The Prestige TV Podcast - Is ‘Ted Lasso’ Going Through a Sophomore Slump?

Episode Date: September 22, 2021

The Greyhound Gang assemble to talk through the journey of the Apple TV+ comedy 'Ted Lasso' from its unlikely rise as a cult favorite in its first season to a juggernaut under scrutiny in its second season. Host: Chris Ryan Guest: Van Lathan Producer: Isaac Lee Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hello and welcome to the Ringer Prestige TV show. My name is Chris Ryan. I'm here with Van Latham. We are here to talk about Ted Lassau season two, which Ted Lassad just racked up Matt Awards on Sunday. It won two or three acting awards plus best comedy series. Van and I are here to talk about the second season, which has been sort of hotly debated,

I think, among critical circles and online, and is about three quarters into its run with a couple more episodes left to go. So, Van, what's going on, man? I am chilling and I am feeling good mostly. Mostly I'm feeling good because I get to talk about Ted Lassau, a show that makes me feel wonderful. That's actually exactly what I wanted to ask you, Van, first.

So first of all, I wanted to say, I know you have Midnight Boys, Pugh Poo Poo Poo-Poo. Do we do Greyhound Gang, Woof? Oh, I love it. Okay, that's us. Greyhound gang, that's us. Oh, I love it so much. So dope. Tell me which one of the following describes you.

I-Van-Laythin go to Ted Lassau to laugh I-Van-Lathen go to Ted Lassau to get in my feelings I-Van-Lathen go to Ted Lassau to do both I-Van-Lathen, I'm going to amend it a little bit I-Van-Lathen was sent to Ted Lassau to do both I was having a downtime Ted Lassau was one of those shows that like I looked at it and for some reason

when I saw it on Apple I was like, that's not going to be for me. So I didn't, I didn't try it. And then the word of mouth got so big that I said even more that I don't want to watch it. That's like everybody's talking about it. And then it was actually Kalika. It was actually Kalika that went, hey, man, you're stomping around the house a little bit. You should watch Ted Lassau.

And I was like, I should watch Ted Lassau. She's like, just trust me. And so she sent me to the show. She couldn't have been writer. So it's actually both. And it's a visual antidepressant. You know what I mean? I love it.

So I feel like that's a really interesting place to come from calling it a visual antidepressant, I think is accurate. But it also speaks to maybe the pressure that's on this show at this point. Because we got to talk a little bit about the journey the show has been on. It was a novelty sitcom based on a commercial for Premier League that turned into a cult favorite, that turned into a juggernaut slash guide to life that has now become, an award-winning prestige television show with expectations and is fighting off what, like, I think in some corners of the internet and, like, elsewhere, people perceive to be a little bit of a sophomore slump,

which we can get into why people might think that. But this show has gone through a lot of different life cycles, and that's a lot for any young show to handle. And I think that calling it antidepressant would suggest that, like, you routinely feel better at the end of all these episodes. But in the second season, I think that Ted Lassow has been going to some darker places, right? Mm-hmm. Like, going on that journey, do you do that,

because you're like at the end of the day, I think we will arrive, we'll get out of the rain and get back into the sunshine, or is it like because you see those stuff, that stuff basically actualized and acted out and these issues come into the fore, that that in and of itself is kind of an antidepressant. So these things don't always make you feel better,

but they do make you feel. And I think sometimes when you're trapped in the throes of anxiety or depression or anything like that, you can't feel. Like it numbs you out to anything. thing other than what you're feeling. I think this season of Ted Lassau has actually resonated

more with me because I'm seeing him push something deep down and I'm seeing the limitations of his character. Meanwhile, you still got a lot of happy, fuzzy, sunny shit that's happening around him. But just

Jamie's situation with his dad, Nate's situation with his father, what Ted is going through. It all still works. I still feel better at the end of the shows. And not that the show necessarily has to make you feel better because that's actually sort of a precarious place to put a piece of art. You don't want to go into something going,

