Believe and Keep Going: Watching “Ted Lasso” Through the Lens of My Family’s Suicide History

A Quick Note of Introduction from AFSP’s Senior Director of Writing & Entertainment Outreach

People often ask me my opinion on TV shows and movies whose stories involve suicide, since they know part of my job involves consulting on such things with the entertainment industry. But I’m always equally curious (a word that has come up meaningfully in the show “Ted Lasso,”) about what others think of depictions of the subject in popular entertainment.

I’ve long appreciated the care taken by the above-mentioned show in its depiction of suicide loss. In Season Two (you should back away slowly now to avoid spoilers), it was revealed that Ted lost his father to suicide when he was a teenager. And surprisingly, given Ted’s famously positive outlook, he revealed himself to be deeply mistrustful of therapy –– which was a clever way of bringing equally mistrustful viewers along with him, as he eventually opens up to the team therapist over the course of many episodes.

The last episode of Season Four recently aired, which brought this aspect full circle. The article below, by AFSP volunteer Julia Roubtsova Hewitt, gracefully unpacks how she, as a viewer with a personal connection to this cause, responded to the storyline, given its themes of families, generations, and the impact of open conversations.

Now pour yourself a nice cup of tea and read what Julia has to say. (Well, maybe not tea, if you’re anything like Ted. Yechhh!)

–– Brett Wean

 * * *

I’ve heard people refer to the hit Apple TV show “Ted Lasso” as “’Bluey” for adults.’” And the show does feel like a warm hug; like sitting down to a healthy snack time with a hilarious, trusted adult.

But if you’re a fan of the mustache-rockin’ coach and his crew like I’m a fan of the mustache-rockin’ coach and his crew, bebe, then you know that the feel-good show touches on extremely tough and controversial topics, including suicide.

The subject is first introduced in earlier seasons, where we learn that Ted’s father died by suicide when Ted was a teenager. Neither Ted nor his mother ever spoke about it openly, and we’ve watched how that loss followed him into adulthood, impacting his mental health and relationships.

I know that kind of silence well. My mother attempted suicide several times while I was growing up. No one ever explained what had happened. No one said the words “depression” or “suicide” out loud. No treatment was discussed as far as we knew.

Nor did the silence protect me or my siblings. No –– it taught us to think that pain was something you carried by yourself, and that you never admitted to struggling because that made you weak and weird. No one was coming to help, and your pain didn’t matter.

Years later, I survived my own suicide attempt during a perinatal period, the months around a late-term pregnancy loss. I knew our family history, and it validated my damaging, dark (and untrue) thoughts: that suicide was an acceptable way to exit my pain.

I was lucky to live but didn’t get help right away. I didn’t know how to ask, and no one around me really knew how to offer. It was years before I found real support, and when I did, it came through AFSP, from and among the people who were finally saying the words out loud, who finally helped me feel understood and seen.

In the “Ted Lasso” Season 4 finale, the subject of suicide resurfaces. Ted’s son asks how his grandfather died, and Ted immediately lies, without blinking an eye.

As I watched that scene from my couch, I felt like my breath was knocked out of me. I have lived on both sides of that conversation. And like Ted, for most of my life, I lived on the side where mental health was viewed as a myth and suicide “never happened.”

I understood Ted’s instinct to lie. It was a survival tactic, an old family rule kicking in before he could think or make a choice of a response. Many of us who grew up around suicide know that reflex. We think we’re keeping the peace, protecting our image, shielding our loved ones. When really, we’re passing down the same darkness and pain we were raised in.

But (and this is what makes me a Lasso disciple) the show didn’t stop at the lie. Ted struggles with his answer, asking someone he trusts, Coach Beard, for his thoughts. And ultimately, Ted goes back to his son and tells him the truth, the dialogue and the scene fading out as he clearly does so gently and lovingly.

I had my own version of that conversation. My oldest child struggled through adolescence and into early adulthood. For a long time, I kept our family history to myself, thinking it would spare them. When we finally talked about my mother, and about me, the world around me and my oldest got lighter, brighter. Their struggles had a context. They weren’t the first in our family to feel this way, and they weren’t alone in it. That conversation didn’t fix everything. But it opened a door and let recovery in. They, and we, together, have made real, significant progress.

Here is what I wish someone had told my family decades ago. Family history of mental health conditions and suicide is health information. We tell our kids when heart disease or diabetes runs in the family so they can watch for signs and get care early. Mental health deserves the same honesty. And talking about suicide directly and safely does not put the idea in someone’s head, or push them to act. (We know this from research.) It tells them they can come to you.

That doesn’t mean telling a child everything at once. It means telling the truth at a level they can understand, and leaving the door open for the next question.

There’s a handmade sign in Ted’s locker room that says “Believe.” In the Lasso tradition, I’ve added two words: believe and keep going.* Believe that the hard conversations are worth having. Then keep going. As football fans sing in “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” none of us has to walk this road by ourselves.

If you’re carrying a story you’ve never talked about out loud, you don’t have to spill the whole thing. Start with one real sentence. Believe, and keep going. And if you or someone you love is struggling, call or text 988. 

* Quick footnote from Brett: Do you see what Julia did there with adding “and keep going” to Ted’s “believe?” That’s an improv concept called Yes-Anding  –– which Ted is a fan of, himself!

Read Brett Wean’s thoughts on the depiction of suicide in “Heated Rivalry,” and the Anthony Bourdain biopic “Tony.”