Ted Lasso | S2 Ep10 Part5 "No Weddings And A Funeral"

Number two I am Midwestern , so , like there is a thing , I saw this comedian , tiktok , the other day talking about how his girlfriend moved to Chicago from LA and she voiced some concerns about his drinking and he was like well , yeah , no , we could go grab a drink right now if you need to Like . I don't understand what the problem is .

It's 70 degrees outside , so we should go get some beers . That's like it's daytime , we should get a beer right . I would also like to very quickly mention that 10-ish years ago I was going out with three other friends . Two of them were meeting us at my friend's house , so I went to her house . She and I went to the liquor store together .

We were planning on enough drinks for four people to have a quick get together catch up session before we went to the bar and she said do you think we should get a 12 pack or a 24 ? Like , six was not an option , six was not going to be discussed . There was absolutely no fucking way that we were going to get six beers .

No , and then it was only a matter . We actually settled on an 18 pack , which seemed like a nice compromise .

I have heard wonderful things about it , but also , like , just to our credit , there was a map of binge drinking across every county in the US , and in Utah , every single county had 0% binge drinking , not , and binge drinking was defined as three or more drinks in a single evening .

And in Wisconsin , every single county had 90% binge drink , like every single fucking one . It's just a cultural thing . You go out , you grab a beer , you go to an art museum , you have a glass of wine , go to your parents house , you drink a fifth of vodka .

So we're hanging out a bunch of like friends of ours that just come through from time to time , and so it's Easter , and we used to do and the kids are smaller , I guess too we used to do like folks coming over for these different nights , so they came up for Easter we're all going to have Easter dinner , so we'd have you know get wine blah blah , blah .

So we're telling this story . We're telling this hilarious story of in quotes of this time that we ended up at the end of the night realizing that we had consumed over a bottle of wine , each Like we had set out saying this is your bottle and this is your bottle , but there are only so many adults here and there are this many bottles of wine .

We've gone over the one to one ratio . And we're telling this story and all having a laugh and one of our friends says oh my God , you did . And we all stopped . And then another friend said you were here , it's one of my , like one of my all time favorite moments ever was like the like stunned silence , because we all thought it like what do you mean ?

You guys did , hello drunkard . Yeah , you did too . Yeah , that's great .

As I'm pouring out all of the bottles of wine , I said to my supervisor her name was Cherie , she was amazing . I said oh , so a bottle of wine is really just like three , maybe four glasses , like I . I was thinking of it in the same way that a bottle of booze .

I could not drink a bottle of booze , any size bottle of booze , except for the little shot ones that you get in airplanes . Outside of that , no , but like a bottle of wine . I was like that's like three or four glasses of wine , that's not a huge , that's not like ungodly amount to me . And she said , no , definitely not One .

One night I drank two bottles of wine all by myself and I was like at that point in my life I was like Whoa shit , cherie , great job . But also , it depends Like are you drinking a very light , not that alcoholic white wine ? Are you drinking a very full bodied , more alcoholic red wine . What do you ? What ? What sort of wine are you drinking here ?

And I said , holy shit . Well , what did you get ? And she said what did I get pregnant ? And I thought , god damn it . I am never , I'm never going to say anything better than that .

I mean like that energy , like how often do you see that on screen ?

Yeah , the language is yes , yes , but in absence of having good terms for all those things , I do feel that there has been sort of a reclaiming of a lot of these terms that instead of making it sound vulgar or dismissive to say that she's getting plowed , it's like oh , no , no , no , he is doing it the right way , he , she is getting plowed like , she is

getting her back blown out Like you . You just read , you reclaim it and you're like he's going to do we and also that's very heteronormative . But like well , yeah , when I mean , I don't think lesbians ever have to worry about if he is doing the right thing . That's sort of outside of the lesbian scope for the most part .

So I don't know that I would ever say getting plowed , but I definitely would say a lot of other super vulgar things .

She said Mbaku can blow my back out . I was like you know what man ? I endorse that message .

Somebody said something basically about how like insoles are always complaining that women will only sleep with guys who are chats or only nines or tens , and in the meantime every hot woman I know in real life would let Matt Berry hit raw and I was , like hit raw is so good .

I do remember . One time I was at Dave Matthews Band Concert . My older sister and I made friends with a couple sitting next to us and she clarified we are not dating , we are friends . We do have sex sometimes and tomorrow I am going to walk funny .

And I was like great , I really you summed it all up for us there , ma'am , Love , love that you just did that so quickly . Appreciate it .

Immediately Nora and Deborah come in and say that she's been told to come in and tell them to lower their voices .

She could have like said , oh , you know , I just wish she was with somebody a little you know a little more her age , you know like she could have done a bunch of things , she could have made a bunch of choices here , but she was like , oh no , it's good , it's good . I thought that was like very like uncommonly nice for Deborah . Oh , that's interesting .

