“I believe in communism,” says Ted Lasso, coach of the London-based soccer team AFC Richmond and hero of the eponymous hit show on Apple TV+, in the 2021 episode “Rainbow”. His team sits in rows in front of a television, slumped and dejected, reviewing their mistakes from a recent match. Some seem confused that their All-American coach, Ted, has just professed a belief in communism. Ted continues, “Rom-communism, that is.” Now he’s got their attention.
Rom-communism is the worldview that if we all work together, we can all end up happy. To live a life of rom-communism is to live in a fictional society where you and your quirky, witty roommate can afford a two-bedroom apartment in downtown New York while working low-wage creative jobs because your hopes and dreams sustain you. Rom-communism, as Jason Sudeikis’ Ted Lasso explains, is “about believin’ that everything’s gonna work out in the end.” We have seen countless television shows and films propagating this “rom-communism”.
The romantic comedy is mercilessly mocked and critiqued. In 2014, Megan Garber of The Atlantic diagnosed the demise of the romantic comedy genre, offering several explanations: perhaps the “magic” has gone out of rom-com entertainment through the advancement of technology like dating apps; perhaps romantic stories have lost their tension now that social taboos are becoming less powerful – is there any believable societal reason left for two adults that want to become romantically involved, not to? If no believable reasons are left to keep lovers apart, how can the rom-com plot remain credible? Or maybe the rom-com is in decline because the genre has historically relied so strongly on the fixedness of heterosexual gender and sexuality and the power imbalance and irreconcilable differences between men and women. Now that this fixedness is becoming more fluid, what is the romantic comedy to do?
Alternatively, the increasing popularity of blockbuster movies like those of the Marvel Cinematic Universe may have crowded out smaller-budget films and inspired actors once associated with rom-coms to move to television. Yet rom-coms no longer draw the audience to make anyone a star. It seems that television viewers, unlike Ted Lasso, no longer believe in rom-communism. Yet maybe we should because the optimism of the rom-com is politically powerful.
Rom-coms have been in dialogue with cultural and societal trends for almost 100 years, exploring dominant ideas about love, gender, and social class. Since the birth of Hollywood, the genre has undergone several transformations linked to changing sociocultural ideas about romance. Romantic comedies, then, can be seen as a barometer of societal change: as the political, economic, and social conditions of the United States shift, the focus of romantic comedies also shifts. Ted Lasso offers a refreshing perspective on the rom-com genre by rethinking three of its key elements: gender dynamics, a focus on couples at the expense of communities, and a happy ending. To understand what makes Ted Lasso special in the rom-com genre, you first need to know what the rom-com has traditionally been like. This overview of the history of the romantic comedy is indebted to Leger Grindon’s 2011 book, The Hollywood Romantic Comedy.
A Brief History of the American Romantic Comedy in Film
The romantic comedy genre is defined by its plot structure, which looks roughly like this: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy regains girl, happy ending! Genres are ever-shifting categories, though; perhaps they’re defined more by their cultural context of production than by their plot. For example, particular movie stars (Meg Ryan), settings (New York), soundtracks (catchy pop tunes), and marketing strategies (you can picture the promotional posters, can’t you?) are strongly associated with the rom-com. These cultural practices shape genres, but they also make them difficult to pin down: “genres are not fixed categories and constantly mutate into new forms,” writes Celestino Deleyto in The Secret Life of Romantic Comedy (2009). Perhaps it is more accurate to think of genres as temporary clusters than as fixed categories. The web of associations that the rom-com genre weaves also makes it highly self-referential; when Ted Lasso praises rom-communism, he refers to the familiar web of meanings associated with romantic comedy.
It all began with the screwball comedy. Screwball became popular in the era the Great Depression and the New Deal. Movies in this genre often portray characters in economic hardship but infuse their challenges with a sense of optimism. For example, in Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night (1934), love transcends social class. After World War II, romantic comedies became haunted by a sense of loss, with the happy ending often thwarted. In William Wyler’s Roman Holiday (1953), for example, the romantic desire of the protagonists remains unfulfilled.
