something more along the lines of “Ok, interesting, noted.”Be curious, not judgemental.
Some might think Keely’s reaction was a tacit judgement on Colin. She’s just not that character. But if they’re going to pursue a plot line there, and this is the first blip on that radar, someone has to react in some way so that it’s significant to the audience. This is storytelling after all. Keely, who has her finger on the pulse of the zeitgeist is the obvious choice for it. Also, no matter how open a person is, getting a new piece of information about someone’s life is bound to have a reaction. If I found out a friend I’d known for a while was a surfer, or knew how to play piano, I’d have a similar reaction.
She’s just not that character. Agreed, She is also the character that started the show as the “girlfriend of the star player”, before they grew her character out of that troupe, so she would be the best character to pick up on these cues and at some point if the story comes around be the one to say “yeah, no biggie, we all know. You’re good.”The idea that she reacted likely didn’t have anything with what it might mean and more likely the idea that Grindr would be plainly discussed in the “macho male locker rom”. It’s not a secret, you don’t have to use it to know what it is, but I imagine the point the show is making with that exchange is that it’s likely to be rarely, if ever the topic of conversation in that setting.
I don’t think surfing or playing piano are really comparable to sexual orientation. Those are novel skills/hobbies for someone to have. But being queer shouldn’t be viewed as this novel thing. That’s the whole issue with Keeley’s reaction – it made it seem like she DID view it in that way.
I don’t want to make this into a bigger deal than it is. Obviously it was a very brief reaction, and it didn’t seem malicious at all. But to me, it suggested that either Keeley has a bit of a blind spot (maybe we’ll find out she was raised in a conservative household!) or the show’s writers do.
I think that the thing people are shooting at as far as sexual orientation is that it’s insignificant and just who a person is. Learning facets of a personality are notable. It shouldn’t be something a person has to be precious about. Liking peonies, hating the taste of tea, being gay, loving horror movies, writing flowery poetry, painting watercolours. Just a thing that is what a person is about. It’s in my opinion that you’re just mis reading the reaction.
Right, I fully agree that it’s insignificant and “just who a person is”. That’s why I think Keeley’s taken aback reaction was interesting/concerning. I fully admit that I may be reading too far into it. It was a very brief moment.
Also offering a UK perspective here, I took her reaction as more of a surprise than judgement. Openly gay professional football players basically don’t exist, so maybe the writers are seeding this for a potential future storyline, but I sincerely doubt Keeley would be anything but supportive, she’s just slightly taken aback by the implication of a gay player considering the culture within football.
Yeah, that’s how I read it as well. I didn’t see it as Keeley casting any judgement, more like “playfully surprised.” Wouldn’t be at all surprised if Keeley ends up helping Colin set up his Bantr profile, and hopefully he ends up with an awesome guy.
To provide context to American viewers: although the UK is in general, outside of a small number of troglodytes, very committed to LGBT rights, and there is very little stigma surrounding being gay these days (none at all in much of society), gay men don’t exist in football. At all. AT. ALL. Last year there was an anonymous letter by a footballer in which he admitted being gay, but nobody knows who wrote it. One footballer (Justin Fashanu) did admit being gay in 1990… but he was disowned by his family (including his famous footballer brother), sacked, never re-hired, and ultimately killed himself. Other than Fashanu, there was once a part-time, semi-amateur footballer once, about ten years ago, who played for a team in a regional league seven flights down, in a town with a population of 20,000 people, who was openly gay, thought to be the only openly gay man to be (sometimes) paid to play football. Everyone at every level – players, managers, officials, bureaucrats – periodically says how welcoming everyone would be if there WERE any gay players, but gosh darn it just coincidentally it happens that, you know, totally be chance, there just has never happened to be more than the two gay men in any of the 7000 English football clubs at any time in the last century and a half… but nobody would mind if there were, honestly!