I don't mean girls , like I'm not calling them women , but just like that vibe of like , and so I imagine , you know , I imagine Deborah going , you know , on the scale of things one could do in this life , having sex with that specimen of man seems like it's pretty high up the fucking list .

I mean like you know like as long as we're just sort of rank and shit in this life . So I kind of just for me in that moment , even though Rebecca says , you know , mother , it felt appropriate to the moment , as inappropriate as it's all supposed to be . Anyway , I'm going to be quiet now .

you said . And , casselton , I do agree that Deborah was being both kind and also fairly insightful in this specific instance , in that it had the newspapers found out that Rebecca and Sam were sleeping together .

We can't let them know because people would make assumptions or they don't understand the inner workings or whatever else that it could lead to trouble in some way , but that the relationship itself is very respectful and kind and nurturing and Sam and Rebecca really care about each other , and apparently Sam knows about them .

She basically has abdicated the role of you know , of just mother and she's coming into this to be like it's just a girl time , yeah , but she removes judgment , which I kind of like . She's just like , oh , it's good , I mean , that is a judgment , but it's a positive .

But there is a little bit of as you get older , as you become , your parents never stop being your parents , but your parents do stop needing to do things that parents do for little kids , Like even if you could always go back to your parents house the way that Castle's and you've said you encourage your children to always think that they could .

If they come back at 30 , for instance , to attend grad school that is further out in the Chicago suburbs , your relationship is slightly different Like they are your parents , but also you are more similarly not stationed , but like you can be a little bit more friendly and talk about more things because they are not responsible for keeping you alive anymore .

So I feel like in this way , yeah , she's kind of not exactly the mom role .

Then that might like that would put a different spin on it . This is sort of like a you are given permission to gossip about this because the gossip is really good and you should be able to tell your closest friends without feeling weird about it . It's sort of spilling for her , so that she doesn't need to do the spilling or something .

And that makes them really get into it . And there's wine flowing and it's like we're hiding from this huge pressure situation . Yeah , this little enclave , and it's beautiful , it's this wonderful thing . And then two more girls come in . It's more girl time , everybody's . Then the first message they get is oh , I fucking know who it is , and it's good .

They're like we are going to achieve the dream that Keely and Sassy had put a pin in it right at the beginning of the funeral . Like is it appropriate to find out today ? Like we're going to find out .

And she didn't .

There are a lot of ways to do this and , by the way , I'm sure part of it was somebody in the writer's room going hey , by the way , our half hour show is now regularly a fucking hour , so let's wrap this thing up . So that's probably part of it , just a practical consideration .

But we , the audience , already know the answer and so there's a boredom that could happen very quickly if we make the characters in the room work too hard because we already know . So then it's like okay , catch up to me , catch up to me , catch up to me . By propelling forward this way , all that energy we built up up to this moment doesn't dissipate .

If anything , we elevate it by having the explosion that comes after it and underscore Sassy I mean Keely's understanding of Rebecca and people that somehow , whatever it is because I mean there's no reason for her to believe that that she .

Boom , I got it , I know who it is . I thought I said like , wow , you two really are friends .

And I was like , oh shit , is it John ? And she was like what the hell ? And I was like well , like if you hadn't said it I wouldn't have known . But when you said you were dating somebody , I fucking knew it was John . Like , obviously it was John . I've seen the two of you interact . So I think that there was a little part of that .

If Keely had seen them together , because we , the audience , had seen Sam in season one go up to Rebecca's office and invite her down to the burning of the keepsakes , and because we'd seen some of their interaction .

But like Keely might have , without knowing it , picked up on those things and not been able to say it until it was presented to her in this way . So I actually like that has happened to me before where I'm like , oh OK .

But I had this one weird , little tingly sense that she was kind of after somebody , like like , but like she almost hadn't even admitted it to herself . I think she was at the end of a relationship , but I could kind of see the machinations .

It was very complicated but she had somehow , over a couple week period , put herself in the situation to be around her one person and I was like I don't remember saying to her I was like like you know , you're in this bustling party and we said this little .

We were standing next to each other just talking and I remember I just knew her really well , she's like a little sister to me . And I said I was like I don't know if you know , but like he's your next guy , and to see her face , you know what I mean . Like she's like how the fuck did you know ? Like I haven't even admitted it to myself yet .

You know what I mean . It was like the greatest , the greatest thing , but it's like so the priest has now sent a sassy back to quiet everybody and it got louder right and it's like . It's like an affliction . Now he sends not only Nora but also Deborah back and it gets the loudest . It's been to the point where we get after .

How the fuck did you know that it's Sam ? Everybody screams . We get like a reaction shot from the front of house , you know , from the main chamber , where the priest is like all right , excuse me , like I have to go manage this .

I want to get back there and hear what everybody's got to say about you know , Sam and Rebecca . So I thought it was just like a really well , well chosen shot .

But in the most fun way , nora starts to step toward Rebecca and and and for those who may have forgotten this detail , nora had a big , huge crush on one , sam Obesanya , and you can see on Rebecca's face that she's like I have , I have betrayed you and I'm sorry .

