Let’s imagine two types of American men. Let’s simply outline them, and see how these outlines conjure certain presumptions on our part.
If someone is from Kansas or Missouri or worst of all Nebraska, for example; if he wears a mustache and coaches American football; if he is optimistic and loud and obnoxious; if he is geographically and historically and politically ignorant; if he is white and closer to fifty than thirty; if he loves his progeny; if he insists with every fiber of his default perspective that America is still exceptional, if only to him, we’d all conclude that he probably voted for Trump. And yet this man is, of course, Ted Lasso, a sort of TV writer’s ideal version of being anti-Trump.
Similarly, if someone is a combat veteran; if he constantly praises Americana junk food and prefers state highways to the interstate; if he carries a weapon on his person and also carries his person like a weapon; if he’s blond and tall and muscular enough everyone refers to him as a kind of beautiful ogre in human disguise; if he’s a fact-machine who mostly uses facts to disrupt your easy narratives about violence and power and crime; if he’s serious about measuring twice and cutting once and somehow still makes women swoon; if he’s as competent at cleaning rusty metal as he is at navigating legalese, then he’s someone your dad probably wants to f*ck, I mean become. He’s dad-competent in a way so many dads aspire (hi, this is a dad speaking), a fictive realization of dad-hopes everywhere. His name is Jack Reacher.
I recently watched the new Reacher TV series based on Lee Child’s novels, and the only resource in the world more plentiful than Ted Lasso’s goodwill biscuit-baking is the determination of Jack Reacher to kick your ass. Yet somehow, despite being apparent opposites, Lasso and Reacher are both projects attempting to salvage traditional, white American masculinity. Probably.
First, there’s Lasso, a Midwest isolationist who reveres America’s institutions of power. Having been transported from Kansas to England, the existence of Wales confounds him (“How many countries are in this country?”). He manages to go most of the Premier League season, as a Premier League coach, without learning even the most basic rules of soccer. He gives one of his young Nigerian players a green Army man as a token of confidence, only for the player (sweetly, amusingly) to point out that he has a different relationship to the U.S. military than Lasso. No problemo, for Lasso. He still likes the American military fine.
Reacher is also a kind of isolationist drifting about America, except he collected and sharpened all his skills and opinions as one of the main tools of U.S. expansionism. A former MP with the Army, his range of competencies includes geopolitical nuances. Venezuelan currency schemes? Just another tick to be tocked in the mind of an MMA goliath. His seemingly endless aptitudes are matched in extravagance only by his brutality.
Call Lasso a child of the New Testament and Reacher a child of the Old. The veteran literally takes an eye for an eye.
Much like the misconception of Old Testament and New Testament bifurcation—the promise expands, but the God remains the same—Lasso and Reacher are two sides of the same moral project. In both cases the writers have taken an extreme of American masculinity—rah-rah ignoramus on the one hand and violent jack-of-all-trades on the other—and given the characters in question unflinching moral instincts. They know what’s right and what’s wrong and they’re surprised others might not. More vital than any other aspect of their personality, in fact, is that their integrity cannot be meaningfully compromised.
Even when they stray, they do not really stray; hell, they barely flounder. Reacher may shoot a man in the back, but it was a man paid a lot of money to kill him. He may have gone rogue vigilante during his time at war, but it was only because some locals were literal child rapists. “Do you mind me killing people who hurt children?” he asks a local cop. He’s asking us, too, as viewers, and he doesn’t give a damn if you say, “Yes? Extrajudicial murder is, how do you say, always shady?” (But also, “No.”)
Not quite hitting the same operatic note, Lasso’s altruistic insistence that he doesn’t care about winning because he cares more about his players as people—and this despite coaching in a professional sport where players’ livelihoods depend on winning—somehow… wins out! His penchant for playing to win by not playing to win sees its greatest success with Roy Kent. He shouldn’t field his aging star, who’s a legend but also a shell bereft of this former powers. And while he gives in to this logic for a time, he rejects it in the final, climactic game of the first season. Put your players first, and better results will come.
I have no idea how Reacher will play with the legion of recappers who fell in love with Ted Lasso, but I’ll be surprised if they feel the same about a character who seems invented to debunk certain narratives beloved by the American left.1 Basically, Reacher is violent, but he is somehow still good. He is the action hero taken to as moral an extreme as possible. His competency and resolve is only matched by his inability to let a bad act pass unpunished.
What if the American military was never wrong? That’s almost the question Reacher asks, on a symbolic plane, at least. But it goes further, I think. What if the ideals of the American military remain, well, attractive? Not the actual military operations, not the wasted and apocalyptic years in the Middle East or the destruction wrought by foolish generals and hapless politicians. Rather, look frankly at the world, Reacher suggests, and ponder whether all the violence doesn’t sometimes make you wish for the God of justice as well as the God of mercy—an angel of justice at least. The kind who’s never heard of compromise, or donuts.2
Somehow, this is the same logic that underpins Ted Lasso’s characterization. What if midwestern ideals were realized at the level of their conception? Lasso’s American myopia becomes humility, his blowhard exuberance becomes exhortation. He doesn’t know much about the world, but golly, that’s not because he doesn’t care, he’s just busy trying to help in whatever part of the world he’s landed. Can you really blame someone for being from Kansas?
Maybe there’s no larger conclusion here except that I found both characters cathartic in a similar way. They’re both silly, they’re both unwavering, and they’re both examples of how the tragedy of American masculinity is that sometimes our men simply betray their own standards. Rather than their love of sports, junk food, or guns, Lasso and Reacher demonstrate how the moral project—the imperative that places right knowledge before right action and humility before leadership—is meant to be at the heart of identity, not its offspring.
Both shows, in other words, are dads at their sincere, dopey best. They want you to build character.
Reading: Quick highlights from my reading journal:
Jenny Linsky and the Cat Club, by Esther Averill: “I think the mystery of pleasure and taste are most difficult to dissect in kids books. Do I think the tales here are charming, eschew a lot of the self-help tendencies of later kids fiction without avoiding difficult kid subjects, and have fun and whimsical and striking illustrations—of course! But isn’t that basically true of every decent book for kids? . . . Jenny Linksy is a shy little cat, and every story is about finding a good enough reason, and the courage, to perform.”
Jack Reacher, Ted Lasso, and Jenny Linsky: name a more iconic trio.
I love you all.
I don’t care that the show makes a big deal out of Reacher loving junk food. That actor hasn’t even been in the same room with sugar for years.