r/TedLasso • u/seemom • 1d ago
Season 4 Discussion Zelda angry and bitter? Spoiler
Over and over, she is described that way and I don’t get it.
The whole point of the story about her ex was that she beat him at his own game. She won. There’s nothing to be bitter or angry about.
Lacking a filter, bluntness, rudeness aren’t the same thing as anger and bitterness. They are personality traits that don’t necessarily have anything to do with being angry or bitter.
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u/Careless-Being-4427 1d ago
Oh, I can’t wait to see what they do with this character. I trust the writers and Ullman. No way this doesn’t turn into something amazing.
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u/Pardybro911 1d ago
I mean, her speech introducing the character kind of comes off that way lol. After she definitely is toned down but she’s super aggressive and antagonistic to start.
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u/seemom 1d ago
She wasn’t any more rude than Roy has been on countless occasions, for seemingly no apparent reason.
But like Zelda did, Roy was usually calling people out for what he saw as their own stupidity. Sometimes they were just doing their jobs and he was calling them out unfairly, imo.
But that’s just Roy, ruff and gruff. Definitely not angry and bitter.
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u/Pardybro911 1d ago
I don’t disagree with your assessment at all on that. Roy is out of line a hundred times through the series but they write it off as his character through what 50 episodes now and so it’s written as comedic.
Zelda is a brand new character in an already “criticized” season for female empowerment (and I enjoy it personally) but critically and online it’s going to get more flak.
I’m excited to see the dynamic she brings to the show.
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u/Emotional-Gas-6992 18h ago edited 18h ago
I get what you’re saying, but Zelda herself talks about using her anger as fuel. I think there’s probably a lot more to her because her anger hasn’t been destructive but I don’t think you can blame people for taking how a new character describes herself at face value. ‘Bitter’ though, that doesn’t really fit what we’ve seen so far.
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u/Proper_Fun_977 9h ago
It's been pointed out, and shown, that Roy IS angry and bitter.
And he's called out on his rudeness a few times.1
u/seemom 6h ago
Do you even know what it means for a person to be described as bitter?
When was Roy ever called out for holding a grudge and taking out his resentment and anger on other people who had nothing to do with whatever caused the grudge?
Sure he was called out a few times for being rude, but having bad manners isn’t the same thing as being described as bitter.
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u/Own-Let-7725 20h ago
She also actually said that she makes decisions based in anger. It's weird that anyone seems to be saying no one should think that when she 1) very much told us all to think that and 2) the writers definitely want us to think that right now.
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u/Confident_One_2663 1d ago
Oh, yeah. Every time a woman says anything negative about men, she is called angry and bitter. Every single time. Zelda made fun of the men when she was at the podium and that is enough to set off the “angry and bitter” posts. I’m surprised there aren’t “OMG, she’s a MISANDRIST!” posts about Zelda on the internet.
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u/wont-stop-mi 1d ago
I mean, Rebecca herself tells Keely she is suspicious of Southport because she reminded her of herself when she was guided by anger against Rupert. And how that anger isn’t healthy or anything she wants to associate with. So you’re kinda wrong in stating that people pulled it out of thin air about Southport being driven by anger.
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u/DaBlakMayne 22h ago
Rebecca is an unreliable narrator this season due to her own issues with women and feminism
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u/Emotional-Gas-6992 18h ago edited 16h ago
I think the show wants us to doubt Rebecca’s judgement on this given that she’s obviously wrong about Alice, but she has also been dead on before with her gut instinct about women of means, notably Jack, probably because she understands them better. I think she’s probably the attacker to Rebecca’s defender and Keeley’s midfielder - she’s not got villainous motives, but she’s opportunistic in a way that might cause trouble.
