Ted Lasso “The Hope That Kills You”

Yeah, that pretty much is what a Bill Lawrence-produced TV show’s ideal conclusion will look like.

Ted Lasso is, in many ways, the ultimate in comfort food TV.  It’s a nice place to visit while leaving the viewer with the sort of warm feeling that a good bowl of hot mac’n’cheese would provide.  The real question might be whether that mac’n’cheese was some sort of Kraft box of instant or something homemade produced from scratch.  I’m not sure it matters much as, well, either is delicious.  One just has a more lowbrow reputation.

I dated a woman once who said of Lawrence’s TV series Scrubs that it was impressive how the show could go from funny to serious and deeply moving at the drop of a hat.  This episode manages to do both many times over.  Nate’s promotion to coach at the start of the episode is wonderful.  Roy’s heroic return to the pitch, one that has him beat former teammate Jamie at what was probably the cost of his athletic career, was as moving as it was possible to get.  Rebecca’s change, now feeling the tension that comes from actually caring about the game, and how much she gets into the game is a nice character moment.  And Ted, Beard, and the other players’ attempts to come up with trick plays to make up for Ted’s lack of knowledge of the game he’s been managing for a full season so far is hilarious.  That the plays don’t quite work or allow Richmond to win the game also makes sense.

And as for Ted, well, he’s the guy who will go to congratulate Jamie for kicking a game winning goal against his own team, stop when he sees Jamie’s father berating his son for not playing to the older man’s impossible standards, and still send Jamie a congratulatory note.  Jamie had spent the episode thinking Ted’s sincere compliments were some attempts at mind games.  They weren’t.  Ted Lasso doesn’t play that way.

He also doesn’t quite let losing get him down.  If anything, it fires him up once he learns he won’t be fired, planning to bring the team back to win the Premier League eventually.  You know, once he gets back to it.

Yeah, I don’t know much about soccer, but neither does Ted.  But I sure do like some warm mac’n’cheese.

By the by, this being the show that so many people told me to check out, was it as good as they said?  Well, I don’t think anything could be as good as they made it out to be, but it is still a fun diversion.  Will that make Jimmy happy?  I don’t know.  The last fix for the site took away the “like” button.