As Ted Lasso just aired it’s (potentially) final episode, let’s talk about the healing power of poop
The show Ted Lasso is a multiple Emmy-award-winning comedy that inspires and unites.
We at Poopable love it, and it has provided us hundreds of hours of enjoyment (yes we all have watched each season multiple times).
Though there are no noticeable stories of bathroom distress (unless you count Nate spitting at himself in a bathroom mirror), the chamber pot does have its place in the show with its (potentially) final season starting with a bathroom-based way to motivate the Richmond Hounds.
In the first episode of the third season, Ted brings his team down to the sewer system of London. The media plays it like an easy joke. After all, everyone was predicting Richmond to finish dead last for the season. And the team expected to end in the sewer of the league was literally climbing down into one.
But Ted uses this sewer to inspire.
When Ted’s son visited London before the start of the third season, after accidentally looking over someone’s shoulder and seeing the horror film It, he asked Ted to see the sewer system of London to help him get over a fear of clowns and sewers.
Enjoying the tour, Ted decides address the negativity pointed to the team by taking Richmond on a field trip that ends with him opening a manhole and taking the whole group down into the bowels of London.
There they meet a friendly tour guide who explains that in 1859, 1200 miles of interconnected sewers were developed, which helped cure a massive cholera outbreak (known as the Great Stink of 1858).
While this provides a fun history lesson for the team (and the show’s audience) and shows the power of having systems in place to make sure your bathrooms are safely Poopable, in true Ted Lasso fashion, Ted uses the sewers as a metaphor for how the team should deal with all the “dookie” they were facing from a negative press corps.
Sewer systems are complex, but the lesson Ted gives is simple.
“Gentlemen,” he says, “Right now y’all’s brains are basically London in 1857. You’re blocked up by other people’s dookie. Y’all need to make an internal sewer system for yourselves. And then connect to each other’s tunnels. Help each other keep that flow.”
Ted uses the power of poop, and the wonders of modern septic technology, to encourage the team to work together, build on their strengths, and rely on each other for support. The classic Ted Lasso approach.
Now, we won’t spoil Season 3 for those who have not caught up yet, but we can confirm that the team takes that Poopable lesson to heart. Because sometimes the most impactful advice can come from a “dookie” place.