I’m Getting Pretty Sick of the One Good Man

The relentless ‘Ted Lasso’ hype is a quest to find one nice guy to heal the trauma of patriarchy

Behold! The one human man who has never sent a death threat online!!!! Photo by Digital Focus on Shutterstock.

Somewhere around the time he promised to lift the spirits of a Nigerian soccer player by “Ni-cheerin’-him up,” I became conscious of a desire to throat-punch Ted Lasso.

I know! I know! Ted Lasso — a fictional soccer coach, played by Jason Sudeikis in the TV show of the same name; please note that, because he does not exist, I cannot hurt him — has become the Internet’s favorite dude. He’s an “an emotional lifeboat amid our culture’s raging sea of discord and unhappiness.” He’s “the antidote to everything wrong with America.” He’s “changed our lives at the darkest time;” he has made everyone a better person. He’s a “roadmap for men” and a “positive male role model” who has a Peabody award for “offering the perfect counter to the enduring prevalence of toxic masculinity.”

I want him to get shit on by a pigeon. It’s not Sudeikis’ fault; he’s a good actor, sometimes a great one. (His performance in the 2016 movie Colossal, as a nice-guy abuser whose cheerful facade disintegrates to reveal the rot beneath, is precisely the kind of incisive commentary on masculinity people give Ted Lasso credit for being.) It’s not even Ted Lasso’s fault, exactly; the show is often…