Ted Lasso’s Best Character
*This Article Contains Spoilers*
Full disclosure: I’m not the biggest Ted Lasso fan. Like many, I find Ted himself to be a refreshing change of pace from the usual jaded cynics stalking our screens. Even more heartening is the glowing response he’s inspired, which testifies to an unslaked appetite for goodness and basic decency. He’s not exactly Dostoevsky’s Prince Myshkin, but he’s a far cry from a Walter White or a Logan Roy. I’ll take it!
In many ways, the show is a victim of its own success. Having crafted a hero with such an unflappably good nature, the challenge is to keep it interesting and avoid sentimentalism. Even with the efforts to complicate Ted’s character—a failed marriage, his father’s suicide—Ted Lasso doesn’t always strike the balance. The Christmas episode approaches Love, Actually levels of saccharine banality and the “Beard After Hours” episode is a self-indulgent misfire, the equivalent of a filler track on an otherwise decent album.
All that to say, Season 2 struggled mightily to recapture the show’s initial exuberance and I was losing patience. Ted’s backstory, harrowing as it was, didn’t exert enough force to pull him out of the life-sized Hallmark card he seemed to inhabit. Enter Nate Shelley. Or rather, take a closer look at Nate. What happened to him?
The former clubhouse attendant, Nate is initially bowled over by Ted’s regard for him. Not only does Ted treat him like a colleague and recognize the creativity in his strategies for the field, he eventually instates Nate as an assistant coach. It’s a smart move. Nate’s playbook works out well for the team and the man soon finds himself in the spotlight. There are warning signs that this professional success is posing a threat to Nate’s soul. He scrolls endlessly on his phone, lapping up all his good press and stewing over any trollish comments. He reacts to any kind of teasing with growing hostility. In one heartbreaking scene, he misreads the casual banter of a female colleague and when his advances are gently rebuffed, spits at his tearful reflection in the mirror. Most damagingly of all, he continues to feel overlooked and cast aside, with Ted getting all the credit for his innovative work. With this mounting tension, Nate resorts to increasingly passive aggressive tactics, even leaking highly personal information to the press about Ted’s emotional state.
Season 2 ends with a stunning confrontation between Ted and his former protege. In a wrathful tirade, Nate tells Ted that he had made him feel so special only to abandon him. He feels used and discarded. The accusation may not be fair, but the emotions behind it are all too real. Ted tries to apologize and make peace, but it’s too late. Nate’s wounded pride can only translate acts of kindness as condescension. Every warm gesture inflicts more damage on his fragile ego and threatens to undermine his own sense of stability. Love is now an affront, compliments, insults. Ted may not be Prince Myshkin, but Nate seems to be partially modeled on the psychology of John Milton’s Satan, whose wounded sense of merit drives his infernal rage. At the very least, he’s a more mild mannered Walter White.
The scene is jarring because it’s so at odds with the show’s overall tone. Here’s a force that can pull anyone out of a Hallmark card. In a show that aims to restore some of the allure of an actual good guy, it’s somehow fitting that its best character is also its worst.
