I am on record as saying that I think Ted Lasso is one of the best television shows ever made. It’s a series that, over the course of three seasons, does everything right at every step along the way, and even the co-creator of the show, Bill Lawrence, who also created other sitcom heavyweights, like Scrubs, says one of his favorite sitcom moments is in Ted Lasso.
Bill Lawrence recently sat down with Deadline and the stars of the Scrubs revival, Zach Braff and Donald Faison. The topic of the relationship between characters J.D. and Elliott came up, as the couple had apparently gotten divorced following the original season finale, but the show’s return confirmed there was still a spark between them. Lawrence himself doesn’t know where the relationship will go, but he hopes it’s handled similarly to another show on the 2026 TV schedule, Ted Lasso, which he says Jason Sudeikis handled well. Lawrence said…
I don’t know where the writers will take it, but I think that one of my favorite things about TV is what we did on Ted Lasso, Jason Sudeikis did it.
He’s specifically talking about the relationship between Sudeikis’ coach and Rebecca, as played by Hannah Waddingham. The two characters got incredibly close over the course of three seasons, and they clearly shared an emotional bond. However, while audiences clearly wondered if the show might “go there,” it never really even talks about it, though it does briefly imply something might have happened as a joke. It’s something that Lawrence says would have been unthinkable on TV even a few years ago. He continued…
You and I are still from an era that if there was ever a young single woman and a young single man on a TV show, the show had an inherent element of Will they-Won’t they, and you couldn’t fight it, you couldn’t break it, the networks would push you into it, it had to happen.
It’s certainly true that teasing relationships was, and still is, a big part of all sorts of television. Frequently, that’s what the show is ultimately about, with the series teasing a relationship between two major characters for as long as is humanly possible. Even when that’s not what the series is about, it's rare to have single characters of the opposite sex and not at least deal with the idea of a relationship, whether or not it ultimately happens.
It’s essentially a trope now, and tropes, while they have their place, can be frequently quite boring simply because we’ve seen them all before. Ted Lasso certainly could have gone that route, but it also had the freedom to just not do that. Lawrence loved that fans were able feel that, without it needing to simply check the boxes. He explained…
So one of the things that was really pleasant on Ted Lasso, it was interesting because there’s never any intent for Ted and Rebecca to end up together, and yet, that old undercurrent, you still felt it. I think that what’s cool now is that even if people are reading into or seeing that, I don’t think there’s any inherent obligation for them to end up together, probably just go wherever the story is taken.
With Ted Lasso and Rebecca working together again in Ted Lasso Season 4, things still could go the romance path, and if it makes sense for the story, that’s fine. But nobody needs to expect it to happen. Such will hopefully also be the case on Scrubs. If it makes sense for two characters to get together, fine, but if they don’t, that’s fine too.