[there ARE openly gay footballers now, of course… they have their own, unpaid, little-heard of gay league. Because that’s not patronising…][meanwhile, there’s no shortage of lesbians in women’s football. And there’s a bunch of gay athletes in every other sport. Even rugby – which has a ridiculously macho, laddish, heterosexual (very rapey) culture – has gay players and referees. But not football. Ultimately, it’s because unlike most sports, football is The People’s Game, and when it comes to acceptance and openness, The People have traditionally been wankers…]
Justin Fashanu came to Canada to play for a couple of years and was on my brothers team. I am not sure how many people knew about his situation, but there were rumours at the time. His death was very sad indeed.
I just thought it was more of a surprise look, not judgmental look.
I dunno if Colin is supposed to be queer, but he was probably my favorite of the second-tranche players from last season so if they give him more to do I’m happy (his “Doctor told me not to drink” line followed by an immediate swig in “For the Children” always cracks me up.)
I’m happy that the show is dealing with the business side of things more. In the first season the point of relegation was pretty remote and especially as an American pretty abstract, so it’s nice they’ve weaved it in the season thus far organically (the quieter press room, etc.) before hitting us with the reality in a starker light.Also, they did a good job throwing the sarcastic TV Teen™ at Ted, because it makes the schtick go down much easier when instead of disarming the adult like she expects he just credulously buys in.
(his “Doctor told me not to drink” line followed by an immediate swig in “For the Children” always cracks me up.)
Me too. The actor really nails the ‘adorable idiot’ character.
I was struck by how much I barely recognized both Colin and Isaac when I was rewatching Season 1 with my parents: they were Jamie’s stooges, but by the end of the season they had drunk the Kool-Aid, and you can tell this season they’ve distilled them down into more amiable versions of those characters.
Nobody comments the fact that the episode is an attack against the government of Nigeria and indirectly the Emirates and at least the Emirati airlines, I mean these people exist and may not like being insulted.
Nobody comments the fact that the episode is an attack against the government of Nigeria and indirectly the Emirates and at least the Emirati airlines, I mean these people exist and may not like being insulted.
Let them whine.
The government of Nigeria is famously corrupt. AIUI that’s a big part of the reason they elected a former military dictator, in the hope that someone would crack down on the corruption (though since he’s a dictator who gained $3m through an ‘accounting lapse’ in the oil funds and never paid it back, he may not really be the man for the job).
And if Buhari is personally insulted? Well, this is a man who, as President, when visiting Angela Merkel, commented “I don’t know which party my wife belongs to – but she belongs to my kitchen!”Meanwhile, Emirates is controlled by a dictator who beats, kidnaps, tortures and drugs women, including his own daughters.
So fuck ‘em, frankly.
Well, Dubai Air is a made up airline. (Etihad is the actual national airline of the UAE and somewhat amusingly in context of the show, they sponsor Man City). And I’m not sure Sam’s protest was against DA but their parent company – he’s trying to drive attention to that company’s abuses to the Nigerian land and people.In reality, I couldn’t name you an oil company (national or private) that hasn’t fucked up stuff and got away with it by bribing ALL sorts of governments. (Including the American one. Hell, especially the American one.) They gave the storyline specifically to Sam because this season is about Sam finding his voice and using it. It wouldn’t necessarily make the best thematic sense if they gave this plot line to Jamie, for instance; that man has no trouble using his voice and staking his claim.
Dubai Air is made-up, but it’s also Emirates, which is the real national airline of Dubai, and the first national airline of the UAE as a whole (Etihad is the second airline). Emirates sponsor Arsenal, but used to sponsor Chelsea. [Then again, Etihad, unlike Emirates, has a British boss, so maybe it’s a bit of both]The stupid name of the corporate owner combined with its oil and controversy for some reason make me think of Ineos, but that might be coincidental…
Emirates Airline is also a national airline for the UAE and is based from Dubai (they sponsor Arsenal), while Etihad is based out of Abu Dhabi. And there is another, FlyDubai, the budget option. Like much of the Emirates, all of those are state-owned.
As you say, the real target is the parent oil company which in real-world terms is either Shell or Eni.
