TED LASSO - S2 - EP 10 - The Deserted (Patreon)

Reminder! Like I said last time, I know people involved with the very heart of making this show so I’m crazy biased / disregard my take / yada yada yada. I just mostly want us to have a space to talk about this show each week and hear what y’all think. Cool? Cool!

CW: Discussions of Suicide and Traumatic Events.

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So. As these episodes get into heavier (and more personal) topics they’re going to take me longer to do. Not because I’m spending more time (I usually spent six to eight hours on these anyway) it’s just that I need to take breaks otherwise when getting into heavy stuff otherwise is overwhelming overload. I hope that’s okay.

As always, let’s subject by subject

Funerals - “Funerals are weird aren’t they?” Keeley asks the question here, but the truth is they are weird in a way that we all have a different personal relationship to (especially within different cultures). Some funerals are stoic, reserved affairs. Some feature intense sobs and deep mourning. Some are sparsely attended. Some have people coming from all over. Some are hippy dippy. Some are just plain weird. And some people don’t really know how they feel about funerals because they haven’t gone to many or really even lost anyone close. It’s weird because I feel like I grew up going to a lot of them, even when I was young. There’s even a dark joke in Boston Irish Catholicism that the obituary section is called “The Irish Sports page” (this also goes back to Ireland proper). My mom even tells this story about her own mother and her friend going through the paper and highlighting the wakes they would be attending that week. There’s probably a whole essay to write about the psychology of all this, particularly the instinct for dark joking within a culture that’s filled with a lot of alcoholism and quiet suffering. I don’t know. I just feel like I’ve already gone to enough funerals for a lifetime. But I know how many more there will be. Which makes it weird when I meet those people who haven’t been to many. It’s just hard for me to imagine. But I can at least imagine how it could feel jarring if you had to suddenly deal with it for the first time in your young adult life.

I thought about this as I watched the way these characters dealt with it in Ted Lasso. After all, these are mostly young athletes in their early 20’s. Many of them are the kinds of people who never even brought dress shoes. It’s as if they’re still operating on a kind of innate teenage belief that everything will be young and great forever. But hey, even grumpy old Roy Kent is making jokes and being inappropriate, too. Honestly, I could imagine people bristling at the first half of this episode. We find out Rebecca’s dad died at the top and it’s like everyone keeps acting a silly fool. Heck, even I was like “Huh, I still don’t know how Rebecca felt about her dad.” But, of course, to stick with the common theme of this season: “they’re gonna get to it.” And when the reasons why everyone has been uncomfortable and displacing their feelings with jokes becomes clear, then everything else comes spilling out. And of course, that everything else is complex, thoughtful, and heartbreaking.

A Matter of Execution - But I’m going to start with a maybe criticism, which probably isn’t even a criticism. It’s more a discussion of technique / story philosophy that I think gets into a tricky conversation about function. Because there are certain types of narrative executions that get lots of attention from the audience because they are rather noticeable. It will be things like “hey, this entire episode or sequence is done in one long beautiful shot!” The aim of this is often to call attention to this fact and see the feat being accomplished. But I do understand it creates a positive cerebral reaction in a way, often where one thinks: “oh that is mastery!” Or “they are in such control!” Because you see the craft. But as I’ve often argued, I’m not always sure that’s the thing you want the audience to feel over the core emotion of the scene itself. And when it comes to writing? I honestly feel the same way about cross-cutting between scenes of impactful dialogue.

Because it brings attention to the cerebral, interlocking nature of the writing, which brings you into artifice first of foremost. Instead of being able to sink into the scene with Rebecca OR Ted’s emotions in the scene, you instead feel like you are getting pulled one way then the other. And I honestly think it confuses the emotional experience by directly equating the nature of their two very different experiences. Yes, I honestly think it’s more emotionally impactful to separate them and then let the audience draw the parallel. I mean, I don’t think it’s an accident that I had to go back and rewatch the scene to catch the important details. Just as I don’t think it’s an accident that the most impactful part of the entire sequence is the last half of Ted’s scene where it lets you just be with him and Sharon as they go into his happy memory. To emote alongside it, you have to be there. You can’t be ping-pong-ed about.