I better feel good at the end of this because then you might not get the best art that you can. But the show is very good at taking human beings and putting them into a situation to where you know what it is that they want to be. and they know what it is that they want to be and seeing if they can get there and seeing if at the end they can be who it is that they really want to be. And I think that's the thing about the show

that draws me to it, is that, like, Ted has a way that he views how people should treat one another. And part of his coaching style and part of what it is that he's doing is trying to push people to how he thinks they should be interacting with one another. And everyone is coming around, even as he's finding it harder

and harder to deal with the shit that's going on in his life. Yeah, you know, it's been a season where I think there's been some conversation about, like, well, this show lacks a central tension because there is no longer a villain. Like, there are Rebecca and Jamie who were nominally the quote-unquote villains of the first season, although I don't know that anybody ever actually disliked them. I think they were just more like, that's too bad that Rebecca is actively trying to destroy this lovely group of people because she's mad at her ex-execlip. husband. By the end of the first season, those two people essentially become good guys. They

become heroes of the show as well. So in the second season, it's just like, what are they fighting against? What is the opposition? And the opposition really is everybody's demons, right? Like, the demons that everybody has has become the villain. And I would say that, like, on a week to week basis, that can sometimes, like, you don't really have a North Star. You're not like, oh, will this be the week that Ted finds out what Rebecca has always been plumbus? And you're not, or will Jamie somehow gum up the works with Richmond trying to just stay up in the Premier League or do whatever. And instead, it's like every week you're just like, which one of these people are essentially

going to break down? You know, and which one of these people are going to have to confront something, probably through Sharon or maybe just through, like, we saw last week, like, beard going out and throughout the city. That's like, you know, maybe uncomfortable to watch, but put in this really comfortable package, put in this really like sunny, sweet, utopian vision of like going to work, which I think it's like a really kind of, especially at a time when a lot of people aren't physically going to work, is kind of like a real piece of escapism. It's strange to have a very confrontational piece of

escapism right now. Yeah, it is. There are some things that are bubbling recently is, and there's some questions, there's just enough stuff to make me wonder if they're going to blow up. my Richmond family in some way. Does Nate at this point believe that he should be leading the club? You know, the Wonderkind. Wonder kid? I think I said Wonderkind.

Is the budding romance between Rebecca and Sam going to end up fucking things up? Just all of that stuff. And I think that I'm so invested in the characters that I've moved off maybe some of the conventional needs that I have from a show. Really?

Yeah, I think so. think that, man, they just made me care. They made me care about everybody. They made me care about what everyone is going through. More than anything, Chris, I'm going to be honest with you. The show has made me want to believe that all of that is possible. Yeah. And so because it's made me believe that, I think personally, I'm in on what every character is going through.

It's obviously been a tough year for me and my family. and watching Jamie kind of come to terms with what's going on with his dad, like I'm all the way in on that. Watching Nate come to terms with what's going on with, obviously he's on the outside of situations with his dad. I'm all the way in on that. And then something that Ted just revealed a couple of shows ago or in the second season, you know what I mean?

I want to see how they can maintain the rhythms of how the first season came off with all of these demons. And my favorite completely walled off and shut off therapist. All of that stuff. I'm into that. And so maybe they bring back Rupert in season three and he becomes the big bad of the show. Maybe there's some sort of power struggle for Richmond

because they really got through that little hiccup pretty quickly. Or maybe Richmond makes it back to the Premier League and whatever, whatever. And that's what we're doing. Because to be honest with you, on the soccer pitch, we continuously get kicked in our nuts. Every time you think these guys are going to pull off like a big win, they lose. And that's the most realistic part of the show, right? It's some of the best football in the world.

So he's not just going to come over there and make them into star footballers, but he might just make them into better people. And I think that right there, that quest to make everybody feel better, I don't know if there's anything that's a harder thing to do right now in the world than that, so I want to see if they can do it, right? The show does such a good job of flitting between caricature and character, by which I mean, like, you get an episode that's 65% of which is Siddakus doing Lassau, doing like little comebacks, little kind gestures, little funny references,

everything is like, how do you do, Doc? You know, like all that stuff. And that is like the usual bone marrow of sitcoms is the kind of everybody playing exactly their part, the entire episode, the entire season, the entire series. That's why people can go back to a sitcom in episode five and then miss five weeks and they go back in episode 11. And that guy is still the same guy. It's still Kramer.

It's still Jim Parsons from Big Bang Theory. It's still Ted Lassow. It's still going to be Ted Lassow and I don't have to worry about it. But then on the other hand, you miss, if you did that with Ted Lassow, you would miss all this deep kind of like diving into this guy's soul and this guy's motivations and this guy's character. And that is hard to pull off sometimes. Like, I think it's hard to change gears like that. Like, you know, if you go from, I'm just like kind of this one-dimensional, like, dude who's always got a sunny disposition and is always chit-chatting with my friends.