Or Saudi’s state-owned oil company, which gleefully gets away with all kinds of shit. (Although I am bitter; I have worked on many a job with Saudi Aramco, but I wasn’t allowed to present in meetings with them or look any clients in the eyes.)I think Dubai Air is definitely supposed to be the “Emirates Airline” for the show – the flight attendant’s outfit looked incredibly similar. Though clearly Arsenal does exist within the concept of the show, so perhaps DA is meant to be a third luxury airline.I will say, the Emirates know how to do luxury. And as long as you don’t look at the literal slums where they encamp their Indian and Pakistani laborers, it feels very nice!
I raised my eyebrows at that too, but in an excited sort of way (all my family ever talks about is how Nigeria’s government is a mess) so I personally love that this was something that got called out on a major show.
I thought it a bit crass to fictionalize the real life situation and the parties involved (maybe a link to Amnesty International’s website could have been provided for edification) but I certainly didn’t see it as an “attack” on Nigeria. Hopefully those who watch the show who are unaware of what’s going on might decided to educate themselves as there are plenty of resources to do so.
As a Nigerian, I didn’t see it as an attack.
“While they were all technically working together, each group would have a perspective the others couldn’t necessarily share, and faced challenges the others didn’t even know were part of the situation.”
Hmmm, that sounds somewhat like an ensemble sitcom.
I know it’s cheesy and I know it’s exactly what the scene was supposed to do, but when Jamie asks for the black tape, that really got me. He treated Sam worse than anybody else in the first season.And I’m really loving the Roy on tv segments.
I’m going with the “the bottom teams in the Premier League season are relegated and the top teams in the Championship League season are promoted to replace them” explanation I read first That’s pretty much all you need to know. The details can be complicated, but that’s the gist of it. That’s how you explain it to people.
I liked his explanation, too. No bs about believing in the cause, just “We’re teammates–we wear the same kit.”
Agreed, it was a perfect line and a great reading from Dunster. I think if he’d tried to show solidarity with the cause itself, it would’ve been seen as trying too hard.
we get a brief glimpse of RoyThe biggest problem with S2 so far, really. He’s Roy Kent; he should be here, there, every fucking where.
I will say last episode was a Roy Kent showcase. You got everything you love about the guy: he’s good with kids, he curses like a sailor, and he is in a loving and incredibly hot relationship with Keeley. But I don’t believe in too much of a good thing so I guess I agree with you. More Roy Kent.
“She loves me. It’s fucking annoying.”
-Roy Kent
I think a lot of straight people are fully aware of Grindr, but I think every straight person who is aware of Grindr is also away or Tindr and the implication is that a straight professional athlete would likely namecheck the straight dating app rather than the gay one.
But also, Colin started out as one of Jamie Tartt’s entourage so it’s very possible that Keeley knows more about him than most of the club would, having likely spent a lot of time in his company when she was with Jamie, and maybe she saw him acting like an overt horny bro trying to mack on girls at the clubs and whatnot, so the idea that he would namecheck Grindr rather than Tindr would definitely raise an eyebrow.
I’m glad they’ve gotten back to the reality of relegation, because it really should be a gut punch for the team.One of the best moments of the first season was when Coach Beard finally dropped the man-of-few-words act toward the end and launched a tirade at Lasso for not understanding how much damage it would do to the lives and careers of his players.They’ve skirted around the issue in the first two episodes. Jamie should have been agonizing over what it meant to leave the top, and Roy’s vanishing act would have made more sense if they clued in how he thought of himself as more than a Championship League player.
It’s always tempting for producers to want to file down all of the rough and uncomfortable spots in a show, so I’m encouraged that Ted Lasso can keep things real. You obviously don’t need to have the show mired in financials for hours, but comedy is better when it’s not always superficial.
Yes, I loved when Beard did that.My guess is once Ted goes to therapy, he realizes it isn’t the devil he sees it as(cause of his divorce), and gets Sharon to help this team nab the last spot in the promotion tournament.
