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I Like Ted Lasso But

 I was going to say, “not in that liberal white woman way.” Offense not necessarily intended, but not absolutely prohibited, either.

On the other hand, even if the acronym and the description for “Affluent White Female Urban Liberal” describes a real thing, it’s a bit mean to go around yelling, “You’re the stereotypical AWFUL!”

I digress. I love Ted Lasso. I love that it’s funny, but it has heart. Pathos. But I don’t “need” Ted Lasso. I’m gonna make my best effort not to buy any Ted Lasso merchandise. Have I been tempted to buy the coffee mug with a Venn diagram explaining the Roy Kent fan chant on it? (IYKYK) Yep. But I won’t. (Roy was written to have once been one of the best defenders/defensive midfielders in the relatively short history of the English Premier League.)

I enjoyed seeing Brett Goldstein on Sesame Street. He seems like a genuinely sweet man (which is why only he could play Roy Kent). But having him sorta in character as Roy, AND making the letter of the day be “F” is winking a little too hard at the adult fans in your audience. You can’t shelter kids, but corrupting them is much worse. Ask Jesus. I had a legitimately weird vibe as a bad boy in the parish young adult group—not necessarily devoid of any foundation—and one friend described me as a kind of John Belushi of theologians, but I don’t want to be in line when they hand out the millstones.

I will say that my entertainment is not my personality. You can be moved by a thing, but that’s because fiction done well is a parable for real life. Your feelings can absolutely trick you, though. I was moved when Will Smith in Seven Pounds committed suicide in order to donate his organs. I was not immediately enraged by any means, when Clint Eastwood’s character helps Hilary Swank’s character commit suicide/euthanasia in Million Dollar Baby. (Spoiler alerts.) But feelings must be ordered to the truth, and we’re in a bad way when our emotions are mismatched to virtues and vices. It’s absolutely not wrong to see morally ambiguous or even evil characters in a story, or to create them. But if we’re not attuned to the good, the true, and the beautiful, we’ll be aimless at best.

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