Ted Lasso Would Beat Andrew Tate’s Ass

Ted Lasso returned to Apple TV last week, premiering its third and final season with the show’s classic Midwest idioms and insightful handling of emotions. The return is a welcome site that engagement tracker Samba TV says some 870,000 households viewed, a 60% increase from last season’s debut.

The first episode hits all the right notes, setting the stage for a fun final act by officially marking West Ham United as AFC Richmond’s foil and maintaining a clear desire for Nate to return to the good side. It’ll be fun to see how the season plays out.

The second episode is available today on Apple TV.

Ted Lasso’s positive masculinity stands in stark contrast to what you’d expect to see in most media today, especially on social media, where the likes of clowns like influencer Andrew Tate find their home.

Tate is a self-proclaimed misogynist and failed kickboxer who, in recent years, has become the face of the online “alpha male” movement, peddling his tired brand of idiotic misogyny to impressionable boys and young men still finding their way in life. Tate, who’s also a failed reality television star and is perhaps best known for instigating a Twitter fight with environmental activist Greta Thunberg, reportedly has cancer and is currently sitting in a Romanian jail for his alleged sex trafficking crimes (his requests for release have been denied three times as of March 22).

If you want to know more about Tate, journalist Shanti Das did a deep dive on his “violent, misogynistic world" for The Guardian in August 2022 (prior to Tate’s arrest).

You can also check out this 2017 tweet by Tate targeting the father of a sick child to get a feel for what type of person he is:

Like I said, Andrew Tate f**king sucks.

As much as he sucks, it’s easy to understand how his online fame happened. His videos and nonsense words aren’t meant for adult eyes and ears who see through his try-hard bullsh*t, they’re meant for boys and young men whose brains have yet to fully develop and, therefore, can find his crap palatable.

So, f**ck Andrew Tate and the microphallus he rolled in with (not sure if that’s true but I’d love to start the rumor here). Ted Lasso would beat his ass.

Yep, I said it. Our beloved Coach Lasso would beat the ever-loving sh*t out of Prince Andrew; any time, any place.

Think I’m wrong? Well, I’m not. How do I know? Well, I don’t, but this is my blog so we’re going with what I say (thanks for reading and subscribing to The Bagel, I love you all) and I’ll accept your responses on Twitter.

Why do I say Ted would beat the sh*t out of Tate? Because it wouldn’t be physical.

Ted wouldn’t have to get physical, he’d beat Tate like he took down Rupert in the pub with darts: by playing Tate’s game.

Imagine a storyline with me (Jason Sudekis, if you somehow read this, you have my permission to make this a future episode):

Michelle, Ted’s ex-wife (still hurts to write), finds out their son, Henry, has been watching the YouTube channel of an “alpha male” influencer named Tweedle Tate out of curiosity after hearing about it from his friends. He doesn’t much care for the hateful stuff the ugly bald man is yelling about but, thinking his friends like it, he keeps watching and sometimes repeats what he hears.

Michelle tells Ted and, after researching more of Tweedle’s content and realizing how dangerous his imp-brained rhetoric is, the two decide to force Henry to stop watching his channel. Henry rebels and begins watching secretly because he doesn’t want to feel left out by his friends, but Michelle and Ted find out by checking his online activity.

Unsure what to do and feeling the distance is keeping him from being more helpful, Ted and Coach Beard decide to fight fire with fire by launching their own YouTube channel displaying acts of their signature healthy masculinity. Rebecca, Keeley, Higgins, Roy, Sam, Jamie, and the rest of the Richmond team help, going viral with kind lesson after kind lesson.

Henry and his friends become huge fans of Coach Lasso’s channel and the dozens of other similar channels launched by professional sports teams after being inspired by the Richmond crew. Henry and his friends ditch Tweedle Tate’s channel as his following shrinks (like Andrew Tate’s real-life tiny penis).

Eventually, Tweedle is exposed as a criminal (doing something dumb too, like importing rare art but still somehow not making a profit), decimating his following and forcing him into bankruptcy. Henry realizes his dad’s love-first leadership and empathetic way of living are the right path, and Tweedle falls into obscurity, withering away in some foreign prison with nothing but a receding hairline and his itty-bitty wiener.

Does that seem like a realistic plot for an episode of Ted Lasso? Maybe. Is Jason Sudekis likely to see this and actually make it an episode? No. Would it be awesome though if he did? Hell yeah.

It wouldn’t be awesome only because it’d be fun to watch an Andrew Tate doppelganger lose his following and wealth, but because boys actually need it.

Boys and young men still finding their way in life need more Teds and less Tates. They need male role models not only at home, but in the media, and they need content showing those men being led by strong, confident women. They need to learn that Tate’s rhetoric is hateful, misogynistic nonsense that has no place in civilized society, and they need to see girls and women shun that type of crap and ostracize any boy or young man who dares to repeat it.

They need to be taught how damaging words can be and that “alpha male” bullsh*t is nothing more than a weak man’s way of handling his feelings of inadequacy. They need to be taught better ways to deal with life’s inevitable adversity and that no amount of putting others down will lift themselves up, and they need to see kindness that’s valued as a trait, not an act someone does when they’re in a good mood.

Should society leave it to one piece of media to combat another? Probably not. But as any good constitutional scholar will tell you: the remedy to bad speech isn’t more censorship, it’s more good speech.

So, let’s fight fire with fire and make characters like Ted our remedy to personalities like Tate (who also has a tiny pecker, pass it on).

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