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sagevalleymusings · 1 year

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Ted Lasso is an extremely subtle and nuanced show that we don't deserve and I'm going to defend a character I hate to prove it

So the series finale of Ted Lasso aired last night and I went out of my way to watch it even though I don't have a Hulumaxflix plus account, because I have utterly adored this whole season. I have seen a lot of disappointed fans and negative takes, even outside of the "it's woke now" brigade, and I disagree with pretty much all of the analyses I've seen so far. People are disappointed at the Tedbecca tease that never panned out, they're disappointed Jamie is talking to his dad again, they're disappointed all this stuff they wanted to happen didn't happen, tale as old as time. But I think the issue here is that Ted Lasso is written in the style of a daytime tv comedy while actually being an extremely heartfelt and pained letter to an abusive father that one of our writer was never able to send.

Co-creator and star Jason Sudeikis has gone on record saying the show is about bad dads. And we see examples of this all over the place. Some are more subtle than others.

But the problem with subtle shows is that you have a very wide audience to appeal to. I have seen and dare I say it even enjoyed both Primer and Groundhog Day. But trying to apply the time travel logic of the former to the latter just because they're both time travel movies would be folly. And this is how I feel about Ted Lasso. It has a lot of similarities to a style of show which is usually nowhere near this deep and it makes people expect something of it that it isn't providing.

How do you know I'm not talking out my ass? Jack Danvers.

I hate Jack Danvers. We get a fucking lesbian for a change and she's an abusive cowardly closeted slut shaming piece of shit.

I love Jack Danvers. Because I knew she was 1) Keeley's financer and 2) a lesbian in under ten seconds of meeting this person, having seen only her shoes.

Jack is quiet and possibly even a little uncomfortable chatting with Keeley in the bathroom. But Keeley's so charming and open that you can't help but appreciate the quiet bonding moment it turns into.

But I've definitely been there. Women are so comfortable talking to each other in the bathroom and it makes me so uncomfortable. There have been so many times I have been made to feel unwelcome in this space and you want to have a chat... Please go away.

Once it's revealed this is in fact Jack, it comes as a minor shock that Jack is a woman actually. Why is her name Jack if she's a woman?

It's because "my father wanted a boy."

Jack is one of Jason's "bad dad" characters. Which means her actions are a reflection of her childhood environment in a very pronounced way. Slowly but surely, we learn that Jack believes love is conditional.

Jack introduces us to the concept of love bombing and I think because the relationship progresses past that point, the audience is encouraged to forget this, but… love bombing isn't just new relationship energy. It's an abuse tactic. And we're told pretty explicitly that it's an abuse tactic because the person telling us about it is Rebecca, regarding her shitty and manipulative ex husband.

That Jack's relationship starts on this beat is noteworthy, because it sets up the dynamic that Jack believes she can only retain Keeley's affection if she buys it. Why does she think that?

Moving forward, we start to lapse into a false sense of security as Jack loudly proclaims their love in front of the whole office and is planning on showing Keeley off, only to have the rug ripped out from us the second something even slightly bad happens.

But it isn't Jack's decision to make Keeley read out that apology and then pull funding when she refuses. Not if we're to believe Jack's word on it at least. It was "the board" whoever that is.

Jack peaces out to Argentina before the final shoe can drop, and it displays lastly an absolute cowardice on her part that she didn't even give Keeley the satisfaction of a break up.

All of this combined makes me realize though that the sudden scrambling retreat is literally the other side of love bombing - we didn't drop that plot point just because we stopped talking about it. The motivations for both actions come from the same place. Jack believes love is conditional. She feels that she must earn Keeley's affection, and sees nothing wrong with withdrawing her own if Keeley doesn't do the same. And also, the actions of her partner reflecting negatively on her means that love can be withdrawn *from her* if she doesn't bow to pressure from those whose respect she's trying to maintain.

The coming out moments in parallel with this lens are stark. Coming out to the office wasn't just about being open -it was about speed running earning Keeley's love and trust with grand acts of affection. And there are no consequences to coming out to people that far beneath you socially. Jack owns the HR firm that KJPR… might not have? Meanwhile her old college friend does matter. And when Keeley was a successful business woman to show off, that would have been fine. But now that she's part of a scandal? They're just friends. It serves her to come out to the firm in the interest of gaining Keeley's love, and it serves her to keep it hidden from her college friend, to avoid messy questions later that might make her look bad.