And Nora is the part of Nora that was able to say this is thrilling , like , got that , like , oh , I'm at the big girl table now . Was able to go Sorry , like I fucking get it . And said boss , ass , bitch .

Which again is only made more delicious by the fact that the , the vicar , is standing right behind her to just soak up this bit of profanity from a child . So , just like so many things , she apologizes , of course , and then Rebecca apologizes for their terrible behavior and as he leaves , she laughs . I mean , I love everything about this .

I eat this entire sequence with a spoon . Just love it .

Except there was a time in college I was hanging out with a friend of mine and his girlfriend and somehow it came up , like I sort of like slightly mentioned that I'd made out with a guy that we knew and his girlfriend , who I wasn't super close with but liked a lot , said nothing , leaned over high five means that back and I was like , yes , all right , you

fucking got it . That is it exactly .

And actually Rebecca's not doing the dirt , that goes along with it , she just standing there , being her attractive self , pulling like a fit rich football star , like so . So it worked for me on that level too of underscoring that .

It's possible that going to this funeral will trigger memories of going to your own father's funeral , and to which Ted says what here , boss ?

He says he hated him for that and he says he still thinks he hates him for it . And you know , dr Sharon Nod says I think you do , ted . And she says it's okay .

So , like you know what happened , your father's difficult thing for anyone to make sense of , especially his teenage son , so Ted is they have chosen to to give some insight into where Ted comes from . He says yeah okay , well , hold on .

It is what he said when he finally let go of the family he'd constructed , to I mean the quitting , I mean it's it's so much , it's so core , it is so core to who Ted is and to to to be provided this glimpse into an origin story , at least of that part of him , I think is deeply significant .

And then , following that , in a , in an episode where we have a lot of prescribed emotions , you should be happy we got to go back . Sad Dr Sharon is like that's cool , you hate him for that . I get it . I think it's a . Really .

There's another version of this where the person says , oh , we mustn't hate her , but he's still your father or whatever they say , and she's like nah , you know , that's how you feel , that's how you feel , that's how you feel , and I think both those things are significant .

We can have the space for boss to talk and I don't want to have to go back and do the other stuff . So we go back to the . She says okay , why don't you share with me what happens with Dr ? Stone says we come back to the church . It's just Rebecca and Debra in the room now . Debra asked Rebecca if she knows what she's going to say in her eulogy .

Rebecca says I don't want to do a eulogy . Rebecca would look awful if he didn't say anything at your own father's funeral . I don't care , I've got nothing nice to say . Rebecca says well , what's got into you ? He was a good father , a wonderful husband . Oh was he ? Rebecca says what are you so angry about ?

Deb says I don't want to talk about it , not today . I'm just going to stop acting like a child . So what's interesting is , stop acting like a child was not the tone at all of I know who she's sleeping with and it's good Like this is like a yeah , yeah , right , jacqueline Hyde sort of thing . Yeah , we're back . Okay .

Rebecca says fine , you really want to know , because I'm so sick of keeping secrets . Dad cheated on you and I saw it when you were away and I was meant to be staying the night with Sassy . I even remember the date . It was Friday the 13th 1990 . One and then we cut to one right and now we're with Ted .

And this is the point , this little thing , the intercutting of these moments , has been a point of contention for a lot of people . It was specifically sort of like kernel of proof for Ted Beckett . Truthers who were like obviously they're star crossovers . They're going to like the biggest event of their young lives happened on the same , exact same day .

We get 1991 . By Marcus Mumford playing underneath the scene . Ted says in September , friday the 13th 1991 , in September I remember the date because we had a bunch of high school buddies we're going to do a marathon of all the Jason movies that night . So for those people listening outside the US or didn't know what that reference was .

There's a series of horror films . The Friday the 13th movies I think most people know them , but I'll mention it . So I came home to school as usual and I went up to my room to we cut back to our back , Make a bottle of wine from your drinks cabinet . And as we opened the door I heard bang , Rebecca , Ted , back to Rebecca .

So we went to investigate and there he was . Ted says Now Rebecca says in all his glory , with his arse in the air , with Mrs Reynolds screaming his name , and sassy didn't say anything for the first time in her life , which you can imagine right , right , that would be the first time , sassy . Right .

And then I screamed and choked , cried Ted says back to Rebecca , and he came running after me in this dressing gown begging me to stop . But I just cut to Ted , ran upstairs , called 911 , went to the fridge , grabbed one of his Coors lights , drank that .

. This is Rebecca . He said nothing about it and that is why I'm so fucking angry . Okay , it's why I always hated him and I still hate him . I know , says Deb . No , you don't know how I feel . We're staying now in with Rebecca and Deb , um . Deb says I know , no , you don't know how I feel . Rebecca says I mean , I know about his cheating .

