I’m notgoing to tell you that if you haven’t seen Ted Lasso yet, you need to remedy that as soon as possible, because no television series disrupts your life or is necessary. But Ted Lasso can make it better or lighter for you, though, that I have to tell you.
Now in its second season (set to conclude on Friday, October 8, 2021), Ted Lasso is a series available only on Apple TV+. It is named after its protagonist, an American footbal coach who finds himself coaching an English soccer team that ownership wants to sink. This is a classic mechanism of storytelling that sets all possible traps for his role as a coach to turn out to be a resounding fiasco. Because everything conspires in that direction: of “European” soccer Ted knows nothing and his adventure in the old continent is destined to come to a ruinous end. Except that one element of this tale is Ted Lasso, that is, a wild and irrepressible variable that will disrupt the plans of those who want to doom the AFC Richmond team to relegation.
The plot is very predictable and you will have seen it a thousand times. After all, if one were to analyze from the point of view of plots, in stories-in any story-the possible developments are a handful. But as always, it is not (or not “only”) the story that matters but how it is told. And you will have realized that the authors and directors of Ted Lasso can tell it very well.
The role of the outsider
Good plot and storytelling skills have decreed his success, and the curious thing is that, on closer inspection, Ted Lasso has nothing particularly original or innovative about him: how many stories have you seen based on the action of an out-of-context character? How many about the world of soccer? How many clichés are repeated, again? There is the owner of the soccer team, who, fresh from a divorce with a cheating husband, wants to bankrupt the team out of revenge because he loved the team more than anything else in the world; there are the players with complex and often insufferable personalities, other times just plain stupid. There are the stereotypical loud and drunken fans. There is coach Ted Lasso, the perfect representation of American optimism implanted in old Europe: a kind of hymn to “We can do it” and the belief that with a smile and a good dose of optimism you can face and solve anything.
Everyone is a protagonist
Yet Ted Lasso is not just Ted Lasso. It is not a series focused only on him, and that is perhaps also one of its strengths. Rather, it is a choral narrative in which the co-protagonists always somehow manage to become protagonists. It is clearly Ted’s attitude that makes this possible, because his presence shakes up the cards, changes perspectives, and allows those who gravitate to him to change, revealing their true nature and not the one to which social roles have forced them.
Here, it’s as if Ted is a traveler from another world who brings a specific message: you can be yourself, you don’t have to conform to a stereotype, you don’t always have to wear clothes that others have put on you.
The underdog
The story of this soccer team and its coach is a classic example of the parable of the “underdog,” that is, that figure who appears defiladed and no one bets on, who at some point has a burst of pride and, perhaps aided by fate, ends up triumphing. You know that athlete who is in the middle group and always sees those in the front with binoculars and then at some point sprints off and burns everyone? Or that team that has always lived at the bottom of the standings that, surprisingly, at some point manages to get to the top of the league? That stuff there.
And what does it cause in us who look at it? A perfect fit, unless you are used to triumphing all the time and have always been part of the winning group (good for you then!): the pride and success of those who have never tasted victory always open up pleasant glimpses of an alternative future: one in which we can all have suffisfaction and success, just by wanting to. And it doesn’t matter whether you succeed or not but it matters how you do it. And therein lies Ted Lasso’s last, fundamental secret: goodness.
Indeed, goodness is Ted’s invincible formula: it may not win the championship but it changes people, revealing their best side. And he is a champion of this, and not because he is a simple, mundane soul: he is in the midst of a separation, he has accepted an assignment without having the skills, he is not in a particularly serene condition. Yet he always manages to find something positive, always manages to make a connection with people, revealing them and making them feel comfortable.
I think in the end his real secret is that Ted can talk to people and, in doing so, make them feel “seen,” perhaps even loved. If nothing else, he lets those around him know that everyone, to him, matters. And this creates cohesion in a team made up too much of diffuse individuality and too little of solidarity.
Ted never approaches problems in a schematic way; he always disorients a bit. It gives a glimpse of an alternative way and makes people think that the world is also good.
The formula for success in a team (and in life) is not only technique, preparation and money, but above all, dialogue, human relationship, recognizing each other among like-minded people as fellow adventurers and life partners.
Yet it almost always manages to do so in a light and believable way: basing a story on such predictable stereotypes can easily slide toward complacency and exaggeration, and instead the authors (some of whom also act, such as-first of all-Lasso himself, played by Jason Sudeikis, Coach Beard, and the legendary Roy Kent, perhaps one of the best characters, gruff and grumpy but ultimately good) always manage to stay balanced between lightness and depth, making you believe that another world is possible and that AFC Richmond’s is a story that could really happen. And that it has already happened.
(Cover: Apple TV+)