|
Apple
TV+ has been
taking full
advantage of the
linguistic freedom
allowed to
streaming
services. It
premiered John
Carney’s
latest film, Flora and Son, not long after Ted Lasso, the
series created by
Jason Sudeikis,
Brendan Hunt, Bill
Lawrence and Joe
Kelly, aired its
thirty-fourth and
final
episode.
Both shows are
filled with
rough-and-ready,
often
reprehensible
characters who
never met a
sentence they
couldn’t
stuff with
obscenities.
And they are all
(with very few
exceptions)
absolutely lovable.
Flora and Son doubles
down on the
grungy,
working-class
Dublin milieu of
Carney’s
Oscar-winning 2007
film, Once. Flora
(Eve Hewson) and
her delinquent
teenage son Max
(Oren Kinlan) are
constantly at each
other’s
throats.
Flora’s
musician
ex-husband Ian
(Jack Reynor) is
unreliable at best
in helping to
raise Max. A
local policeman
tells Flora she
needs to keep Max
out of trouble,
and suggests she
find a hobby for
him.
Flora finds a
broken guitar on
the street, has it
restrung, and
gives it to
Max.
Max—who
likes only
electronic
music—rejects
the gift, but
Flora decides
she’d like
to learn to play
it herself.
Scouring the Net
for cheap
instruction, she
finally settles on
Jeff (Joseph
Gordon-Levitt), a
struggling
Southern
California
songwriter who
offers lessons
online.
What follows is a story—like Once and Carney’s other previous film, Sing
Street—about how music makes both life and people better. Granted that
Carney does not say music turns people into angels. Max commits theft
and calls his mother the c-word (she slaps his face and reminds him he
wouldn’t exist without her c-word). Flora herself thinks nothing of lifting
money from her employer’s purse. Her online relationship with Jeff is
testy at first, and nearly ends before it begins when she suggests Jeff should
teach her with his shirt off.
But then Flora and Jeff start bonding. She becomes confident on the guitar
under his instruction; he plays her one of his songs, and she makes good
suggestions on how to improve it. Their conversations become friendly,
then tender. The six thousand miles separating them become nothing, as
one scene on a Dublin rooftop—played exquisitely by Hewson and Gordon
-Levitt—demonstrates. It doesn’t hurt that they are both strong singers (no
surprise in Hewson’s case; she’s Bono’s daughter).
Meanwhile, Max starts making his own music videos to impress a girl. His
misadventures continue, yet he and his mother gradually become closer
through music. Even the feckless Ian joins in the final act, in which all the
major characters unite to form a truly unusual band.
In the end, Flora and Son is a heartwarming film—not precisely a musical,
but a film whose characters are enhanced and deepened by the music they
make. As with Once, Carney knows just how far he can go with his story
without making it soppy; he never forgets the people he’s dealing with.
Early on, when Flora asks Jeff an impertinent question, he pauses, then
laughs. “I forgot,” he said. “You’re Irish!” Jeff is the only character in Flora and Son who isn’t flagrantly, defiantly Irish. The film’s final
line—shouted by an audience member at Flora and Max’s first public
performance—leaves us in no doubt of that.
If Flora and Son is charming, Ted Lasso bowls us over with its lovability. It
feels like what Frank Capra would have made if he were alive today—and if
he had consulted Martin Scorsese, David Mamet and Quentin Tarantino
about dialogue. There are web pages that tell you how many times major
characters Roy Kent (Brett Goldstein) and Rebecca Welton (Hannah
Waddingham) say “fuck” in every episode. Most of the other characters are
no slouch in the f-word department.
The title character, on the other hand, swears rarely and gently. Ted Lasso
(Sudeikis), a winning football coach at Wichita State, makes international
sports headlines when Rebecca selects him as the new coach of the English
soccer team she owns, the fictional AFC Richmond. Rebecca has an
ulterior motive in hiring Ted: she got the team in a divorce settlement with
her ex-husband Rupert Mannion (Anthony Head), and she wants to run it
into the ground as a way of humiliating him. Hiring a coach who is utterly
ignorant of soccer, she thinks, will do the trick.
