For a show focused on highlighting the best in everyone, Ted Lasso’s second season really did its female characters dirty.
Season two of the soccer-themed comedy-drama aired its finale on October 8, leaving viewers sitting with more than a few cliff-hangers. However, when I look back on this season, I’m not thinking about Nate’s alarming character progression, the threat of Rupert’s new soccer team, or even the unethical portrayal of journalists (which hit a little too close to home).
Instead, the season finale left me feeling like I’d eaten the shortbread Ted accidentally bakes with salt—I expected more of the same sweetness and was left with a bitter taste instead.
I take no joy in saying that. I had higher hopes, considering how much I enjoyed season one. From the start, even when she was supposed to be an antagonist, I loved AFC Richmond team owner Rebecca Welton (I’ll take a well-dressed woman with sharp one-liners over a do-gooder mustachioed protagonist any day).
Rebecca’s character arc is arguably a guiding axis of the show: She moves from an embittered schemer seeking to tank her ex’s beloved soccer team to finding humour, happiness, and a mellower sense of self.
She relaxes into funny, sweet relationships with the coaching staff and even the soccer players, both professional and platonic. That is, until season two’s eighth episode—when Rebecca finds an unlikely romance.
Before I continue, a disclaimer: I love love. Hearing my friends wax poetic about their romantic partners makes me happy. I’ll grill anyone for a good meet-cute story, and I watch the same few romantic comedies on a loop. With this in mind, it’s a true feat of television that Ted Lasso’s second season has me so uncomfortable with the romantic relationships it displays—not to mention what that does to the women of the show.
Coach Beard’s girlfriend Jane exists to upset him: She’s a careless, unkind character who derives amusement from manipulating him. Rupert’s arm-candy-turned-new-wife Bex is a punchline for her much younger age. And Ted’s estranged wife Michelle is more of a plot device meant to showcase his weaknesses than a character in her own right.
Roy and Keeley’s romance is one of my favourite plotlines in the show (second only to the Keeley-Rebecca friendship.) They’re stable, communicative, funny, and affectionate. Plus, they look great together.
But toward the end of season two, everything we’ve ever learned about their relationship completely shifts. A cornerstone of Keeley and Roy’s dynamic is mutual support through their various ambitions—until Keeley is the one to achieve professional success. Then, we’re suddenly meant to believe her achievements make Roy insecure and rattle their relationship. In my view, that storyline does supportive male partners a disservice as much as it does to successful women.
This brings us back to my real pet peeve of the second season: Rebecca’s romance with Sam Obisanya, a twenty-one-year-old player on the soccer team she owns. The plot has them match on an anonymous dating app, where they’re charmed by one another’s witty banter without knowing who’s on the other end of the chat. When they finally meet at a bar and realize each other’s identities, Rebecca puts her foot down on the grounds that she’s in her forties and his employer. The two end up in bed together anyway and carry on a secret relationship through the remainder of the season. We’re clearly meant to root for their passion.
Eventually, Rebecca initiates a break in their relationship on the grounds that she needs to “work on herself.” However, when another team tries to buy Sam away from Richmond, she tells him she can’t make any promises about their relationship but she wants him to stay regardless. Viewers are told through expositionary B-plot phone calls that Sam doesn’t consider their relationship in making his decision, but he still decides to stay after she tells him that.
This relationship is a bad play (soccer pun intended).
Sure, the characters have great chemistry. Sam is a charming foil to Rebecca’s ex-husband’s toxic, possessive masculinity. But in my books, that still isn’t enough to justify their romance. Rebecca signs Sam’s paychecks and controls his career trajectory.
Between the age gap and the power differential, if the gender roles were swapped, theirs would not be a love story that we’re encouraged to back.
The show spent two seasons displaying Rebecca’s growth after her divorce, finding her footing as both owner of the team and an independent person in her own right. This romance causes her to act unprofessionally; she lets her relationship with Sam colour her decision-making for the team as a collective when she tries to convince him to stay.
Rebecca and Sam should be happy—but separately. It’s not fair to give Rebecca a free pass on behaviour that abuses her power just because we like her as a character.
I’d love to see her be done justice as a complex character without being shoehorned into a romance. In doing so, the show perpetuates the idea that a successful woman isn’t really successful until she’s got a romantic partner, particularly after so much of the show was contingent on her independent growth.
Ted Lasso is a show that focuses on finding the best in people. That value should extend to the women it portrays by treating them consistently rather than using them for plot twists alone.