Ted Lasso's Writers Made Sure Sam's Season 3 Story Avoided An All-Too-Common TV Trope
This post contains spoilers for "Ted Lasso" season 3, episode 7 "The Strings That Bind Us."
One of the most happy-go-lucky characters on "Ted Lasso" is Sam Obisanya, the AFC Richmond midfielder and Nigerian restaurant owner played by Toheeb Jimoh ("The Power"). Even when a billionaire calls him a "medium talent" and curses him out to his face, Sam is able to take it in stride. However, in "The Strings That Bind Us," Sam's unflappable, cheery demeanor finally cracks when he finds himself and his restaurant on the receiving end of racism and vandalism. It all starts when he gives some polite pushback on social media to the British Home Secretary's anti-refugee stance. Sam is promptly shouted down and told to "Shut up and dribble," a message that vandals graffiti inside his restaurant, too.
In the locker room, Sam explodes at the world's evils, and it's the first time we've really seen things get to him on "Ted Lasso." His story, however, confronts issues faced by real-life England players like Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho, and Bukayo Saka, and it does so without making Black trauma Sam's defining character moment, in the exploitative way entertainment often does. In an interview with GQ, Jimoh said:
"I think everything we've done with Sam has been really sensitively handled. He's super politically active, and so a lot of the storylines, even going back to Dubai Air in season 2 and not wanting to take the little army man in season 1, show that that's a big part of him. But as you said, we see a lot of times on TV with Black or African characters [a focus on trauma]. The writers really did want to prioritize joy and they wanted to prioritize Sam finding family and finding love because this is a relatively small part of Sam's story."
The cost of doing the right thing
As Toheeb Jimoh observes, "Ted Lasso" season 3 isn't the first time Sam has waded into political matters. In the season 2 episode, "Do the Right-est Thing," Sam backed out of promoting Dubai Air after learning from his father that the oil company behind it was responsible for pollution in Nigeria. This meant putting his neck on the line since Dubai Air was AFC Richmond's sponsor. Yet Sam had the full support of the other players and they even covered up the Dubai Air logo on their uniforms with tape when they took to the field before Sam spoke out against the airline and the Nigerian government in a press conference.
In that case, Sam's criticism was directed outward at two foreign entities. It's when he dares to step out of line and criticize the British Home Secretary that he becomes the target of a hate crime in England. Jimoh continued to GQ:
"I'm glad that we got to shed light on what it is sometimes to be a Black footballer, you know. When everybody loves you, and you're scoring the goals, it's great. But then as soon as you do something that stands out, then suddenly you're relegated to being a Black person in a predominantly White country. I'm glad that we got to speak about that, but I'm also glad that for the most part with Sam, he just gets to be a happy kid."
Thankfully, AFC Richmond has Sam's back again, as we see when he arrives at his restaurant to find his teammates all contributing to the cleanup effort. In that moment, it's enough to restore one's faith in humanity, in keeping with the "Believe" theme of "Ted Lasso."
New "Ted Lasso" season 3 episodes stream every Wednesday on Apple TV+.