I Don’t Want to Live In a World Where Ted Lasso Is on Dating Apps

4 min readYou won’t see a more concentrated instance of how funny and frustrating Ted Lasso can be at the same time than an overly long bit where Ted fills out his dating profile. In signature Lasso fashion, mundane questions are but prompts for Ted to run wild with his brand of mistaken yet sincere and wholesome wit. (And what a way to target me, personally, with references to Stephen Sondheim’s Company and David Fincher’s Zodiac.) It’s cute, mostly, until it gets embarrassing. I fail to find a more apt summary for Ted Lasso as a whole.In the seventh episode of season 4, “Yes & Baby,” we finally take a closer look into the lives of the Lady Greyhounds. It’s a safe assumption that playing second division women’s football doesn’t match up to Premier League paydays, but the series makes a legitimate effort to show what, exactly, all the women have to lose if they don’t shape up and get butts into stadium seats fast enough. Meanwhile, Rebecca and the Richmond front office navigate the uglier sides of the football business as Dani Rojas’s scummy agent tries some underhanded negotiating. Coach Alice (Tanya Reynolds), now in the new year, learns the power of “yes,” while Roy Kent’s love life hits a serious juncture.Then, there’s Ted. He has permission to date now, which he always had and didn’t need, but it’s meaningful to have the door open for him. But it’s been a while since Ted put himself out there. And have you heard? Dating sucks now. Sucks! Vox’s Today, Explained just did a whole episode about it. Ted’s walking back into the jungles after a lifetime of domesticity, and he’s frozen stiff by a questionnaire.I don’t blame him. Imagine being Ted, a grown man on the other side of a decade-plus-long marriage with a kid in high school. Being asked to describe oneself in three words must be banal, mortifying, and not the least bit embarrassing. Which is why I appreciate the resolution the episode offers to Ted, and perhaps all of us in the trenches of apps and endless first dates. Before we can commit ourselves to someone else, it’s critical that we recognize our own worth and love ourselves first.What a beautiful sentiment. If only the rest of Ted Lasso were as brilliant and graceful.“Yes & Baby” is hardly a stinker—I’d even wager to say it’s a rather good episode—but it’s just another episode where Ted Lasso’s forward progress feels perpetually hindered by its umpteenth step on a rake. I was on board for so much of it. Really. Rebecca, Zelda, and Leslie’s cartoonish phone call had me in stitches (I need Zelda’s “KAHK-sacker” as a text alert), and the farewell between Roy and Dr. Beaumont (Laura Haddock) was genuinely moving. The latter reminded me how, after watching an early cut of Spider-Man 2, Chris Carrabba of Dashboard Confessional wrote “Vindicated,” a song centered on the significance of recognizing someone else. (“I am seeing in me now the things you swore you saw yourself.”) How apt the song plays in the end credits after Peter and MJ decide on a life together, no secrets or masks between them. No, Roy and Dr. Erin don’t capital-L love each other in the same way, but there’s genuine power still in telling someone that you see them.I’m not even mad at the convenient resolution over the “Believe” sign subplot either. When the team sees Coach Alice taping Ted’s new sign in their locker room, they’re swift to a deep and callous cynicism that even Ted Lasso’s folksy superpowers seem powerless to fix. But all it takes is Lizzie’s adorable four-year-old to read it aloud and they’re suddenly motivated to, well, “believe.” (And win.) Their transformation comes from nowhere and it’s all very tonally maudlin—which is, let’s be real here, typical Ted Lasso—but it’s got enough of the show’s missing season 1 magic to sweep me away.Which is why I am irritated that the show habitually resorts to eye-rolling zingers and punchlines. The whole two-minute stretch where Keeley helps Ted fill his profile runs the gamut of cringe to funny to embarrassing to impressive to cringe again. (And to not even play The Greatest American Hero theme over the end credits? Come on! Whack!)I like fun and whimsy too. And I can appreciate Jason Sudeikis’s karaoke pipes. But having your middle-aged protagonist swear he’s “invited to the cookout” and is pro-pronouns... Man, it’s just exhausting for what is ultimately just a ninety-second gag. Nothing about this sinks Ted Lasso completely. But it’s discouraging how the show can be capable of wisdom and grace only to zap the air out of the room with weak grasps for—I’ll say it, I don’t care—woke points. At the end of the episode, Ted himself finds the three words to describe himself: “I am lovable.” That’s beautiful. That works. It’s amazing how little can go a long way.