All of them , says Deb , okay , that's another huge , huge bombshell . You knew and you did nothing . Rebecca says of course , I knew , I know everything . And Rebecca says then I hate you too . I hate you for letting him treat you like that . Okay , now almost done . I'm sorry that we're back to Ted . We have now heard the story .

We've now heard that he found his dad . We've heard that he took got a Coors light . We've heard that he called his mom to Chief's home and called 911 . I'm sorry that that happened to you , ted . Dr Stone yeah , me too , and understand why you're angry with him . He took a lot away from you , dr Stone , and my mom and your mom .

Yes , I'm curious about something . What ? What he was like , dr Stone ? He was a real good man , real chatterbox , believe it or not , which I thought was a cute line .

And now Ted says when I was in fifth or sixth grade there was this book called Johnny Tremaine and our homework for like a month was to read this book . At the end of the month I hadn't read a lick of it , you know . And we had a test , a big test , the next day , and the night before I was anxious , it was all heck and I couldn't sleep .

My dad starts getting after me about that and I start crying whoa buddy , what's wrong , what's wrong ? And I tell him what's up and he says , hey , don't worry about it , just go up to your room , lay your head on your pillow and think about something you're looking forward to . So that's what I did .

Next morning I wake up and he says hey , you ain't gonna ride your bike to school , I'm gonna drive you . And I'm like all right . And all the way to school he talked me through the entire book , like it's a bedtime story or something .

He stayed up all night , the whole night reading the whole damn thing , cause he didn't want his boys stressed out over some stupid , silly test . I think this is a beautiful Right . I'm not having a hard time holding it to you .

I was just so angry at him cause he was always going to work and just out with friends or something like that , and then he was gone and I knew right then and there I was never gonna let anybody get by me without understanding that they might be hurting inside . Life is hard , real hard .

But , more importantly , let's let Boss have the floor and explain her perspective .

I don't think they did the job that was needed to be done in order for them to use this scene Like , if you're going to talk about suicide , you can't take the idea of suicide and stretch it across the framing of Ted Lasso . You need to talk about what suicide actually is and how it impacts people and then incorporate that reality into Ted's story .

So , very specifically , there are two things that he says that Ted himself , ted the character , says about suicide that I needed Ted Lasso , the show , to then step in and say actually , ted , that's not accurate . Like that's not right . Okay , because the first thing that Ted says is he quit .

He quit on his family , he quit on himself and I hate him for that . I understand why Ted Lasso the person , especially because once he hit 16 , he never again processed through his dad's death . I understand why he would feel that way . But Ted Lasso is the protagonist of the story . He's the new man .

He is the one that is supposed to be in touch with his feelings and supposed to be a role model for other people in thinking about how you deal with mental health and emotional aspects . And what he says is my dad quit and nobody ever challenges him on that .

And framing suicide framing people who die from suicide as quitters is detrimental to people who are currently suffering with suicidal ideation and extremely unhelpful for people who have had close loved ones die by suicide . It is a really bad way of framing suicide . It isn't good for anybody involved .

It's one of the negative stereotypes that we have about people who die by suicide and also part of the reason why people feel so uncomfortable discussing loved ones that they've lost in this way , or also just people who are struggling day to day to not have suicidal ideation Like this idea that they are a quitter To many people , though boss to many people that

would be a normal response like oh he quit .

How should it be framed ? Actually , that's a really great question and one of the things that I am .

There are a lot of times where I think that this scene wasn't for me . This scene is not . The rom-com episode is not for me . The Christmas episode is not for me that's fine , I am willing to like say that didn't hit right for me , but for other people that's okay .

So as a resident Ted Laszlo apologist , or so I've been told , when Dr Sharon takes us to , the way I experienced it was sort of what codes were saying and what you said , which is what a lot of people would react .

And then I took her saying would you love about him as a step in the direction of we're gonna need to be able to look at all this differently . But like not , how do I frame this ?

I guess it comes out of parenting in some ways , like there's some things that I wanna communicate to my kids that I say ABC , and then there are other things that I ask something related to A , because I want them to walk through .

So the experience I had and again I'm not saying right , I'm just saying the experience I had in this scene was just by getting him to remember a good memory , he humanized his own father and then he was able to recognize how much pain his father must have been in , how difficult life was for his father , and what he's in part talking about with all his anger

is I wish I had told him . Maybe if I would have told him , he wouldn't have done it . That's guilt . It's not healthy , but I think it's part of like to me . I took this as like part of the processing , whereas I think for you it landed as it was supposed to be the sum total , not the sum total , but you know what I mean .

Like I took it as much more of a step toward than an answer , and so I'm curious what you take is on that .

What I think is that , because of the fact that we don't discuss suicide that much , and because the show wanted to tackle that , if there were ever a time for PSA , it is now what you do , is you put out ?

all of the information , because there might be people watching who have never lost someone to suicide that thinks , oh well , they're angry because that guy quit . And even if they think , well , he might have been a good guy , he might have been a good dad , he might have done all these other things , that doesn't negate the fact that they believe he quit .

