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Creating a comedy show based on promotional ads for the Premier League (( Echegaray, Luis Miguel. “‘Ted Lasso’ and the Journey From Viral Promo to TV Series.” Sports Illustrated, SI.com, 11 August 2020. ))? Seemingly impossible. And yet, the AppleTV+ hit show Ted Lasso not only exists – it’s really good, as evidenced by its 7 Emmy Awards and the buzz on Twitter’s Trending page each time a new episode drops. The show, now in its second season, has been from the start a celebration of good people who, though they make mistakes, are not irredeemable.
With such a premise, Ted Lasso tackling mental health is fitting. Season two introduces Dr. Sharon Fieldstone: a sports psychologist whose presence prompts a more refined focus on Ted’s mental health. Ted is hesitant towards therapy at first, citing a past bad experience, but he realizes that talking out his problems with someone uniquely qualified to help is exactly what he needs. The second season of Ted Lasso tells therapy skeptics that while therapists are no replacement for friends, their tools should be utilized if accessible.
Ted’s therapy visits do not negate the importance of having help from friends during mental health crises — friends give people the support they need when these crises are happening. However, the role of a therapist can be different. While therapists can still be one’s friend and offer general support, they have more specific tools that they can use to help someone get better over time. In addition, therapists are often more comfortable talking to about specific problems than friends are. By showing therapy as an obstacle that Ted eventually embraces, Ted Lasso portrays a nuanced take on therapy that doesn’t avoid showing some critiques by therapy skeptics. Instead, the show is doing a service to viewers who may be afraid to get the help they need.
Ted Lasso (2020-): The Story So Far
Ted Lasso‘s premise is enough to draw any viewer in: A college football coach from Kansas City (Jason Sudeikis) is tapped to coach football in London. But this isn’t your average American football — this is English football, more commonly known to those in the states as soccer. This decision makes more sense when it is revealed that the newly-divorced owner of the AFC Richmond football team, Rebecca Welton (Hannah Waddingham), wants to destroy the team that her controlling and cheating ex-husband loved so dearly. The best way to do that, in her mind, is to hire Ted – an American who has no experience with the game known throughout the world as “football.”
Over the course of the season, the members of AFC Richmond — from gruff team captain Roy Kent (Brett Goldstein) to cocky it-boy Jamie Tartt (Phil Dunster) — give into Ted’s folksy aphorisms. Even Rebecca, who tries to sabotage Ted at every turn, eventually realizes her error of alleviating her pain by hurting other people. She comes clean and apologizes to Ted, who forgives her with mutual understanding since he is also recently divorced. While the season ends with the team being relegated — moved down into a lower division — after a heartbreaking loss, Rebecca keeps Ted on the roster. The two plan the team’s eventual resurgence into the Premier League and, hopefully, an eventual championship win.
Ted Lasso: The First Season
While the main plot of Ted Lasso‘s first season focuses on the secret and eventual reveal of Rebecca’s planned sabotage, there are some hints that set up season two’s focus on mental health. In the pilot episode, Ted is rushed into answering questions at a press conference that he was not aware of. He doesn’t know the answer to critical questions, like who won the league championship the previous year or the number of games per season. While the scene has some comedic value — asked about players he knows, he can only name Ronaldo and “the fellow that bends it like himself” — a high-pitched ringing sound eventually drowns out the questions and represents Ted’s unease and overwhelmedness. The scene sets up that Ted may not be as calm and self-assured as he appears on the surface.
This theme comes to a head in “Make Rebecca Great Again,” the seventh episode in the first season. After an unlikely win against Liverpool, the team goes to celebrate at a karaoke bar. As Rebecca is singing, Ted is visibly uncomfortable, and the shot pans down to show his hands shaking. The ringing sound gradually replaces Rebecca’s voice, and Ted leaves the karaoke bar. He goes outside to an alley, where he sits down and experiences a panic attack. Rebecca finds him and helps him calm down by telling him to breathe.
