1x06 Two Aces

[7.6/10] So let’s get the most important thing out of the way. I love Dani Rojas. The way he just runs around, overflowing with enthusiasm, shouting his own name and declaring “football is life” at a moment’s notice, is infectiously delightful. The fact that he’s a talented soccer player, one who shares Ted’s chipper attitude and is willing to listen to instruction, makes him the exact antithesis of Jamie, which also makes him the perfect motivator for Jamie.

There’s a good story to that, of Ted working as hard as he can to motivate this player and, in a tough moment for himself, getting angier and more emphatic than we’ve ever seen him when Jamie fakes an injury in protest of being benched. The way the combination of a happy-go-lucky competing “ace” and a Ted Lasso uncharacteristically ready to read the riot act, and even a speech from Keeley gets through to the guy is a good one. I even like the bittersweetness of Rebecca recognizing that Ted’s method is working and so getting rid of Jamie because her ultimate goal is for the team to fail to hurt her husband.

I appreciate the integrity of that move, so to speak. My complaint about this show in the first half of this season is that it can be a little too much of what Emily St. James refers to as a “hugbox”. The world needs hugboxes -- shows that make everybody friends by the end of things and exist to brighten your day -- but they don’t always end up as my favorites. The show has done a lot to humanize Rebecca, to show her warming up to Ted and Keeley and the other movers and shakers of the team she’s trying to drive into the ground. Having her read a terrible headline that refers to her as “Old Rebecca”, which reinvigorates her on her mission to hurt the team to hurt her ex, sticks to the complicated choices the character is making, rather than turning her into a n ally straightaway, which I can appreciate.

I’m a little less appreciative of the thumbnail sketch of Jamie’s past that we get in his curse-removing item part of the story. It’s such a cliche to hear the “mommy loved me/daddy told me not be soft” personal history. If the show explores it in more depth down the line, t hen it could work, but delivered as a monologue in what functions as a convenient “Tell me what’s important to you” ritual, it comes off as a stock explanation for his priggish behavior.

That said, I like the general idea of the ritual! The team’s convinced the training room is cursed, something reaffirmed by Dani’s injury. Ted digs into it and finds an explanation for the curse. He comes up with the ritual to both to foster more camaraderie and understanding among his players and to do something to honor the soldiers who died after being treated and recruited in that spot, thereby lifting the hex. Hell, we even see Ted be a little sneaky, a little pragmatic, in colluding with Higgins to time Dani’s return in just such a way as to suggest they’d beaten the curse. It’s clever, and shows Ted understanding the need to get his players out of this psychological ditch rather than any firm belief in curses.

Overall, Jamie still is a bit of a dead end in this show, and I don’t need the continued telegraphing of a Keeley/Roy relationship. But I do like Ted’s efforts to sway Jamie paying off, his ritual that shows a deeper understanding of his players than anyone might have thought, and the steadiness of Rebecca in her quest, and of the writers in their willingness to keep someone sympathetic the erstwhile antagonist for the time being.