#ted lasso liveblogging

[brilarsn]

phoebe kent is gay confirmed

[captainkirkk]

You cannot convince me that journalists aren't more excited to attend a Richmond press conference compared to literally any other team

[sylvies-chen]

my mother said something really interesting about this episode (yes, she also watches the show and is a huge fan of dani rojas just like me) and it’s been stuck in my head ever since. she said: “it seems to me like this whole episode was about intimacy”

and like… yeah! that’s exactly it! the amsterdam trip set the perfect scene for it too, because people are normally a little more lax on vacation, a little more adventurous, a little more lenient and able to put themselves out there.

you have the pretty obvious contenders for this point: rebecca having her little fling with that nameless bald man and learning to open herself up to real connection and intimacy again, to be able to envision for herself a life and a love that is unmoored to her past with rupert and is able to exist in its own little intimate pocket. you’ve got jamie and roy learning to trust in each other, to be intimate and vulnerable about their pasts and about their present situations too (especially for roy, who is still right now a man who would rather break up with the woman he loves that admit, that he doesn’t think he’s good enough for her). and you also have, of course, the true soul of the episode, which was colin and trent’s discussion, and how colin feels that ache to be able to show the more intimate parts of him to the world the way heterosexual couples do, to be able to merge his intimate personal life with his fun if not a little reserved professional life. how to achieve a balance between intimacy and privacy.

and then you have the less obvious ones maybe, like higgins and will going to the jazz club— which isn’t really that hard to decipher when you think about it. it is, after all, where higgins opens up about an intimate detail of his love for jazz, and then gets to share his previously very intimate and private activity of playing the bass with the crowd. he even starts the night complaining of how exposed their seats feel, and ends up standing on the stage by the end of it. and, of course, will potentially had a threesome. so there’s a kind of intimacy for you. the one that truly isn’t obvious is the team pillow fight which honestly, I think is just a way of showing that sometimes a more intimate, fun yet indoor activity makes for better memories than something like a sex show or a club, which are both very grand and exciting yet impersonal and detached kinds of activities.

then of course you have ted, who is sort of lacking what my mother called an intimacy with himself. he’s been feeling a little lost, a little “stuck” as he put it. and I don’t think he understood why until this episode, until this adventure he went on with the museum and the american themed restaurant. it was a way for him to spend quality time with himself, to be alone with his thoughts while still not totally unable to absorb his surroundings and learn something. and in exploring his more intimate thoughts he was able to think of something really good! something that will make him a better coach!

and yeah, when it’s framed in this way I think this episode was sooooo killer. I love seeing people open up a little bit, to show these deep and intimate parts of their being. it’s so so so good.

[senshibignaturalz]

Jade giving massive "cat who Immediately detects bad vibes" here with rupert

[makimacult]

he was literally born to malewife and forced to girlboss

[altschmerzes]

history rhymes broke 20k and new york minute is 28k now i'm on a biiiiit of a roll

[jacnaylor]

Jamie wrapping Roy's present in all black because that's the colour he likes...

[brokenglassapplepie]

something so gay about that "laugh police" scene in the ted lasso finale. yes, trent and ted didn't kiss or confess or what we generally consider characters' endgame, but i have gone with less so im willing to take it. happyy pride month to tedependent you may not have kissed but you for sure made out on screen the way yall lookin at each other. gay.

[raviposting]

Not to do a religious reference on this show but to me the guys waiting until long AFTER the string was wrapped around their penises to ask why it was there is the modern day equivalent of Isaac gathering all the wood for the offering that Abraham was ready to nerf him on. Like this is that scene to me

[lady-of-the-spirit]

JAMIE'S FACE WHEN PHOEBE SAID ROY TALKS ABOUT HIM ALL THE TIME!!!!

[brilarsn]

“shouting is roy’s love language” trent crimm, the independent informing us that roy loves jamie

[captainkirkk]

I started watching Ted Lasso. Hated the first episode because of second-hand embarrassment, and then loved the second episode. Is this show just one guy winning over the hearts of grouchy British soccer team by being friendly and thoughtful?? Ted is so nice it actually hurts me

[sylvies-chen]

ooh and I’m not done obsessing over this episode so lemme just add one more thing re: colin’s storyline. so like. I don’t know what the guidelines are for apple tv+’s content ratings and what ted lasso being tv-ma means other than that roy wouldn’t be roy without it, so idk what the guidelines are on the f slur today (although I do know that it has been said in succession at the encouragement of brian cox, but HBO Max is a whole different thing idek). but that being said… they could have kept it in. a room full of white male writers, mostly straight, middle-aged… it could have so easily been a group of people who made the conscious decision to keep the word in for “authenticity’s” sake or in the name of maintaining the weight of the moment or whatever. but they didn’t, because it’s this group of dudes, it’s this group of writers and creators who recognized that everyone would know the word that was said, and who recognized that they didn’t need to traumatize (or, in some cases, re-traumatize) their viewers just for the show’s sake. and it’s a very small gesture of goodwill that is like, the bare fucking minimum if we’re being honest, but I’m still going to applaud them for it. kudos to ted lasso for keeping it classy as always and focusing on the love more than the hate.