Part of what has been weighing on Ted’s mind before the panic attack has been his relationship with his wife and his young son. In a breathtakingly effective one-sided phone call at the end of the first episode, the audience learns that Ted has moved to London by himself to give his wife space. “I love you,” he says to her, and after a pause, he adds, “No, no, that’s okay. You don’t have to.” While his family eventually comes to London, the visit ends with Ted and his wife agreeing to divorce. Ted’s panic attack comes in the midst of being served divorce papers, showing that his family struggles are a point of anxiety.
Finally, Ted brings up his relationship with his father. In a scene that has been popularly dubbed “The Darts Speech” by Ted Lasso fans, Ted tells the story of how his father passed when he was sixteen. He and his father would play darts “every Sunday afternoon” since Ted was ten. Apart from this, the season does not reveal any more about Ted’s father, leaving the topic open for exploration in the second season. Season one of Ted Lasso shows us that Ted suffers from panic attacks, his relationship with his wife is over, and his father passed when Ted was young. So, where does the second season go from here?
Trouble In Richmond
Without the central narrative of Rebecca’s revenge plot and the fight for the team to avoid relegation, the second season of Ted Lasso has more free reign to focus on character development. The first season’s philosophy hinges on Ted trying to make his players better at the game by helping them “be the best versions of themselves on and off the field.” Dr. Sharon Fieldstone (Sarah Niles), the new team psychologist, takes on this challenge. Dr. Sharon is brought on in Ted Lasso‘s season two premiere after player Dani Rojas (Cristo Fernández) accidentally kills the team mascot Earl Greyhound after the dog chases a bird and ends up in the path of the ball. Dani, who before now has been a bastion of positivity for the team with his endless energy and his catchphrase “football is life,” now proclaims that “football is death.” The incident visibly shakes him to the point where he misses every goal he tries to score at practice.
Ted has taken on the role of therapist and advocate for his team so far, advising players to “be a goldfish” and forget about their past mistakes. He tries to do this with Dani, too, switching up the drills to help Dani “have some fun” with the game. Unfortunately, Dani ends up kicking the ball right into Ted: a clear sign that Ted’s plan hasn’t worked this time. Ted and his assistant, Coach Beard (Brendan Hunt), diagnose Dani’s problem as “the yips,” which Beard describes as “when, just out of nowhere, an athlete suddenly can’t do the fundamentals of their sport.” In order to help Dani, it is suggested that the team hire a sports psychologist — a proposal which Ted reacts to with uncomfortable silence, although he eventually agrees. However, Dr. Sharon’s arrival clashes with Ted’s ideas about therapists.
Enter Dr. Sharon Fieldstone
Ted goes about life trying to break down people’s walls: he did the same with Rebecca and Roy in the first season. But this time, Ted seems to have met his match in Dr. Sharon. From her first appearance, she challenges Ted’s and Coach Beard’s superstition of avoiding saying “the yips” out loud, and her first meeting with the coaches ends with Coach Beard sarcastically commenting on how “fun” she seems. Dr. Sharon doesn’t eat sugar, thus crossing out Ted’s tried-and-true plan of using homemade biscuits to connect with people. She doesn’t even wave back at him during practice. Resistance isn’t new to Ted, but he seems more disheartened and less hopeful when it comes to Dr. Sharon, and his hesitance stands out even more so when more players on the team start seeing Dr. Sharon for help.
Dr. Sharon is a woman who is good at her job and is not afraid to say so, which she does. She is blunt and authoritative, a contrast to Ted’s pithy sayings and general folksy attitude. If Ted was distrustful of therapists before, Dr. Sharon is doing herself no favors. But the series is careful to show us that Dr. Sharon is effective and kind: players go to her to get help with problems like low self-esteem, and every player she speaks with has raving reviews. She even conducts sessions in the players’ native languages to make them feel more comfortable. After speaking with Dani, he returns to the game and is as good as new. Dr. Sharon is not the same as Ted Lasso, which is why she is such a big help.
