Hello dear friends,
I’m back from my wedding break. Marriage is great, highly recommend.
Now on to the news of the day: Ted Lasso finished its third season yesterday. The show has been a hit since season one, in part because it was so surprising. It took every classic sitcom trope and turned them on their heads and, perhaps most surprisingly, was based on a skit Jason Sudeikis did in like 2013 to promote the Premier League coming to NBC sports. At the end of season 1, Sudeikis’ character, Ted Lasso, says something along the lines of “Next season we’ll get promoted and then we’ll win it all.” Setting up what many predicted would be a three season arc.
Season two neatly followed that arc and was incredibly emotional and lovely and in the end, the coach who didn’t care about winning won and was promoted back into the Premier League. After the end of both seasons, I stated, publicly and often, that I wanted the show to end after three seasons. This was in response to the number of shows I’ve seen either go on too long or get cancelled too soon. I thought with such a hit like this, let’s do three perfect seasons and end it. Don’t leave season three on a cliffhanger and decide not to continue and don’t drag it out until the public, the writers, and the actors are sick of it.
But season three has been such a revelation, I’m retracting those many statements and imploring that the show continue. Apple has not confirmed (and hopefully decided) whether or not this is the final season, so I think there’s a window here to tell them to continue. Since streaming took over the world, sitcoms have died. Comedies on streaming platforms have historically been too short and story driven to be considered sitcoms. But Ted Lasso has shown us that it doesn’t have to be that way. This season featured an absolute plethora of play. Whether it be the Diamond Dogs goofing around or the team spending way too long discussing an article of speech, the writers took time to just be silly and funny. Something that has been missing in so much of TV.
I don’t want to belabor this point to much, just to say, think about your favorite moments from TV. Obviously, there are story defining moments like Jim and Pam’s wedding or when Ross and Rachel finally got together (I think, I don’t really like friends). But my favorite moments are the little ones, like when Stanley is having a heart attack and Michael is trying to revive him or all the times Tobias Funke makes unconscious innuendos like saying he “blue himself” when talking about painting himself blue. Good comedy can’t just be Leslie Knope and Ben Wyatt getting together, it also has to be a whole episode devoted to “Treat yourself” so that we, the viewers, can see Ben Wyatt buy and wear a Batman costume around his house.
If you, like me, believe(d) in the sanctity of the three season Ted Lasso, I implore you to give it a second thought. Believe instead in the sanctity of the sitcom and believe that Ted can do for sitcoms what he did for the greyhounds.