Football is life – Dani Rojas

Ted Lasso has been one of the best things to have come to existence in the past couple of years.
And for me, it has solidified the genius that is Bill Lawrence (Scrubs is one of my favorite shows ever).

Quick Spoiler Alert at the end about the fantastic character developments. And Kudos for Ted Lasso passing the Bechdel test.

Anyway,
Soccer season for Nathanael started.
It’s a laid back league that works with kids of all skills and abilities and helps them learn some soccer skills.
We did it last season and thoroughly enjoyed our time.

This past weekend was his first game of the season.
He was actually hustling and running around and getting good kicks on the ball.

Now. This is gonna make me sound bad — but I never really expected him to score.
Not that it mattered, as long as he was having fun.
But there was one moment where he actually kicked it good and it the goal post.
Thought that was the closest we’d ever get to a goal in his soccer career.

But no. Near the end of the game, the ball rolled right to him near the goal and he kicked it… and it went in!!!!

He was jumping up and down like I’ve never seen him before.
And I was sooo excited. Like — he did it! I wish I had filmed it or something… but I was excited that he was excited.

And then, on the way back to the middle of the field, he tripped on a rough patch of the field (I mean there were lots of rough patches all over the field).
He said that he couldn’t get up.
I thought he was being overly dramatic.
So I tried to lift him up (he’s pretty heavy).
He started crying when he tried to put weight on it.
Then I knew that it was hurting a lot more than I initially gave him credit for.
He couldn’t walk on it for the most of the day. I had to piggy back him from the field to the car.
It was such a crappy way to end the day that he had. I wish we could’ve celebrated him more. He definitely would’ve pulled out his patented dance moves.
But the afternoon was spent icing his foot.
It’s much better now. He’s walking — albeit — with a slight noticeable limp.

We’re hoping he’ll be good enough to play the next game. And every time he’s near the goal, you know I’ll have the phone out to see if he’ll get another goal.

One more note on Ted Lasso, spoilers — but before that — thank you for reading and sorry for the grammatical errors you may have encountered. I stopped self editing a while back just so that I can focus on the writing part. You know — like freestyle writing (is that what it’s called?)

The character arc of Nate has been fascinating and disappointing all rolled into one.
It’s a nice mirror image of the progression that Roy and Jamie are making because while they are growing (and shedding toxic masculinity) Nate is regressing and embodying toxic masculinity.
The fact that he brought up the incident with Keely to try to get a reaction out of Roy just solidified his regression.
And that rant at Ted.
It wasn’t really about Ted. Although, if you look back at the two seasons, the last time Ted and Nate had one on one screen time was when Ted apologized to Nate for being short with him in Season 1. They never shared the screen, just the two of them, until the final episode of season 2 – validating the hurt Nate felt from Ted’s neglect. But Ted wasn’t the issue issue.
This stems from being unseen by his father.
And this stems from the self-hatred that lurks within his heart. While those hateful words were said to Ted, the source of his hatred is himself.
Will Nate’s character arc end with redemption? Or will he just plummet further and further?
Bill Lawrence mentioned briefly on the Scrubs podcast that he never intended Ted Lasso to go for more than 3 seasons. So we’ll see what happens next. And btw, great job by Nick Mohammed for making us root for him so hard and then having us hate him just as much. He fricking tore the ”Believe” sign.
What a monster…