With her very name, Jack has been taught that there's a version of herself other people want her to be that she's incapable of reaching. And absolutely nothing we see from her suggests she's worked to unpack that trauma.

Jack is a minor character - a brief love interest in Keeley's life. But her decisions are deliberate and weighty. The good and bad moments are both informed by the same parental trauma, and the writers stick to it. They're true to character, even if it's "bad representation," even if it's not what fans want.

So let's talk about Tedbecca. I will reiterate that this show is about "bad dads" and more broadly about the ways in which who our parents are and how they raised us results in intergenerational trauma that's difficult to disrupt.

Ted and Rebecca are foils for each other. They both have absent fathers (eventually even they both have dead fathers) and they both have emotionally controlling mothers (more on that in a moment). They both are starting a new chapter in their lives because of a divorce, and family is an important component of that divorce.

And they are both responding to their trauma, especially in early episodes, the way they've always been taught to respond to that trauma. Rebecca schemes vengefully while pretending everything is fine on the outside because she's been taught that the people in her back will not support her. Her mother put up with shitty behavior from her father for years. Then when her father left, her mother turned into a flighty unreliable hypochondriac. She doesn't want to allow Rupert the same power over her, so she reacts like a cornered tiger.

But at the end of the day, what she wants is a family, and in a lot of ways Ted can't give her that. Is Ted going to have one child in America and another in Britain and split his time between the two? Does that sound like the kind of thing Ted would be willing to do? Nor do I think it's what Rebecca really wants because her desire for family isn't just about having a child, but having a stable family unit to come back to, one she didn't really have growing up. Maybe you could see them hooking up, but by the time their relationship has progressed that either of them could have, they've both grown past the desire to do so. Tedbecca isn't endgame because Rebecca needs someone calm and warm and relaxed to come home to, in contrast to her childhood being a parent to her mother, or the cat and mouse dance with her ex husband.

But Ted isn't much better. We see that his father's suicide soured their relationship, but holy crap do I want to talk about Ted's mom.

In every single scene that Ted and his mom are interacting in right up to the blowout fight, she is guilting him into behaving a particular way. She says he "was born nice" but in reality it's obvious that he's extremely used to having to guess at what someone wants and bend his life around that. Ted's mom wants to visit him so *waits around his apartment* until he notices and offers her a place to stay. Ted's mom wants to sleep in the bed while insisting otherwise (but immediately starts having specific plans about what that means re: suitcases don't go on the bed). Ted's mom wants to go to the game and Ted doesn't insist she go, so she sends a text saying she wishes she were there. It is a relentless barrage of emotional abuse.

No wonder Ted is so sensitive to the lies she's telling people, also the whole time. How many fights have they had where he's done something because she asked him to, only for her to turn around and say "I never asked for that" and have that technically be true? And in fact we are explicitly told in the blow out that she responded to her *husband's suicide* by pretending everything was normal.

And then, finally, we get the truth. She's not there because she wanted to visit London (a thing she said explicitly which turns out was also a lie). She's there to guilt Ted into coming home by using his guilt over leaving his son. Is Ted… also a bad dad?

Ted's entire generous, forgiving personality was shaped by these two parents. One, who was a good man despite making what I would say is the only unforgivable act of selfishness, and the other, who is a manipulative woman who demands generosity from the people around her despite never overtly saying such.

Ted isn't just forgiving of Beard because of the guilt and anger over his father's death. He's also willing to go the extra mile for people because he thinks it's his job.

Ted leaves for Richmond because his wife wants space, but in a lot of ways it's also an act of selfishness. After all, his ex wife says that she didn't want them to take a break, she wanted to know that Ted would fight for their relationship. And he doesn't - in fact he does the opposite. We now have context to know that asking for something without really asking for it explicitly is a trigger for Ted. So he sees what looks like the emotional manipulation of his mother coming from his wife, panics, and runs as fast and as far away from the situation as he can.

That Ted could never be in a relationship with his boss. Tedbecca isn't endgame because Ted needs a relationship where he can be selfish.

And I think, genuinely, that all of this is intentional on the part of the writers. A relationship with Ted and Rebecca could never have been healthy, because they are the same character, but one of them is fight and the other is flight.