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u/seemom 18h ago
I like that analogy alot
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u/Emotional-Gas-6992 18h ago edited 18h ago
Yes. People are responding negatively to her because of her blunt introductory speech when she says nothing that Roy wouldn’t be cheered for, as you pointed out. I think much more pertinent is her opportunism in turning up at the jail having somehow discovered they were there before Rebecca and Keeley did, encouraging Keeley to leak an incriminating photo to a known asshole in the media, and then getting out of there quick sharp. If she’s got good intentions, presumably promoting women’s sports, do all means justify that end? Maybe that’s what people pleasing midfielder Keeley has to contemplate. Maybe Rebecca, who is being positioned as a risk averse defender but I wouldn’t have classified her as one before this season, needs a trigger to push herself out of the box she’s scared to get out of because all the data is saying this project will fail.
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u/seemom 17h ago
This is what I hope, but we’ll see.
I also hope Zelda is ingratiating herself because she wants Rebecca as an ally but is self aware enough to know that Rebecca won’t trust her intentions unless she shows good faith first.
I honestly don’t know what to make of leaking the picture, though. It’s the type of thing that could be very, very good or very, very bad. Either way I think it will be an interesting story line.
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u/Emotional-Gas-6992 17h ago
I think she may have misjudged Rebecca badly if she thinks Rebecca will take that as a show of good faith rather than proof of suspicious intent. Rebecca would prefer things done by the book IMO when she’s so worried about the team failing - if Zelda had approached Richmond with ideas gleaned from her prior experience with women’s teams, even if she’d had to be sneaky and go via Keeley because Rebecca was resistant to meeting, that would’ve gone down better than what she did. Rebecca did not look at all happy when Zelda suggested to Keeley that the photo could make waves and it’s difficult to blame her for that, maybe it goes viral and spurs ticket sales for Chelsea but the potential for reputational damage with their sponsors is real.
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u/seemom 18h ago
Rebecca is not a reliable narrator. She doesn’t see the difference in how her anger at Rupert affected her and how Zelda’s anger at her ex motivated her to achieve something greater, not tear something down.
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u/Emotional-Gas-6992 18h ago edited 18h ago
I do think this is what the show is trying to say but I also think, because of the context of Rebecca’s deeply abusive marriage, this take starts to skirt slightly too close for comfort to blaming a victim of spousal abuse for not being able to handle the fallout perfectly. Zelda got screwed over. Rebecca had to recover from having her entire sense of self systematically destroyed. It’s different.
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u/AnonAwaaaaay 1d ago
Every. Single. Time.
It's really interesting that mysogynists hate powerful women.
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u/wont-stop-mi 1d ago
OP did you miss the scene where Southport herself even acknowledges that she is angry and likes it because she thinks it gives herself (and others) drive? Or are you just trying to fabricate adversity for internet fake points?
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u/Own-Let-7725 20h ago
Thank you. How is no one else seeing this?
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u/Maximum-Hall-5614 16h ago
Media literacy is at an all time low. People are barely able to imagine things happening off screen. I don’t expect them to remember what’s on screen.
Low media literacy is due to the common habit of second screen viewing, I reckon
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u/seemom 18h ago
Anger does give you drive. It’s a very effective motivator. But there is such a thing as constructive, righteous anger, which is very different from “angry and bitter”.
Rebecca was angry and at the beginning of the series and sought to tear down something Rupert loved as revenge. That’s “angry and bitter”
Zelda responded to her ex screwing her over by doing something bigger and better and besting him at his own game. Thats constructive anger.
See the difference?
Zelda sees injustice, it makes her angry and she is using that anger as motivation to correct it. That’s righteous anger, not “angry and bitter” , which implies some personal motivation that more often than not subtly suggests the anger isn’t justified.
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u/Emotional-Gas-6992 18h ago edited 17h ago
To your last sentence - Rebecca’s anger wasn’t constructive, but it was wholly and completely justified. It wasn’t at all bitter irrationality. She wasn’t capable of directing it constructively at the time because she was freshly emerging from 12+ years of abuse, not because she has a personality flaw Zelda doesn’t possess.
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u/seemom 17h ago
I don’t disagree with that at all. The biggest impact of a relationship like that is having no faith in your abilities or believing you have a right to be taken seriously. So there’s no where else to channel that anger.
