![]() ![]() “Ted Lasso” distilled this theme to the Nth degree without resorting to supernatural activity. Then there are the shows about the very embodiment of stuckness: “Ghosts” and “School Spirits,” both of which address the problem from the vantage point of people who have shuffled off the mortal coil but - even then - can't seem to figure out how to get where they're going. Even some of streaming's most recent stars - “Severance,” “Shrinking" and the recently concluded “ Star Trek: Picard ” - focus on central characters who are stuck by bad choices, trauma or a lost sense of purpose. Alma in “Undone,” Carmy in “The Bear” and “Mare of Easttown”? Stuck, stuck and stuck. Nadia in “Russian Doll”? Stuck in strikingly different ways in seasons one and two. The Scarlet Witch in Marvel's “WandaVision”? Stuck. Take a tour across genres in the American streaming landscape over the past, say, four years, and you'll find a surfeit of stuckness in pretty much every direction you look. ![]() But something more intense is happening lately. It has been a useful and oft-used narrative engine from “It's a Wonderful Life” (1946) through “Groundhog Day” (1993) and beyond. The character who's stuck in the mire is nothing new. Even Sharon the sports psychologist (Sarah Niles) was, to some extent, stuck.Īnd of course Ted himself (Jason Sudeikis), a lost boy with a mustache and a plenitude of platitudes who had been stuck in the quicksand of grief for most of his life and, it turned out, needed a mission to get others unstuck to help him find his own way forward. Trent, Colin and Sam (James Lance, Billy Harris and Toheeb Jimoh) were stuck. It was difficult to find a show with more of a collection of people who were stuck - trapped in the amber of their own circumstances or choices. “Ted Lasso” has been a Whitman's Sampler of pandemic-era stuckness with a message that, whether it was delivered with a subtle glance or a giant narrative mallet, couldn't help but resonate in a post-pandemic landscape: The moments that have trapped you don't have to last forever. And if there had been a travel guide to the three seasons of the Apple TV+ show, that quote might well have sat opposite the title page. “Perfect is boring,” Coach Beard (Brendan Hunt) says at one point in the season ( and likely series ) finale. The answer, after Wednesday, is a resounding "probably." “Can people change?” Roy Kent (Brett Goldstein) wonders. And the kind-to-a-fault but often lost Ted Lasso finally - after three seasons, but arguably after nearly a lifetime - figures out exactly where he needs to be.Ĭriticized by some for losing its way in its third season, “Ted Lasso” ended up exactly on brand - by taking a sharply drawn crew of characters who had lost their ways and gotten stuck, and freeing them from shackles that were often of their own making. ![]()
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