And then I'm making this phone call after the Man City game to Dr. Sharon and really letting everything out about who I am. I think it's like that is an incredibly difficult thing to do. And I found that the way that they have tried to pull that stuff off, they've been pretty effective, to your point. Like, the Man City episode is one where it's like somewhat fantastical. You know what I mean? Like this team going to Wembley and playing this big game. Then it's actually like pretty tragic. They get their asses kicked.

The team seems to be, at least in the coaching staff, kind of coming apart a little bit. And Ted is repeatedly suffering these panic attacks. And finally kind of copse to what is at the root of it all. And Sharon is there to help them. But then like right in the next episode where you're like, okay, now we're going to get more into that. Maybe there's going to be some resolution for Ted. we go off on this kind of comic odyssey with beard throughout London.

So it remains pretty unpredictable. And I think that's what is kind of the recipe to its success because for as much as you might have an issue with some of the things that are going on the second season, you can't say that it's resting on its laurels. If they wanted to rest on their laurels,

they could have just done what they did in the first episode of the second season where it's like, the Greyhound dies and then Ted says something very profound about losing a pet. You know what I mean? And then you're just like,

God damn, this dude did it again. Right. Like somehow I laughed and then I cried and then the episode ended and we just punched the clock and we'll do it again next week. But it's not doing that this week. It's going to some more complicated places, I think.

It is. And it's just showing you that it's hard to be good. You know, it takes work. It's hard to even fucking want to be good. You know what I mean? There's so many things that are stimulating you, so many things that are triggering you, so many things coming at you that a lot of this is a lot of work.

And some of it might be some work that Ted himself may have tried to get around doing, you know. Is Ted's sunny disposition all because he's burying something deep, deep, deep down inside and not really being his full self? And how long can you do that before you explode, you know? And so it's almost a throwback to a point to where we were expecting to be civil to one another. And that's why I dig it. But also, think about it. Think about what we were talking about. There is a fair amount of tragedy in the show.

You know, there's a lot of hard things to discuss. Our fair Dr. Sharon almost loses her life on her bike. Yeah. Like the one place that she's happy. Listening to Roots maneuver. Yeah. You know, so it's like it's, there's a fair amount of, oh, shit. Where's this going to go stuff that happens?

And the Beard episode, which was this crazy journey, at times was like really, really heavy, man. Yeah. And you're scared for him and like, how is this going to end up and what the fuck is going to happen? And is he going to go off the deep end and his own demons are coming and back and you're going on this ride. The show has really managed to actually be human in sort of a superhuman way. Even the way Ted Lassau looks, when the show comes on and I hear the theme song, I'm like, oh, man, let's go. Like, let's go. And I'm like, oh, I'm so fucking happy now.

Let's go. You just want to put a crew neck on over a collar shirt. And like the feeling, the art is, the tough thing about art is the feeling, right? You can put like a lot of shit up there. I'll give you an example. This is going to be like a stupid example because I really don't even understand this movie. Ten it. I don't understand it.

Yeah. I've tried, Chris. I completely understand it. I know you do. I know you do. I've completely mastered Tenet. I can explain any element of it. In fact, I've put it into a lot of its theories into practice in my own life.

Oh my God. We've already done this podcast multiple times. Right. But I don't. I've tried. I've reached my limit. They go, Van, what's the limit of your intelligence? I know the answer.

Tenet. Tenet. You know, I thought it was calculus when I was in high school. Conquered that shit. Thought it was trick. Conquered that shit. You know what I mean? Thought it was all.

Conquered all of it. It's tenet. It's actually how many Robert Pattinson's are there? One dude from the future. meet in the past, but then they meet in the future. They start tenant. Tenet is like, I don't, you know what I mean? Don't get it. But the more than anything

about Tenet, when I look at it, the reason why I really don't dig the movie and guys, Nolan is a genius. I'm not going to like everything from every director. I get it. Please don't fucking flame me. I don't have time for this. You already did it to me on Twitter. The real reason why

I didn't dig it overall, it's because I felt nothing. Beautifully made. looked cool. I probably could get it if I put enough time in. I felt nothing. There was zero connection. And the stakes were as high as they possibly could be.

