#I binged the entire show 2.5 weeks ago (had never seen a single ep before) and honestly I'm not impressed with the writing overall

[mermims]

Omg, you're so right about the infantalising thing. I feel like a lot of the time I cannot for the life of me pin down how old these characters are meant to be! And the show is supposed to be contemporary, but when I'm watching these episodes it doesn't feel like I'm watching something that's supposed to be set in the current year two-thousand-twenty-three. It's so weird.

another week, another ted lasso rant (lol)

this latest episode had so much potential to do something of importance. they set everything up so well for colin to have a meaningful coming out story with a supportive team that made it about him, but there’s this thing that straight creatives do where they try to make being gay not seem like a big deal and try to normalise it, but their method of normalising it is to remove its importance and try to minimalise the dangers, fears and liberation that comes with coming out.

they spent half the episode dealing with colin and isaac’s issues fairly well, as isaac was processing it. it was a bit on the nose and felt more like how a parent would react initially rather than a 20 something man in 2023, but whatever, it still felt like it was going somewhere.

but then the fight happened, and suddenly it was all about isaac. everyone was talking about isaac’s anger, his ability to be team captain, what that means for richmond, and whether he is gay. 

and then it came to colin actually coming out, and instead of getting colin to say the words “i’m gay”, we cut straight back to isaac, who gets comforted by roy, and we then focus on roy and isaac, the former of which is only here so he can develop his own personal story. so again, nobody here’s story is relevant to the actual queer person in question.

we then go back to colin coming out, and ted makes a stupid story about someone being a fan of a different football team and they even point out how irrelevant it is, so literally what was the point? colin had so much time taken away from actually coming out and it was given to his straight friend and straight coaches. and then they make these references to oprah and “what’s a top or bottom?” which feel like they’re being written by a 50 year old who googled some gay forum from the 2000s to get his knowledge.

the whole story was just silly because we spent so long focusing on isaac, and even then, that wasn’t even about isaac. it was about isaac worrying about colin and in turn taking away time from colin so who was this whole story even about? who benefitted? because we know nothing more about either man, and there was next to no development that came from it. just isaac acting out and colin being silenced. roy and ted got more from this than isaac or colin so what was the point of it all…

a big issue this show has is that it doesn’t know how to tackle toxic masculinity without making it a big joke. homophobia in football is something we’ve seen in real life a few times, and we know horrific it can get. and this show - based in a very male dominated avenue and constantly dealing with toxic masculinity - had a huge chance to do something but because their take on the topic never goes beyond “isnt it funny how anti toxic masculinity i am?”, they couldn’t hackle.

isaac’s dialogue was written like he was a freshman from high school (because what man in their 20′s reacts to his friend coming out like that?) this show constantly infantilises these men as a way to “challenge” toxic masculinity, and it’s just so irritating. why are ted and roy the only men allowed to actually confront anything in a serious way?

atp, i just don’t want ted lasso to touch queer stories ever again. they don’t know how to handle it without putting in some dumb joke that takes up half the screen time just to get to the punchline.

colin and isaac had so much potential and neither of them benefitted. it was just a way to give jason a “funny” monologue for his emmy campaign and for roy (a grown man who has been in this business for decades) to learn how to speak to people.