This show is so, so smart. And I think it's absolutely tragic how much of that smartness is missed because we aren't used to shows with this level of carefully crafted nuance. My god, the scene where Nate comes out of his room and the first shot is an all white hallway with absolutely no distinguishing features? My god. The flex of having the characters singing, and you can hear them walking off, Dani is literally getting louder as he gets closer to the camera! That's studio audio because their breathing doesn't line up with the dancing, but it sure sounds like it was recorded on a soccer pitch. I looked up the name of Keeley's form because I distinctly remember the last scene *not* saying KJPR and turns out in a blink and you'll miss it moment, she changed the name to KBPR to honor the fact that Barbara stood by her when Jack pulled funding.1

I could go on and on and on. There's so many moments where the writers just jam packed meaning and nuance to bursting in this show.

In the "morning after" scene in the series finale, Ted is wearing a KC shirt, specifically a KC Current shirt, which is a women's professional soccer team. That says a lot all on its own for that being the shirt

In fact, Ted wears a lot of KC shirts on the show. He wears Richmond shirts… when he's at work.

There's a lot more I could say, and maybe even will. I want to give the jamie/keeley/roy OT3 another look from the top at some point. But I just wanted to get something topical out quickly, because good shows deserve to be showered in praise, and I really think the negative publicity on Ted Lasso specifically is an absolute crime. We can't expect to see writers take a chance on something this detail oriented and nuanced again any time soon if we just skip all the nuance and get mad they didn't doll smash our favorite characters together.

#Ted Lasso #ted lasso season 3 #ted lasso spoilers #Media analysis #actually this is quite short for me #Also I have some questions about Jason and Dan's IRL relationship #Like they seem fine at first glance and also it's none of my business #But someone inspired this story #Those abuse tactics are too real and too bone chilling to be made up whole cloth #Anyway I think the series finale was spectacular #Loved the whole season three actually #Also if you read nothing else #I would like hulumaxflix plus to enter the cultural lexicon

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gallusrostromegalus · 1 year

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I was raised agnostic and tend to remain ambiguous on theological matters.

-but my house has a porch on the second story that affords me a terrific view of my neighborhood and the Colorado Front Range and I was partaking of some peace before the 4th Of July Finger-Loss Festivities begin, and I have had a

~*Spiritual Experience*~

I just watched my neighbor try to unload an actual wooden pallet that had to have been forklifted into the back of his insecurity pickup worth of fireworks.

Except that he does not have a forklift in his garage.

He does have so much sports memorabilia and cardboard boxes of unsold MLM Merchandise and patriotically themed camping gear and posters of women in bikinis and flags of suspect political organizations in his garage that there is only BARELY enough space for the fireworks and certainly none for his truck.

So he had to unload the individual boxes of recreational explosives from the back of his truck and stack them in the minimal space he had cleared by hand. This is a tedious and time-consuming process as this neighbor has purchased a wide variety of recreational and locally illegal explosives instead of many of just a few types, so the individual boxes are rather small.

He begins, and this is crucial to what happens next, by cutting apart the industrial-grade saran wrap his explosives dealer had so carefully wrapped his merchandise in, and discarded it unsecured on his lawn.

Where Outdoor Conditions sometimes happen.

His process for unloading the fireworks is to 1. Climb up through the gate into the bed of his pickup truck (a feat made unusually difficult due to the slope of his driveway, and this man's fascinating decision to wear the world's Siffest and least Flexible Denim Overalls. 2. Once in the pickup bed, he selects ONE (1) box from the pile He is apparently from a niche religious institution that doesn't believe in stacking things. 3. Carries it awkwardly around the palette that barely fits in the truck bed 4. His wife yells "Be careful!" when he nearly falls out of the pickup. 5. He Yells "SHADDUP!" back at her. 6. The Large German Shepherd barks from inside the house. 7. He yells "SHADDUP!" back at her too. 8. He sets the (1) box down on the gate 9. Slowly and awkwardly climbs out of the pickup bed 10. picks the box back up, and carries it into the garage.

Question: Aren't you going to help this poor man? Answer: Absolutely Not.