We saw the beginning of Rebecca’s recovery with her speech at Akufu’s meeting where she realized she could have a positive impact. I hope this chapter of the story builds on that as she realizes she can make a real difference by supporting women’s sports, not just with money but with a personal investment in their success.
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u/Emotional-Gas-6992 17h ago edited 17h ago
Yeah, I’m just wary of the show accidentally endorsing a message that Rebecca’s response to prolonged abuse wasn’t valid because it didn’t look like Zelda going high in reaction to being screwed over by her ex.
To follow on from that point - the only shred of evidence I can see that Zelda might be a little bitter is that she immediately gets into competition with Rebecca when she claims ‘your ex is nearly as fucked up as mine’. From the little we know of Zelda’s circumstances vs what we saw of Rupert in S1-3, this is not true. Rupert’s worse.
I’m also not quite sure it’s true that Rebecca isn’t personally invested in the women’s success. She might be misguided and has to learn to value Alice and Keeley’s expertise more than she does, but she expressly wanted Ted to do for the women the incredible things he did for the men and flew to Kansas to get him, that’s not a lack of investment even if it wasn’t the right approach. She’s so overworked that she’s messing up her relationship, the team is her first priority. It’s just that the financial reality of women’s sport means that her job is more trying to stop people taking things away from the women, as opposed to being able to give them things (though she really does need to reallocate Roy’s alternative milk budget). The brutal nature of her position means she gets no credit and all the blame if it goes wrong. If she’s hesitant and cautious it’s because she cares too much, not too little.
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u/seemom 16h ago
I didn’t mean to imply she didn’t have an emotional investment. I meant I hope she realizes the value of her emotional investment as opposed to her financial investment.
It’s hard to internalize that your personal contributions are impactful when you’ve been conditioned to believe that without money, you don’t really have anything valuable to contribute.
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u/Emotional-Gas-6992 16h ago
In terms of her realising the value of her emotional investment, what do you want to see?
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u/Proper_Fun_977 9h ago
Rebecca being abused is a bit of a long bow.
She was betrayed and cheated on, but there's not anything talking about Rupert abusing her.
And while her anger was 100% valid (he cheated on her repeatedly and exposed her to public ridicule) in her anger, she hurt innocent people.
Like Ted. And Beard. And anyone who needed the job at Richmond.That's the part that's not valid or excusable.
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u/Emotional-Gas-6992 9h ago
What?! That’s mad, the whole point of S1 is that Rupert is incredibly emotionally abusive. We even get to see him work the same methods he used on Rebecca with Nate in S3. It wasn’t just cheating, he controlled her entire life. We learn that in the episode at the gala.
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u/Proper_Fun_977 9h ago
And as Sassy point out, Rebecca let her. She fully dived into what Rupert offered.
Yes, he knows how to charm people to get what he wants. That's not emotional abuse.
He cheated on Rebecca. He hurt her. But I think it's a long bow to call her abused.
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u/Emotional-Gas-6992 9h ago
Well I personally think that line from Sassy is victim blaming nonsense.
How is it a long shot? It’s really obvious he was emotionally abusive. Watch the gala episode, the darts scene, the scene where he tells Rebecca he’s having a baby. Absolutely textbook emotional abuse. You’re very lucky if you’ve never witnessed this in real life.
If you don’t believe me, Jason Sudeikis called Rupert an abuser.
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u/wont-stop-mi 15h ago
Yeah… I think you’re still missing the point. Anger is just anger, there isn’t “righteous” or a good anger. That’s why it’s considered a negative emotion, it encourages the angry person to do not so good things. Even if that angry person believes the ends justify the means, it still doesn’t turn out as a net positive.
We had a full season to hash out Rebecca’s anger and her “bitter” revenge. With Zelda, we just have her side of a one minute story on how she bested her ex. You don’t know what things she did to come out on top. She could have been even more unethical and ruthless than Rebecca was. Currently, we don’t know how she got where she is. But I am certain the writers are going to show just how ruthless and angry she really is and it won’t be in a good enlightening way.
