SPOILERS

I included a spoiler tag even though this has been out for a couple of years now. Just to be safe in case there are people out there, like me, who had not seen Ted Lasso before today.

Ted Lasso has been one of those shows that everyone loved and everyone talked about, but that I had not watched. It is on Apple TV +, which I have, but I never got around to watching it. After hearing so many positives about the show, I put it on my list, but I had not gotten around to it. With The Boys, Ms. Marvel, Stranger Things over for now, and Only Murders in the Building releasing once a week, it felt like the right time to dive into Ted Lasso.

So I started it up, knowing that there were ten season one episodes and that if I was not interested, I could easily discard the binge and watch something else. However, that was not going to be a problem because I was immediately hooked after the first episode.

Jason Sudeikis played Ted Lasso, an American football coach hired to come to England and coach football (aka soccer) in a Premiere League team that had been ravaged by an ownership divorce between Rebecca Welton (Hannah Waddingham) and Rupert Mannion (Anthony Head).

Rebecca, angry over her ex-husband’s affairs and betrayal, had decided that the way to pay him back was to ruin the one thing that he loved, the AFC Richmond. This story started with a very Major League flavor to it, but I like this storyline much more, because we meet Rebecca and we find out why she has been such a cold and angry woman. While she is sabotaging her team, we can see the reasons and we can see the strain it put on her as she grows closer to Ted and others in her orbit.

There were plenty of other stories going on through the season including the brash, young and selfish stud Jamie Tartt (Phil Dunster), the aging and always angry captain Roy Kent (Brett Goldstein) and his developing relationship with club manager of PR, Keeley Jones (Juno Temple), who had a relationship with Jamie. There are several interesting characters floating through the series as well.

Other great actors involved included Brendan Hunt, Nick Mohammed, Toheeb Jimoh, Kola Bokinni, Annette Badland, Andrea Anders, and Ellie Taylor.

The episodes were hilarious and kept the sport team clichés away from the show. In fact, I would go as far as to say that I was never sure how things were going to happen and I enjoyed how the show kept me off balance with the sport tropes.

The character of Ted Lasso is as hopeful and inspirational as you are going to find, yet he is instilled with his own personal issues that he has to overcome. Jason Sudeikis truly deserved his Emmy win for this season.

Next up will be season two.