During the Eisenhower presidency (1953-61), unprecedented economic growth was the impetus for a booming consumer culture. This development is reflected in romantic comedies of that time. Rom-coms of the 1950s are characterized by a cynical portrayal of gender differences combined with luxurious depictions of the consumer lifestyle. In films like Jean Negulesco’s How to Marry a Millionaire (1953), men seek sex with women with no strings attached, and women seek the economic security of marriage. In the 1960s, second-wave feminism destabilized some of the ideologies, including the desirability of marriage and procreation, that earlier rom-coms had relied on. This led to several counter-cultural rom-coms, like Mike Nichols’ The Graduate (1967), in which marriage is no longer the protagonist’s goal.
The 1970s saw characters lose their faith in happy endings. Nervous romances, such as Woody Allen’s Annie Hall (1977), reflect self-consciously on a relationship’s difficulties and vulnerabilities. Still, these films often evoked old-fashioned romance, in which the relationship itself becomes the uncomplicated ending of a character’s emotional journey through nostalgic references. Political conservatism in the 1980s coincided with the resurgence of more traditional romantic comedies. Movies like Rob Reiner’s When Harry Met Sally (1989) reaffirmed that happy endings were possible but also relegated women to more traditional gender roles, reneging on the promise of emancipation implicit in many films from the ’60s.
In the 1990s, romantic comedies became characterized by ambivalence: characters that start out reluctant to be in a relationship end up happily coupled, as in Gil Junger’s 10 Things I Hate About You (1999). In the 2000s, the romantic comedies of Judd Apatow combined romance with bodily humor. Such comedies may be edgy or transgressive, but they also evoke a disgust with human bodies that seems antithetical to romance. The characters’ stance towards romantic coupling remains ambivalent throughout, especially as couples often seem unevenly matched or unhappy at the prospect of domesticity, like in 2007’s Knocked Up.
The Rise of Rom-Coms on American Television
Despite recent cinema’s ambivalent take on romance, declining box office successes, and the heralded “end” of romantic comedy, Ted Lasso shows that elements from romantic comedy, especially its rom-communist ideals, are not as dead as they seem. In this sense, Ted Lasso follows in the footsteps of several recent television shows that transported romantic comedy plots to the small screen. The rom-com’s return to prominence on television became evident in shows like Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (2015-2019) and Jane the Virgin (2014-2019). These shows acknowledged the ambivalence at the heart of the genre: Do we believe in happy endings? Iwe do, how do we unite that with our contemporary desire to see female independence and agency represented in entertainment?
Jane the Virgin explores these questions by telling its story in the style of a Latin-American telenovela. This stylistic choice emphasizes the divide between the events of a story and the way it is told. Here, content and form enter into a conversation, questioning both the plot elements of the rom-com and the ideology that supports them. Similarly, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend lets its characters reflect on their choices, agency, and their identity by having them perform catchy musical numbers. The presence of familiar tropes from romantic comedy helps the audience empathize with the characters. Conversely, the ironic songs question and undermine some of the oppressive ideologies in those tropes.
In both Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and Jane the Virgin, the single love interest is replaced with several appealing men. Throughout the shows, the romantic heroines must choose between these men, each aligning with a specific way of life and view of the self. Choosing a partner becomes a matter of who you want to be with and who you want to be. The relatively drawn-out narrative of a television show offers space for a protagonist to try out a variety of partners, and by extension a variety of identities for herself. The episodic narrative and overarching storylines for each season let these shows subvert the overly familiar three-act structure (boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy regains girl) of traditional rom-coms. However, because of their experimental style and tone – musical numbers, telenovela tropes, and voice-overs – these shows appealed to a relatively niche audience, and their reliance on formal features became clichéd.
Nonetheless, Jane the Virgin and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend illustrate that television offers rom-coms new opportunities to stay fresh. Because TV shows have length over episodes and narrative room, so to speak, to build bigger and more complicated story worlds – worlds populated by a larger cast of characters, where plots unfold over time, and where different episodes can cover different topics – TV is an ideal medium to integrate romance in a nuanced and immersive portrayal of characters’ fictional lives.
Ted Lasso and the Future of the American Romantic Comedy
Briefly considering 100 years of US-centric romantic comedies, a series of societal developments in our stance towards romance, and the possibilities of contemporary television have all come together to transport audiences to that locker room where Ted Lasso is telling his team about rom-communism.