[makimacult]

i can't believe this is real

[altschmerzes]

happy hanukkah, chag sameach everyone!!! here's a clip from far, far ahead in wriggle up on dry land, my ted lasso au where jamie's 15 and the groundsman's assistant when the story begins. at this point of the story he is 17 and he lives with ted - for. reasons. - and ted and roy have essentially ended up co-parenting him, which has been a learning process for everyone. this is their first real holiday season together, and the first time roy has decided to celebrate hanukkah of his own initiative (not with phoebe and his sister) in a long time.

The mulish determination that had carried Roy all the way through talking to Sarah and going to the little judaica store she’d given him the address of and getting everything set up disappears as soon as there’s someone else in the house. He hovers awkwardly near the doorway and watches while Ted and Jamie shuck off their coats and Ted nudges the kid to remind him to take his shoes off inside. They’ve both been in his house before, more times than he can count by this point, but somehow the experience feels new and unpredictable. Neither Ted nor Jamie seem to notice, chattering to each other about whatever they’d been talking about before they got here, but Roy can’t escape it. The feeling is loud and cloying and he can’t turn it off.

Just as Roy is about to conclude this entire thing had been a mistake and he should call it off right now, he realizes that the new arrivals have left him behind in his own entryway, moving on into the dining room where-

Well. Roy hurries after them and comes to an abrupt stop in the doorway. Ted’s got his hands tucked into his pockets and he looks at Roy with a warm, knowing smile that Roy resents on principle. Jamie is staring at the table, stopped in place like he can’t quite comprehend what he’s seeing. It’s an understandable reaction. A menorah was to be expected. Three of them is… Three of them is something else.

They’re lined up in a neat little row on the table, candles already placed in the farthest corners and the middles, a lighter laying nearby in anticipation of what’s coming next. The one on the left end is simple and traditional, the first one that Roy had grabbed. It reminded him of the one his grandparents had, the one that is probably in the window at Sarah’s house right now, already lit. In the middle sits a short menorah, a flat row of silver candle holders with the shamash slightly raised at the centre of them, and a colourful pattern on a panel behind them. Red pomegranates are set against a blue background and the whole thing had reminded him of Richmond. The last, on the right, is elegantly shaped silver metal, a trunk and the reaching branches of a little tree. It had taken Roy a long time to choose it. Dissatisfied with the options, he’d been about to give up and choose one at random when he’d spotted it, tucked away at the back of the shelf. As soon as he’d seen it, he’d known it was the one he wanted - on the way out of the store he’d thought to himself Do they even have trees in fucking Kansas? And then he’d been so irritated at what an insane thing that was to worry about that he’d nearly tripped over a crack in the pavement.

Finally tearing his eyes away from the table, Jamie glances over this shoulder at Roy. He looks confused, a little uncertain, like he’s got a question but he doesn’t want to ask it. The story he’d told about spending Hanukkah with his friend Ash’s family pops into Roy’s mind and he wonders if this is a setup Jamie recognizes, if he’s counted the menorahs on the table and done the simple math and realized what that meant. Then again, this is Jamie. That kind of conclusion is not one he can be relied on to reach himself, and so Roy is going to have to explain.

“That’s what we did,” Roy forces out eventually. His voice sounds thick and stony even to his own ears and he stops, swallowing hard before he tries again. The last thing he wants is to sound resentful, or angry, or any of the other things he knows he sounds when he’s emotional - embarrassed, this time. Anxious for their reactions, for this display of the thinness of his own life, his lack of substance that he’d needed to go out and buy these new and Googled it three times before he was sure he’d put the candles in the right end.

“In my family,” he says, faintly pleased that it comes out softer than before, gentler and less intense. “And in a lot of families. Don’t know about your friend Ash, but… But that’s what we did, and a lot of people do. Have one for… For everyone in the…” Roy waves a hand around, a vague circle indicating the room. His cheeks feel hot and he doesn’t know why this is so fucking hard to say. “In the immediate family. So. Y’know. Three.”

There. He’s said it and he’s explained and he didn’t pass out or die and nobody immediately laughs either so that has to be some kind of a good sign. Roy stares resolutely at the grain of the kitchen table. He can feel the eyes of the other two people in the room on him but he can’t bring himself to look over at them. Not quite yet.

[jacnaylor]

i'm sort of obsessed with the idea that the only thing zava knows about rebecca is that she was married to the antichrist, she sour yells at men in bathrooms and apparently all her surfaces are covered in crumbs