The "Hidden" Message...In "Ted Lasso"

 Like millions of you, I've followed the exploits of Ted Lasso and the adventures of the Richmond Greyhounds as the lovable team battles relationships, anxiety attacks, bruised egos, and other soccer teams to somehow triumph against improbable odds.

I've blogged about the show before, about how the show "won me over" the way the show's namesake won over everyone--the players, the owner, the fans as an "fish-out-of-water" protagonist. I thought they way they did it was brilliant, but I noticed something watching Season Two this fall...

Something even more brilliant...

Something I almost missed.

The show, among the other amazing things it does well, is a voice, a voice for a much-maligned group, a segment of the population that has been pretty much hammered on for years. What Ted Lasso does is stand up for the human male. It's a story about men, but what it isn't is a story about how terrible men are, how they are not destroyers of societies, not greedy selfish pigs, not walking evil in gym shoes.

This isn't to say that these men are without fault--far from it. The series many times shows men in all their unflattering glory. But what it doesn't do is begin with the premise that all men are the root of all evil. It shows men's weaknesses, but also their strengths. It shows how men don't necessarily want to just use women for their own selfish needs, among other things. 

I have no proof of this, but my theory is part of what has made Ted Lasso such a success We get to see men being men, without the labels that follow around men like these days like a bad penny. Like I said...no proof, just a thought...a thought I'd like to believe is right, and I think we need to see more of in entertainment.

Maybe others would, too.

Can't wait for next season.