you know how back in S2 of Ted Lasso when Doc Sharon was in the hospital, and this one doctor had a lot of Character, not to mention Eyebrows, and then Roy mentioned his sister works in the ER and some fans were like ‘was that her’, and then it WAS?
Well, in S2 Trent’s daughter would’ve been 4 or 5, just when there was a brief but memorable appearance by a small girl with a passing resemblance to him, who also had a Lot of Character:
it is fascinating to me that at the very beginning of this episode they threw in one last inescapable sign of jane’s emotional abuse of beard only to end things … like that
i would genuinely love to know what on god’s green earth and in the year of our lord 2023 was going through these writers’ fucking heads
the way i see it, colin has three options for handling the repercussions of kissing michael on the pitch in front of everyone:
gatekeep: by some miracle no one caught the kiss on camera so colin’s sexuality is kept between him and any fans who happened to be on the pitch near him. the safest option.
girlboss: keeley gets the pr challenge of a lifetime handling the story of the first active premier league player to come out as gay. rebecca is tall and powerful and intimidating in the press room making it clear that richmond stands behind colin one thousand percent. the most realistic option.
gaslight: straight-up blatantly lying. not because he’s ashamed or because he thinks he can actually convince anyone that the kiss didn’t happen, but just because he refuses to let it be a big deal. acts like he has no idea what anyone is talking about if asked anything related to his sexuality. he doesn’t claim to be straight, mind you, he just pretends to be extremely confused about why they’re asking because he never kissed anyone in the middle of a football pitch at the end of an internationally-televised game? when presented with photo and video proof of the kiss he says that was some other richmond player named hughes who wears a number 12 jersey. you don’t know him, he goes to another school. the funniest option.
this is outstanding and way better than my mansplainoption, which is just for colin to go for cheerful bullshittery: ‘oh, I’m welsh and was brought up on rugby culture and I’m trying to introduce a little more of that inherent homoeroticism to the game. my mate michael’s part italian: he’s never let a celebration go by without kissing another bloke on the lips. do you really find kisses particularly sexual? i dunno boyo, I think that’s just really restrictive. who among us hasn’t wanted to kiss our friend on the lips? live your life! go snog your bestie right now. I guarantee you’ll enjoy it.’
“he’s not homophobic, he just hates what he perceives to be softness and weakness and vulnerability with particular vitriol when it’s in men who love other men!” girl that is literally what homophobia is
Some people in this fandom seem to think about homophobia the way many white people think about racism, that it’s something only Truly Bad Awful People do. Like congratulations on not being in the KKK, Brenda, but you can still be racist. These concepts don’t apply only to one-dimensional cartoon villains.
Helpful and necessary words for describing patterns & behavior really lose alllll their utility when they come to be understood simply as markers of Irredeemable Evil