You need to very explicitly draw the line between they didn't quit , they lost . Like this is one of the things that we framed in such a fucked up way . It makes me crazy If there were somebody battling cancer , if they had had cancer for seven years and at the end of seven years they were like , well , we're gonna do another round of chemo .

And that cancer patient said I'm fucking tired , I don't wanna do any more surgeries , I don't wanna do any more therapies . Like , I wanna go home , I wanna abuse my family , I want this to be the end . We would understand that , we would be comfortable with that .

And when somebody is battling mental health issues , depression or undiagnosed bipolar disorder or substance abuse we think , well , why won't you keep fighting ? Why are you fucking giving up ? And that's so unfair to the person Like that is wildly unkind . To frame it that way .

The way that you actually are encouraged to frame it for kids , in order to make sure that you're putting it as at a gentle enough level while still being honest is they were sick . Their sickness was in their head or their brain . It made them incredibly sad sad in a way that most people don't get . They hurt themselves because of that and then they died .

And all of those things are true . None of those things are quitting . Absolutely none of that is quitting . And framing it as quitting then makes it so that we're angry at them because they didn't continue living in really significant and severe pain in order to stare us from dealing with the pain of their death .

Like , the shit that we say about people who die by suicide is they quit , they were weak . They were weak , they gave up , they were selfish .

If Coach Beardstead had died in 1991 by suicide , the church that he probably attended would have said that guy's going to hell and we're not giving him a funeral because he died by suicide , because the Catholic Church still said that up until 1992 . Like , we say really terrible things about people that die in this way and this doesn't negate it enough .

Like you can't just say I feel like he quit . The show needs to say like he didn't quit . He was so sad that life killed him . He was so sad that he couldn't stay alive anymore . And that isn't . I can't be angry about that .

But and I'm wondering if , well , I'll share this , I probably have on in some ways already I've been suicidal before . It's something I've talked about publicly and written about , so it's not . And so I'm now listening to you and looking at the notes we have here and I'm wondering if we always do this .

But I'm wondering if I infused the scene and Ted's speech with some things that weren't there , like that I brought to this particular party . So that's what I know , and I'm really asking it in real time , like as we're talking .

Because , again , for me , when he says and I knew right then , and there I was never gonna let anybody get by me without understanding that they might be hurting inside , as opposed cause he could have said I knew right then , and there I would never fuck with anybody else who I thought was a quitter , which isn't what he says , for me that carried some of what

you're saying around , like that's not fair . He was in pain , I didn't necessarily say the right things , which is a whole again a whole other set of things that can be unhealthy about . Like maybe I could have made it different . But yeah , I think I may have added I'd wanna watch it again with this conversation in mind and maybe I brought some things to

the party . But I think where I was disconnecting when you were saying like this doesn't work , this doesn't work , and I wasn't getting why you were saying it didn't work , I think I was infusing some .

I guess I was familiar enough with that state of being that , the idea that it was just like you quit as , if you like , reset some video game , like I know it's not that so I'm , but I'm hearing you , I am hearing you .

If they needed a consultant , I could have submitted a resume , but that's beside the point . I would also like to point out , just because it did fucking bother me , they have a football consultant credited on this episode .

They do not have a mental health consultant , and that's one of the things where I'm like , guys , you work at fucking Apple , you have the internet . You should have taken that step . That is a major oversight , okay . But I hear you . I feel like what they were really interested in telling was Ted's version of a suicide .

They were not interested in doing suicide prevention advocacy . Right , right right . Maybe I shouldn't be tasking them with that , but if you were going to represent it in a way that feels lacking to me , then I can't say you did the same well , especially when you don't have the background required for it .

I understand where they're coming from with that , but again that also there is such a difference between what we need to do when we're talking about suicide prevention and what we were talking about when we were talking about death by suicide processing . And the first half of that might be that you say like can I do anything ? Is there anything I could help ?

There was also like no way for individuals to actually make a significant difference in a lot of these things we're talking like reducing racism and sexism and homophobia and transphobia and income inequality those things actually do a shit ton to prevent suicide . Saying like , can I , how are you doing ? Unfortunately not the same .

That like just on a person-to-person basis . It unfortunately is really effective . If we had significantly better healthcare and mental healthcare system , that might improve it . But me checking in on you , unfortunately no , it doesn't do it . The other thing is that they are talking about a very specific relationship with a death by suicide .

They I think we're tapping into this is suicide in general feels and what they're giving us is this is a kid who lost his father to suicide , and that is a different relationship . Yes yes , that , yeah , because that isn't even I've already mentioned before .

But Osling B , who did lose her dad's suicide , said I didn't wanna hear that he wasn't in his right mind , because if I were important enough to him I should have put him in his right mind before he did anything .

So the question for kids who lose their dads that way , especially when they're younger , when their teenagers are under , isn't like I'm so angry that you left . The question is also often why wasn't I worth staying for ?

