TED!
/I've taken a few days now to let things settle, for emotions to level off. When you make a statement that includes phrases like "the best ever" or "the worst ever", you need to strive to be at your most objective. Wait; that's not true! We're not talking science here, this about art and life; deep feelings, wide-ranging emotion, stuff of the heart and soul. Hyperbole is in order.
Still, I needed a cooling off period before declaring that "Ted Lasso" is the best broadcast series ever. The pause between the end of the finale series episode and this writing was not because there was any doubt, I just needed to have my wits about me. And yes, I did watch "Downton Abbey". No, I didn't watch "Breaking Bad" or "Succession". Yes, I'm a sentimental sap and a sucker for fantastic, once in a lifetime writing of brilliant comedy and dramatic moments that border on corny but make you want to believe they're true all at the same time. Higgins, one of my favorite characters in the series said of the series, "It pulls at your heart and hits you in the funny bone."
I love this kind of stuff. It's the magic recipe of writing that makes it possible for me to watch any Richard Curtis movie over and over; films like: Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), Notting Hill (1999), Bridget Jones's Diary (2001), Love Actually (2003), About Time (2013) and Yesterday (2019).
Surely Jason Sudekis is a fan as well. Just check out the Ted Lasso parody episode of Love Actually.
Now the series has ended, but only the episodes. Ted Lasso will last a long time.
There are a few people out there that if I see their name in a by-line, I stop and read it. People like Anne Lamott, Nadia Bolz-Weber, and Tish Harrison-Warren who is a priest in the Anglican Church in North America and writes a weekly newsletter for the New York Times. In a fairly recent edition of her newsletter she wrote this:
Each Wednesday night my husband and I tune in to watch “Ted Lasso,” the Emmy award-winning Apple TV+ comedy series. The show’s protagonist and title character, played by Jason Sudeikis, is ebullient, kind and, though smart, persistently silly. In the pilot episode, Ted, wide-eyed and folksy, arrives in England after relocating from Kansas with his friend Coach Beard. They climb into an impossibly small car, and Ted calls out to Rebecca, his serious, conniving new boss, “Look! This car has an invisible steering wheel!,” mimicking steering on the left side of the car (as we do on this side of the pond). It’s clear that he’s a sort of clown, with this scene even hinting at a clown car shtick. We discover throughout the series that it is in this very silliness that his power is found.
There is no shortage of religious archetypes in literature and in popular entertainment. There are famous “Christ figures” like Gandalf in “Lord of the Rings,” Dumbledore in the Harry Potter stories, and Anna in “Frozen.” Seen through this lens, Ted Lasso is another kind of religious archetype: a modern-day holy fool.
The holy fool, or yurodivy (also spelled iurodivyi), is a well-known, though controversial, character in Russian Orthodox spirituality. In his book “Holy Fools in Byzantium and Beyond,” the historian Sergey A. Ivanov writes that in the Orthodox tradition the term designates “a person who feigns insanity, pretends to be silly, or who provokes shock or outrage by his deliberate unruliness.” In other words, the holy fool is a person who flouts social conventions to demonstrate allegiance to God. Holy fools dwell in ordinary, secular life, but they approach it with completely different values. Rejecting respectability and embracing humility and love, holy fools are so profoundly out of step with the broader world that they appear to be ridiculous or even insane and often invite ridicule. And yet, they teach the rest of us how to live.
Not to crown myself A Holy Fool or to compare myself with Ted Lasso, but I do find something familiar in that character. Maybe that's why I find the show so relatable and wonderful. In life in general and in roles I've had, I feel like a fish-out-of-water, like a guy who knows nothing about soccer coaching a team of English "footballers".
My two main vocational pursuits have been youth ministry and banking. I came to each of these accidentally. I stayed in each of these roles for a considerable time, roughly 30 years in each, with some overlap. Ironically, I'm not and have never been a theologian. I suck at Bible trivia games. On a scale of irreverent to reverent, I drift leftward, but respectfully so. When I was offered a position working for a bank, I shared honestly that when we were first married, My Amazing-Missus took away my checkwriting privileges because of my lack of monetary discipline. I now get to have a debit card on a probationary basis. Thankfully the CEO and board of the bank saw something redeemable there or they have deep pity. Probably a combo.
According to the Pearson-Marr Archetype Indicator® assessment, based on Jung’s archetypal work, my archetypes are Creator and Jester. Of the Jester the description is:
Jesters are most fulfilled when they can use their ingenuity and wit. Naturally playful, spontaneous, and humorous, they enjoy light-hearted truth-telling and can motivate others to see the value of fun. They’re usually excited and challenged by opportunities to lighten up stressful situations. Jesters need to be careful to stay on task when getting routine work done; avoid using humor in hurtful ways; and not come across as being unable to take anything seriously.
Maybe for the first time in my life I feel like I'm in a role that suits who I am. Now it's ABOUT being POPS. All that's required is making them laugh and have fun, helping them stay curious and innocent, encouraging them to look deep into stuff, to see the spiritual, the scary and beautiful spiritual.
If you've watched Ted Lasso at all, I'm guessing that you have done so religiously and that you know the characters well. I love them all but especially Roy Kent. He's so tough and narrow-minded that as a coach, rather than wear a whistle, he just yells, "WHISTLE!!" If you know Roy, this little snippet of dialog between Roy and Ted will make you smile and maybe tear up just a little. If you don't know the show, I hope it is still profound for you.
Roy Kent: For the past year I’ve busted my [expletive] [expletive] trying to change but apparently it hasn’t done [explitive] because I’m still me.
Ted Lasso: Wait. Did you want to be someone else?
Roy Kent: Yeah - someone better. Can people change?
Well, now I'm all dewy-eyed like Meg Ryan in "You've Got Mail" or "Sleepless in Seattle", and I can barely see to type. So, I'm going to rely on the words from Tish Harrison-Warner to close this one out.
"In a time when our culture is marked by outrage, division and cynicism, Ted Lasso calls us back to humility. He asks us to lighten up a little, to not take ourselves too seriously. In doing so, he reminds everyone he encounters — including us watching at home — of our shared humanity. We are all, in the end, not winners or losers, successes or failures, pure heroes or villains, but people who long to be known, loved and delighted in. This is the gift of Ted Lasso. He shows us what’s possible when we give up winning — soccer games, power grabs, professional success, culture wars or online fights — and, however foolish it may be, choose to root for the people all around us."
