By Fr. Parker Love
On Sunday night, Jason Sudeikis won the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy
TV Series for his performance on the Apple TV+ program, Ted Lasso. Although I am rarely
invested in the awards members of the Hollywood elite give to one another, I was really excited
when I read that Sudeikis won this award. Ted Lasso is a revelation in television comedy, and the
show hinged entirely on Sudeikis’s performance, and he pulled it off perfectly.
Ted Lasso tells the story of an American football coach travelling overseas to coach a European
football club—that is, a soccer team. With a premise that started as one-dimensional joke to
promote NBC Sports’ broadcast of the Premiere League, Ted Lasso grows into something much
more deep as the series progresses. Since the title character’s charm, honesty, and humour are the
main features of the show, if Sudeikis had put in a sub-par performance, the show would have
been annoying and cringe inducing at best. Instead, Ted Lasso is a series that challenges how its
viewers engage with the world around them, encouraging them to live with hope and love.
An American gridiron football coach is hired to coach a down-on-its-luck Premiere League team
that faces the threat of relegation—that is, playing in a lower, sub-par league in the season that
follows. This silly circumstance is orchestrated by Rebecca Welton, the owner of the team, who
does it with the hope of disappointing her ex-husband as he is forced to watch his treasured team
lose over and over again. Because of her malicious intentions, Welton’s relationship with Lasso
begins as ambivalent at best; she has no desire to like, or even relate to, the coach that she has
hired with the hope of him losing as much as possible. Over the course of the season, Lasso’s
charm and kind heart win her over, and although the moments leading up to the confession of her
ill-intentions are filled with suspense, Lasso’s response does not carry the same drama; he
forgives her immediately. Lasso forgives Welton for trying to embarrass him, sabotage him, and
for just generally being a bad person without so much as a second thought.
This quick act of forgiveness is nothing superficial, but rather, it’s the response of a man who is
practiced in hope and love in his relationship with others; because he’s practiced at it, he can do
it almost habitually, and in that sense, it is clear that Lasso is a virtuous man. Lasso is a coach.
He wants to coach his team to be better people, not better athletes. He openly admits to reporters
that he cares more about the character of his athletes rather than their physical abilities, that he is
more concerned with his team giving it all they have rather than winning or losing, and that in
sport, sometimes a win can really be a loss and a loss can be a win. Lasso cares about his
athletes, and so he coaches them, and he cares about all the people around them, so he does his
best to coach them too.
Beyond his quick act to forgiveness, another example of Lasso’s hope and love is how optimistic
he is. He believes his team can win any game they play, even if the odds are not necessarily in
their favour. He challenges his team to believe in miracles, but most of the miracles his team
performs are not on the soccer pitch, though the unity they show as a team by the end of the
season is certainly inspired by Grace. Miracles like rivals showing respect for one another,
leaders being led in humility, and the breaking down of emotional walls are the kind of miracles
that abound on Lasso’s team, his team which is really the whole community around the football
club he coaches.
Ted Lasso promotes this vision of optimistic belief by living with hope and love in a short season
that is easy and fun to watch. The show’s sense of humour never gets dull, and more importantly,
it’s moral lessons are sharp.
Fr Parker Love is a Priest for the Archdiocese of Regina. Ordained in the summer of 2019, Fr Parker serves as Parish Priest at St Augustine Parish in Wilcox, Saskatchewan. He also often helps at Christ the King Parish in Regina, and he serves at the Archdiocese’s Vocation Director. Somehow, in the midst of this, he still finds too much time to consume media in the form of books, tv shows, and movies. To justify that over indulgence, he also hosts a podcast called Cold Drinks, Questions, and Christ, which can be found here, or anywhere you get podcasts.