Most of Dr. Sharon’s characterization is held off until later in the season until an episode begins with her in her home. She has a therapist of her own, who reveals that she has some problems with not being willing to open up to others. In addition, multiple empty wine bottles on her kitchen counter clue us into a potential drinking problem. Biking is “her happy place,” as she shares with Ted after an incident where she is hit by a car while riding. Dr. Sharon is not perfect, and she is not meant to be; there is a healthy amount of growth to be done on both sides of the Sharon/Ted relationship. The bottom line is, though, that she has proven herself to be a great therapist — and it is her role as a therapist that initially causes a rift between her and Ted.
Ted And Therapy In Ted Lasso
Ted describes his feelings towards therapy as “general apprehension and a modest Midwestern skepticism.” In reality, it is a lot more than that: Ted tried going to couples therapy with his wife, which did not work out, he angrily explains, as evidenced by the fact that his now-ex is across the ocean in America. He says that he felt “set up,” especially since his wife had been seeing the therapist on her own before, and the experience left him with a distrust of therapists. As a result, Ted’s experience with therapy has been a profoundly negative one, where he says he only heard about his wrongdoings instead of ways to solve his problems.
Thus, Ted is not immediately welcoming to the idea of a therapist being brought in to work with the team. He feels uncomfortable that the therapy sessions with the team members are private, and he wants to have a more significant part in helping them during sessions, to which Dr. Sharon declines. Despite Ted’s denial, this could be slight jealousy. However, any jealousy he might have is rooted in the idea that he doesn’t think therapy is the best way to help these players. He feels shut-out but is unwilling to confront his feelings about therapy yet and thus discounts its benefits. His feelings about therapists cause him to have an overall negative view of Dr. Sharon compared to Roy, who was also initially opposed to Ted’s attempts to connect.
What finally prompts Ted to start seeing Dr. Sharon for therapy is another panic attack. This one happens during a game when suddenly the sound of the crowd and the players are muffled and replaced with chaotic string music. Once again, we see Ted’s hands shaking, and he quickly hides them in his pockets. He walks off the field with the excuse that his stomach is bothering him, but instead, he seemingly walks to Dr. Sharon’s office, where he is found lying on her couch later that night. He looks worse for wear and tells her that he wants to make an appointment.
Therapy Vs. Friendship
Instead of therapy, Ted chooses to deal with life’s problems through friendships. In a conversation with Rebecca, he asks rhetorically, “Why pay someone to do what a friend should do for you for free?” Rebecca is similarly dismissive of therapy, saying that she can “diagnose herself in a heartbeat,” and prattles off a strikingly accurate reading of her problems stemming from her abusive relationship. However, immediately after stating that the point of friendship is to help others with their problems, they both deny that they have anything they need to talk about with each other. The pair exemplifies that just because one has a friend they feel like they can talk about anything with, friends aren’t equipped for or aren’t comfortable audiences for everything that people need to talk about.
In his second therapy session with Dr. Sharon, after criticizing her for charging by the hour while offering fifty-minute sessions, Ted bluntly explains why he thinks therapy is “bullshit.”
You don’t know me. We don’t have history. And yet you just expect me to spill my guts about all the gory details of my life.
Ted is uncomfortable opening up to Dr. Sharon because she is not a friend, saying she is only listening to him because she is paid to listen to him. In a later session, Ted apologizes for this statement, and Dr. Sharon says that just because someone is paid to do their job doesn’t mean they don’t care about the people they affect. “Would you coach for free?” she asks Ted, who answers affirmatively. “But do you?” she asks, to which he responds that he does not.
Ted is even trying to make a friend of Dr. Sharon: he offers her cookies and wants to talk to her… just not in a therapeutic environment. As Ted begins to see Dr. Sharon for therapy, they even begin to have a more traditional friendly relationship. This is most evident when Ted meets Dr. Sharon at the hospital and buys her a new bike to replace the one that was destroyed. Dr. Sharon even spends time thinking about witty wordplay that she can use in her sessions with Ted. Therapists can be friendly people in one’s life, and it is not harmful to connect with them within reason.
The problem of depending on friends alone to solve one’s problems is that friends often don’t have therapeutic tools to help others create long-term solutions. Rebecca helps Ted calm down from his panic attack in season one, but she has not been able to completely stop them from happening. Before a game, Ted uses breathing exercises that Dr. Sharon teaches him, showing that therapists can give more insightful help to prevent panic attacks rather than providing comfort after the fact.
