Ted Lasso’s Dad Reveal Renders Season 1’s Best Scene Utterly Sad

In Season 2, we saw Ted Lasso struggle with the idea of therapy. Episode 8 reveals his father’s devastating death is at the heart of it.

Sarah Niles’ Dr Fieldstone was the show’s newest addition. And it was only time that we saw an episode from her perspective too. In the latest one, we follow the Doc on her uber-cool bicycle to work. She describes this whole exercise as her happy place.

Sadly, she comes across a minor accident and the happy image in her head shatters. This leads her to be vulnerable in front of Ted, someone she formerly thought could not be anything other than insufferable.

A domino effect ensues: AFC Richmond loses horribly to Man City. This leads to Jamie getting taunted by his abusive father in front of his team members, and an altercation occurs. Ted cannot stand to bear witness to the scene and leaves the locker room.

In a subsequent heart-wrenching phone call, Ted reveals to Dr Fieldstone that when he was sixteen, his father committed suicide. This revelation is sadder yet when we recall the last time Ted spoke about his father.

Arguably one of the best scenes of Season 1, this was in Episode 8, where Ted beats Rupert at a game of darts, reminiscing how he played the game every day with his father from the age of eleven to sixteen.

The moment was a triumph one — Ted ensured that Robert would not interfere with AFC Richmond or Rebecca again. Rebecca realized that Ted indeed did not hold any grudges against her. And come on, Ted’s victory was the closest a game of darts could come to being cool!

When we put both the two together, Dr Fieldstone’s assessment at the beginning of the episode holds true: Ted uses humor to deflect the ugly feelings instead of dealing with them.

And as the Doc’s therapist foreshadows it, Ted will only let his guard down in therapy, when Dr Fieldstone herself does so.

Albeit slow and accompanied by many tears, Ted and Dr Fieldstone have both make a dent in their therapeutic progress and we may see them meet halfway in the episodes to come.

Ted is still far from a personal happy ending but acceptance is always a good first step.

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.