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In Ted Lasso Season 2 Episode 5, “Rainbow,” the eponymous coach tries to cheer up the losing AFC Richmond team by describing the philosophy of “Rom-communism.” You have to trust, Ted tells his squad, that things will work out, like they always do in romantic comedies–maybe not the way you want, maybe not the way you expect, but they will, in fact, work out.

At the time, it struck me as a weird thing for the coach of a losing soccer club to tell his struggling team. I get what Ted was going for–it’s a philosophy of avoiding frustration and hopelessness about things outside of your control, and trusting that this, too, shall pass. For a guy whose big central tenet is “Believe,” outwardly, it’s an idea that tracks.

But something about the whole speech felt wrong, somehow. Ted’s job is to motivate players to win, and his philosophy of believing in people is an active approach, pushing them to do better, to achieve more. Rom-communism is a passive ideal, and poorly suited to a situation in which the team is struggling. “Don’t sweat the losses” is good advice–“trust that everything will handle itself,” though? That’s not coaching, that’s wishful thinking, and it seems like something that doesn’t jive with what we’ve previously seen of Ted’s personality.

In fact, a lot about Ted has felt “off” this season, and not just in its latest episode. The season has been criticized by some as hitting a “sophomore slump,” largely because there doesn’t seem to be much overarching conflict going on, and because some of the humor is weaker than in the much-loved first season. Most episodes, including “Rainbow,” seem to wrap up interpersonal conflicts with a nice bow in the space of 40 or so minutes. Despite Richmond’s struggles, everyone seems to be doing well on a personal level. The characters are happy, or getting there, and they’re helping each other, or trying to. Things at AFC Richmond seem generally pretty easygoing, outside of the constant losing.

It’s possible that Ted Lasso really is just suffering from a downturn after a hit debut, but I don’t think that’s the case. Rather, the changes between Season 1 and Season 2–the more contained episodes, the neatly solved problems, the generally cheery cast of characters–belie the real turmoil of Season 2. That’s because the overarching conflict has been, so far, almost completely subtextual. Everyone else might be doing pretty well, but Ted is falling apart.

While we saw outward signs of Ted’s struggles in Season 1, including the difficulty of dealing with his divorce and a full-on panic attack, the signs have been much more subtle in Season 2. As mentioned above, Ted just seems a little different. It’s something that’s playing through his interactions with people, and gets highlighted in the progressively increasing desperation of his “Ted-isms.”

Good example: Ted was walking out to the pitch ahead of the game at the end of “Rainbow,” when Dr. Sharon Fieldstone called out his name as she came out of her office behind him. Ted whipped around and responded by calling back to the doctor, then just shouting random words, naming the things he could see around him–“ceiling, floor, trash can.” In the moment, it was weird. Ted throws out his folksy jokes all the time, but he knows when someone is trying to get his attention, and shouting random words back at them almost came off as rude. What’s more, it wasn’t especially funny, and part of what made Ted Lasso a standout in Season 1 was how often the unexpected, pop culture reference-laden banter from Ted stirred up laughs.

That’s an underlying thread of the season as well. While other characters have stepped up with a lot of humor–looking at you, Roy Kent–the jokes delivered by Ted have been strained. Where he dropped gags and made references as a breezy matter of relating to people in Season 1, in Season 2, the punchlines take more setup and leave less impact. Ted was funny in Season 1. In Season 2 he’s kind of annoying.

We saw that when Ted chased down Roy at his favorite kebab place in “Rainbow.” Ted pops up, and when Roy offhandedly makes a comment about the restaurant being “like my church,” Ted runs with the gag throughout the whole encounter. “Who knew transubstantiation could happen with a pita?” he jokes, a gag that only plays because of Roy’s ever-annoyed reaction, and not because of the strength of the line itself. Even Ted’s appeal to get his former player to join the coaching staff feels half-hearted.

