Are We at the End of TV’s Golden Age of Non-Toxic Masculinity?

With The Bear ending and Ted Lasso taking on a new team (of women!), are we ready for a new era of male TV show characters?

Six years ago when Ted Lasso premiered, it was the little show that could. With so many people stuck at home, the eventual 2021 and 2022 Outstanding Comedy Series winner got us through COVID, putting Apple TV on the awards map and garnering the streamer’s first series Emmy win. 

Not only a fish-out-of-water story, Ted Lasso surprised audiences with its depth, as our title character grapples with divorce and comes to terms with the death of his father—even going to therapy to deal with his unresolved feelings (!!). His journey impacts the rest of the team, with characters like Jamie Tartt (Phil Dunster) and Roy Kent (Brett Goldstein) also wrestling with their emotions, and eventually the entire soccer club seeks the services of team therapist Dr. Sharon Fieldstone (Sarah Niles). 

Ted Lasso Changed Depictions of Men on TV

Ted Lasso marked a shift in the way men are depicted on television. Previously, our male protagonist was the anti-hero (see Don Draper, House, Walter White) whom we loved for what they got away with, whether it was cutting out of work to hook up with a mistress or becoming a drug lord in New Mexico. Ted Lasso was like devoting an entire show to Ned Flanders. 

Of course, we’d seen lovable, flawed men on TV before, but can you imagine Tim Allen talking to a therapist about his grunt tic? ER’s Mark Greene forgiving himself for his actions in “Love’s Labor’s Lost”? Up until this point, our most evolved lead TV male might be Zach Braff’s JD (it definitely wasn’t How I Met Your Mother’s Ted Mosby, who I might even put in the anti-hero category). 

Really, if you think about it, Ted Lasso kicked off a golden age of TV for men getting in touch with their emotions. Hulu’s The Bear riveted audiences with one young chef (Jeremy Allen White) confronting the death of his brother, culminating in a seven-minute monologue at Al-Anon in the Season 1 finale that pretty much earned him the Emmy (for Comedy…*adjusts eyeglasses*). 

After The Bear, in the limited series category, Netflix’s Baby Reindeer saw Richard Gadd’s Donny address the sexual abuse and grooming he experienced at the hands of a mentor/television writer. He confides in his girlfriend, Teri, a therapist (!!) who’s in way over her head in regards to dealing with boyfriend trauma. 

And of course, last year, we saw Adolescence and The Pitt display male protagonists struggling with how to manage their emotions, and we have a whole series about men in therapy—who provide therapy—in the form of Apple TV’s Shrinking. 

While we can’t say none of these shows would be possible without the Apple TV comedy series, Ted Lasso certainly struck the net so other shows could do the same. But does the show’s new season mark the end of this TV trend?

Ted Lasso Season 4 and the End of an Era

Ted Lasso Season 4 returns this August, and this time around, Jason Sudeikis’s iconic character is taking on a women’s soccer team. 

Not much more is known than that, but Ted coaching ladies completely changes the dynamic. Will they tackle sexual harassment? How women’s sports are often ignored? 

There are so many angles the show could take, but clearly, it won’t be the series we all fell in love with, with some of the original cast not returning, which can be both a good and bad thing as it opens the show up to new possibilities. 

Are we at the end of the men-in-their-feelings era? Or are we at the start of something new? We’ll see in the coming TV seasons, but it will be interesting to see Ted Lasso return to an environment different from when it started and one that might not exist without it. 

Ted Lasso Season 4 drops August 5 on Apple TV.