Week-to-Week: Are We Watching The Same Show?

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but some of the takes on Ted Lasso and Yellowjackets have driven me to madness/this newsletter

Photo: Apple TV+

As someone whose relationship to television has always been shaped by online discussion, I am never one to dismiss fan theories or ‘ships out of hand. I cut my teeth on Television Without Pity, read the comments on every A.V. Club review I wrote, and am now trying to build a website around the value of a community of viewers coming together to discuss what they’re watching. Given this, I would never deny a given viewer the right to interpret a text in good faith.

However, I have to admit that there are instances where the gulf between our respective experiences becomes difficult to navigate. It’s not that I would ever deny anyone their right to feel a certain way about something, to be clear. Rather, it’s about how if fans were to be right about a particular theory, or if a particular ‘ship were to set sail, it would destroy my entire relationship with the show in question, in ways that I don’t think the show could recover from. These “Are we watching the same show?” moments are uncomfortable for me, as I am a firm believer that everyone is entitled to their opinion, and yet in my heart there’s…well, there’s this newsletter entry explaining why these opinions are wrong.

We start this conversation with Ted Lasso, which is marching toward the end of the show as we know it in a third season likely to be Jason Sudeikis’ last playing the character. This kind of endgame, even if the show continues on in a spinoff (or spinoffs), naturally pulls to the surface romantic pairings the show has addressed over the course of its run. Are Roy and Keeley O.T.P.? (Duh.) Will Jamie’s burgeoning maturity make Keeley reconsider? (Nah, red herring). Will Rebecca and Sam finally get their timing right? (No, because the power dynamic means there is no right time). And for the most part, while my opinions are in parentheticals, I get how the show is seeding a variety of different opinions, and accept that things may or may not play out as I expect.

But this is not the case with one particular ‘ship. Now, when it comes to strong feelings about fan theories, I feel particularly guilty when it comes to ‘ships, since it’s often a practice born out of transgression of traditional norms—slash fiction, for instance, gave queer fans opportunities to find their lived experience at a time when texts excluded them, and continues to do so in the case of texts that under-represent them. As such, I am always reticent to police shipping, lest it feel like a reinforcement of the normative worlds television often boxes us into.

Photo: Apple TV+

It thus pains me to say that I reject TedBecca with every fiber of my being. I’ve long known that there were fans rooting for Ted and Rebecca to end up together (especially when people were convinced he was on the other end of her bantr flirtations, which I knew was wrong from screeners), and I don’t want this post to serve as a rejection of their right to do so. It just flies in the face of everything I believe the show is saying, undoing a meaningfully platonic intimacy that helped establish the show as special in its first season. And while I’ve long held this opinion, it’s bubbled to the surface this week after the show leaned into its romantic endgames with the fan theorist’s greatest friend: a psychic’s prediction, which Decider reports has the Tedbecca shippers convinced they’re about to sail out into the sunset.

6 Reasons ‘Ted Lasso’ Fans Think Ted and Rebecca Are Endgame After That Psychic Readin - Decider

Attention TedBecca shippers: This is not a drill! Ted Lasso Season 3, Episode 3, “4-5-1” may have just hinted that Ted Lasso (Jason Sudeikis) and Rebecca Welton (Hannah Waddingham) are endgame.

I don’t know if there’s a ‘ship I’ve rejected more thoroughly than this one. Yes, “friends to lovers” is a widely-used trope, but even if I did see romantic chemistry between them (I don’t), my bigger issue is that neither character’s core conflicts would be solved by a romantic relationship. Admittedly, the show is definitely signaling with this psychic reading that Rebecca’s character is boiled down to her desire for love and family, which is an ongoing disappointment after her role as owner was basically sidelined for the relationship with Sam last season. But on Ted’s side, his whole conflict is about being separated from his son, and thus the idea of TedBecca as endgame requires her to abandon her entire life (and the team) to go follow Ted on his return to the U.S. It would betray her independence as a character, and as it stands I’m not convinced it would be satisfying for Ted to find romantic love either. Essentially, I’m at a strong 0% in terms of seeing the logic supporting this from a narrative perspective, and if the show were to actually go in this direction it would make me question the foundation of my appreciation for the story being told in a way no amount of nitpicking over consequences ever could.

Again, this isn’t a case where I intend to yuck one’s yum, and demand these shippers stop writing their AO3 stories or editing their fancams. But it is a case where I am actively rooting against the show going in this direction, which feels adversarial in a way I don’t love but nonetheless feels necessary given how strong those feelings are.

And regretfully, something similar is happening with Yellowjackets as it starts its second season.

Screenshot: Showtime

I was late to the party with this show, and so I started the first season knowing the series had developed some significant theorizing over the course of its initial run, with the Lost parallels particularly strong. As such, it’s not like I’m ignorant to why there’s an ongoing debate regarding whether or not there might be a supernatural explanation to what happened in those woods back in 1996.