In general, so many of Ted’s interactions this season seem forced. His jokes come hard and fast, and he’s often almost speaking too quickly to be understood. Moments like the hallway interaction with Dr. Fieldstone are strained, as if Ted is playing the role of himself, but many of his other one-liners leave the other characters bewildered, until he finally explains the punchline. Though he’s always smiling, that smile appears plastered on. There’s strain in his eyes.

It’s a testament to the talent of Jason Sudeikis that it’s possible to pick up on these subtle differences in Ted, but it is possible to pick up on them. Ted in Season 2 seems like he’s barely holding on, fighting extremely hard simply to maintain his own personality. In a real sense, it’s all he has, but being himself, exuding the Ted Lasso personality, has stopped happening naturally. His charged, hyper interaction with Fieldstone when she first appeared in the office–an amped-up version of the way he first met and endeared himself to Rebecca–wasn’t the lighthearted means of establishing friendship and common ground with someone new, but seemed fueled by desperation. A lot of the time in Season 2, Ted being Ted looks like work.

In my view, he’s struggling to cope. This is a guy whose life was torn apart in the first season, and who hasn’t really dealt with so much personal trauma before now. His family is both physically and emotionally distant, and he’s unmoored. And in a big way, his positive influence on the people around him has had a negative influence on Ted himself. More runtime each episode is dedicated to the rest of the ensemble cast, which is good–they’re great. But as in “Rainbow” or in the Christmas episode, “Carol of Bells,” we’re spending more time with everyone else and less time with Ted. When Nate has a problem in “Rainbow,” he goes to Rebecca and Keeley, who help him solve it. Ted has helped engender a community where the people around him are positive and excited to lift one another up, but we’re seeing a feedback loop where Ted has started to make himself obsolete. It furthers his isolation.

And we’re seeing that isolation more and more. Ted’s intention during “Carol of Bells” was to spend Christmas alone, committing to several rewatches of It’s a Wonderful Life, an uplifting movie that also carries darker tones and concerns suicide. As mentioned, he seems distracted and unconcerned about Richmond’s struggles in general. He’s altogether clueless about Nate’s apprehension about Roy joining the coaching staff, and earlier in the episode, openly laughs at Nate when the younger coach suggests that he’s the “big dog” who should talk to Isaac about his attitude as captain. Ted realizes belatedly that Nate was serious, and that laughing might have hurt his feelings, and we watch Coach Beard affirm that he picked up what Nate was putting down–but Ted, ever in tune with how everyone else is feeling, missed it.

And then there’s Ted’s general aversion to therapy and seeming mistrust of Fieldstone. His interactions with her are especially tense, and she causes his mask to slip a few times–when they first meet and she shuts down his meet-and-greet please-like-me routine, and again in “Rainbow,” when he quotes the lyrics of “Under Pressure” to explain himself to her, but which sound just a little too pointed to be driving the eventual joke about stress. “I’m just terrified from knowing what this world is about,” Ted says, the ever-present smile fading a bit.

Yes, eventually, Ted will wind up in therapy with Dr. Fieldstone; it’s a plot point that’s inevitable. How he gets there, though, is an open question, and it seems like things are going to get a lot worse for Ted before they get better. His effervescent personality, his constant need to attend to and help others, and his inability to face how he really feels, even as far back as Season 1, are building to a boil.

Those things about Ted are, so far, preventing the people around him from realizing how bad things are for him. But we’re starting to see cracks in the facade. Coach Beard seems to be taking notice of what’s going on with Ted, and Dr. Fieldstone is definitely aware that something is up with him. But Ted is clearly closed off, to his friends and to his feelings, about what has happened in his life. And that’s the conflict of this season, subverting everything built up in the first. Season 2 isn’t about some big villain that Ted must use his unflinching kindness to stand against. It’s about the internal struggle of living for others, dealing with trauma, and the ways that depression can alter life in all aspects. It’s about how pain can hide behind a smile, how difficult it can be to ask for help, and how feeling like you have an inability to lift yourself out of that pain can amplify it. Ted Lasso is building to a climax, and the fact that it’s not obvious is the point–we don’t always know when someone close to us is suffering.