But I guess my question would be and I'm again , I'm really glad to make the distinction between Ted Lasso , the character , and what has happened here and you're feeling that there's an overarching responsibility if you're gonna wade into these waters which I have a whole thing about with comedy as well , by the way . So I get that piece , or that instinct .

I really did experience really both stories and I didn't mind them being intertwined , and we'll get to the mechanics of this sequence . That part of us , what it also captured for me in the work I've done with the way it resonated , was that part of us remains in the place of the trauma until we deal with it .

And I may have already shared this , I'll just be quick , but there's sort of like an origin story trauma . I'm not sure I don't know why I'm acting like a god damn secret after I've told everything else about my life , but so , basically , my first memory of my life , quickly , is crying . That is my earliest memory of my life .

It's me crying and I was crying . No , no , no , no , no . It's true , this is true . I'm no bullshit . I didn't know . Yeah , no , this is not something I talk about very often and I'll actually tell you why in a second and I was crying .

I was out on our porch , where I lived up until age five , when my parents got divorced and my parents had just had a fight .

So I'm crying and I could very clearly picture , like anybody who's lived in the city where they used to have those orange street light , and I can see sort of like the light and the streets off the lights If you remember , looked at a light bulb when you're crying and that kind of . So I can see all that in the night . I can see it .

And I was just inconsolable and my father told me everything was OK and that's like , man , the number of things that's impacted in my years is really quite astounding . But when I would even think of the story until like the last couple of years and I've done therapy before when I would even think of the story , I would choke up .

And I didn't choke up as a man , remembering a thing that happened to a child . I was three again , yeah , yeah , like it was not , and I was aware of that and I would like , and so , in a way , what did work for me in the sequence again talking about the show now , but not the overarching responsibility is .

There is a 16-year-old in this room telling his story , and maybe Ted Lasso , the man who's done the kind of work that we're talking about and who has the awareness to say you know , if that's a joke , I think it's hilarious , and if it's not , I can't wait to unpack that with you .

That guy might be able to say well , suicide is X , y and Z in a logical way , but the 16-year-old inside of him who needs the healing you gave up , dude , and that's why I didn't go to your funeral and that's why I hate you and look what you did to me and mom .

I'm going to play a fun game real quick . I'm going to ask you guys right now to think of a movie or TV show that deals with the aftermath of a suicide , like that actually goes through the somebody dies by suicide and then they deal with it .

And I'm going to sort of vamp for a couple of seconds here to try to give you guys just a second to think of anything . And I'm wondering if you're coming up with anything in particular .

When I was googling to see like movies if , I was like I must be missing something , there must be something out there , I specifically googled for movies where a parent dies by suicide and one of the top results was the prestige , which if you've seen the prestige , it's fucking hilarious .

Like I love the prestige and so , knowing the entire plot , I'm like , well , that's , that's fucking wild , but that's one of my MDB top results . Great job , guys . So I think in this case , what we needed to see was not an instance of trauma where somebody is stunted at the age where the trauma happens .

What we need to see is some indication of what happens when you are processing through that trauma and we just we don't get enough . I got you Like I understand what they're hinting at . I think that they don't do . I will say I am actively unhappy with them not forcefully refuting the idea that people who die by suicide quit that .

I am angry with them at that . I understand what they were going for , but they had a responsibility in this case to make sure that they added on a hey . By the way , that's not a great way of thinking about it , yeah .

But Jamie Raskin , us representative member of Congress , his son died a few years ago by suicide and the family was very open about it and they wanted to make sure that they didn't hide anything and that they talked about I believe his son's name is Tommy , but I need to double check that but he had struggled with mental health issues . He was 25 .

He wasn't that old , but he'd already struggled a lot , and his farewell note which is the way that I'm going to be referring to them explicitly from now on said please forgive me my illness one today . Oh , all right , I mostly did , and I , just like he was 25 . He didn't have anything that he needed to be forgiven for . He struggled and then he lost .

So if people in 2020 are still feeling like , if this is how they died , that they did something that needs forgiveness , I feel like we haven't done a good enough job of making sure that they know that they shouldn't feel that way .

So when he says oh , the ailment , one today or something , like that it's still a contentious thing or a fight-based thing or something , and it means a struggle and maybe the framing should be around struggle or the continued . Maybe it's a burden instead of a . I'm trying to think of how to make it much more .

What's an allegory that would make it more accessible to your average Joe who would think ? I think many people think of it as quitting and so , just like in layman's terms , what's something that could reframe it , I wonder . I wonder if maybe it's just too complicated to fit neatly into a categorization , but it would be helpful to have something .

But what I'd like to say is maybe there's something around the idea of quitting we also need to look at and I say that as a person the number of times I've ended up with somebody who either represented an employer or who was the employer saying to me , yeah , we probably should not do this anymore , is almost exactly equal to the number of times that , well

before that , I went . Jesus Christ , what have I fucking gotten myself into ? And it's almost a one to one . That Venn diagram is a circle , as they say , and I've more than once thought what is it in me that , faced with this , fucking sucks and is clearly not a fit , that makes me go ?

