Ted Lasso [TV-series 2020-...] - As Sweet as Apple+ Pie

[Heartofice]

So I’m 2 episodes into season 2 and I’m spending the whole time trying to work out what has gone wrong with this show.

On the surface it’s the same, all the same characters are there, similar situation.. but honestly this is a shadow of what season one was. I find it a bit painful. It’s not bad but it’s so utterly meh. It’s what I assumed Ted Lasso was before I first watched it, and that’s not a compliment. 
 

Some of the problems I think this season has:

After 2 episodes football is barely even featured. Season one actually seemed interested in football, here it’s basically set dressing.

This means there is seemingly not context for any of the events, and hardly any jeopardy. Didn’t they get relegated last season? Wouldn’t that mean serious financial pressures? Wouldn’t some players want to leave? Where are the new players? Didn’t they try and bring any in?

Its like they didn’t even think about the situation at all and just carried on, hoping nobody cares so they can just make a bland sitcom that just happens to have football as a backdrop.

So without any real context or dilemma to fuel the narrative, the show just meanders around a series of small scale, meaningless soap opera situations, none of which grab you.

Most of the characters have almost nothing to do. What worked so well in season one was that each character felt kind of integral to whole, here they are just sitting around in the background, being pulled out for a laugh.

But on top of all that, the writing is just worse this year. Not laughed once. It’s more saccharine than before without the bite. None of the jokes land. Episode two featured a bunch of references to long lost pop stars that would be over head of most people! ( also bothered me that Jamie Tartt would have any idea who Ted Danson or Julia Louis Dreyfus were! That’s bad writing)

Should I even bother continuing?

[Teng Ai Hui]

3 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Should I even bother continuing?

Probably not.  Episodes 3 & 4 seem to be filler episodes.  Ep 5 setup some personal conflict among the coaching staff, but it will probably be resolved quickly.

The players' salaries were mentioned briefly.  But, Rebecca no longer seems to care about the business aspects of the club.

[Heartofice]

6 hours ago, Teng Ai Hui said:

Probably not.  Episodes 3 & 4 seem to be filler episodes.  Ep 5 setup some personal conflict among the coaching staff, but it will probably be resolved quickly.

The players' salaries were mentioned briefly.  But, Rebecca no longer seems to care about the business aspects of the club.

Sounds bad, if you see eps 3 and 4 as filler episodes, when I’d say that was a good description of the first 2 as well

[Mark Antony]

Yeah season two isn’t hitting like season one did but maybe that’s cause the week to week format and that I binged season one in like a day. 

[Heartofice]

1 hour ago, Mark Antony said:

Yeah season two isn’t hitting like season one did but maybe that’s cause the week to week format and that I binged season one in like a day. 

No, I think it’s really not very good. I’ve waited for a few episodes to come out before starting this year.

What it’s highlighted to me was just how much of an achievement the first season was. Actually there was very little reason why it should have worked. I’d seen the original sketches and shorts on YouTube a few years ago and they were really pretty weak, with some super obvious jokes about a yank who doesn’t understand football. 
 

But the actual show didn’t rest on that one time joke, it was a lot more well crafted and carefully thought out. It had heart and Ted was a likeable and identifiable character. As a central focus he kind of worked, his journey was well plotted, there was an arc, he had strengths and weaknesses and you really got involved in his special qualities.

So far he is a non entity in season 2. He hasn’t done anything. I’m not even sure if anything of note has happened yet. Roy got a job on Sky Sports News. Wow. 
 

All the character and conflict has disappeared. The only kind of tension in the show is with the therapist, who is just utterly wooden, and the whole plot is completely uninteresting. 
 

Im not surprised this season is a dead duck, I bet they were surprised by the success of the first one and had to rush something out to follow it up. 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

I expected them to do something with financial challenges for the club due to their relegation or losing sponsors or pressure to fire Ted.  The show has been profoundly episodic this season.

[Slurktan]

2 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I expected them to do something with financial challenges for the club due to their relegation or losing sponsors or pressure to fire Ted.  The show has been profoundly episodic this season.

I could see them doing a plot where Rebecca would be forced to sell due to her mismanaging the finances all while the team is getting better due to Roy.

[Heartofice]

Forcing the side into selling players off and buying in new ones would also allow a bigger refresh of the whole show. They played it super safe instead and did the whole sitcom thing of never actually allowing characters to change or grow, just more of the same every year 

[Deedles]

Loved season 1. Genuinely loved it, but very disappointed with season 2. The Xmas episode was dire, and most of the others fillers. It never bore up to any in depth thought, but even superficially it’s not making sense anymore. I really hope it turns it around.

 

The only bits that landed for me were Roy related

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

I liked that episode.  I think my big problem with season 2 is that it is so very episodic.  I think they are going for “subtle” and instead it’s coming off as “random”.  

Of course there’s going to be tension between Roy and Jamie, that resolved too easily.

The Roy/Nate tension of course Roy only gives complements when they’re earned.  He’s honest to a fault.  That shouldn’t immediately make Nate’s insecurity vanish.

Of course Ted misses his son why is this just coming up now?

Rebecca has FOO (Family Of Origin) issues.  Why are we just learning about them?

Why do we care about Beard and Jane?

Too much random.

 

[Mexal]

I have zero issues with Season 2 and think it’s very good  This past episode was excellent.