Ted Lasso may at first seem more like a sitcom than a romcom: a US football coach is hired to coach a Premier League football team (“soccer”, in American parlance) despite knowing nothing of the sport. Misunderstandings ensue. However, romantic storylines are central to many episodes. The show builds on the work of earlier shows to integrate romantic plots into a more expansive story. Ted Lasso continues the rom-com traditions of deriving comedy from cultural differences between the US and the UK, making clever intertextual references to the canon of romantic comedies and employing rom-com tropes like mistaken identity and the love triangle.
Yet Ted Lasso also offers a new approach to the rom-com. It differs from earlier iterations of the genre on both the big and small screen because it focuses on an ensemble cast rather than a couple or series of couples. This brings the show closer to the genre of the buddy movie. Buddy movies emphasize friendship as a fulfilling kind of relationship in its own right, often sidelining romantic plotlines as secondary.
Ted Lasso combines this ensemble cast with a focus on emotional fulfillment for all its characters, radically rethinking what a happy ending may be. In this way, it questions the cultural norm of amatonormativity: the idea that a monogamous romantic relationship is the epitome of happiness for every individual. Instead, Ted Lasso illustrates various ways for people to live happy and fulfilled lives, not all of them centered on a romantic relationship or nuclear family. It thus presents a diverse notion of human happiness.
For example, some characters, such as ex-kitman-current-coach Nate (Nick Mohammad), are shown to be happiest in romantic relationships. The characters Keeley (Juno Temple), Roy (Brett Goldstein), and Jamie (Phil Dunster), are often embroiled in romantic entanglements throughout the show, and they all end up single but happy and fulfilled in other areas of life. These endings move away from the notion that every woman needs a man to be happy and towards a more flexible understanding of what “everybody needs somebody” means.
By offering various roads to the characters’ happiness, Ted Lasso also questions traditional gender roles. It challenges the idea that heterosexual women need men to feel fulfilled and shows that such women can be happy long-term while remaining single. In response to this challenge, because they live in a fictional world where women can be happy without them, the men of Ted Lasso must rethink their masculinity: what does masculinity entail when it is no longer based on providing and caring for women? For three seasons, Ted struggles with the fact that his ex-wife Michelle (Andrea Anders) doesn’t need him anymore. Ultimately, he embraces another type of happiness: he returns to the United States to be a father to his young son without seeking a romantic reconciliation with Michelle.
The Importance of New and Different Stories in Rom-Coms
By exploring ways that individuals and communities can be happy long-term outside of amatonormativity, Ted Lasso offers a way to think about our real-life collective future through (romantic) comedy. This illustrates the genre’s continued relevance to popular culture. As polarization increasingly shapes the cultural landscape both within the US and abroad, romantic comedies are important because they propagate and explore new forms of unity. They illustrate how we can work through our differences and disagreements to everyone’s satisfaction.
Caroline Levine, professor of the Humanities at Cornell University, observed in a 2020 keynote speech how important stories with happy endings are. She argued that happy endings are politically helpful because they illustrate the desirability of ongoing routines. A happy ending means that all characters are sustainably taken care of – fed, sheltered, emotionally fulfilled – and that this stability extends into the future. In this sense, happy endings can serve as an instruction manual for creating stable, sustainable futures for our communities.
Another narrative that Levine deems politically useful is the story of the struggling team. In a struggling team story, a group encounters a series of obstacles. Motivated by their leader, the group comes together and submits to rigorous training. Ted Lasso, in which Ted inspires the players of AFC Richmond and dramatically improves their performance and sense of community, fits this trope perfectly. Stories of struggling teams, Levine argues, make the routine of collective action seem fresh, new, and inspiring. They encourage us to subordinate our desires to a shared goal that requires collective, repetitive action. They also emphasize the pleasures of collective work.
In this way, struggling-team stories encourage skills useful in bringing about political change and collective action. The struggling team shows the potential of pop culture to explore how people can work communally towards more equitable, sustainable, and stable ways of living together.
Mimesis: Does Art Shape Reality or Reflect It?
