#nate shelley redemption

[aveys6]

nate wanting to say sorry :(

[hacash]

‘Nate hasn’t earned a redemption arc yet!’ my dude no-one on Ted Lasso ‘earned’ a redemption arc, that’s the whole damn point

‘redeem’ literally means to compensate for. to give something good in repayment for something bad, to ‘buy back’ the shit you’ve done. And Ted Lasso has never tried to do this. Rebecca didn’t ‘earn’ a redemption arc: she couldn’t unsay all the cruelties she’d said to Higgins, couldn’t bring Jamie back from Man City, couldn’t undo the damage that let to Richmond being regulated. Jamie couldn’t unsay his ageism to Roy or his snottiness to Ted. he couldn’t buy his way out of the bullying he’d imposed on the team – he tried, don’t get me wrong, and then Ted put the breaks on buying the team’s love because he knows how poorly that’s going to go down. earning redemption is an exhausting arc, and Ted Lasso’s been very clever in never really doing it.

what these characters did, however, is resolve to change.

Ted Lasso has never been about redemption: it’s been about reformation. reforming your life, and giving other people the space to acknowledge that and appreciate that. former ‘villains’ in Ted Lasso don’t abase themselves or spend episodes earning back people’s good opinion or their trust: they acknowledge that they’ve done something wrong, and they resolve to turn themselves around. and vitally, they can’t do that until they’ve escaped from the shit place they are in their lives, from their own personal dark forest. Rebecca can’t reform until she’s removed herself from the mental state of obsession with Rupert and instead finds herself in a place of community. Jamie can’t reform until he extracts himself from Man City and his desire to get his father’s approval. mentally, they have to be in a better place themselves before they can start being better for other people.

And then, crucially, I think the crux of a Ted Lasso reformation is a demonstration that you are now a safe space for others when before you weren’t, even if it means putting yourself in a position of vulnerability. for me Rebecca did this not just when she apologised to Ted, but when she offered him an out to share her whole story with the press – risking the press intrusion she so hates. Jamie did this when he joined a potentially risky protest against a prominent sponsor, risking further potential reputational damage (at a time when Jamie’s brand has never needed more of a boost) if it means being part of a team.

and because of that, I think it’s impossible to argue that Nate isn’t in the middle of his reform. He’s already extracted himself from his dark forest: he’s put Rupert behind him, he’s sorting his father issues, he’s proven himself to be less dependent on external validation while having greater confidence in himself. and he’s also starting to show that he’s a safe person to be around, even at the risk of vulnerability. he owns a humiliating nickname that we know carries a lot of painful baggage for him for the sake of conveying to Will that he was wrong, and I think for someone who’s had so many self-esteem issues as Nate, owning a name which he saw as minimising and infantilising and humiliating was a big gesture.

I don’t think that Nate’s arc is finished yet. but I think it’s impossible to claim that he isn’t ‘mid-turn’. and no, he hasn’t ‘earned’ redemption, but ma’am, this isn’t the earn your redemption on your hands and knees show, this is the make the changes to your life that are needed and accept other peoples’ grace if it comes to you show. And there’s a big difference between the two.

[the-krakens-bitch]

“We need more complex characters”

Bro you couldn’t even handle them

[ambnight]

Nate the Great haters are my enemies

[devotioncrater]

[livelovecaliforniadreams]

2x7 | 3x10

[politelymenacing]

My man Isaac knows what's up.

[ridingtedlassosjetskimustache]

Me when i see posts hating on Nate

[alphabetatoes]

trent crimm watching the cctv footage of nate knowing he’s about to write the most damning, juicy chapter on it in the richmond book

[whatimdoing-here]

I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.

TED LASSO | 3.12 So Long, Farewell.

[autistically-zoinked]

"Nate is a foil of Ted"

YOU FOOLS! HE'S A FOIL OF JAMIE!!!

[usercelestial]

i hope nate-antis are having a horrible horrible day

[i-gotrunover-bya-porsche]

the way i was so scared that nate was gonna once again spit onto the mirror and he DIDN'T!?!?

that's what i call growth baby

[jessicawhitlysimp]

the nate storyline is making sickkkkk. when he knocked the ted figure down and then put it back up on the table and said “there you go” i had a physical reaction to it i feel so bad for him. he’s so lost.

[writingway-in-writinghell]

I must say. The way they handle mental health, parental abuse, trauma, sexuality, toxic masculinity (and overcoming it) in Ted Lasso is like nothing I’ve ever seen in a popular piece of media. They really understand what they’re doing there.

It makes me sad, then, that a lot of the narrative surrounding Nate (and to some extent Shandy as well, since her arc was cut short) is so. Colorblind. I mean, yes, Jade isn’t even exceptionally rude by European standards when it comes to customer service, but she sure is rude enough that it stands out to me, a German. And we’re not known to be the most bubbly people. (Really, we can be rude af. Don’t go to some parts of Eastern Germany, resting bitch-faces everywhere here, it’s draining.) And, well. I’ve never been stared at as if the server was a dead fish, ya know. As if I was invisible.

So when people of color in the fandom tell us that they see racist behavior here in Jade, and in Jack’s and Barbara’s treatment of Shandy? We better believe them. Because if even my white-bread nose can smell this against the wind, something is off.

And the thing is, I was ready to give Jade the benefit of the doubt! I even commented somewhere that she seems like someone who sees through people, like she just knows when they act a part, when they try to turn up their nose at her.

Cue Anastasia. And Jade treating her with dignity, something she denied Nate from the beginning, and he’s been coming to this place for years!

The whole framing of Nate’s interactions with her have a taste of “finally the white woman takes pity on the brown man now that he praised her restaurant’s cuisine in her proximity”, and that taste truly is bitter, especially compared to everything this show does well!

It stings. And now imagine you’re a fan from the same minority group (in England) as Nate and Shandy. And you see this treatment of their arcs. The disrespect. How it’s played as a joke. And then you see how well they execute queer narratives and how tenderly they approach mental health.

Man. The framing of Nate’s narrative is such a perfect mirror for reality. And people HATE him for lashing out after years of this disrespect? I think we can be glad he didn’t strangle someone. Why do you think Ted isn’t angry at him? (Hint: It’s not because he avoids negative feelings. Not in this case.)