[Heartofice]

Just saw the Christmas episode 

I’m speechless

that was just… GARBAGE

 

[Heartofice]

Ok actually I do have some thoughts outside of that

Yeah this was one of the worst things I ever seen. The writing this season has been mindless, directionless, overtly sentimental, lazy and hurried.. but this episode really tops it off. It really just boils down all the seasons issues into one singular episide.

Ok I get that Christmas episodes of any show veer towards sentimentality and sweetness.. but the good ones know how to give the viewer and emotional kick by adding tension and sadness in with the soppiness .

None of that here. The closest we got was Ted drinking a little whisky and watching tv… which was very quickly remedied by the fanciful idea of boss lady taking him on a trip round the poorer parts of West London giving out gifts.. as if that would happen.
Btw that bit really highlighted that there must be some Americans writing the show with no British consultants any more, the whole ‘mom, there’s two white people outside our door and they are smiling’ just doesn’t fit in a British show. In fact none of the ‘jokes’ seem aimed at, or make sense for British audiences, or within a British context. I mentioned the Ted Danson reference before, just sums it up. There is no authenticity in anything anyone says, none of it is coming out of a character, it’s more like what is the first thing a writer thinks of.

So anyway, what was the plot of this episode, because I can’t find it. The only drama was whether a young girl could find a dentist. Christ! What the hell. And the love actually moment?! WTF?! Embarrassing.

Otherwise there was a big party where nothing happened, there was no tension, no drama, just a bunch of people being very nice, everyone getting on swimmingly. Oh how enthralling.

I didn’t mind episode 3 so much, thought maybe I’d been harsh. But no , this was just awful. 
 

So 4 eps in and what is the plot of this season?!! Is anything happening?! Any football related stuff.. at all!!?

Argh, it’s just so lazy and insulting to its audience. That’s what really gets me. The first season actually managed to make people care about its characters, and was sweet and heartwarming. But they just thought ‘oh you like sweet and heartwarming huh! Well we’ll dial that up to 11 and your gonna fucking eat it and enjoy it!’

Im very angry. Roy Kent angry.

[Werthead]

I've just started this and am 7 episodes into Season 1.

I think it's pretty good so far, just staying on the right side of sentimental schmaltz. The actors are all excellent (I was surprised to learn that Roy's actor is actually primarily a writer and was only cast because he played Roy so well in the read-through) and I will happily pay money to see Tony Head turn up in anything and be an absolute shitheel. I also like that the long-haul format allows them to really make the grind of constant matches and wildly varying results come through, rather than just a quick honeymoon ending in which the American guy shows up and instantly saves the day.

There are a few glaring issues that feel like the British writers should have caught: shortbreads are never (well, rarely) called biscuits, The Independent is not owned by the same owner as The Sun (The Sun's nominally posher brother is The Times) and the football team feels bizarrely out of place as a Premiership team, which you'd expect to have more management layers and a much bigger staff, not to mention the absolutely insane amount of money involved. It feels like they should have made the football team a League One or Two team, or even the Championship, to make more sense. Granted, gritty realism and pedantic accuracy is not what the show is going for, but it feels like even in the show's own universe the team's high placing feels unconvincing.

[Mark Antony]

On 8/28/2021 at 2:39 PM, Mexal said:

I have zero issues with Season 2 and think it’s very good  This past episode was excellent.

The latest episode was easily the best of the season. Written by the actor who plays Roy Kent. The show is always at its best when it’s focusing on the actual sports side of things imo

[Heartofice]

Well the biggest inaccuracy of the show is that Richmond already has a football team. Non league Hampton & Richmond. But they don’t play in Richmond.

Really though, Richmond is too posh to ever sustain a football team, especially a premier league one. It’s down the road from Twickenham Stadium so it’s much more of a rugby kinda place. 
 

But then you wouldn’t get the nicey nicey shots of Richmond Green if the show relocated to somewhere realistic.

[Werthead]

One thing I wasn't expecting going in was for the classic fantasy novel A Wrinkle in Time to play a part in the serialised plot. That was random but entertaining (plus a cameo for Ender's Game).

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

An interesting analysis of how our expectations from Season 1 of “Ted Lasso” are being subverted in Season 2:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.gamespot.com/amp-articles/ted-lasso-season-2-isnt-in-a-slump-its-building-to-a-breakdown/1100-6495634/

[Heartofice]

5 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

An interesting analysis of how our expectations from Season 1 of “Ted Lasso” are being subverted in Season 2:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.gamespot.com/amp-articles/ted-lasso-season-2-isnt-in-a-slump-its-building-to-a-breakdown/1100-6495634/

Interesting idea. But trying to explain bad writing by implying it’s leading up to something a lot better is what I tend to do when I just refuse to believe something good has turned to shit. Nothing I’ve seen in the show this year suggests that there is anything deep or even planned going on. It all feels like ‘shit we need to write more episodes! What do we do now?!’

There was a moment in the Xmas episode where Ted looked depressed, but it was waved off within 3 minutes like it was nothing , because it didn’t fit with the safe feel good nature of the episode , and that highlights where writers are placing their priorities.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

7 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Interesting idea. But trying to explain bad writing by implying it’s leading up to something a lot better is what I tend to do when I just refuse to believe something good has turned to shit. Nothing I’ve seen in the show this year suggests that there is anything deep or even planned going on. It all feels like ‘shit we need to write more episodes! What do we do now?!’

There was a moment in the Xmas episode where Ted looked depressed, but it was waved off within 3 minutes like it was nothing , because it didn’t fit with the safe feel good nature of the episode , and that highlights where writers are placing their priorities.

The most recent episode was a marked improvement.  We’ll see.