Using fiction as a model, or potentially even as a catalyst, of political change has its pitfalls. Literary studies’ hottest topic is the relationship between fiction and society. Plato coined the term mimesis to refer to how art mirrors reality. The mechanisms art employs to mirror reality are the object of study: How does art mirror reality? This question can be answered in two opposing ways. Either literature reflects societal trends or it shapes them, with many theorists believing the truth lies somewhere in the middle. This is essentially a chicken-and-egg problem: which came first, the art or the reality? Does art respond to social change, or does it incite social change?
The representation of masculinity in Ted Lasso shows that reflection and shaping are going on in this case. While the show is responding to the complicated status of masculinity in contemporary US culture – which Idrees Kahloon of The New Yorker has called a crisis of masculinity – it is also influencing how audiences view masculinity and offering various storylines as ways for us to get out of that crisis. Similarly, the show’s emphasis on community building both responds to increasing polarization in the US cultural landscape and shows us ways to move beyond those social divides.
That leaves Ted Lasso’s flexible interpretation of happy endings. What is the societal relevance, or perhaps even impact, of opening up a more comprehensive range of possibilities for people’s happily ever after? Happy endings may fail in their political work if they are too predictable (i.e., do not challenge or expand our imaginations) or, conversely, too fantastical (i.e., literally beyond belief). The relentless optimism of Ted Lasso occasionally crosses the line from inspiring to Pollyanna-esque. Ted’s insistence that “everything’s gonna work out in the end” seems excessive, even to some of his friends and colleagues within the show’s optimistic and chipper story world.
Yet the over-the-topness of Ted’s rom-communist attitude is nuanced when we see it in the context of his journey as a character. Ted has developed a stance of relentless optimism in response to trauma from his past and struggles with anxiety. He must face these issues to deal with them rather than burying his problems in a pile of cheery slogans and jokes. In other words, Ted Lasso problematizes the uncritical affirmation of romantic comedy tropes, because they present a simplistic idea of what it means to be a man, and what it means to have a happy ending.
In short, Ted’s rom-communism is a positive spin on the stoicism associated with traditional stereotypes of masculinity. He must let go of these stereotypes and embrace the full spectrum of his emotions to become happy. His storyline challenges traditional representations of manhood and expands the possibilities for being happy as a (single) man. In other words, even the less realistic aspects of Ted’s character development engage meaningfully with the real-world politics of masculinity.
A Happy Ending for the Romantic Comedy Genre
Since the genre’s inception, romantic comedies have been in dialogue with society’s political and cultural norms, either shaping or reflecting social reality. While some critics in the 2010s thought the romantic comedy was nearing its demise, it is perhaps more accurate to say that the romantic comedy is changing, as it always has.
Romantic comedies are now more often found on television than in cinemas, and romance is no longer central to every storyline. Perhaps it would be more accurate to call this genre the (rom)com. Instead of putting one-on-one romance center stage, shows like Ted Lasso focus on character development and the journey towards happiness of individuals in a community. Because these new stories explore different ways to balance the needs of individuals and communities and to reshape the roles of men and women in social relationships, they are both heartwarming to watch and politically powerful.
Works Cited
Deleyto, Celestino. The Secret Life of Romantic Comedy. Manchester University Press. February 2009.
Garber, Megan. “When Harry Met eHarmony”. The Atlantic. 9 July 2014.
Grindon, Leger. The Hollywood Romantic Comedy. Wiley-Blackwell. March 2011.
Kahloon, Idrees. “What’s the Matter with Men?” The New Yorker. 23 January 2023.
Levine, Caroline. “Defamiliarization for a Sustainable Planet”. Keynote at the conference Stranger Things: Rethinking Defamiliarization in Literature and Visual Culture. Netherlands Research School for Literary Studies. 29 January 2020.
“Rainbow”. Ted Lasso, created by Brendan Hunt, Joe Kelly, and Bill Lawrence. Season 2, episode 5. Apple TV+. 20 Ausut 2021.
Roe, Amanda. “A ‘Special’ Relationship? The Coupling of Britain and America in Working Title’s Romantic Comedies”. Falling in Love Again: Romantic Comedy in Contemporary Cinema. ed. Stacey Abbott and Deborah Jermyn. I.B. Tauris. January 2009.
Smeets, Roel. Actual Fictions: Literary Representation and Character Network Analysis. Cambridge University Press. 23 July 2022.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. “Plato’s Aesthetics”. 22 July 2024 (revised).