“Nice Tatas” you’ll one day say to me. “You’re too kind,” I’ll gently reply back. Probably.
Tyler’s Autistic Thoughts About Stuff. T.A.T.A.S. New feature here, and I’m gonna randomly sprinkle it into these Friday Brain Rain posts from here on out.
Once again for reasons I’ll never quite understand, I get asked a lot about things I’m reading, watching, listening to, and digesting mentally. More than the what, it’s what did you think about it, and that’s where this was born.
Not just a simple media diet, but HONEST, totally Autistically without a filter, personal reviews on the things I am consuming, whatever they happen to be.
I hope YOU respond to these too, I hope you tell me Your thoughts on My thoughts, your own TAS since you don’t have the first T or A to contribute, because that’s me, and my Autism, obviously haha.
This week, I wanted to talk about one thing, and it will be controversial I have no doubt.
The latest season of Ted Lasso.
Also, before I dive in, I’ve a brief plea: Please, if you’re a free reader and you’re able, consider joining the paid family. I pour my little heart out into every single thing I send out, and doing so takes a lot of time, energy, and love. I’ve lost quite a few paid followers over the last year and every single one makes it tougher to keep this place going. If you can, we’d so love to have you as part of the fam, especially now that we’ve been having so much fun with our LIVE community hangout nights each month called The Menagerie. We have one TONIGHT! If you can, help keep this little unicorn alive!
Let’s go.
Ted Lasso, Season 4
People are gonna hate me when I say this, but I can only be what I know to be. I wish they would have stopped after season 1, or maaaybe season 2 if I am totally honest, as I did love more bits of the 2nd season than I didn’t.
Season 1, when it first came out was something different. Maybe it was the timing, the COVID-Scary-Perma-Dread that we all felt constantly, maybe it was because we were all still shell-shocked with the culture of cruelty that was beginning to creep in from Trump’s first term, but even Jason Sudeikis himself said he had to re-write Lasso’s character in response to the cultural shifts he’d been seeing to be more kind, a better listener, good.
The ho-hum metaphors were unique and fresh, the feeling was overall one of “Dammit, I want to be better, too.” And I did. We all did.
Somehow, and please know I am the least cynical person there is, I don’t feel any of that anymore when I watch. This season, it felt like every single line was a “Lasso-ism” and every single scene was filled with some kind of forced slapstick silliness that took me out of whatever the scene was even about. Rebecca spilling BBQ sauce on her shirt once is great, but doing so every time she comes on screen, why? Same with Higgins knocking things over, same with Beard adding to his midlife crisis costume every time he’s in a shot.
Overall, I found myself searching for less, not more. I found myself craving more honest and adorable moments that have always made the show what it is.
Moment’s like Roy acting out the game for Keely using her makeup, moments that highlighted the very real, very unfair struggles of female athletes in a world that only praises men. Opportunities for more of this seemed to be bypassed for the slapstick, the silly, the over-the-top to the point of ridiculousness anytime Tracey Ullman’s Zelda character is involved, and it made me sad each time. Opportunities like Ted finally talking to his own son about what happened with his own father. Moments like this defined the first 2 seasons, now they are just glossed over and shown with no dialogue. Why?
Overall, I found myself still loving bits and moments of this season, but they were few, and they made the other feeling stronger. The one of “WHY?” that kept creeping up almost the entire rest of the show. Somehow, I found another show that shares a very similar origin story, Chad Powers, that feels more like how the first 2 seasons of Lasso felt, without nearly as much inanity.
I’m fully expecting some to fire back at this with the “Why does everything have to be _____” argument, and that blank can be filled in a myriad of ways. Whatever word chosen to fill in the blank, know this: I totally agree. Not everything Does have to be so serious, high-brow, perfect, sappy, literary, or whatever, but I feel like a show like this should at the very least make me feel, and believe it. Hell, that’s his whole thing and he has now made Two signs about it. This season, for me, didn’t. Neither did the one before it.
I hear another is in the works, and I’m hopeful it rallies, I’m hopeful more time is devoted to Alice, who I find to be the best of the new characters, more nuance given to the real struggles it can sometimes portray, and less time devoted to Beard and his crisis, the forced slapstick stuff, and maybe paring down, rather than continuing to Add storylines. Tighten, not expand, and thereby let everything breathe?
I know some of you are die hard fans and will be for life, and that’s totally acceptable. Maybe even you can offer up what you loved, what you didn’t, and what you hope changes in the season to come?
What are your thoughts?
Also let me know if you’re digging this idea, this format, the TATAS that can, and will be, about everything from movies, tv, music, to hell, food or places. Whatever. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Lastly, DO NOT FORGET:
TONIGHT IS THE MENAGERIE LIVE GATHERING!!!
Tonight, 6PM Mountain Time, we’ll be back and we’ll all join and talk and hang out and tell stories and read things and whatever else you wanna do. It’s a free-for-all and we all get to see each other’s faces, and I love it. To unlock the link and to join us, just join the little paid fam!
I love you all.
Be good.
Laurel and Hardy; The Three Stooges; and Looney Tunes… These three staples of Saturday morning television in my youth were founded and fed on presence of nonstop slapstick physical comedy. The element of art in all of this was not so much in its originality (a ‘bonk’ on the head is only funny once) but its nuanced attempt to present a survival mechanism for a traumatized world.
While it is easy to dismiss pie-throwing, eye-gouging, and anvil-dropping as lowbrow humor, these three comedic legends served as vital cultural pressure valves during the Great Depression, World War II, and the early Cold War. By transforming real-world violence, poverty, and despair into cartoonish, consequence-free physics, they offered audiences a desperate, necessary relief.
And perhaps Ted Lasso is not an equal, but a noble creative effort to meet the same fears of our world today. The true artistry perhaps is in the ballet-like choreography and emotional timing. After all, most comedies don’t make past one season. It has allowed us to turn on a television, look at a chaotic world, and say: "If they can take a hit like that and get back up, maybe we can too."
I never even fished the 3rd season for this exact reason. It lost something, some warmth that it had previously. Those first couple seasons were amazing, I wish it would have ended there.