As I always say, if it actually worked better, we would do this all the time, no? Every scene would just be cut together with others, rocketing about. But there really is a core reason we don’t do that, no matter how appealing the cerebral alternative might be. And I think that’s represented in how often the show, and even the rest of the episode, goes for the subtle emotional connection instead of the move that calls attention to artifice. Because when I scanned twitter and saw people talking about the scene? They weren’t talking about the content of what the two of them were saying and how powerful it was, they were only talking about the construction itself. But even then - that doesn’t mean the sequence does not NOT work either. Ultimately, I’m just talking about approaches and what I argue you gain and lose.

Keeley - While the majority of the episode is taken up by Rebecca and Ted’s respective plots, one thing that really hit me was how much I really liked seeing Keeley feeling out of sorts. Because the funeral is clearly freaking her out. For someone who knows how to be sociable and game the systems and be a good friend, death feels like something she hasn’t quite dealt with before? At least not head on. I mean, she’s spent her life as a party girl, “famous for being famous,” and shagging 20 year old footballers. And all that stuff is the mark of endless youth. But part of the reason she fell in love with Roy was here realizing she can’t keep going on that merry go round. So of course the idea of attending a funeral starts making her feel itchy. She clearly wants to talk about it, but Roy starts cracking jokes because he’s looking for distractions from death at the moment (for reasons that will be clear in a bit).

So Keeley takes a cue and finds distractions, too. First by trying to be the perfect friend to Rebecca on this terrible day, all before she runs off the second she sees Sassy (that beat is so well done). But all of this is set-up for two key moments that come near the end. The first is when Jamie comes up to her, now understanding that life is short and he has to declare how he still feels about her. On one hand, it’s honest and vulnerable. But it’s still all about making Jamie feel better. And it’s the kind of thing that overloads her (particularly on a day like this). And then literally a second after that, Roy comes over and apologizes because the funeral reminds him of losing his grandpa at an early age and how he wishes he always just had one more day with him. Where other shows would probably start playing up “the love triangle” dramatic tricks, I love how little interest this show seems to have in that. It’s more about putting you in Keeley’s shoes and feeling overwhelmed in these messy moments, especially noting how the little things can stack up. In the end, all she needed right now was what she needed from the very start of the episode… She needed a hug.

Rebecca - There’s something about watching Rebecca wake up in her childhood room that really strikes me, if only because of how much the episode is about her relationship with her mother (and by extension, both of their relationships with her dad). But when Rebecca presses about why her mom kept it the room that way, her mom says “it reminds me of when we were close” and oof. Because here’s the thing. I can’t remember where I read it, but it was about how a lot of parents “like to remember the version where they had the most power over you.” While sometimes this is a ripe characterization of outright abusive relationships. Sometimes it’s more subtle, or even innocent in its aims. Here in the show, we see the infantilizing nature behind a lot of it. Even in the way she calls her the pet nickname of Sausage. It’s a way of staying in the charming, carefree past and not addressing what’s in the present… Like how they both seem to be non-reacting to her father’s death.

Then comes the big spill. How did Rebecca really feel about her father? Oh, she hated him. Mostly because she once discovered him cheating in a hugely traumatic moment and yet her dad never even acknowledged it. And it was something she had to keep inside all these years because she felt like she couldn’t tell her mom. The utter weight of that secret just sat there in silence all that time. And family secrets like this can be so, so brutal. Because the secret always takes up space anyway, and becomes suffocating in ways that are never being dealt with. To wit, when Rebecca tells her it’s followed by an even bigger blow… Her mom knew.  Of course she knew.  Cue Rebecca’s understandable response: “Well, then I hate you, too.” You wholly feel every bit of it. Because it means that Rebecca carried that burden of silence for nothing. They could have talked about it. She could have come to some kind of understanding of each other in this tough situation. But instead, it all sat unaddressed and so it haunted them. And now? Turns out her mother is glad to be hated. Because it means Rebecca at least feels something toward. And whatever resolution they go on to find the rest of the day (which we’ll get to it in a second), they have at least finally hit that point of honesty.

Concurrently to all this, the beans about Sam are spilled to her close friends and family. Everyone’s tickled by it. But it’s also this very act that also inspires Rebecca to break it off. Why do that? Well, because they can’t be a secret anymore (note: the learned behavior from how she grew up). Now is the moment it all becomes real. And Rebecca very honestly admits that the entire prospect of them moving forward just terrifies her and “she has to go figure out why.” What’s perhaps fascinating about this is how much the rest of the episode informs us as to why. The story of her father. The interactions with Rupert. The simple fact that she’s never lived an open, vulnerable life before (at least not that we’ve seen). Rebecca instead comes from a beautiful little dolls house where all the things that were vulnerable were hushed and secreted away. And in the end, it’s not going to be a thing she “figures out.” Like most therapeutic actions, it’s going to be a wound she has to heal.