I thought Sam’s storyline was great (and it’s always nice to see Toheeb Jimoh get more playing time, to borrow the parallel from soccer), but the only thing that bugged me is it has just now come up. Presumably Sam’s dad has seen Sam in uniform numerous times, so he knows the team’s sponsored by Dubai Air. Was it just a case before of “well, Dubai Air are owned by an awful corporation but this is the team that signed Sam, so we’re going to put it aside” and it was just made outraging by the fact that Sam did extra ad work for them? It would have maybe made a bit more sense if it had been a recent spill and Richard Cole, creepy CEO, had shrugged it off publicly. Also I kind of wish it didn’t come about from a talk that Sam had with his father, if only because it then felt more like Sam was taking a stand less to take a stand against an awful thing and more because he didn’t want his dad to be disappointed in him. IDK, that may just be my reading into it as a person deathly afraid of ever disappointing my father.Led Tasso was pretty silly, but ironically I just told my kid the other day about the particularly sports-centered management style of punishing everyone for one person’s fuck up. She said it seemed mean, but see? It works.Nora was pretty great. I love that she straddled that line between being more grown up than Rebecca realized but also having just a giant crush on Sam to the point where she could barely talk.Colin is 100% queer. Having the team deal with a teammate coming out would be a good angle for the show to tackle.
Also, when is Shannon (the young woman who is often playing soccer in the alley near the pub) going to join the team?
That’s gotta be where her story is leading, right? She’s been such a large presence from the very beginning.
She the Greek Chorus, telling Ted the same things the drunk fans at the pub does in more erudite and direct ways. I doubt they’ll elevate her beyond that, but I’m happy to be proven wrong.
That’s what I think. Otherwise, she’s just serving as The Wise Black Woman who fixes Ted’s problems and that would be a really shitty turn for a show that seems to be above that.
Definitely Chekov’s Shannon.
As for the oil thing, I think you bring up a good point about it seeming like Sam was taking a stand just so he wouldn’t get the backlash. Honestly, I would have liked a bit more pressure/conflict about the protest, because even in an optimistic show, this is not the sort of thing that should ever be easy, and it weirdly was.
it’s just a guess, but i would think that it was easier for Sam’s dad to accept when it was “the team” wearing Dubai Air, and part of “the team’s” doing. Sam being highlighted individually, in some ways becoming a face of Dubai Air, was probably over the line for him, though.
I was also sort of confused how the Dubai Air issue was just coming up now. I guess the ad is more direct, but if Sam’s dad has such strong feelings about his son being a shill for them why wouldn’t he have brought it up when he saw Sam playing every match in a jersey emblazoned with their logo? The only explanation I can think of is maybe he father was willing to accept that because he knows what happens when black people speak out in mostly white spaces, but even then you think he would have mentioned it at some point if he had such strong feelings about it, even if just to warn Sam to do as little off-pitch publicity as possible. That said, if Sam’s dad was trying to protect him from being seen as “difficult” he probably wouldn’t have said anything about the ad either, because he’s basically forcing Sam to choose between disappointing his father or pushing back against RFC’s biggest sponsor.
I think Sam’s family would realize that you’re going to be profiting from some unethical team owners and sponsors and that’s part of the nature of the system when you play professional sports. But becoming a spokesman for that sponsor and endorsing them is a whole different level of support.
I read the situation as the cup overflowing. One can probably overlook a subsidiary of Evil Corp being the main sponsor of the Premier League team your son was drafted to, but when he becomes the face and spokesperson of said company, that’s when the patience stops.
Colin wants to have sex with a pair of Air Jordans if I remember correctly. Not sure where that puts him on LGBTQ+ spectrum.
A couple things: I am in love with Sassy. A confident, funny, intelligent woman who raised a badass kid. I am shipping her with Ted something fierce, and I think she’d challenge him in ways that he’d need. I know this isn’t maybe that show but I want it I loved every scene with Rebecca and Nora. No real conflict. Just needing to meet each other where they are. The small doses of Roy Kent we got were much appreciated and hilarious. Sam’s storyline was great. I’m so glad he’s become such a focal point for the show. Can’t wait to see where this story goes.
It may have been too much info, but I love Sassy’s detail that Ted is an unselfish lover and that’s what makes him great, actually 😉
But very talky and energetic, which could get old fast unless he’s putting his mouth to other use.