We're talking about the end of the world here. So the stakes were as high as it could possibly be, and I didn't feel anything. Here, the stakes could be as low as wanting your niece to stop swearing, and I'm all in. The stakes could be as low as your boss, not knowing that you're the one that I'm making her favorite biscuits for, and I'm all in. They just have gotten me hooked all in in the most trivial and some would say mundane aspects of these characters' lives.

And that's when you know that you've really created something that people give a fuck about. Yeah, I mean, you talk about the mundane. I think this show is being built for somewhat of a long haul. Like, when it first came on and was really successful in the first season, I had a feeling that maybe it was going to be a three-season thing where they were up in the Premier League, they go down and get back up,

and then they do a Lester and win the Premier League in the third season, and it's kind of like a perfect little package. I think it's like, it is like the culmination of a career for Sudakis, so I don't know that they are like going to be quick to step away from Ted Lassow. It's also obviously a show that they know

how much it means to so many people. So I would imagine it's going to be with us for a while, and it's interesting to see that this season is 12 episodes. Like I think that Bill Lawrence and Sudecis and these guys, like Brendan Hunt and the people who write it, understand like sitcom mechanics and understand how to sustain a show for a while. So it's interesting to wonder whether or not say,

is Rebecca and Sam like kind of one of those diversions that when you look back on season three of the office or season four of Parks and Rec or something like that, you're like, oh yeah, I remember when they did that. I remember when there was that subplot. Or is this actually like a significant relationship that we're going to be with for the rest of the series? is Nate's kind of like

dalliance with bullying albeit spurred on by like his inability to like make his father happy proud of him something that's going to really like cause a rip in the team or is it just something that they'll get handled over the next couple of episodes

and if it does get handled or if Rebecca and Sam is just a quick thing that like is like a season two experiment does that in any way like impact the way you relate to those things if they become a little bit like kind of TV tropes interesting question the Rebecca and Sam thing

I think it has to matter now they certainly have like really really really invested yeah so I'll put you like this so the Rebecca and Sam thing I feel like that has to matter now they've spent a lot of time building that up you know and I think that there are a lot of themes and a lot of conversations that can be had around that

particular like the power dynamics and stuff like that dynamic, right? The racial dynamic, the celebrity of it all, if she rebounds with a guy from her football club, what does that mean in the British press? Being that her husband or ex-husband

is out there, you know, doing his thing with every Kim Kardashian that England has to offer, you know? So I think there are a lot of things, there's a lot of story there. So there's a lot of like meat between the fact that they probably would want to kind of and like, what is Ted going to think about that?

Like, how is that going to change Sam's relationships on the team? Like, will the rest of the team even fucking like that? Yeah. That's a weird place to be in a dynamic that we don't typically see in professional sports. So, so, I think there's a lot of story there. And I would be surprised if they didn't take that somewhere. Nate's thing, I think, is interesting from the standpoint that if Nate blows up Richmond and goes to coach somewhere else, he's off the show.

Yeah, right. You know what I mean? Or it'll be kind of like a deal when we had to follow Jamie when Jamie left. I think that will probably be something that gets, you know, kind of play closer to the vest. But to answer your larger question, you know, I don't know. I haven't been into a sitcom that was this traditionally a sitcom in a while. Do you remember the last one? Oh, good question.

What was the last 30-minute joint? like just straight comedy sitcom that I was into that was like this man oh you know what here's the thing I recently started watching the office I had never watched the office before yeah yeah it was one of those things to where I went hey you know what I'm black no but but but but I was wrong because it's a great show so I recently went through all of the office maybe like a year ago during the pandemic and so I guess that would be it yeah as far as as a traditional 30 minute, hey, sit down, because now every time I watch television,

it's got to be an event. It's got to be Johnny Depp comes to TV as Errol Flynn. You know what I mean? So now it's different. So I haven't done this for a while. It's been a while since I have. And I'm sure there are other great 30 minutes shows out there, but I don't really watch them.

