Ted Lasso Season 4 and College Road Trip to University of Utah

Ted Lasso Season 4 Episode 2 titled “Curiouser and Curiouser!” inspires conversation about feminism, inequality in men’s and women’s sports, and we cover a road trip to take Izzy to college that spanned from Boone, NC to Salt Lake City, Utah.

What would you say was the “big news” of this episode?

1. Beard is back! Also, Beard was looking like Big Foot and something happened with him and Jane. What do you think? Chicago’s “You’re the Meaning in My Life Scene.” 

• Beard refers to himself as Mr. Gladstone as a movie reference to the 1967 classic film The Graduate, where it is the fake name used by Benjamin Braddock (played by Dustin Hoffman) for clandestine hotel meetings.

2. Ted meets the players. I was pleasantly surprised! 
3. The women got a new locker room! 
4. Chilton decides to stay. Why do you think so?
5. What was Ted’s gift to her? Do you think we’ll ever find out? 

Best line/s: 

1. For a sport that asks you to be light on your feet, women’s football sure does seem to have a lot of weight around it.
2. On couples on the team: Ted: You don’t get a lot of that in men’s football. Chilton: Not that you know of. 
3. I think keeping people apart who belong together is bad for everybody. -Keeley about Beard to Roy 
4. What’s the point in life if you’re not feeling? – the goalie who didn’t wear gloves, who doesn’t take novocaine at the dentist 
5. You can polish a turd but all you are left with is a rag that smells like dookie. 

What are themes you see this season dealing with? 

1. Feminism 

• Do you fault Rebecca for not interviewing any women for the head coaching position? 
• bell hooks work introduced 
• Chilton challenges Rebecca 
• Rebecca’s mom hopes she isn’t a feminist 
• Title IX: Title IX states “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance[.]” All federal agencies that provide grants of financial assistance are required to enforce Title IX’s nondiscrimination mandate.

2. Stigma from men to other men about coaching girls 
3. Analytics with origin stories 
4. ACL injuries: 

• Females injure ACL about 3.5 times more than males in basketball. In hs girls soccer, there are 13.3 tears per 100,000 athletes vs. 4.9 in boys. 
• Athletes who suffer an ACL injury are 15x more likely to tear one of them again as athletes who have never torn one. 
• In my 6 years at Watauga I can remember four players who tore ACLs and two of those tore theirs 2x. 

As the episode wrapped, what questions do you have about what is coming up? What has you interested? 

What new characters stood out to you? 

1. Caroline Seaward the physiologist 
2. Tanya Reynolds as Coach Alice Chilton

• From the LA Times: A week after sending in the tape, “Ted Lasso” co-creator and star Jason Sudeikis asked Reynolds to hop on a Zoom call. “I assumed it was part of the audition process,” she says. “We had a chat and then at the end he was like, ‘Well, we’d love you to do it if you want.’ I went away and watched all three seasons, and I loved it. It’s the kind of telly I seek — light and soft and heartwarming and optimistic.”
• Sudeikis wouldn’t give her any scripts. He did tell her the character arc and he said he hadn’t done that before. 
• Standing up to Hannah Waddington / Rebecca: “I remember filming that scene and trying to be intimidating to Hannah Waddingham,” Reynolds says. “I was looking up at her and trying to square my shoulders and feeling like a worm in a tracksuit. I was trying so hard to be tough and to be a bulldog. And Alice is trying to be tough and taken seriously, but actually she’s wobbly, like I was.”
• Click here for the LA Times article on Tanya Reynolds. 

3. Goalie who doesn’t wear gloves

Craft Observations: 

1. We hear an episode before we see it. This time we heard an Elton John song. 
2. Rhetorical device of “This Morning” television show. (think it’s a real show) 

bell hooks quotes: 

• It is obvious that many women have appropriated feminism to serve their own ends, especially those white women who have been at the forefront of the movement; but rather than resigning myself to this appropriation I choose to re-appropriate the term ‘feminism’, to focus on the fact that to be ‘feminist’ in any authentic sense of the term is to want for all people, female and male, liberation from sexist role patterns, domination, and oppression. – Ain’t I A Woman: Black Women and Feminism, 1981 
• All our silences in the face of racist assault are acts of complicity. – Killing Rage: Ending Racism, 1995
• The function of art is to do more than tell it like it is – it’s to imagine what is possible.  – Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations, 2012

Road Trip to Salt Lake City to take My Daughter Izzy to College 

On Izzy’s leaving: 

1. 18 years. Every minute of 5 days and then she’s gone. 
2. Most of what made Izzy’s room hers is not in there. It looks empty an plain. 
3. That room, in that building, on that campus, in that city is a really exciting and fun moment for her. 
4. Very proud of who she has become that she wants to go away on this adventure by herself. 

Impressions of University of Utah: 

1. Modern lodge feel to the campus. 1400 people in her residence hall. Has a food court, recreation areas, a computer lab, sophisticated Amazon delivery, and lots of meeting spaces. 
2. Izzy is within a mile of her classrooms, library, pool, arena, and football stadium. 
3. The amount of money that goes into keeping the campus looking like that. 
4. Light rail right outside the residence hall that goes downtown and one train change to the airport. 
5. Clean and safe city. 
6. Mountains surround the whole campus. 

Some of the most memorable sights: 

1. The University of Missouri felt like IU, UNC, and UK to me. 
2. Bleakness of Western Nebraska. Sandy flat ground with scrub brush. 
3. Vedauwoo climbing area 30 minutes west of Cheyenne. 
4. Snowy Range Scenic Byway / 130 West of Cheyenne: Mirror Lake and Lake Marie (I think winner of most beautiful spot I saw on the trip) 
5. Snowbird 
6. Terrain went from super light brown sandy mountains, to Grand Canyon Looking, to Red Rocks, to the Rocky Mountains of Glennsprings and Vail. 
7. Glennsprings, casual fun, huge mineral pools, ride to the top of the mountain to amusement park to activities on the river. 
8. Vail’s closed alpine looking streets. 

I have some complaints: 

• Poison ivy, midnight bedtimes and 6 am wake ups, driving most of the day, sleeping in strange beds, 6 out of 7 days packing and then unpacking my suitcase each day 

Thanks for checking out Torg Stories! We appreciate you!