These past couple of weeks I was looking for a new show because we are nearing the end of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and finished the last episode of Abbott Elementary season 2. My family kept talking about how good Ted Lasso was, and frankly I didn’t know really anything about the show other than people talking about how good it was and that it won a lot of awards, so I thought, This show must be really good. We ended up watching the first three episodes in one evening because it was that good.
If you haven’t seen the show yet, it is about a football coach from America who has a very optimistic nature but then gets recruited to go to coach football in England and people wonder, What is this guy and his cheery disposition doing thousands of miles across the Atlantic, especially because he doesn’t know anything about football in the United Kingdom, which is soccer here in America (they call Ted a “wanker” throughout the season, and at the beginning not in a good way.) Rebecca and her assistant, Higgins, are determined to bring down Ted and the football team. Rebecca wants to do this to get back at her cheating lying ex-husband Rupert, who Higgins let sleep with other women behind Rebecca’s back and who really treasured the football team. However, Ted has a cheery optimistic nature that ends up being quite contagious even if his football team doesn’t warm up to it well in the beginning. For the team they are really sick of losing, and they have an egotistic player on the team named Jamie, who is only focused on his own success and not about the team’s success. And then we’ve got the super hot Roy Kent (played by Brett Goldstein), who harbors a lot of anger issues but is dedicated to leading the team. Ted Lasso does what he can to encourage each of the team members, including the team assistant Nathan, or “Nate,” who gets bullied and ostracized by the soccer team. Ted and Coach Beard embrace Nate, who ends up providing a lot of moral support for the team and ends up coming out of his shell to become a more confident person. Roy even gets the other boys to stop picking on Nate, without Ted intervening. Ted doesn’t want to intervene because he believes that Roy has the potential to stop the bullying. Honestly, Ted reminded me of this chapter in The Lotus Sutra called Bodhisattva Never Disparaging. In this chapter this person named Bodhisattva Never Disparaging seeks to lead people to enlightenment by telling them they have a Buddha nature, which is our inherent potential to be wise, courageous and compassionate and to overcome any challenge that comes our way. The people in his environment throw sticks and stones at him and call him names whenever he tells them they have a Buddha nature and bows in respect to them, but while making sure to keep himself at a distance he continues to tell them that he would never look down on them because they are respect-worthy Buddhas. Ted Lasso reminds me of Bodhisattva Never Disparaging because no matter how down on themselves the people on the football team are, Ted never gives up on them and encourages them to believe in themselves. Honestly, I was surprised that Jason Sudeikis was at first going to make Ted Lasso a mean guy because Ted is so nice, but then I remembered that a lot of sports dramas I see the coach is serious and often harsh to the players in order to toughen them up, but I’m so glad the writers made Ted a nice guy because the political climate was divisive and there was (and still is) already so much anger in the world that it helps to have a character who is kind and gives people hope.
I really like though how the show is addressing the importance of seeking help for mental health. Ted is far away from his family, but it’s because his wife wanted emotional space from him. He tries to brush it off with optimism, but even he finds out that when you feel sad or worried, there is no shame in addressing it and being honest about it. Ted’s wife and son travel from America to visit Ted in England, but then he finds his wife crying and she admits that she isn’t happy in her marriage with Ted, and so she leaves him. This takes a serious toll on his mental health and he tries to come into the office and stay optimistic about it, but Nate and Coach Beard understand on a deeper level that Ted is suffering because his wife divorced him, and they do their best to support him through this tough time. Ted ends up having a severe panic attack because of the emotional toll his divorce from his wife has taken on him, and Rebecca finds him suffering from a panic attack and helps him. This was really touching because it showed me that mental health is a serious thing and it’s not something you can just tough out on your own, and it really does help to have friends who support you. I have definitely been in that place where I try to tough out the depression through smiling or not talking about my pain, but then I end up harboring a lot of my own anger and resentment inside and then when it explodes I feel worse about myself because I took out my anger on people who didn’t deserve it. I think this is why seeking professional help was so crucial because my therapist gave me a new way of looking at stressful situations and I found new healthier coping mechanisms for dealing with stress. I think especially it was helpful to visit therapy because the COVID-19 pandemic was stressful and traumatic for so many people, and I remember coming out of quarantine and having to face my depression and loneliness head-on. Depression has been a huge part of my life and I have gone through so many ups and downs with it, but watching shows like Ted Lasso that address mental health reminds me that I’m not alone and that a lot of people deal with mental illness even if they don’t talk about it. There is a really cool campaign that the Ad Council has done about talking about mental health, and there is one ad where teens are bombarded by messages of toxic positivity on their phones and by their family and peers, who tell them things like, “Why are you depressed? You have a roof over your head?” or “Men don’t cry.” or “Just think positive thoughts.” And then it showed these teens’ friends sending them empathetic supportive messages like, “Do you want to talk about it?” or “I’m always here to talk” rather than brushing over their feelings. As someone who has been in that camp of “just think positive” I have learned the hard way that you can’t just brush over someone’s feelings like that and addressing mental health isn’t as simple as “just think happy thoughts.” In fact, in my junior year of college I kept a journal with a message “Think Happy Thoughts” emblazoned across the cover with sunshine and butterflies painted on it. Anything but. The journal was filled with my deepest insecurities, anxieties and darkest thoughts. It contained depression, suicide, pain, anger, resentment but also gratitude, love, and some positivity. I wasn’t about to gloss over my suffering when I wrote that journal, because journaling was one of the few ways I felt comfortable talking about my pain because I didn’t think that others around me would understand what I was going through. I worried about being a burden on others, but I think that’s why I love my Buddhist activities because I get to support other youth who struggle with not just mental health but problems in general. That’s not to say that my mental health issues are gone; I still very much learned from this experience that there is no one size fits all magic cure for depression, anxiety, PTSD and other mental illnesses, and everyone’s experience with their mental health is different. But what Ted Lasso taught me is the importance of connection and knowing you have someone to talk to even if it’s uncomfortable to be vulnerable and honest with the person about what you’re going through. Ted is vulnerable and that takes courage because we are still living in a society where people still have to overcome a lot of fear, judgment and shame around talking about mental health. And I love how he encourages his team to be vulnerable as well, especially as young men, being vulnerable is such a valuable thing. I remember when I watched Blackish and in the next to last episode Junior, Pops and Dre go on a camping trip because Junior just broke up with his girlfriend, Olivia, and is still dealing with the heartbreak. Dre and Pops tell him to “man up” but Junior is sick of them telling him to man up because he is human and doesn’t need to be strong all the time. This is especially important because Pops and Dre didn’t get to be honest about their feelings growing up so it makes them uncomfortable at first that Junior is open and honest about how much pain he is in over breaking up with Olivia. This episode showed me the value of vulnerability.
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