Yeah, I've actually, I mean, I've definitely watched more than my fair share of sitcoms. And so it's kind of wild to go through. watching something like this and knowing like when I watched how I met your mother or whatever or like modern family when it was really big like you know you get

into like season four or five six of those shows and like a character has had like seven jobs you know what I mean? Like they reboot a lot of stuff they like fix a lot of stuff on the fly. Now those shows used to do 22 episodes a year or whatever and like they would have to grind through a lot of plot. But

the reason why I'm asking all of this is because there's clearly such a personal investment in the fortunes of these fictional characters that I wonder whether or not it can sometimes infringe upon the creative license that people might want to take with the show in terms of like the people who write it, especially if what they want to do is confront some of the darker stuff that can happen to human beings. Losing a parent, not being able to please a parent, looking for love, not being able to trust anybody in romantic relationships. All those things sometimes have bad consequences. And that would not necessarily jive with

this is this like idealist utopian escape where like you create a family that is even more supportive and loving than your real family, which is essentially what Ted Lazo as a show is sort of about, right? It's like the work family, the family that you choose can sometimes be more supportive

than the family you're given. Yeah. I mean, and it's so funny when Ted had the panic attack and he left the pitch, that gave me anxiety because I didn't want everyone to come down on him. Yeah. I didn't want Ted to go through that.

I didn't want this to be a recurring thing to where everyone was like, what's wrong with Ted Lasso and he was abandoning the team and that's when Nate's things started to come. So yeah, a little bit like a good show, think of the hell that Don Draper went through. You know what I mean? Think of like all the shit we learned about him, deep, dark secrets to where you're like, God damn, Don. You know what I mean?

Like crazy shit. Or don't get me started on. I talk about this all the time. like Tony Soprano. Jesus Christ, he's a lovable guy like at the beginning of it. By the end he's fucking Machiavelli. He's fucking like he's one of the

worst people on planet Earth by the end of it, but you're still looking at him through season one eye so you want Tony to win, right? He's fucking crazy by the end of it. It's going nuts. And great shows take you through that. But I think this one is great for other reasons.

I think it's great because like I said before, it sets some margins. and it really pushes its characters into these margins and then remakes them. And a lot of this season is about whether or not Ted can exist within the standards that he's set, right? Because, you know, would Ted Lassow ever quit on his team in season one? Would he ever walk off the pitch during a match?

Right. Isn't that precisely the opposite of what he would do? But it's all too much for him. So now he has to give the old college, try, he's got to give a quip for that in a different area of his life. So I do think there's going to be a point to where there's going to be like a major tragedy in Tallahsa, like a major one. I'm talking about like a Graze anatomy level tragedy because they've fucking been through it.

We're talking about mass shooters. So you feel like Nate's going to come in and have like a light post sticking out of his chest and they're going to have to operate like, but there's another person on the light post and only one of them can live? Exactly. Something like that. Like Jesus Christ, who they have to decide this Thursday on Grey's Anatomy. I look at Kaleegra like, why the fuck do you look at this? Like, what is that disease? Is that disease real?

Because if that disease is real, then I got to go on, I got to make sure I don't have that shit. Whatever the fuck, they're always making up some gnarly shit for Gray's Anatomy is crazy. So I do think that there's probably going to be some huge tragedy that befalls one of characters pretty soon. I'm going to be honest with you. I don't know why in the beard episode, it had me tensed up the beard episode, which I know a lot of people are up and down in season two,

but which was just brilliant television. Yeah, it's cool. It was a very cool homage to Scorsese's After Hours, which is a very amazing New York movie. But yeah, you're right. I mean, a beer episode was pretty fun. It was a fun episode. I was tense throughout the episode

because I kept waiting for something really bad to happen to be it. Right. Because I know that that's eventually going to have to come. To your point, I don't think there's ever been a television show that has successfully been able to deal with low stakes television. At some point, the stakes have to get pretty high to make people super, super care. Yeah, maybe it'll be a Graze Anatomy level thing, or maybe it will just be like Roy Kent or Nate gets a job off or somewhere else or Rebecca and Sam don't work out or Kiwi. and Roy don't work out.

There's a lot of stuff where they're like, we need to do this because this is what like everybody would want from a show. Like this is what the people just want this guy and this woman to be happy. And then there's the whole like competing aspect of like, what do you do to generate plot and to like push this show forward? We'll probably be back a couple of times over the course of the season to discuss the last couple of episodes. Before we go, Van,

any like favorite moments from the season that you wanted to highlight or anything like that? Yeah, a couple. one is the little niece having bad breath yeah and the reason why I like that is because as an uncle one of the things you have to do

the kids is tell them that they stink you got sometimes you gotta be like you gotta take a bath yeah hey man you know I love you right but it's because I love you that I can't let you leave this house like that it's because I love you that I'm telling you right now we're not gonna have a good evening just going there

I don't care if you just but you stink and we got to do something about it. You make it sound like you're talking to a kid before you take it to the club. Like we're not going to have a good evening. But you don't understand. Look, I don't have any kids. Do you have kids, Chris?