Except that I refuse to even consider that possibility. It was interesting to watch season one in something of a bubble (I did have Ben’s great remindercaps), without any of the week-to-week speculation that would’ve come with traditional viewership. And within that experience, I developed the very clear opinion that any introduction of actual supernatural activity into Yellowjackets would destroy it. The first season is very careful that even those elements that present themselves in this realm have been rooted in tangible explanations—in the case of Lottie’s visions, for example, the show is not subtle about the fact she’s weaning off whatever drugs she was taking.

Essentially, if we go back to the Lost comparison, there is no equivalent to the reveal at the end of “Walkabout” that the island has given John Locke his legs back. Across both timelines on the show, Yellowjackets explores how trauma manifests itself in ways that confound our sense of ourselves and our surroundings. The introduction of Lottie into the present day timeline reinforces the ultimately grounded nature of this story, continuing to frame elements of spirituality and the supernatural as conscious constructs of the characters’ attempts to grapple with their circumstances. Thematically, it makes sense that things like random symbols etched into the wood or creepy sounds in the cabin would be translated as a higher power, adopted by the characters in order to understand their surroundings.

Screenshot: Showtime

But yet there’s no question that Yellowjackets has actively stoked these theories (pun intended)—as noted in the comments on Ben’s review of this weekend’s second episode, in the scene where their funeral pyre is snowed in, the camera swoops into frame as if a spirit awoken by Nat and Travis shakes the branch to ensure the snow falls. The scene exists solely for our benefit, not the characters, and it’s Lostbaiting at its finest. The writers clearly want the specter of the supernatural operating over top of this story as the characters descend further into the madness the opening scenes of the pilot previewed, but I remain convinced this is just posturing, and that if the show ever did introduce a smoke monster equivalent it would destroy the fabric of the grounded psychological traumas the characters have carried into the present day.

Does this mean there’s definitely nothing supernatural going on? No, much in the same way that TedBecca could be endgame. These shows are in the hands of their writers, and are big enough hits that I expect them to have carte blanche to take the story in whatever directions they choose. But in these two instances, I have to acknowledge that I am not open to whatever path they choose. If they were to choose these particular paths, it would fly in the face of everything that I watch these shows for, and with apologies to those rooting for TedBecca or committed to the supernatural, we are simply not watching the same shows in a way that’s fine in theory, but deeply upsetting in practice as this newsletter reflects.

Episodic Observations

• It was Wrestlemania Weekend, if you didn’t know, and I ended up half-watching Night 2 and catching some highlights from Night 1. I remain a lapsed wrestling fan, but my Twitter feed is wrestling-adjacent enough that I had seen most of the buildup around the main events, and as always the WWE has some fantastic editors when it comes to investing you in ongoing storylines with a well-made 5-minute recap. Nothing I saw made me excited enough to jump back in, but as long as I’m paying for Peacock (hint: not forever), I’ll probably drop in on a pay-per-view (what do we even call them these days) every now and then.

• I’ve had too many shows to cover of late to dive into too many different shows, but in terms of other media I’ve been slowly working my way through God of War: Ragnarok over the past few weeks, after starting back in the fall. I tweeted about this, but I was struck by how of the three main Sony first-party AAA franchises of the modern era (Last of Us, God of War, Horizon) being adapted into TV shows, they all have different gameplay balances. God of War’s mix of linear combat environments and open world segments is the bridge between TLOU’s and Horizon’s gameplay loops, so I’m curious what Amazon’s take on the show looks like (Horizon is a Netflix series). Anyway, I’m enjoying diving into this story for a couple hours a night as able, which kind of creates an “episode” structure, when I think about it.

• And finally, speaking of Amazon, I encourage you to take time this week to read Kim Masters’ startlingly thorough breakdown of how messy it is to create content for the company. I might write more about it next week, but what stood out to me about the story is how it just keeps going, example after example of how no one understands what’s happening, and billions of dollars are being spent anyway. And it didn’t even go into how they cast a 6 foot tall actor to play Alex Claremont-Diaz!

  • Inside Amazon Studios: Big Swings Hampered By Confusion and Frustration - The Hollywood Reporter

    • “On the series side, numerous sources say they cannot discern what kind of material Salke and head of television Vernon Sanders want to make. A showrunner with ample experience at the studio says, “There’s no vision for what an Amazon Prime show is. You can’t say, ‘They stand for this kind of storytelling.’ It’s completely random what they make and how they make it.” Another showrunner with multiple series at Amazon finds it baffling that the streamer hasn’t had more success: Amazon has “more money than God,” this person says. “If they wanted to produce unbelievable television, they certainly have the resources to do it.””