Ted Lasso Should Be Angrier About This…

Warning: Spoilers for Ted Lasso’s third season follow…

Ted Lasso — both the show and the title character — are beloved for their cheery spirit and unshakable optimism. That doesn’t mean that the award-winning Apple TV+ series doesn’t tackle serious, deep topics but overall its design is to inspire, provide hope, and, where applicable, offer pathways to redemption. Ted himself isn’t one to usually allow negative, intrusive thoughts to affect his well-being though Season 3 has given him some of his toughest tests yet…and there’s definitely something he should be angrier about.

Angrier than he already is, that is. “Ticked off” is the verbiage he chose. Which quite possibly is irate as he allows himself to get. Yes, Ted can get ticked off sometimes, as a treat.

Ted’s usually someone we can count on, or at least carries favorable odds, when it comes to charting an appropriate emotional response, but that hasn’t always been the case (see: Ted thinking his father was a coward and a quitter for succumbing to depression). His effervescent, overly-positive attitude has served him well…until it sputters out and malfunctions, as evident in Season 2. And as we sit now on the precipice of Ted possibly offering a forgiving hand, and hug, to Nate despite the Wonder Kid’s ghastly behavior toward Ted and the team in Season 2, Ted needed to be harsher, and angrier, with Michelle for dating their f’n marriage counselor, Dr. Jake, in the wake of their separation. Wow.

[Veep *nervous laughter* wtf dot gif]

Please don’t mistake this for a message that Michelle shouldn’t be dating. Or even that she can’t actually have the relationship with Dr. Jake that she does now. Ted just needed to react differently to the discovery and realize that’s it was a rough, rugged betrayal from both Michelle and Jake (as well as a huge ethical, and in some cases illegal, issue). Yes, the case could be made that as long as Dr. Jake is no longer Michelle’s therapist, there’s nothing wrong with it, but…that’s semantics. There’s still just so much that’s foul about it.

Okay, so Ted is going through it right now. He is being forced to let go of someone he loves before he’s ready because they’ve moved on. He never wanted the divorce so he’s suffering under the heavier weight here. And it would already be distressing for him that Michelle is seeing someone new. That would be tough for Ted no matter what. And good drama for show.

It would be another added thing if she was dating someone they both knew – be it a mutual friend or coworker. That’s an extra layer of yuck that would certainly throw anyone for a loop.

It’s worse though that she’s dating Ted’s therapist.

It’s even worse than that that she’s dating her own therapist.

And it’s the absolute worst that Dr. Jake is dating his patient. 

Again, probably former patient, to be clear, but that doesn’t make this not majorly icky. There’s still a power differential here since Michelle was his patient, past-tense, and opened up to him about things in a way, or in a different manner, than she would have with someone she was seeing.

Another thought here, aside from the moral breach, is that Michelle and Ted’s sessions with Dr. Jake were marriage sabotage from the get go. The whole time, Dr. Jake may have been driving them apart in order to make Michelle available, all while taking advantage of her emotional vulnerability. At the same time, this dynamic allowed Michelle to more easily leave Ted because she might have been steered toward it. And Ted’s earnest efforts to put in the work were never going to pay dividends. 

In this season’s third episode, “4-5-1,” Ted fully learned the truth about Michelle and Jake’s deal and it caused him to spiral – though not enough to tell her he was upset, he had to be prompted to do so by others. When he eventually did, it was a mild reveal and he mentioned his feelings in passing over a video call. Once more, this is not a call for Ted to have any type of say-so in Michelle’s life, but he has the right to be pissed. And probably the right to have known ahead of time that Dr. Jake was going to become a integrated part of his son’s life. Granted, Ted also moved across the entire ocean, away from them, so his stamp on that is thinner than it would have been if he stayed in Kansas.

Anyhow, as viewers, and therefore (most likely) default Ted advocates, we have questions here. About when Michelle and Jake began seeing each other. Who approached who? Were they actually an item when she and Ted were doing the sessions? And because Ted won’t get mad enough to inquire, in the way most humans would, we’re all left wondering. Ted is nothing if not polite but his restraint here just has us thinking the worst.  

As it stands now in the season, Ted’s said his meager piece and is now more focused on if Michelle and Dr. Jake will become a permanent thing. There’s been no proposal as of yet, and signs seem to be pointing toward Michelle realizing she may have made a mistake (not in divorcing Ted, but in dating Jake), so this all might shake out by the finale. As things tend to do on Ted Lasso. Because can you even imagine, if Michelle and Jake got married, Jake continuing to be a marriage counselor? Yelp would destroy him. Or whatever Yelp is for mental health professionals. Couch Tripadvisor.