Ted Lasso is a "manic pixie dream guy" fantasy that removes the worst of the locker room

The Muse

"Throughout the series Lasso is presented as a manic pixie dream guy, marrying together typical attributes of machismo—sports lover who can grow facial hair and is in charge of others—with just a touch of feminine energy, making him the measuring stick for all of the other masculine identities in the locker room," says Shannon Melero of the Jason Sudeikis-led Apple TV+ comedy. "Lasso is compassionate and listens, but he’s also solution-oriented. He brings an energetic balance to the locker room, and the audience is supposed to perceive him as a good guy because he is the same man outside of the man-space as he is inside of it. Lasso has no shadow personality that activates as soon as all the women are gone—not that there are many women, to begin with, in the world of Ted Lasso. But Lasso’s inner and outer balance endears him to reporters, angry fans, the team members that hate him, and even his heartless boss, Rebecca (Hannah Waddingham)." Melero adds: "Ted Lasso may not win any Emmys next year, but it in some respects the show is a masterpiece. Without trying too hard, the show weaves together various archetypes of masculinity and creates a perfect locker room in which they can all work together, even through the insane notion of having a woman in charge. The magic of Ted Lasso is that although it is set in the locker room, it removes some of the worst factors of the space—overt sexism, homophobia, emotional and physical abuse—and instead reimagines a space where those dark and dirty behaviors are relics of the past. These men and this locker room are more evolved than the men and locker rooms that the audience is familiar with, and that’s accomplished through the simple addition of empathy. Ted Lasso is empathetic to the struggle of each man on his team and toward Rebecca as well. This empathy that trickles down to the rest of the locker room is what sets the show on a different path than any other series that follows men into locker rooms. It’s not just a sports comedy—it’s a perfectly executed fantasy."

ALSO:

• Co-creator Bill Lawrence tweets that Ted Lasso will be back for Season 3, though an official announcement hasn't been made
• Hannah Waddingham on playing Ted Lasso's boss: "I initially thought, Oh God, the audience is just going to hate me. And I also thought that I should find the line — because the writing is so good and clever — of giving little nuggets about why Rebecca is the way she is. She’s not Darth Vader."