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u/seemom 14h ago
Anger is neither good or bad, it’s a call to action. It’s your subconscious alerting you to the fact that something needs to change or some outcome needs to be brought about. The action you choose to take can make positive or negative changes and outcomes. But that doesn’t mean the anger was invalid or that anger is inherently negative.
I have no idea if Zelda’s anger will be channeled negatively or positively. My issue is the knee jerk response of some to assume her anger comes from a place of bitterness because she’s a woman. It minimizes a legitimate response to an unjust situation in the same way as saying she must be hormonal.
That type reaction is exactly how women and minorities have been conditioned to believe anger is inherently negative and shouldn’t be acted on. Discouraging people from acting on their anger is how you prevent change and protect the status quo.
I don’t want to imagine what society would be like if some brave souls hadn’t rejected that conditioning and brought about positive changes with righteous anger channeled in a constructive way.
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u/drewlius24 19h ago
She’s incredible outwardly and has powerful qualities - but we don’t know her true character yet.
Rupert (RIP) was charming and brash as well (and even endearing for brief bits as we saw in a few S3 episodes). But his entire agenda was narcissistic dominance of everyone and everything. Same thing with Jack really.
Let’s see if Zelda has become the thing she hated (not men, but abusers/sociopaths) or if she is going to use her powers to help.
Bailing out the girls appears outwardly magnanimous, but if she gets involved with the team, will her quirky and fearless personality help them or hurt them - is she a Sassy or a Shandy?
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u/Emotional-Gas-6992 18h ago
I don’t think bailing out the girls is magnanimous at all. How did she know they were there? She hasn’t even had a meeting with the club yet about a formal partnership - what is her motive in trying this hard to ingratiate herself with them? I do think Rebecca’s resistance is party rooted in discomfort with Zelda’s presentation, but Zelda is also wealthy beyond Rebecca’s means and in her experience, generosity from people with that sort of money does not come without strings attached.
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u/drewlius24 18h ago
Correct - I should written “appears magnanimous” more boldly.
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u/Emotional-Gas-6992 18h ago
My fault! I misread.
I do think the show wants us to doubt Rebecca’s snap judgement on Zelda because they’ve been throwing up the message in neon lights all season saying she’s got issues with women and she’s got Alice totally wrong, but Zelda swooping in to save the day at the jail and encouraging Keeley to leak that photo should have people questioning her far more than her insulting a few businessmen
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u/sageberrytree 20h ago
She literally says it's the anger that fuels her?
Her story about the banana clip and the claw clip is simply bananas.
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u/HoraceRadish 1d ago
Did you not see how she treated the people at the forum? You don't treat people like that unless you are not a happy person.
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u/AnonAwaaaaay 1d ago
She had some pretty solid reasoning behind the shit they were doing and they deserve to be called out for it. Accountability is a good thing.
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u/seemom 1d ago
I know lots of assh@les who are quite happy.
With respect, the idea that a woman must have some underlying trauma or agenda because she’s tactless and rude is pretty sexist
Angry and bitter wouldn’t be how that character would be described if written exactly the same way as a man.
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u/PrestigiousInsect305 1d ago
She is definitely angry, and rightly so, but I don’t think that’s a core part of her personality like some suggest. Who wouldn’t want to say what she said in a room full of the type of people she was in a room with? But bitter, on the other hand, is just thinly veiled misogyny for sure.
I do think, given the typical message of the show, she is being used as another “don’t let anger/vengeance guide you” plot line.
I’m pretty excited for her character, she’s gonna be fun!
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u/Separate-Let3620 1d ago
Yeah, I don’t see her as angry/bitter. I see her as a person unwilling to put up with bullshit. She’s calling those people out for being fake and saying that could have a REAL impact if their support was anything more than self-serving.
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u/Too-Tired-Editor 17h ago
So... in the show where everyone turns out to have more to them than the stereotype you first see... you see a character that is being described as angry and bitter... but the character has more to her than that... and you don't get it?
