Football, or soccer, has long since been portrayed as a man’s world. Be it the players or the audience, men are always shown on the field and sitting around televisions.
Ted Lasso has consistently been a change to that idea. Since Season 1, the show has had women at the front of the sports comedy-drama, and Season 2 is just truer in that aspect. What to say, the show even seems to have men discussing about women more than vice-versa!
The award-winning TV series Ted Lasso indeed passes the Bechdel Test, and its Season 2, even more so. Celebrating the impact of women in the world of football, the show features women talking about their dreams and aspirations, which does not include a man.
What is the Bechdel Test? How does Ted Lasso pass it?
The Bechdel Test is a measure of the representation of women in film. To pass the test, a film must have at least two named female characters who must converse with each other about a topic that is not a man. Ted Lasso ticks all the boxes and more.
American cartoonist Alison Bechdel created the Bechdel Test. It indicates the active female presence in a film or fiction and is used to bring attention to the lack of gender equality in the fields.
Though the test does not indicate the level to which females are represented in creative work, it is generally used to give an idea about the lack of importance given to women in film and fiction.
Ted Lasso indeed has several women named and central characters of the show. They converse multiple times with each other and express their dreams, beliefs, troubles, and more, with the topic of no man appearing in the conversation.
How does Ted Lasso empower women?
The protagonist Ted Lasso embodies several traits typically associated with women, like intuition and caring. Several instances of the show also see a reversal of the usual gender stereotypes and greater equality and importance to women.
In the show of the same name, Ted Lasso is very caring, helpful, attentive, and intuitive. He is a good man, and equality for the genders is one of his traits, as it should be. These traits are primarily associated with women typically, but Ted, a man, carries these traits in the series.
The Jason Sudeikis starring show has women in the front, even leading in the football-centric world, especially for Season 2. Several characters, conversations, exchanges, and incidents are proof of this.
Women are authority figures in Ted Lasso, such as Rebecca Welton as the owner of AFC Richmond, Keeley Jones as the club’s marketing and PR manager before she starts her firm, and Dr. Sharon Fieldstone as a sports psychologist. They are primary characters of the show and have significant parts to play.
In Episode 2 of Season 2, Jamie Tartt tells Ted that he named the figurine the latter gave him after Ted Danson. Lasso replies that Ted Danson is the male version of Julia Louis-Dreyfus. In that second, the show broke the mind-numbing stereotype of having a female-centric thing compared to the female version of a male-focused idea.
The show pays homage to famous female country singers such as Loretta Lynn and Shania Twain by having Roy Kent’s tickets under their names. It also pays tribute to women-centric romantic comedies with a perfect re-creation of Love Actually’s ‘say it’s carol singers’ scene. Also, Dr. Fieldstone’s favorite book, The Prince of Tides, is a hint that readers of the book would have picked up.
In another instance from the show, Ted tells his team to ‘woman up.’ When Tartt says he must have meant ‘man up,’ Ted corrects him and says, “No, y’all been man-ing up for a while, and look where that’s gotten you.”
These are just a few parts of the show that bring women into the limelight, and for a football-centric drama, this is huge!
Ted Lasso, no doubt, passed the Bechdel Test in Season 1 and again in Season 2. Let us keep our fingers crossed for another incredible creation as we wait for Season 3 on March 15, 2023!
About Ted Lasso
Ted Lasso is an American sports-comedy streaming TV series developed by Bill Lawrence, Jason Sudeikis, Joe Kelly, and Brendan Hunt. It’s based on a character of the same name that Sudeikis first portrayed in a series of promos for NBC Sports’ coverage of the Premier League.
It follows the life of Ted Lasso, a coach of college-level American football who is unexpectedly recruited to coach an English Premier League team, AFC Richmond, despite having no experience at all in association football.
It stars Sudeikis as the titular character, Ted Lasso, joined by Hannah Waddingham, Jeremy Swift, Phil Dunster, Brett Goldstein, Brendan Hunt, Nick Mohammed, Juno Temple, and Sarah Niles among many others.
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