All right , I'll figure it out , I'll tough it out , I'll go talk to someone and I'll figure out what other people are doing in this job .

Well , maybe it's just not the fucking job for you , and maybe quitting that was number one , maybe it was very close to the top of my list with things with my own children that I was like we ain't going to be raised as little quitters around here and there's some good around that , but there's something between being a quitter and knowing when to quit that I

think we don't know , we don't , I don't think we societally appreciate and I think it costs us . So I say all that to say , not with the value judgment , not with the moral sort of judgment of it , but in a basic way .

If Tommy Raskin I assume his last name was Raskin said you know what man , whether it's been a year or two years or five years or 10 years or whatever , I have done the stick and move with this fucking depression and I'm all set .

Yeah , part of me almost wishes that we could say he quit fighting it without it feeling like we're maligning him , like maybe that's part of our conversation too . It's like maybe and again I'm not saying like you've got a friend who wants to commit suicide , you encourage them to you know what I'm saying , but I am saying like I know .

Yeah , I had a client it's not the exact same thing , but I think you'll get why . I thought of her and she reached out to me because she was a colleague in the first place . And then she reached out to me she had had cancer and had gone through chemo and some stuff , and then now was was back and so she was essentially deciding .

She wanted me to coach her through the decision of whether to do chemo again Heavy shit , right , like this ain't . Like hey , I think I want to lose 10 pounds . Like I was like OK , here we fucking go . And at first I was very like hey , so how do you want to handle this ?

And she let me know , without going through the whole conversation , that like no , no , no , no , no , no , no , no , no , no , I need coach Orlando , like I need you to kick my ass and make me go do this , whatever . And we went through the process and it was actually painful for me and mostly for her in all the ways , but also beautiful .

But had she said , like you pointed out the example earlier that's probably why she was on my mind had she said yo , man , chemo sucks Really , yeah , for another three fucking months of life , or six fucking months of life . I'm supposed to do that again . I'm all set . Why does that quote quitting ? Why do we judge it so harshly ?

And I think there's some like basic biological stuff wound up in that and like survival instinct and we want to discourage that action because we feel like no , no , no , we've got to keep as much of the tribe here as we can . I'm not , you know , I'm not qualified to explain all the reasons why .

I think , yes , everything you said about it not being quote unquote , quitting , but I also think we need to get clearer about what we mean by quitting . To me it's like it's like saying water , right . Like yes , a cup of water is water and the ocean is water and a lake is water and right .

So like we need more words , we need glacier and droplet , and we don't have them right now . So quitting is quitting is quitting and I think it's not to anybody's benefit .

She's significant I don't know , maybe she would disagree with significant , but she is very functional . And one of the things that she and I have to say to each other sometimes is if you were missing a limb , you wouldn't be up angry with her .

When dealing with a family member who might be a woman who doesn't listen to this podcast I'm not going to narrow it down further than that , but we say if her limitation were physical , we would not be angry with her , we would understand . But because it's like you're 30 fucking minutes late again , we're like why the fucking so ?

Number one yes , there is that difference . Number two I think that you are very precisely pointing out the imprecision of what we do when we are encouraging somebody to prevent a suicide and how we are reviewing it after this happened , and that there are two different things to that .

The first one you want to make sure I have given you every resource , every option , every treatment , everything that I can put towards this problem .

I'm going to try to do , because we don't want you to hurt yourself and don't want you to be gone , and we don't want you to do this , and that after the fact , we sort of say we honor and acknowledge the struggle that the person went through , like we say , yeah , that shit was really hard . We get why you couldn't keep doing it . We understand .

I think that there is something to be said . We do say that somebody lost their battle with cancer . We make it a fight and we also say they lost and we feel okay with that , whereas we don't feel okay with it when it is a mental health issue . So there's that aspect of it .

I think that if what people started staying instead was I'm ready , we wouldn't be able to feel like it was such a one way or the other , you starting some real trouble now .

So we are pretty goddamn far from society being good about saying I'm ready . Like that is . I want to say Germany . I could be off . It was in how to change your mind , the Netflix documentary , but someone was just talking about the experience they had and that they're , and I had never heard of this .

This person was having these unbelievable , like daily headaches , like such pain that his hair had been falling out because his body was just like you know , you just can't experience that kind of pain every day and be okay .

And he explained that there were these essentially these centers , these hospital centers , whatever you want to call it , where people go , when they're , you know , ready to go , and I thought the level of chaos and protest and evangelicals praying and picketing if you tried anything , if you tried to open a place that had a pamphlet about that hospital , what you would

face Like we're just really far from what you described . But I think there's something powerful to be said for that . And even when they talk about older couples and you know , one dies and they're like you know and I'm part of me gets it where you're like what the fuck man ?