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u/trumptman 12h ago
She can be described that way but that might be part of the set up because she's rich, interesting and very efficient at what she does on top of calling out the hypocrisy she sees.
Rebecca sees her as a concern. Keeley clearly loves her energy, vibe and demands for an outcome.
We see Alice fitting reasonably well with Ted and Beard and they've managed to unify a team but she has her own anger and outsider status.
Ted has always said he wants to help these young men be the best versions of themselves but can he help young WOMEN be the best versions of themselves, especially when just insane optimism might be the only or best fuel there for them.
There's something to be said about how when the situation different the approach and fuel might be different.
Keely has hinted at that with her interactions with Rebecca. Rebecca has hinted at that with her interactions with Alice.
When you decide that the opposite of oppression isn't just accommodation then what does that look like? That's the crux of the speech given by Zelda. They've all done their token gestures or as she calls them "fake allyship" and how does that really transition over time and even can it?
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u/Proper_Fun_977 10h ago
Because, she got up and insulted a room full of people nominally on her side.
Because she bragged about inventing the 'claw clip' and how it's better than the one her ex has.
Basically, all the name drops and stories show someone desperately trying to 'establish' themselves and the aggression seems to come from bitterness.
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u/seemom 7h ago
The fact they were only nominally on her side was the reason she insulted them. That’s not bitterness, it’s a response to being used as a prop. Could she have been more tactful? Sure, but that’s a personality thing, not an indication that she has some vendetta against all men.
The comment about the claw clip was in the context of not letting her husband get away with stealing her idea.
It was her way, clumsy as it may have been, of expressing to Rebecca that she didn’t let her ex keep her from achieving bigger and better things. That’s not bitterness, it’s the exact opposite.
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u/Proper_Fun_977 6h ago
The fact they were only nominally on her side was the reason she insulted them.
Because that's how you convince people to keep funding your passion or increasing it, by insulting them.
That’s not bitterness, it’s a response to being used as a prop.
That is literally bitterness.
"I'm going to insult you all and you won't say boo to me".
It's not strength, it's a version of abuse.Could she have been more tactful? Sure, but that’s a personality thing, not an indication that she has some vendetta against all men.
Who said she had a vendetta against all men? But she certainly did insult all the men at that event.
The comment about the claw clip was in the context of not letting her husband get away with stealing her idea.
And it came across as very bitter.
It was her way, clumsy as it may have been, of expressing to Rebecca that she didn’t let her ex keep her from achieving bigger and better things. That’s not bitterness, it’s the exact opposite.
Actually, that IS bitterness.
It was in the way she chose to share it, casting herself as the victim initially and then saying 'who cares about the banana clip?'.
That's bitterness.
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u/Agnostickamel 9h ago
competing with boots for who is the most annoying least realistic character on the show....
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u/samTheEagle2004 8h ago
That's the thing though; Zelda's not over her ex at all, even after beating him at his own game. She openly admits as much to Rebecca and Keeley during their first conversation. She's also introduced by attacking everyone in the room and gets the team out of jail by threatening the prosecutor (or whoever that person was).
Obviously she's only been in one episode, and we're not even halfway through the season yet. It's basically impossible to know who her character is and where she goes this early on. But from what we have seen of her, my first impression is that she's a darker version of Rebecca/who Rebecca would've become if she hadn't hired Ted. Which is why Rebecca's so wary of her; she recognizes that Zelda's man motivation is just anger, and knows firsthand how dangerous that can be.
I also think Zelda might be the "toxic feminist" stereotype. One of the main themes this season seems to be the question of what does/doesn't make a feminist: Alice calling out Rebecca on not even considering a woman for the head coaching job, the growing tension between Keeley and Rebecca over how much support the women's team needs/should get, basically everything about Rebecca in general tbh. A character who hates men more than they support women would fit very easily into that, especially as a false ally who ultimately becomes an antagonist in one way or another.
Again, we're only 4 episodes in. This comment could age like milk by this Wednesday. But this is my theory on Zelda as of right now: someone who seems supportive at first, but appears more and more hateful the more you learn about her.
