Ted Lasso, Saccharine?

“Hello, my name is Todd. And I like Ted Lasso.”

Even the start of Season 4. We watched the much-anticipated first episode last Friday evening.

Apple News knows my search queries. Clearly. Recently I opened the native news app, and there it was, right in my feed: a review of Ted Lasso Season 4. I am sure it was prompted by my search for “when will the new season drop,” or rather, drip out to us fans.

The reviewer asserted the show should have ended with Season 3. Let well enough alone is the sentiment. Take this as a sample.

It looked like it was gone forever, but Jason Sudeikis’s hugely popular show returns with a premise that’s all twee nonsensicality. If you love messages of positivity and togetherness, you’ll be thrilled.

Who does not enjoy a good bit of sarcasm? But this piece is as over-the-top as the author claims the show’s positivity is.

If you are already a Ted Lasso ultra, you may be inclined to gloss over the twee nonsensicality of this fourth season’s setup and simply sink back into the show’s anodyne atmosphere, one that revolves around messages of positivity, togetherness and how good it is when your football team wins. If you bristle at such blatant emotional button-pushing, you might come to another conclusion: Ted Lasso is fake and phoney, to use the kind of Americanism this show loves putting into the mouths of its British characters (who calls it “the John Lewis Christmas commercial”?!). From the vague transatlanticism and fairytale London to the football-based inaccuracies and stiffly unreal vibe, Ted Lasso rarely bears any relation to reality. This is not a show for pedants.

Then, there is the closing sentence.

Ted Lasso is still saccharine business as usual and, no doubt, still a lot of people’s cup of tea.

I don’t get British humor. Maybe the author is punching up, and she likes it for its overly friendly air. Or, she more likely is poking viewers in the nose for enduring what she sees as fakery.

Pedants. I would guess most literalists would find something wrong with every produced show about life, no matter the genre. Life is arbitrary enough but not as predictable as a production. Emphasizing a counter to skepticism and cynicism may include a dose of hyperbole or, as in Lasso, a too-often smiling main character as a counterweight to the darkness that has left too many lonely and disconnected.

Another review, which I cannot find again, set the first three seasons in the context of the welcome the show received during the COVID-19 pandemic. Everyone needed an uplifting show. But now, the reviewer intimates, that was then. We don’t need this anymore.

Except clearly we do.

Sudekis is motivated to a new three-season story arc because he needs it too! No, not the money, but a counter to the way the world is.

I could not help but think of our trek through the Farewell Discourse of Jesus in John’s Gospel at Snow Hill. Aware that His enemies have secured the services of a friend in their plot to take him and kill him, Jesus spends more time talking about love and how the love of the Father and the Son make real what and how they are to love one another. We have reached what Frederick Dale Bruner, in his commentary on John’s Gospel, calls the Son Sermon. Jesus gives his special command - love one another. And just before he concludes what we hear on Sunday, we hear Jesus telling the disciples he no longer calls them his servants but his friends.

The counter to a world hell-bent on killing a rabble-rousing Rabbi is that the targeted Rabbi dares to live out the way of life long prescribed for Ancient Israel. Loving God and loving neighbors is not intended to create a mysterious counterplot to the way the world is. No, the path taken by Mary’s Boy who becomes Pilate’s Victim is the reality behind the mystery that we find it hard to make real friends.

When Jesus tells his friends to love one another, he knows he is telling them to begin with those they know well. Three years of knowing has witnessed them arguing over their pecking order, a couple of brothers secretly asking to be Top Dog #1 and Top Dog #2, and can you imagine how long it took for the four fishermen in the group to get good with one among them, who assessed Rome’s tax on their fishing expeditions. We could go on with the interpersonal relationships of these young men faced with learning how to wash each other’s feet. But even that reference has you wincing at someone touching your feet, maybe even the person whom you deem nearest.

Jesus tells his disciples that he calls them friends because they know everything he is doing is born of and in the love the Father has for Him and the love the Son has for them. In other words, seeing and hearing Jesus is to know what it is to love one another. Every incident, every healing, every teaching, every interaction with those considered outside the pale for their condition calls attention to how Jesus loves those near him. As they venture beyond the boundaries considered acceptable, the disciples see Jesus not just loving those in his immediate proximity, but going out of his way to counter the darkness in places his people generally did not dare go.

Ted Lasso is not Jesus. But he may give us a glimpse of what it might mean to learn to love one another. Lasso is relentless in finding ways to crack the hard shell of those who hired him to fail. Determined to win over those who use his lack against him and smile at those who seem determined to embarrass him, all while facing his own shadows and relationship difficulties. Follow the Apostles in the Acts of the Apostles. Paul and Barnabas split over John Mark. Peter and Paul nearly come to blows over ethnic divisions. Over time, they learn what it means to love one another by doing what they know Jesus does. Paul and John Mark reconcile. Peter writes about the kaleidoscope of people included in God’s love. And Paul summarizes the Law with Jesus’s my commandment.

Critics may not like Ted for his optimism. They may wince at the lack of accuracy related to the game of soccer as well as both American and British cultures. But the show is not about any of that.

Just the same, the Good News of Jesus Christ is not about finding people, real or media figures, to gin up our optimism for a better world. If we would just love one another, as the sign-off of Big Brother’s host insists after a show where anything but loving one another is on display for 90 minutes. We’ve proven that too big an ask. The Good News of the Gospel is anything but anodyne. After all, Jesus, John says, loves the disciples to the end, and that meant death on a cross. The Father loves the Son such that the Father raises the Son from the dead. And that is not optimism. The Resurrection is the reality that makes our world a mystery.

The world may deem the Good News twee nonsensical and those who follow Jesus satisfied with saccharine. However, for those who are perishing, the Good News is that Jesus is the True Friend of a hostile world that gave Himself for us all.