A group of men running a professional athletic team gather around to talk about women. Right off the top, that doesn’t seem like it’ll be a sensitive, respectful scene. But these are the Diamond Dogs, and this is Ted Lasso. Forget what you’d expect.
The Apple+ comedy, which is a reason to actually look into subscribing to Apple+, offers us a wide variety of male characters in situations that place them under pressure. And with very few exceptions, they are rising to the occasions beautifully and in ways that we could be proud to emulate.
The premise of Lasso is that a high school football coach from Kansas with no prior knowledge of soccer is brought to England to be the head coach of AFC Richmond, a soccer (sorry, football) club and interacts with characters we are led to believe on first sight will conform to types: There’s the egotistical star player (Phil Dunston), the aging captain (Brett Goldstein), the team owner’s (Hannah Waddingham) quivering lackey (Jeremy Swift) and the self-doubting clubhouse attendant (Nick Mohammed), among others.
Let’s begin with Ted himself. As created and played by Jason Sudeikis, Ted would seem on paper to be the classic fish-out-of-water and something of a buffoon. He is anything but. Perhaps the best scene in the series so far (at least one more season is on the way) illustrates exactly what he’s about.
Key to the men on Ted Lasso is how they act toward women. And in the scene where Ted meets his boss’ ex-husband Rupert (Anthony Head) in a pub and plays a game of darts is the clearest view into his psyche as we are likely to see, even more than when he’s having therapy sessions to deal with panic attacks.
Having gone through a bitter divorce, Rebecca (Waddingham) and Rupert clearly loathe each other but it’s also obvious that Rupert wants to inflict pain upon his ex-wife. So having thrown sacrificed his ownership stake in the team as part of the divorce, he finances his new girlfriend to a minority stake in Richmond. That’s when Ted challenges Rupert to a game of darts.
Rupert takes the bait and agrees that if Ted wins Rupert will never come to sit in the owners’ box at a game, something Rebecca would find excruciating.
Ted needs to make a series of difficult shots to win, and begins a monologue that starts him saying, “Guys have been underestimating me my entire life.” He tells a story about noticing a Walt Whitman quote painted on a wall while driving his young son (back in Kansas, and it’s tearing him up), to school: “Be curious, not judgmental,” and how that spoke to him. The people underestimating Ted, he decided, weren’t curious. “Because if they were curious they would have asked questions. Questions like, ‘Have you played a lot of darts, Ted?’” He hits all his shots and beats Rupert at the game.
He defended his friend but not because she needed defending. It was because she stood for a principle that Ted himself understood all too well.
The example of “one of life’s most complicated shapes: the love triangle” gives us insight into two other of the strongest male characters, Jamie Tartt (Dunston) and the magnificent Roy Kent (Goldstein), in their romantic entanglements with the team’s marketing manager Keeley Jones (Juno Temple).
At the funeral for Rebecca’s father, Jamie, who used to date Keeley and has recently returned to the team, approaches Keeley to tell her that he came back partially for her, because she made him realize the man he could be and is now trying to become. He tells her he still loves her. That’s more self-awareness than we probably expected from Jamie.
Within seconds Roy, who has been teasing Keeley to the point of rage the whole day of the funeral, walks over to tell her that he’s sorry, that death upsets him and that is how he copes. He also says that he loves her.
The respect and understanding both men show Keeley is again unexpected from two rough footballers in what can be a very toxic culture.
Everyone shows up at the funeral out of respect for Rebecca, who is obviously moved by the gesture. Even when she breaks up with her current lover Sam Obisanya (Toheeb Jimoh), one of the team’s best players and easily 20 years younger than she, Sam accepts her reasoning even as his heart is being broken.
Roy has a special loving relationship with his six-year-old niece Phoebe (Elodie Blomfield) and does yoga regularly with a group of women in their sixties. Even if he regularly drops the F bomb in Phoebe’s earshot, he respects the people he knows. You wouldn’t want Roy to see you treat anyone he cares about badly.
Coach Beard (Brendan Hunt) is the existential thinker of the group and the moral compass of the team. It’s not Ted who tells people when they’re stepping out of line; it’s Beard. He even calls out Ted when he feels his boss’ focus is too heavily weighted toward creating a happy group and not enough about winning. Their bond is strong enough that he can speak freely, and Ted takes it to heart.
When Ted and Beard get together with Leslie Higgins (Swift) and until very recently Nate (Mohammed) to discuss emotional or relationship-related problems they call themselves the Diamond Dogs. They fake howl and discuss issues of the heart and the soul, and it’s possible that the scene where Roy showed up to ask for advice about his relationship with Keeley was award-worthy all by itself.
They’re never not masculine and they’re rarely unkind.
We can learn a lot about how to navigate being a man from Ted Lasso. Fantasy? Sure. But doesn’t fantasy help us move in a more idealistic direction? How can you get better if you haven’t pictured what “better” is?
The Diamond Dogs are a pretty inclusive club. It would be an honor to join.
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Image Brenden Hunt
