Two couples who are completely opposed, starting with their values, drink a Spritz on the terrace of a luxury Sicilian hotel. A killjoy and her husband, depressed by the state of the world, accompanied by a Roger Bontemps and his wife, who are more interested in the temperature of the swimming pool than in global warming.
The only thing these two fictional couples seem to have in common, in the first episode of the series’ second season White Lotusit’s their love of the series Ted Lasso.
Everybody Loves Ted Lasso. There is nothing more consensual in the current television landscape. The story of a college American football coach, hired by a recalcitrant owner, determined to see him fail as he leads England’s premier league soccer team, AFC Richmond.
It’s a candy office comedy, a light-hearted, good-feeling sitcom that explores every corner of the cultural misunderstandings between Europe and North America. We smile at boho puns and pop references from Ted (irresistible Jason Sudeikis). And we get attached to this fun cast of caricature characters.
I was surprised by the dazzling success of this series, which garnered Emmy awards in the United States, and won over many viewers in Quebec. Probably because I “devoured” Ted Lasso as soon as the series appeared on Apple TV+, and it didn’t immediately make a lot of waves in the media.
Who, like me, is interested enough in English Premier League soccer to fall in love with this funny soap opera Tit for tat ? I asked myself when I discovered Ted Lasso and his jokes tucked away on Sheffield Wednesday.
I had it all wrong. You don’t have to love soccer to love Ted Lasso. Why has the first season of this series been nominated for more Emmys (the equivalent of our Gemini) than any other before it? Probably because it aired in the summer of 2020 and there was no better antidote to pandemic lockdown at the time.
A fantasy with a premise as original as it is comic, with effective writing, and whose breadcrumb trail is a reassuring benevolence that we all needed in the first months of the pandemic.
But here it is: we no longer have the same relationship to the pandemic. We decided, rightly or wrongly, that she was more or less behind us. Also, our appetite for benevolent characters on TV seems to have dissipated in favor of more cynical characters, which translates into less interest (especially from critics) for the third and final season of Ted Lassoavailable on Apple TV+ for two weeks.
People will tell me that I do five-cent psycho pop, but I believe that the majority’s pressing desire to return to normal is embodied in the inclination of several telephiles for the final season of a series from the antipodes of Ted Lassoand I named Succession (offered on Crave since last Sunday).
As much interest in Ted Lasso expressed a thirst for benevolence which was quenched, as much as the continued interest in Succession translates the opposite: the cynical disillusion with which we observe the pandemic three years later.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Brian Cox plays Logan Roy in Succession.
Succession is a much more ambitious series than Ted Lasso, both in form and substance. On the other hand, it is just as caricatural and redundant. For four seasons, the patriarch of the Roy family, Logan (irresistible Brian Cox) – born in Scotland and raised in the Eastern Townships – has fallen out with one or more of his children and collaborators, reconciled with one or more of his children and collaborators , after having betrayed them and been betrayed by them.
His children themselves plant knives in the back to who better better. Each new season of this Shakespearean tragedy in the form of soap capitalist marks the beginning of a not-at-all-tricky new cycle of dirty tricks.
In the last season of Ted Lasso, all is not always for the best in the best of worlds, even for the candid Ted. What her boss wants more than anything is to defeat her ex-husband’s new team, led by Nate, Ted’s former right-hand man.
Nate transformed from a reserved and shy equipment attendant into coach narcissistic and arrogant. He’s obsessed with what people say about him on social media, scorning his players and insulting Ted. In this he resembles Kendall Roy, the humiliated heir of Successionguided by the same insecurity in his quest for paternal approval.
Ted Lasso doesn’t hold it against Nate. He is a gentleman, in all circumstances. Quite the opposite of Logan Roy, irritated by the obsequiousness of his entourage. He only considers people as potential consumers of a market whose strings he pulls. Only power and money interest him.
“He looks like a scrotum with a forelock,” he said of a newsreader on his all-news channel, who he got fired from an angry call in the middle of the night. Logan crystallizes what is ugliest, most odious and most detestable in human beings. Her personality is captivating. One wonders how far he will go, in the depths of the human condition, to humiliate his adversaries.
Ted Lasso, on the contrary, is an outstanding motivator who compensates for the limits of his soccer skills with his empathy, his psychology and his sincere affection for his players. We believe in him as he believes in them. Because he’s likeable, more complex than he seems and we hope that in the end, this good guy will finish first.