Ted Lasso's Season 3 Tooting Gag Was Just A Sliver Of A Deleted Season 1 Scene

A culture clash is always a reliable source for comedy. Is it always the most deftly handled or most sophisticated material? Absolutely not. In fact, it often times can create some of the most offensive humor out there. But there is always something to mine out of one group of people being bewildered by another, particularly if the two groups of people only have minor differences from one another.

"Ted Lasso" was built on this kind of humor. The premise of an American coming over to London to coach soccer sets itself up to be filled with jokes about different customs and words that mean different things depending on where you are. Because the inconsistencies between the two cultures were ultimately minor, it helped the audience endear itself to the titular character played by Jason Sudeikis, particularly because the joke was rarely ever about making fun of the differences but instead the ignorance of not knowing them.

Many of these culture clash moments involve Ted learning something about his new home and conferring with Brendan Hunt's Coach Beard, who is far more worldly and seems to know everything about every place like a sage, about how silly the differences are. The dialogue scenes are quick and punchy and often good for a laugh or two. Even when we get to the penultimate episode of the series, "Mom City," there are still things Ted learns about England that make him chuckle. One of those things: the existence of a district in London called Tooting.

As someone not from the United Kingdom, I am not particularly well-versed in British euphemisms, but I have to imagine that "tooting" isn't one of them. Because it is part of the country's biggest city, it's just a fairly normal word to say. For us in the United States, however, it is our weirdly cutesy way to say farting. I don't know why some people are uncomfortable with the word farting and are more willing to use tooting in its place, as the daintiness of it feels more off to me the older I get, but they do. Someone who I'm sure delights in the use of it is the aw-shucks king himself, Ted Lasso.

Exploiting Tooting for comedy came to Jason Sudeikis and Brendan Hunt well before its use in "Mom City." In a recent Reddit AMA, Hunt revealed that this idea cropped up way back in the very first season of the show:

"In 311 there is a brief riff on the town name 'Tooting.' This is a fraction of something we once did before that got cut from 110. One of the team meetings in the tactics/press room had like a two-minute run of pretty much everyone saying the word 'Tooting.' It did not fit the energy of the scene and was a good cut; but o how we laughed."

Is this the Shakespearean wordplay? Of course not. But I know that there is a small part of everyone that they don't want to admit exists that made them lightly chuckle at Ted Lasso being amused that there was a place called Tooting. You don't have to be proud that it tickled you, but don't deny it either. It's a cheap, easy laugh, but that is exactly what they wanted it to be.