I don't. People talk about all kinds of scientific advancements that we could have. My scientific advancement, if it was possible, was that your kid is born at nine years old. I love this. Because everything before then, is, I'm not gonna lie, bro, it's pretty fucking whack.

It's like, you can't send them to the store for you. You can't make them find a remote. You can't really wrap with them for a while. Like, they don't really chat it up until, like, what, four? Like, when they're really, like, doing it, right? Every single thing is for their entertainment or they freak out. You know what I mean? And so that's kind of my thing.

So anytime I see, and so I know this is a tangent and people, I'm known for tangents, But in this particular deal, like dealing with my nephews and going, hey, man, you stink. All right? Like, we're trying to go out. And I know you don't want to do it. There's a time in your life where for some reason you don't want to take a bath. I get it. But we got to cut through this.

You stink. Your breath stinks. Your underarms stinks. Let's do it. And so when I saw that, I'm like, oh, this is how. And they were nice about it. Yeah. Smelling her breath.

So, like, this is how to happen. So that was cool. But also, I think. watching Ted deal with because really when you look at Ted Lassos' life, it's not that awesome. He's the coach of a losing

soccer team that got relegated. The only reason why people really fuck with him is because he's super nice. He's still trying to figure out his way overseas. He's getting divorced, right? He does not get to see his son. He had to do Christmas on FaceTime.

You know what I mean? He's dealing with anxiety. All of these things. So when you look at it, his life isn't the greatest point that it's probably ever been at. There's probably been better days for Ted Lasson. That was one of my favorite things of this season is it's a very subtle detail, but he often is eating alone. They'll start a scene and he is in a restaurant at the bar by himself eating. And it's like, oh, that's a really good touch. Because if you were living in England and your only friends were your work friends and they were all having their own life,

you would probably find yourself being like, I guess I'll go down to this restaurant and get like a bowl of soup by myself. Yeah, yeah. And so looking at that and him still trying to keep it together and not just keep it together, but be a leader of people and still said that I think that that's an underrated aspect of season two. I think that watching that happen is an underrated aspect of season two. Are we going to get to a point to where Ted just fucking can't do it in England anymore? To where he's just missing too much. So there's a lot of story there for me. Yeah, it's going to be really interesting to see where it goes.

I've personally really enjoyed how they take basically like very TV-ish moments, like bringing Jamie back, bringing Roy into the coaching staff, which are like very like, let's just engineer a way to get your favorite characters back in a room together after we've sent them their separate ways in the previous season. And when they bring them back, you know, most shows would just be like, and now it's perfect. Like maybe there's like one second where Jamie's return. was a problem, but now he's back and he's the best player on the team.

Or maybe Roy comes and there's like a little bit of like, is he going to yell at us all the time? But then basically it's like Roy's one of the coaches now. They have not let that go. They have like made Jamie's presence awkward and sometimes complicated. They have made Roy's starting coaching tough on, I think, Nate. It's also been tough on the players.

I think that even there are moments where it's just like, obviously Roy knows the game better than everybody else there. So it's just like, well, why isn't this guy the coach or why are we not just listening to this dude? He coaches the starters. So I think that their ability to do like very TV writing and then actually tease out, well, what would that be like? What would it be like if Rebecca actually did keep DMing

with a dude and she found out it was an employee of hers? Right. But then she was actually in love with him and like I had to grapple with that. Like that stuff to me is like that that's pretty, I wouldn't necessarily say it's courageous, but it's a very interesting subversion of what usually is like pretty traditional TV writing. We can wrap it up there, man.

I mean, you know, we got nine episodes into the second season. We'll be back to talk about about 10, 11, 12, I would imagine. Van Greyhound gang, woof, woof. Woof, woof. Woof, woof, woo. This episode is brought to you by Netflix's remarkably bright creatures. What if a Pacific octopus held the key to a mystery that could heal your heart? Well, that's Tova's reality.

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