I have a new love interest.
Ted Lasso has touched my heart. I had heard the name before, but never quite understood who it was.
I remember people smiling and laughing when I shared a story about him, or the TV series with his name on it. I’ve had a lot of other things on my mind over the past year, and I’ve never paid attention. Bye now.
I fell in love late one Sunday afternoon. For some reason, Sundays are especially difficult days for me since my husband died.
On this particular Sunday, after devouring the entire sections of two morning papers, I felt conflicted. I sought refuge on my iPad. I was going to use it to re-read a rather dry historical novel I had started the day before when I accidentally clicked on the icon on my Apple TV. I didn’t even know it had an Apple TV icon!
Click! It was immediately apparent that I had a ton of iPad/Apple movies available to me, who knew?! – an unexpected gift.
Let this be clear: I am not a TV watcher, other than CNN in the early morning just to make sure overnight global threats are kept at bay. The truth is, I haven’t quite mastered the complicated remote mechanism required for each of the TVs in our household. Note to self: Identify someone in the family who needs a TV.
Return to “Ted Lasso”. I watched an entire season of this incredibly engaging series in two short days. If you’re already familiar with this streaming option, hopefully you’ll agree that it’s five-star entertainment. The show is about kindness. Football and kindness.
That said, it’s not a family series. There is a lot of profanity. Mainly, the constant use of the “F” word, the one that rhymes with “duck”. I think they overuse that word. In one episode, I heard it 17 times before I lost count. Powerful word, how was the episode.
Despite the profanity and some difficulty understanding the heavy British accents of some of the characters, Ted and his team made me feel like we had a chance to make the world a better place. There were repeated situations where the characters would get angry, angry, belligerent (remember, this is competitive football!) or distressed and despondent (loss, failed marriages and self-doubt) but usually with some narration and a refreshed Ted’s perspective, they seize the moment and tackle the current problem with authenticity, creativity and good heart.
Heavy in the good heart, that is, kindness. Watching this series made me want to pay attention to the little things I can do in any given day to make the people I meet happier.
I suspect the poet and author, Maya Angelo, now dead, would have liked “Ted Lasso.” After all, she was the one who said, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
amen
Sharon Johnson is a retired educator. Contact her at sharjohn99@gmail.com