I'm all set Like my buddy's gone and you know , thanks for the memories y'all , but I'm out of here . I get it . I mean , I understand . I'm not saying it makes me happy , but I understand .

When I say I'm taking myself out at 80 , I am being mostly serious , Like it might be 82 , but I am not sticking around until the bitter end . This is not true blood I will take myself out .

I think that having a less fearful relationship with death would impact a lot of the things that we're talking about with suicide and death in general , and it's something we need to be moving towards and it's something that I would like to see represented in popular culture a lot more than it is .

I think is also beautiful around that and I guess I'm wondering , boss , there's part of me that feel that recognizes Ted felt abandoned , I imagine . I would feel abandoned . I imagine everybody could get why one would feel abandoned . I guess my question is how , what's your take on how to process that piece or like , because it does feel ? I mean , it feels

like that . I remember I actually remember specifically thinking , looking down into my kid's crib for those who don't know this through all the hours . My mother died in March and my kids were born in May , so like it's a lot of emotion for a pretty small pocket of time .

And I remember two really sort of big things emotionally that I found myself thinking about as I looked at them . One was holy shit , I said you who didn't even fucking exist before I got my big ideas , I set you up for this experience . That is fucking awful and I am really sorry .

But the other one was well , if I was going to commit suicide I shouldn't say commit If I was going to die by suicide , I needed to have done it before now , because these motherfuckers didn't ask to be here and now it's my job to see them through . Now that may be healthy on it , whatever . For me it was like if you suffer , you suffer .

You did this and they didn't ask for it , so your job is to see them through to adulthood best you can , yeah , and those two things came up a lot .

So when the abandonment thing did resonate , even though I recognized the like unfairness of it , if when my kids were five I died of cancer , no one would be like that fucking asshole , that mother fucker , so I don't know . I don't even know if I'm articulating it .

Well , I'm having a hard time like putting these pieces together in a way that feels like okay , that's the picture . It's very messy .

I think that what is most important to understand about the feeling of abandonment when your parents either do abandon you or they die by suicide , which is a form of abandonment is that your brain interprets that to say they left me . What's so bad about me ? What is it about me that made you feel like you could leave ?

And the answer is they weren't even thinking about you , which doesn't sound great . That sounds really shitty .

But the real answer is the answers is that , because you are interpreting it for yourself , you think you did something that made them leave , and the order of events is they left so you felt like you were worth leaving , so you just need to like it's , just it's . I fucking spent 18 months .

It's , oh my God , a TV show I'm not going to say which one because I don't want to do even minor spoilers but one of the characters said you left because I suck . And the character that left said I left because I suck . I am tremendously messed up . What I did had literally nothing to do with you , and I was like , I was watching it .

I was like mother . I felt like the guy that , uh , when , uh , donald Jr tweeted out all of his crimes , he was like he just tweeted it out . I was like I did fucking 18 months of therapy to get to this point . You motherfuckers just tweeted out on this one episode of TV show Like but , but that was all of it .

Like it was working through and figuring out the relationship where you could say you left because you had issues , it had nothing to do with me , and that is always going to be painful and difficult for people who have people who die by suicide . But we need to be talking about that part . What we don't need to be talking about is he quit Like .

This is what should be front and center that they left because they were suffering . They didn't leave because you were worth leaving .

It's just really tricky and there's all kinds of things around it that are tricky , and also , in the wrong hands , it can be used as a tool , like you know there's I don't want to get into it , but it's like oh , you know , it's like , if you say like there's this thing that happened in one of our local schools where someone was a high school aged woman , a

young lady , was bullying a cyberbullying some people and they went , you know , to get her . As soon as the punishment came in , she was threatened to take her own life , and then it was .

Then it sort of it pivoted and then it was about that and not about you know what I mean and like and then she didn't and then went to college and bullied somebody else and then did the thing again , and you know . So there's this . It can be like this weird . We don't know how to handle it because we're so messed up around mortality . We have a tough .

It's just a tough topic , and so , yes , I really appreciate all of the framing you guys have done , boss , thanks for , for unerthing that much emotion . Yeah , for sure .

I just wanted to give boss the floor that we've been meaning to give her for a long time . We will start next time with Rebecca's side of it , which is , you know , no , no less poignant , but we definitely wanted this is a talk we've been meaning to to get to for quite a while .

Anyway , by this being broken up , we could lose that part and I and I . It's obviously very much a choice that was made , so I think we should , you know , at least address it .

But it's tough . I mean these are heavy topics and they can hit people in powerful , powerful ways . So anyway , I don't want to make light of it , but my natural inclination is to just do anything to try to lighten the score . But but yeah , thank you everyone for , for you know , being part of this conversation it's not an easy one .

Coach , where do people find you if they want to find you ?

If you do the whole thing about liking and subscribing and and and all that stuff , it really , really helps us . If you don't have the money and you can't , people going through a hard time . Please give us a review or any of those things . They always , they always help . So , anyway , that's it , thank you .

We'll be back next time with part six , and until then , we are Richmond .