TMC
05-05-2023, 04:23 AM
https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2023/05/ted-lasso-season-three-decline/673943/
As it’s racked up viewers and accolades, a charming workplace sitcom has transformed into a bloated prestige drama.
By David Sims
Midway through watching “Sunflowers,” a nearly feature-length episode of Ted Lasso that juggles five separate plotlines, I wondered aloud, “When exactly did this show turn into a prestige drama?” Yes, the script still has plenty of jokes—though few of them deserve more than a low chuckle, and many characters are little more than caricatures. But as it’s continued to draw viewers and accolades for Apple TV+, this Emmy-winning comedy has pivoted further and further away from the genre to which it supposedly belongs, devolving into ham-fisted, novelistic nonsense.
When Ted Lasso first emerged as a sleeper hit in the summer of 2020, it was the gentle hug audiences needed in the middle of pandemic lockdown, a familiar fish-out-of-water tale about a nice man infecting the cynical world around him with his niceness. Like most people, I was at first skeptical: The show expanded on a character—a cheery American football coach hired by a flailing U.K. soccer team—that its creator-star, Jason Sudeikis, had first portrayed for an NBC commercial. (“Based on a semi-well-known ad” is not exactly a compelling hook.) But Ted Lasso’s first season earned its massive hype; it was a well-crafted workplace sitcom that built out its central character’s leadership strengths step by step, methodically depicting how Ted’s emotional intelligence more than makes up for his lack of tactical acumen. The show’s propensity for “niceness” was radical and surprising, somehow allowing it to generate laughs while dodging conflict.
Every episode was also half an hour long, which is typical for sitcoms—something that Ted Lasso is, even if it isn’t shot on an overlit Hollywood soundstage in front of a live studio audience. One of the Season 1’s best episodes, “Biscuits,” is 29 minutes long. The big finale, “The Hope That Kills You,” is a roomy 33, but I forgave that, given the solid work that co-creators Sudeikis, Bill Lawrence, Brendan Hunt, and Joe Kelly had done in developing Ted’s world at the fictional club of AFC Richmond. The following season also won an Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series, but it showed signs of bloat, with episode lengths ballooning from 30 minutes to 49 by the end of the run. The plotlines themselves began to sprawl too, extending beyond the workplace of the team in order to give each character more screen time.
As it’s racked up viewers and accolades, a charming workplace sitcom has transformed into a bloated prestige drama.
By David Sims
Midway through watching “Sunflowers,” a nearly feature-length episode of Ted Lasso that juggles five separate plotlines, I wondered aloud, “When exactly did this show turn into a prestige drama?” Yes, the script still has plenty of jokes—though few of them deserve more than a low chuckle, and many characters are little more than caricatures. But as it’s continued to draw viewers and accolades for Apple TV+, this Emmy-winning comedy has pivoted further and further away from the genre to which it supposedly belongs, devolving into ham-fisted, novelistic nonsense.
When Ted Lasso first emerged as a sleeper hit in the summer of 2020, it was the gentle hug audiences needed in the middle of pandemic lockdown, a familiar fish-out-of-water tale about a nice man infecting the cynical world around him with his niceness. Like most people, I was at first skeptical: The show expanded on a character—a cheery American football coach hired by a flailing U.K. soccer team—that its creator-star, Jason Sudeikis, had first portrayed for an NBC commercial. (“Based on a semi-well-known ad” is not exactly a compelling hook.) But Ted Lasso’s first season earned its massive hype; it was a well-crafted workplace sitcom that built out its central character’s leadership strengths step by step, methodically depicting how Ted’s emotional intelligence more than makes up for his lack of tactical acumen. The show’s propensity for “niceness” was radical and surprising, somehow allowing it to generate laughs while dodging conflict.
Every episode was also half an hour long, which is typical for sitcoms—something that Ted Lasso is, even if it isn’t shot on an overlit Hollywood soundstage in front of a live studio audience. One of the Season 1’s best episodes, “Biscuits,” is 29 minutes long. The big finale, “The Hope That Kills You,” is a roomy 33, but I forgave that, given the solid work that co-creators Sudeikis, Bill Lawrence, Brendan Hunt, and Joe Kelly had done in developing Ted’s world at the fictional club of AFC Richmond. The following season also won an Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series, but it showed signs of bloat, with episode lengths ballooning from 30 minutes to 49 by the end of the run. The plotlines themselves began to sprawl too, extending beyond the workplace of the team in order to give each character more screen time.