San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Compassion, belief, love: Just mere stories?
Spoiler alert: Ted Lasso fans who are not deep into season two may want to read this later.
There is a scene in the first season of the hit show “Ted Lasso” when the endearing football coach from the American heartland, confused about all things British, asks “How many countries are in this country?”
And when he learns there are four, he muses, “Kind of like America these days.”
What I have loved about “Ted Lasso” is its mix of unifying humor and optimism against the fractious backdrop of these times and our lives. Lasso star and creator Jason Sudeikis and company have crafted an intensely human and vulnerable story, dropping pop culture and literary nuggets along the way: A riff on former hoops star Allen Iverson’s “practice” rant, a quick shot of James Hollis’ “The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning in Midlife,” name-dropping and beat-boxing Biz Markie, deftly citing Anne Lamott’s “Bird by Bird,” highlighting Brené Brown. It’s serious fun.
It’s also a profound cultural critique. For as much joy as Lasso has delivered to me on Friday nights, it has also left a lingering sadness because it is set against the swirling backdrop of Trumpism and the very real rejection in much of America of everything that makes Lasso, an American hero, so endearing. Why can’t we all live and treat one another like this?
There is the story, and then there is the meaning. Season two is not really about a struggling football club finding its way or yet another American protagonist bumbling about England à la Clark Griswold, it is the story of fathers and the impressions they make long after their children become adults.
Let us count the ways: Lasso must confront his father’s suicide, and his separation from his son, who lives in Kansas while his football coach father leads a soccer team in England; former star player-turned-assistant coach Roy Kent has no father figure but is a foul-mouthed loving father figure to his niece, Phoebe; star player Jamie Tartt must confront his abusive and unrelenting father, for whom winning (or passing the ball) is never enough; fellow teammate and emerging star, Sam Obisanya, has a loving father, but one with unrelenting ethical and political expectations; the team’s owner, Rebecca Welton, hates her own late father for an affair she witnessed as a teenager, and she also must come to terms with how her ex-husband, the womanizing Rupert Mannion, refused to have children with her, only then to become a father after their divorce; assistant coach Nathan Shelley (alas, “wonder kid” not “wunderkind”) is dwarfed and tortured by his father’s inattention and indifference.
Even Iverson, so joyfully invoked in the first season, is the son of a single mother.
It’s been argued parents can pass trauma on to their children — even for generations — and the heroic arc for Lasso is how he comes to terms with the trauma of his father’s suicide, just as he helps others come to terms with the failures of their own fathers (or the pressures that can come with the best of intentions). As Lasso says, his father “quit,” so no wonder he overcompensates by filling his players with belief, showering praise, remembering birthdays, dancing in the locker room — serving as a father figure without the pressures of actually being their father.
He is a coach who doesn’t care about winning (or knows anything about soccer), but by uplifting others, and seeing their best, he wins. It is the “Lasso way.” Why should this be a fairy tale? Why can’t this be real life? Why shouldn’t we all make like Lasso and hang a crooked, handmade “Believe” sign in our homes and offices?
What makes Lasso a hero is his emotional vulnerability: The panic attack before a big game, the willingness to sing — at first alone — from the pews at Rebecca’s father’s funeral, carrying
Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” when Rebecca’s powerful voice falters. Moments like these make him stronger. Honesty and empathy are his superpowers. He’s too loving and earnest to ever be Rickrolled.
As my wife and I watched “Ted Lasso” this summer and early fall, I also found myself turning to another heroic English tale: “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.”
I was an English major in college — and my father is a retired English professor — and I reconnected with the alliterative epic poem, dating back to the 14th century, written anonymously, in anticipation of watching the movie adaptation, “The Green Knight.” But here, I must admit, I have so far failed in my quest to see the film. While I have re-read the text, in a world of kids, school, work, tennis lessons, “Ted Lasso,” soccer practice and political mask fights, I just can’t seem to find two hours to watch the film. That said, the trailer is so overwrought, I’m preparing for disappointment.
But again, in the written text, we have a hero in Sir Gawain, profoundly different from the modern-day Lasso, but one that ultimately carries the scar of failure for his betterment. In this story, Gawain must honor a yuletide pledge he has made. Having chopped off the Green Knight’s head at Christmastime — only to see the mysterious knight retrieve it — Gawain must meet the Green Knight one year hence for a return blow, certain death.
Gawain meets his fate, and survives, but he fails because he places his faith in a mythical green belt that he believes will protect him from the Green
Knight’s blow. It doesn’t. He leaves his encounter with the Green Knight with a scar on his neck as a reminder that faith should reside not in a sash but in God. It is a painful lesson to learn for a character so pious.
Ted Lasso is, of course, a white man. And the Arthurian “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” has traditionally featured a white man as its hero (although actor Dev Patel, who plays Sir Gawain in “The Green Knight” is of Indian descent), and I am acutely aware of the limitations of this. That white men, whether in the 14th century or now, have long been free to go on journeys that others — women, people of color, LGBTQ+ — are often denied or excluded from.
And that’s one reason why in this prolonged COVID-19 moment, one in which Texas’ demographics are rapidly diversifying, and the murder of George Floyd has awakened much of this nation, when many women are marching for control of their bodies and transgender youth are under political threat, I feel compelled to give a shoutout to a more diverse set of heroes and heroines: Luke Cage, a bulletproof Black man in Harlem saving the day with super strength and a big heart (who also confronts father issues); the tortured and brilliant character of Beth Harmon in “The Queen’s Gambit,” who must confront the loss of her mother and achieves independence and joy in an oppressive male world (and game); the irascible and creative Ivy and Bean, a brave duo who speak so honestly about the pitfalls of childhood and the power of imagination (my kids love this series of children’s books).
Each character is a hero who has recently captured my imagination and heart. But perhaps most striking about Sir Gawain and Lasso are the qualities that make them heroic for all, at any time, and yet seem to be absent in much of our modern world, particularly among many white men in the political arena. After all, Sir Gawain sets forth on his adventure as a hero very much embracing the “Lasso way.”
As James Winny translates: Gawain is respected and admired because (emphasis added) of his “generosity and love of fellowmen above all; / His purity and courtesy were never lacking, / And surpassing the others, compassion.”
In other words, in an age when strength is often flexed by the size of one’s truck, or the number of guns one carries in public, or the volume of one’s vitriolic social media feed, true heroism is rooted in compassion, love and generosity.
This is the connection I have felt between “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” and “Ted Lasso,” and it’s one that has stirred an intense sadness in my own soul because as Lasso says, America is very much divided into something like four countries these days; more often than not, perceived political divisions appear to trample the bonds of compassion and generosity.
Our timelines and energies are absorbed by the likes of characters such as the hairstylist Ashley Rocks dogging Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff at the grocery store, and then posting mindless drivel on Instagram, for the great sin of Wolff wanting people to wear masks and get vaccinated to save lives. And some people find this inspiring.
And so we have millions of Americans falsely believing a presidential election was stolen and state lawmakers responding to the Big Lie of voter fraud with very real voter suppression. Just as large swaths of Americans take inspiration from a decidedly anti-heroic former president, a man who gropes women, belittles opponents, has his own father issues, revels in anger, and lies and lies and lies. Why not expect better? Why does it have to be this way? Those are nonpartisan questions.
Heroes are exceptional, not because they possess traits the rest of us lack, but because they inspire those traits to come forward in each of us. One might wonder, what traits define Trumpism?
In “Ted Lasso” and “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” — but especially Lasso — the virtues of compassion, belief and love are what bring order and a sense of being and meaning to a divided, hostile and fractious world. These superpowers reside in each of us and are in desperate need. Believe.