Ted Lasso's "white guy wish fulfilment" helped make it a hit for Apple TV+

Vox

"The thing about Ted Lasso is that it’s an antihero show," says Emily VanDerWerff. "I don’t mean that Ted himself is an antihero — clearly he’s someone we’re meant to emulate. What I mean is that Ted Lasso is about a man who enters a system that’s resistant to him, then forces that system to change to accommodate him, all through sheer willpower. Ted Lasso and Tony Soprano have diametrically opposed aims, but they both remake the world in their image. Ted Lasso also presents an idealistic view of how the powerful rich white cis straight men who our American system so privileges could and should carry themselves. Ted Lasso overcomes everybody’s resistance through being a genuine and nice man. But that, perversely, speaks to the privilege he has within the system he is part of. When Parks and Recreation tried the same with Leslie Knope (a powerful and eventually affluent white cis straight woman), it always had to couch her persistence in tones of 'Sure, she’s annoying, buuuut ...' Ted Lasso takes a few faint stabs at 'people roll their eyes at Ted!' but by the middle of its first season, he’s won over even the press that taunted him mercilessly when he took over the team. It’s a bit wild, and again, it’s clearly a fantasy. But it’s a fantasy that speaks to something people long for right now. Ted Lasso can remake the world in his own image because we intuitively understand that guys like him create and recreate the world every day. It’s just that, usually, they’re doing it for their benefit and not anybody else’s. That does not appear to be the case with good ol’ Ted. One reason Ted Lasso has been compared to Joe Biden’s presidential campaign is that Biden very consciously positioned himself as someone who was kind and decent when running against Donald Trump. We’re supposed to see much the same in Ted, a good man who cares about people before he cares about wins and losses. But kindness and decency only go so far. We all know this, and if we didn’t, watching Biden’s legislative agenda crash up against Republican intransigence in the Senate is a harsh reminder."