There's four military veterans, MANY dogs, and several people with dementia in this neighborhood, all of whom are terrified by this chicanery every year and many neighbors have repeatedly asked him to maybe do the fireworks somewhere else. (This is the Eighth Year Running he's held a major demolition event in his driveway, and for those of you who can do math, you may be able to guess the precipitating incident to this little ritual) Additionally, I live in Colorado, a state marginally less prone to spontaneous and catastrophic conflagrations than a rotting grain silo, but only marginally. Our recreational explosives laws are written accordingly.

I am in fact calling the Non Emergency line to report Fireworks violations, and reading off the brand labels to someone named Dorothy, who is gleefully totaling up a SPECTACULAR fine for my oblivious neighbor.

However, while I'm on the phone with Dorothy, I notice the wind begin to pick up. and by "Notice" I mean "The Industrial Saran Wrap he left on his Lawn earlier is suddenly swept up about 100 feet into the air by an updraft intense enough to make my ears pop" And by "Pick Up" I mean "I look up to see the sky has turned a fun and exciting shade of glass green, and the bottoms of the clouds are bumpy and rounded, and the overall effect is not unlike looking up through the bottom of the cup at God's Matcha Boba Tea."

For those of you who do not live in places with Inclement Weather, these conditions mean "You have about 30 seconds before a Major Meteorological Event Occurs."

I move under the eaves. "Hang on Dorothy." I say, nose filling with Petrichor. "The show is about to be cancelled." "Oh, that doesn't matter!" Dorothy cheerfully informs me. "It's illegal for him just to possess those, no matter if he actually gets to set them off or not." "Terrific, because he's gotten maybe five boxes out of a hundred inside."

Sometimes, the weather gods are Merciful and give you a verbal warning, typically in the kind of thunderclap that makes your ears ring.

The Gods were not merciful today.

It's not often that I am in the time, place, correct angle or in a properly observational frame of mind to see this, But I got to see it today. Huh. I thought. I've never seen a cloud just DIVE for the ground before. Oh. I realized as it got closer. That's RAIN.

Sometimes, a thunderstorm will form in such a way that the rain that would normally be distributed over an area of say, five to tent square miles, is instead concentrated into an area of say, my neighborhood exactly.

So today, I was granted the rare privilege of being able to actually see the literal wall of water descend from On High and DIRECTLY onto my porch, my street, and my neighbor's truck, and his pile of unwrapped fireworks.

The sheer impact force of the downpour immediately scatters the teetering pile of fireworks boxes in the back of the truck, like the wrath of God striking down the tower of Babel. Boxes tumble, then are washed out of the bed of the truck by the deluge. Smaller Boxes are carried down the road in a little line by the stream forming in the gutter, like little impotent explosive ducklings.

My neighbor was definitely yelling something, but I could not hear what over the DEAFENING noise several million gallons of water makes upon high-speed contact with the earth's surface, but there was a lot of arm-waving and faces turning red as he went looking for the saran wrap that had probably blown to Nebraska by now, while his wife started disassembling the complex three-dimensional puzzle of interlocking material goods in search of a tarp. They do not have a tarp. They have one of those wretched Thin Blue Line flags though, and my neighbor jogs out in a futile effort to cover what's left in the truck.

Which is when the hail begins.

"HELLO?" Yelled Dorothy. "HI!" I shouted. "WE'RE HAVING SOME WEATHER!" "OH GOOD!" she shouts back. "WE NEED THE MOISTURE!"

I watch for a minute longer, but the loss was immediate and catastrophic- the hail is the size of marbles and dense and cares not for your pitiful cardboard and cellophane, ripping the boxes asunder and punching holes in the few things covered in plastic. The colors on the Thin Blue Line Flag are seeping all over the remains of that it was supposed to protect in a particularly apt visual metaphor. Not even the few boxes that made it into the garage are spared, as the German Shepherd escapes from indoors, and in an attempt to assist her humans, jumps directly into the small stack of not-yet-ruined boxes, scattering them into the driveway and deluge. She even picks one up so her humans will chase her around the yard, before dropping it in the gutter to be swept away.

So. I was raised Agnostic -but even I can recognize when God slaps someone upside the head and shouts "NO!" at them.

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(If you laughed, please consider supporting my Ko-fi or preordering my book of Strange Stories on Patreon)

#Family Lore #Long Post #Local Man Experiences Local Weather

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