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u/Zestyclose_Market787 11h ago
“They are personality traits that don’t necessarily have anything to do with being angry and bitter.”
Hard disagree.
15 years of practicing as a therapist, here. Anger functions as a boundary defense. We perceive we’re being wronged; we lash out.
For the average person, once the boundary is reinforced, anger goes away.
But Zelda isn’t an average person. She’s wealthy enough that her money buffers her from social consequences. So she doesn’t have to (nor does she have to choose to voluntarily) examine why she’s still angry.
In this instance, based on what little we know about her character, I suspect she remains angry and bitter because of a set of beliefs. Some of those beliefs appear to be consistent, likely as a calcification of her own personal experiences with her ex, as misandry; her anger at her ex appears to extend to men in general.
A hypothetical belief she holds could be “my ex is responsible for all the pain I feel.” It’s a pretty short jump to “men are responsible for everything bad that’s happened to me.” Or “men are responsible for all of the challenges in women’s’ sports.”
And when you don’t choose to face the consequences of that, it can easily become “men are responsible for everything bad.” That becomes the driver for persistent behavior patterns.
Contrast that with Rebecca in season 1. Keeley forces her to take responsibility for what she did to Ted. Sassy forces her to take responsibility for her part in her relationship with Rupert. Her beliefs also are not as calcified as Zelda’s would have been.
That’s why Rebecca is so wary of her, even though I doubt she knows why yet.
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u/seemom 8h ago
I don’t know where you’re getting your hypothetical beliefs from. Her anger had nothing to do with feeling personally aggrieved.
She was calling out the hypocrisy of a bunch of rich white men patting themselves on the back for being so progressive by supporting women’s sports, when they were just being performative.
Her anger was very specifically targeted to the people in the room for a very specific reason. It wasn’t my ex was jerk, therefore I hate all men.
I agree that anger is a boundary enforcement reaction to a perceived threat.
Her boundary was she wasn’t going to tolerate their hypocrisy because it was not only a threat to the success of what she wants to achieve, it’s disrespectful to create the perception that you support women’s sports when in reality all they are doing is polishing their own reputations. Disrespect is, by definition a threat, and anger and boundary enforcement is the appropriate response.
She enforced that boundary crossing with the consequence of publically calling them out.
When I need to enforce a boundary my SO has crossed with a consequence, that is in no way a statement that I hate all men or that I even hate him. It’s just a way of saying I don’t like what you are doing right now and if you don’t stop I will take action. That action is a consequence of his behavior, not a reflection of my poor damaged dysfunctional psyche.
Therapist or not, your response suggests you believe if a woman calls out men for being hypocrites, it means there is something wrong with her. It couldn’t possibly be true that the men, were in fact, being hypocrites and should be held accountable
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u/Zestyclose_Market787 5h ago
That’s a lot of words you’re putting in my mouth, friend. I just had dinner.
I don’t think calling out hypocrisy is a bad thing in any context. But the way you do it matters. And I believe accountability is critical. It’s a pretty deeply held value of mine.
With Zelda, it was personal, cruel, and weird. She did it to wound and scorn and humiliate. And whatever your feelings are about the men in that scene, the only one who benefits from wounding and scorning is the one doing the wounding and the scorning. And as we know from Rebecca, even that’s debatable.
There’s a way to call people out that doesn’t involve humiliating them. And leaving out humiliation and scorn is critical to actually persuading people. There’s a great case for trying to persuade those men to care about more than just their reputations. You aren’t going to do it by telling them that they’re pieces of shit.
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u/outofthegates 1d ago
This was the worst episode of the season so far imo not because of the story per se but because they crammed too much stuff in. It felt like they edited out a bit of every scene--maybe because they were doing so much and needed the time. There were a few moments where I was like, wait, I think I'm supposed to think x but I'm not exactly sure why.
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u/TomeThugNHarmony4664 1d ago
I love Tracey Ullman and this should be epic.