Ted - Ted’s day begins as I imagine that many of his do: he sings along to a happy song as he gets ready - but then his hand cramps and the panic attack strikes. We get a quick flash of images: The army man. His son. The dart board hitting a “barbecue sauce” bullseye, which invokes how he played every Sunday with his dad). It’s all the internal feelings of him being a dad who was not there for his son, which ties into the trauma of his own dad not being there for him. Thus, he calls Sharon. And just like Rebecca, Ted admits that he hates his father for what he did. And when he has to explain why. He immediately says: “because he quit.”

*Deep breath* So first off, it’s really hard for me to write about this because it requires going back to the well of suicidal thoughts. But in the end, it’s also important to talk about. And second off, let’s be up front about the parameters of the issue: suicide is not quitting. The phrase implies that we’re all playing the same universal game and there are people who quit because they just can’t hack it or something. No. The suicidal instinct comes from the fact that your survival instinct gets flipped like a damn switch. You know, that little thing makes you fight to live and feel terrified of death? Instead it’s the constant feeling of wanting to die. In fact, it would be GREAT to be dead right now. To not have to do life. I know people joke so often about the “I don’t even want to be around anymore” from I Think You Should Leave. But yeah. It can be like that. Or much worse. And the day to day pain of getting up every day and having to live in a world where you feel that way can feel unbearable. Almostly like you’re rolling for psychic damage at every second. I know that sounds silly, but I’ll through every dumb simile / metaphor / reference at it because I just want the notion to click.

Because it’s not that these people who struggle with suicide often don’t have things to live for. Often we do. It’s that the knowledge that we would hurt and leave behind people only makes it all the harder to deal with the basic physical suicidal feeling that we can’t help but have. Yet, you keep putting one foot in front of the other best you can. You get good days and bad days. Good periods and bad periods. And even then it’s not an excuse to prevent you from living a life, nor does it absolve feelings of guilt. It’s just a really, really, really hard weight to carry around and something that a lot of people will (thankfully) never get to know. But I also know that none of this takes away from the damage that suicide can do to loved ones. Of course not. It can create massive, aching feelings of guilt and regret and desertion and so much more.

All of which comes out in Ted’s recounting of his loss. But it’s actually in Sharon’s asking for a good memory that we understand the total shape of his feelings. Because the Johnny Tremaine story evokes the image of a father who really, truly cared. To some, they might see that as the story of a man who would not kill himself. But one has so little to do with the other. As Ted says: “He was a good dad. And I don’t think he knew that.” Some part of his dad probably knew, or tried to be. But it was still something he couldn’t internalize in a way where it made it louder than the negative voices that clearly haunted him. Here, we see what Ted really took out of it. How much he wishes he could have told him. Particularly his phrasing: “And I knew right then and there I was not gonna let anyone get by me if they might be hurting inside.” And thus, the empathetic Ted we know today was forged. But also in the here and now, Ted’s finally coming to grips with the limits of that approach (particularly when it mutates into a kind of pathological people pleasing, where you feel awful if you are somehow less than and also don’t take care of yourself). But he’s coming to see the architecture of the way this old wound is creating new ones in his life right now. Because he’s at the real start of one of the most important journeys of his life. A space where he’s going to become a more whole and balanced person.

Even in the episode’s final act, Ted has to be comfortable being late for a funeral. Which is actually a really hard thing that compounds a panic attack. Because it’s that tough feeling where you feel like you can’t show up for people because you are literally slumped over and unable to breathe (and note that him “not being there” is already the trigger in question). This is such a real thing. Heck, a few weeks ago I had to miss one of my best friends' birthdays because I was having panic attacks. I didn’t even make it late. And it makes you feel like absolute shit on top of everything. But here, Ted manages to get his composure. He shows up and even sings when the moment needs it. But the real moment of support comes just a beat later. Because right when he’s talking to Rebecca, Ted uses the lesson Sharon just taught him. Ted invokes a happy memory that he had of Rebecca’s father the one time he met him and he was doing a dance from Singing In The Rain. It’s a silly thing, but a real moment of warmth that reminds Rebecca of something she had forgotten. What I love is that this helps show that the real thing about therapy is not that it magically fixes you, it just gives you tools that can start employing for yourself and for others in turny. And in that, you realize how much taking care of yourself IS one in the same with taking care of others.

