I was recently on a walk (yes, I walk for exercise from time to time) with a friend. Whilst perambulating and conversing, I opened up about recent emotional difficulties. To my recollection, this was the first time I’d done that with this particular acquaintance, despite having been friends for over a decade and having gone through some significant life experiences alongside this dude. Which got me wondering: Why did I wait so long? How is it so easy for me to write my feelings but so challenging to make the words come out of my mouth?
Some of the answer is certainly cultural. The example my Japanese father set for me as a child was, well, what you might expect from a Japanese man. Stoic and emotionally reserved. But some of the the answer to that question has to be gendered. By which I mean: One big reason that I waited so long to finally open myself up to my friend was that it isn’t what men do.
I (much like the rest of you) fell in love with the Apple+ comedy series Ted Lasso during pandemic lockdown. When we simply needed to feel good about something, anything at all. The story of an American football coach (Jason Sudeikis) whose sole talent appeared to be his relentless optimism, recruited to lead a British football club by an owner who hopes he’ll run the club into the ground: It was what we needed. It was the type of streaming show that you binged your way through, then immediately pulled out your phone and googled something like “release date season two ted lasso”.
Ted has done well, pulling multiple awards and a ton of adulation. The writing is great, the acting superb, the comedy out of the world. It’s what you’d expect from the guy who made Scrubs (Bill Lawrence), which remains one of my all-time favorite shows. But it’s Ted Lasso’s approach to masculinity I love the most. And to be honest — beyond its roots as a comedic sketch advertisement for NBC’s venture into Premier League (that’s a European “football” league if you’re wondering, just a “football” league if you’re European, and a European “soccer” league for us ‘Murricans) — it’s what the show is about. Ted Lasso is a show that explores what it means to be a modern man.
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