Friends are great support systems that people can rely on to help them at a particular moment. In the eighth episode, “Man City,” Jamie stands up to his physically and verbally abusive father by punching him in the face in the locker room in front of his teammates. While the team sits in stunned silence, Roy goes up to Jamie and hugs him as Jamie cries. In this case, Jamie will benefit from regular therapy sessions, but, at the moment, what he really needs is support from a friend. By embracing therapy, Ted Lasso is not decrying the role that friends can have on one’s mental health or saying that people who don’t have access to mental health are doomed. Instead, by portraying Ted as someone who has access to mental health support and chooses not to use it, the show is making a broader statement that those who have access to help should ask for it.
Sometimes, Speaking To Professionals Is Best
“Man City” also comes with the heaviest reveal of the season so far. After seeing the confrontation between Jamie and his father, Ted walks outside and calls Dr. Sharon. In a callback to the conversation earlier in the episode where Dr. Sharon reveals her love of riding her bike, Ted tells her that his father died by suicide when Ted was sixteen. He says that he does not want to talk about it at that moment but that he wants her to know. When Coach Beard comes outside to speak with him, Ted wipes away his tears and puts on a brave face. The audience doesn’t learn about Ted’s father through a conversation with a friend: they learn about it through a conversation with Ted’s therapist. At times, speaking to friends about one’s problems comes with fear of judgment in the future. We don’t want to tell our friends our most vulnerable secrets because these secrets, we feel, could drastically change the relationship.
This isn’t the case with therapists. In addition to being a resource with knowledge about mental health, professionals do not judge people for admitting their flaws. At times, they can be the best people to tell something that one doesn’t feel comfortable telling anyone else for whatever reason. Whether any of Ted’s friends know about his father is unknown as of now, but possibly Ted may have been avoiding telling them for some reason or another. He needs to tell someone right away, not because he wants help yet, but because he cannot be alone with this knowledge anymore. Therapists are safe people to let in on your problems precisely because they are not the friends you interact with every day. You don’t have to worry about compromising your relationship with therapists by appearing weak in front of them; in fact, expressing yourself without fear of judgment might be the best way to deal with certain feelings.
As Ted Lasso (2020-) Teaches Us That Therapy Is Not Easy And That Is Okay
Ted Lasso‘s second season in particular shows key lessons and emotional beats through character monologues, and in the press conference in the aftermath of Earl’s death, Ted outlines the plot of the season:
It’s funny to think about the things in your life that can make you cry just knowing that they existed, can then become the same thing that make you cry knowing that they’re now gone. I think those things come into our lives to help us get from one place to a better one.
Ted Lasso, Ted Lasso Season Two Episode One, “Goodbye Earl”
Ted is ostensibly talking about the dog he was afraid of as a child that he eventually helped care for, but his words also relate to his experience with therapy. He is out of his comfort zone whenever he tries to open up about himself, but by embracing therapy, he learns that opening up is healing. Something that one hates can end up being what saves them.
In a world where access to therapy through online programs makes access to professional help more manageable than ever before, it is comforting to see a show with an audience as large as Ted Lasso‘s speak to people who may be hesitant about going to therapy. But, unfortunately, asking for help from professionals still carries an enormous stigma, especially when people do not know much about what therapy entails or if they have had bad experiences with it in the past.
In some contexts, it is crucial to refer to therapy with a casual nonchalantness, as it normalizes getting professional help and turns it into something that people share without fear of shame. Ted Lasso does this as well, as different players on the team are welcoming and readily adopt Dr. Sharon’s help. However, not everyone is ready to accept therapy on their own, and with Ted’s skepticism, the show portrays why therapy is something that people should try even if they are afraid of what it may bring.
Therapy is uncomfortable and speaking about what you believe to be the worst parts of yourself to a stranger is a daunting task. Ted even says that he might be afraid to learn the truth about his feelings. As Dr. Sharon says, though, “The truth will set you free. But first, it’ll piss you off.” Ted Lasso season two is not afraid to “piss off” its characters to uncover the truth about their mental health.
