I’ve added Ted Lasso to my Top-N list because it is an unqualified masterpiece, is underwatched, and needs all the evangelization it can get.
From Catherynne M. Valente:
Ted Lasso is…nurturing, caring, wise, capable… He encourages everyone, starting at the surface (Higgins’ puns or Jamie’s confidence) until he can get a glimpse of something deeper to encourage. He is others-focused but devoted to his own passions. He is radically, confrontationally sincere about his own feelings, and his #1 trick is just saying what he feels flat out, without guile. He’s a football coach who loves musicals and food… He gives everyone books, mostly science fiction books, specifically tailored to who they are in order to teach them how to evolve without losing that sense of self (I AM TELLING YOU, THIS SHOW).
His model makes me want to be a better man. It’s pretty easy to wield wit like a knife — especially if you grew up small and learned how early, because wit was often the only defense you had that drew any blood. But I’ve also found that “when you…have the pleasure of saying the thing you mean to say at the moment you mean to say it, remorse inevitably follows.”
I’ve like to think I’ve learned to be a little less F-O-X and a little more Lasso.