By Lori Twichell
“There’s this person you just have to meet!” How many times have you heard this? Usually it’s with regards to dating, but I have also heard it applied to networking, business, and friendships. This time it was for…Ted Lasso??
Whenever I hear this, I always smile, nod, and listen to whatever descriptions or explanations come next. Internally though? Nope.
New relationships in my life are always approached with a healthy level of caution. At this age of my life I have learned to be careful and wise with who I let in and how much of myself, my family, and my world that I give.
But how does this apply to a television show?
Much like a new relationship, approaching a new television show for me is almost always handled with caution. After all, if I get into a relationship with this show and I start to like it, let alone love it, the network could at any time pull the plug. I could find out tomorrow that the show is no more. That makes me cautious about where and when I decide to become a fan and how much time I invest.
A Blind Date with Ted Lasso
So how did my relationship start with this show? Well, I had at least a dozen people tell me I needed to watch it. Most of them informed me that in real life, I was Ted, so I really should be watching it. This always made me pause. I’m a writer. I’ve created characters. I know how quickly things can go off the rails for fictional characters so hearing that I am one of them? As much as people wanted it to, that didn’t really give me immediate warm fuzzy vibes.
It wasn’t until one friend told me that he’d shifted his entire business regimen because he wanted to be more like Ted that I started to take notice. He told me that he loved the entire concept of the show and what Ted was about. Then he followed that up with “Hey Lori, you kinda are Ted Lasso. You might want to watch it.”
At this point I was still cautious, but I decided to give it a try. I think I finished the entire first season in an afternoon and I was definitely falling in love. Not with Ted or a character, but with the show itself. Yes, I am fully enamored with a television show but to be fair, this show deserves all that love and more.
The Lasso Effect
In the show, the Lasso Effect has a different meaning, but out here in real life I think it should be applied to the standards of quality this show has attained.
Here is what sets Ted Lasso apart from almost everything else on television right now: it teaches you things without beating you over the head with them. You watch the show and you are completely delighted by the storylines, the characters, the moments. And then somewhere in the middle of laughing or crying you realize you just got a life lesson about how to be kind in the face of bullying, or how to push through imposter syndrome, or what real leadership actually looks like in practice. The lesson was always inside the story. You never felt lectured. You felt entertained, and then you realized you had been changed a little bit without seeing it coming. That is extraordinarily hard to do. Almost nobody does it well.
The writing that makes that possible is beyond exceptional. The scripts alone should be a master class for anyone who believes they want to write for a living. There is not one single line in any episode of this program that is wasted. Even if you think it might be now, future episodes will hearken back to that line and a light bulb will go off. No line is wasted. Ever.
What that actually represents, from where I sit having worked across every stage of production, is a room full of people who all understood the mission. No wasted line means the writers knew exactly what they were building. But it also means the directors honored it, the actors trusted it, and the editors protected it all the way through post. That level of unified intentionality across every department is genuinely rare. Most productions have talented people. Far fewer have everyone pulling in exactly the same direction. Ted Lasso did. And you can feel it in every frame.
It is not only the writing either. Every part of this show from casting to acting to music to set design and costuming operates at the highest level of quality. This program is now the standard I would hope to achieve with anything I create or help bring to an audience.
Are We Breaking Up?
I am not sure if we are winding down to an end of this relationship. Maybe it was only meant to be a short summer fling. If it was, then I am okay with that because I believe I will be coming out on the other side of it a better person. More than that, a better professional. The show has taught me a great deal about how to see and treat others, what to look for in the work, and what the highest standard of craft actually feels like when every single person in the room is committed to it.
The season three finale is set to air next week. If the show should go on after season three I am willing to stay on the ride and see where they take us. There is a lot of criticism, speculation, and even some really ugly theories happening out there. I do not read those. I choose not to. You see, I am a Ted Lasso fan and right now this is my favorite television program. I choose to be curious, not judgmental.
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