Rick Astley - Of all the things to imagine in this episode, I did not expect a lot of attention to be paid to Rick Astley’s seminal classic “Never Going To Give You Up.” But one of the things I love about the choice (besides the obvious) is that it provides a kind of prism to look at the different ways that everyone’s dealing with their emotions. For Rebecca’s mom it feels like a daily mantra, as if singing to herself (but also her not being able to give up on her husband). Beard and Jane can’t give each other up in a toxic way. Jamie can’t give up his feelings for Keeley.  Roy and Keeley can’t give each other up but have learned healthy ways to heal. Meanwhile Rebecca feels like she HAS to give up Sam, even if Sam will wait because he doesn’t want to give her up in turn. But it’s really Ted’s struggle that puts the negative / positive nature of the song in perspective.. Because, like the lyrics imply, it’s about the feelings of not wanting to be deserted. Heck, at the heart of all their worries is how they’ve been deserted at different times in the past. Events which cast long shadows in all their lives. But they’ve all shown up for each other in the here and now. Even if some of them may be a little late, or need a pair of pink fluffy shoes, or even finally let out decades of built up trauma in a moment of truth, the way we “be there” for people may just look a little different than we thought.

But it’s no less welcome

RANDOM THOUGHTS / BEST JOKES

-Yeah, that was also Hot Priest’s church.

-Nate: “I’d be reincarnated as a tiger and ravage anyone who ever looked at me wrong.” The way narrative time hits an audience can be funny. Because I KNOW they’re waiting to get into this behavior with Nate, but it kind feels like we’ve had one two many times of people looking at him funny when he says something worrying instead of actually engaging it?

-Re: 21 Grams and their suspicion that it was a murderer doing this - there’s actually a really great Sawbones episode about “The Weight of the Human Soul” and the technique the doctor used to measure it (it mostly involved putting dying people in beds on giant scales and I’m not kidding).

-Re: funerals “They’re like parties, but for sad people.” Me: So you mean… parties?

-New Rebecca: “It’s not magic, I ate the placenta raw *baby voice* and heee knowwwws it” Probably my favorite joke.

-The moment where Rebecca first sees Higgins and her face drops and she finally shows emotion was a really touching and subtle moment (one that shows how far their relationship has really come). And it was even better when it was followed up by Rebecca’s realization that the entire team came to support her.

-“Jesus has no place in the conversation of these damn shoes” Danny Rojas in a suit and dress shoes is so very wrong / the funniest thing.

-I also love how much the episode touches on trainer / sneaker culture. Particularly the idea that they don’t know you can just buy regular shoes at a store where don’t have to wait in line all night (because “no one wants these shoes.”)

-Gah, I can’t look at Jane as anything other than one of the show’s main villains after the text rant last week.

-Ted: “I don’t know if this is illegal or something, but can I have a hug” Awwwww, Ted.

-There’s that little beat that’s so interesting when Rebecca’s Mom talks about Rupert and reveals “the best way to deal with people like that is to know they can’t get to you,” which is probably not awesome in some scenarios, but here really seems to do the trick here. That little look he gives when she invites him to the house is fantastic.

-And it actually triggers the moment where Rupert moves forward and whispers something probably devilish in Nate’s ear! I’m worried!

-Also, did anyone catch the moment where Colin looks at Rupert and New Rebecca and their baby? I might have missed something, but it felt super weird and I’m like “oh this is either nothing or that’s totally Colin’s baby somehow?????”

-Sassy: “… Speaking of which” Ummmmm….. did… did sassy just establish in canon that Ted has a big ding dong?

-Also, the wording of a few jokes kinda hit me a little weird in this one. Anyone else?

-Sam “I’m only going to get more Wonderful.” Okay so here’s my question at this point. How is Sam NOT wonderful? I love that we always get little bits of his weirdness, but I want to see some flaw character working next?

-Rebecca’s Mom: “[Sassy ] does like wounded birds, doesn’t she?” Hmmmm, curious if we’re gonna get more between her and Ted now given the end.

-Lastly, perhaps one of the biggest strengths the episode that was full of lots of strengths is they somehow, someway managed to create a an emotional connotation for that song beyond RickRolling… kinda feels like a miracle.

<3HULK