Rebecca, however, is unprepared for the juggernaut of optimistic, folksy
charm that is Ted Lasso. A latter-day Will Rogers, Ted does everything
from baking cookies to leading a guided tour of the London sewer system
to win over Rebecca, the team and the fans. Not that he has an easy time of
it. His first several games are disasters, and fans yell “Wanker!” when they
see him on TV or in the street. Then there are the things Ted doesn’t talk
about: his frequent panic attacks and his ongoing sorrow over his divorce
from Michelle (Andrea Anders) and separation from his son Henry (Gus
Turner).
These issues are explored in full in succeeding episodes of Ted Lasso, as
are the ongoing issues of all its characters. These issues can be farcical,
irksome, or tragic, depending on the character and the situation. They can
involve anything from the complications created by a no-photos online
dating service, to the death of the team’s greyhound mascot, to the
difficulty of using live lambs in a TV commercial. (It’s the poop.) What
distinguishes all these events is that they reveal the vast majority of the
characters—even the most rebarbative ones—to be as lovable as Ted
himself. Rebecca Welton and team executive Leslie Higgins (Jeremy Swift)
at first come across as Cruella De Vil and Uriah Heep, but eventually reveal
themselves to be Care Bears. So do crusty team captain Roy Kent (his
small niece bases her college fund on the money Roy is forced to add to her
“Swear Jar”); Roy’s nemesis on the team, the cocky Jamie Tartt (Phil
Dunster); and even Nate Shelley (Nick Mohammed), equipment manager
turned assistant coach, who commits what appears to be an unforgivable
act of treachery at the end of Season Two.
Some Ted Lasso characters are delightful at first encounter. One is Keeley
Jones (Juno Temple), model, PR flack, aspiring influencer, and love
interest first for Jamie, then Roy. (She’s the one who learns the sad truth
about lamb poop.) Others include the teammates at AFC Richmond:
thoughtful, idealistic Sam Obisanya (Toheeb Jimoh); ebullient Dani Rojas
(Cristo Fernandez), who races around the field yelling, “Futbol is life!”; and
Colin Hughes (Billy Harris), who feels he dare not reveal to his teammates
that he’s gay.
Some characters resist easy definition. Trent Crimm (James Lance),
sportswriter for The Independent, begins as Ted’s inquisitor and ends as his
chronicler. Quirkiest of all is Willis “Coach” Beard (Hunt), Ted’s laconic
second-in-command, who seems opaque at first but eventually reveals
himself to be the show’s closest equivalent to Hunter Thompson.
Besides likability, these characters are distinguished by their victimization,
mainly at the hands of tycoons who see professional sports as a toy. Rupert
Mannion, despite his surface charm, proves to be even worse than he
seemed at first. Edwin Akufo (Sam Richardson), a Ghanaian billionaire, is
best described as a cross between Donald Trump and Idi Amin, and (for
reasons I will not reveal here) devotes himself to making Sam’s existence a
living hell. Jack Danvers (Jodi Balfour), a masculine-named billionaire’s
daughter, sets Keeley up in her own PR firm, but is only toying with her in
more ways than one.
As in all good sports movies and Capra films, the characters in Ted Lasso need antagonists to show their mettle, their integrity, and their team spirit. Ted Lasso is the exemplar of an ensemble comedy, in essence using a great
cast as a metaphor for a great sports team. Sudeikis & Co. make each AFC
Richmond game an edge-of-your seat contest, but even more they ensure
that each character is an integral part of the team. As delightful a character
as Ted is, he sometimes seems like the show’s McGuffin. I finished the
series believing that the true main character was Roy, but one could make
the same argument for Rebecca, or Keeley, or Nate, or Jamie. It all
depends on who scored the latest goal.
My only complaint about the show is that the finale left me unsatisfied; I
could have stayed with these characters for another thirty-four episodes at
least. But I was happy to spend time with these crazy, messed-up,
endearing characters, f-bombs and all. Ted Lasso had me eating, drinking,
and sleeping AFC Richmond. And I’m not even a soccer fan!
|