Sassy said Ted was very eager to please so I think she can find things for him to do to limit the chat time! 🙂
I love these people. But more Roy, please. Also, no, this fart story doesn’t sound better in French.
Myles, you picked an excellent day to be confused about the Premier League/Championship calendar, because the Championship season actually started today. The Premier League starts next week and both will run through May.
I love tertiary characters like Jan. Very little use, but his 1-2 lines are hilarious. Seeing how Bill Lawrence is part of this show, and he did this on Scrubs and Cougartown.
Love Ted Lasso. Love it.
But damn it for getting that tune about the infant fish stuck in my head again.
One of my favorite jokes in this episode was a subtle one I haven’t seen mentioned. When Nora & Rebecca were composing the letter to the oil company CEO, Richard Cole, Nora called him “Dick Cole” but pronounced it in such a way that it sounded like “Dickhole,” with Rebecca anger-translating to the more formal version.
Rebecca might be a “Boss Ass Bitch,” but she won’t be able to ignore that phone call forever
Let’s hope not. I would like some follow-through on this development. But it’s just as likely the show may luxuriate in “sticking it” to the suits this week, and move on. After all, there were rumblings last week about how Ted could take Jamie back without telling the rest of the team (especially Sam after their conversation) and nothing really came of that.
-No one does orphans like the Brits. Lol
The trailer shots have the team wearing jerseys with the “bantr” logo later in the season so I doubt they’ll linger on the financial implications for long.
There is no way Bantr has enough capital to sponsor even a Championship-level team. Keeley must be a marketing genius.
Maybe we’ll discover that Bantr is the vanity project of a fabulously wealthy idiot and Keeley is able to convince them that sponsoring a struggling football team is the perfect way to get the company’s name out there?
There is no way Bantr has enough capital to sponsor even a Championship-level team. Keeley must be a marketing genius.
If there anything that these app start-ups are actually good at, it’s getting moron investors to throw money at them. As a real-world example, I give you Uber.
Or crypto anything.RIP FTX Arena
I’m hoping something bad doesn’t happen to Sam’s parents because of the protest. I’m leaning towards no because it doesn’t seem to be that type of show but for me the dread is still there.
The killing of the dog was a real Ned Stark moment for the show, so anything can happen.
I’ve started it with my parents this week, and it’s intriguing to see the small details you catch. They seed a LOT of details early on. Ted’s nervous hands, the training room’s WW2 history, Higgins’ choking noise when he’s in an uncomfortable situation, multiple characters using the “I never know how to react when X” joke construction… there are a few others I know I’m forgetting but all that stuff is mostly present in the first two episodes of S1.
• I’m curious how much Apple is actively requesting the show work in mentions of products like iCloud – Coach Beard’s digital intimacy joke also works to keep seeding his chaotic relationship with Jane, which means it isn’t a waste, but it always stands out.• Speaking of Apple, I’m wondering how much it costs to use “She’s A Rainbow” as Higgins’ ringtone.Since those two moments came back to back, it did bring to mind that that song was used for a very old iMac commercial (the first time they put them out in different colors), which, admittedly, was probably just a coincidence. There have been a couple other inside-baseball-y Apple references in the show (the only other AppleTV+ thing I’ve watched is “For All Mankind,” so I’m not sure how common overt parent-company nods are in their shows that are set in the present day), I wonder if just one of the writers is an old Mac fan, or if they have someone who mentions stuff that can fit into context in the “network notes” pass, or what.
I don’t know about you, but The Morning Show and Tehran don’t strike me as “PG-13 content.”
I have to feel like much awkwardness is in store with the Bantr app now that Keeley has roped the players and staff into signing up. From Rebecca’s screen it looked like at least a few of the users might be her employees: malelegend1, horndog (possibly a jazz fan?), horny_dude from France, born_this_way (don’t want to presume but obviously looking at you, Colin). And if anything on second viewing, I think Richard gave Colin more side-eye over the Grindr comment than Keeley did.