Nintendo has announced the Pokemon TV App for Nintendo Switch and it’s available now for free. The Pokemon TV App features full episodes of the animated show, highlights from competitive matches of both the video games and the Pokemon trading card game, and “junior content” for younger Pokemon fans.

Announced by Nintendo of America on Twitter, the Pokemon TV App features tons of content, including hundreds of episodes of the animated show for free, with content rotating regularly. With no official Netflix app available on the Nintendo Switch, the Pokemon TV App might be the best way to stream the animated show on the console.

The “junior content” includes videos with sing-alongs and popular nursery rhymes themed around Pokemon. The app also includes highlights from championship competitions for Pokemon and the Pokemon Trading Card game.

In other Pokemon news, the recent Pokemon Presents showed off new footage from the upcoming Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl remakes, along with a new trailer for Pokemon Legends: Arceus. Pokemon Snap also received a free update, adding three new areas and 20 new Pokemon to photograph.

1. Shang-Chi

Bernard Rose’s 1992 supernatural Clive Barker adaptation Candyman was not a huge commercial success, and while it inspired two sequels that decade, they were mediocre low-budget films that felt more like quick cash-ins than any meaningful attempt to extend its legacy. But in the 30 years since Rose’s film hit theaters, the masterful, haunting mix of social criticism and gory scares has helped the film retain its power in a way that many other horror movies of the ’90s have not. Director Nia DaCosta and producer/co-writer Jordan Peele have now gone back to the source to make a sequel that attempts to both honor the original and apply the mythology of Candyman to modern America.

The movie’s setting is Calibri, the Chicago community that stands in the same location as the original film’s Calibri Green. Back in the ’90s, this notorious housing project provided a compelling backdrop for the movie’s dissection of class and race, as white student Helen Lyle ventured into the poor Black neighborhood to investigate the legend of Candyman, a former slave turned vengeful hook-handed, bee-conjuring spirit. Today, Calibri is a wealthy and gentrified area, with expensive townhouses in place of the dilapidated apartments. It’s here that the movie’s main character, artist Anthony (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), now lives with his girlfriend, art curator Brianna (Teyonah Parris).

Anthony is struggling to find a subject for an upcoming show, but when he starts investigating the history of Calibri, and in particular the legend of Candyman, he finds new inspiration. Unfortunately, that also means doing the one thing any horror fan will tell you never to do–say Candyman’s name five times into a mirror–and soon people around him are dropping dead in gruesome ways.

With his two directorial credits to date–Get Out and Us–Peele has shown himself to be skilled at exploring issues of social justice through the conventions of horror. DaCosta is new to the genre, but her acclaimed 2018 debut Little Woods proved her ability as a sensitive, character-focused filmmaker. Aptly, their take on Candyman holds up a mirror to the first movie. That was the work of a white British filmmaker exploring racial injustice and social divide from the point of view of an outsider. Conversely, DaCosta and Peele take us further inside the experience of Calibri’s residents–both middle-class newcomers such as Anthony and old-timers like William (Colman Domingo), who grew up in the old housing project.

Candyman is not exactly subtle in the way it establishes its themes, and some of the early scenes feel a little heavy-handed in the discussion of gentrification or Anthony’s struggle to represent the Black experience through his art. But the efficiency and ambition of the film are impressive–it only runs 91 minutes, but for the most part, DaCosta, Peele, and co-writer Win Rosenfeld find the right balance between the social and the scary. Political and topical horror movies–from Night of the Living Dead to Invasion of the Body Snatchers–rarely have time for subtle satire, preferring instead to keep the messages surface level and have the horror add to the overall impact. Candyman is no exception.

DaCosta brings a distinct visual style to the movie. Throughout the film, she plays with the motifs of glass and reflections–some of the opening credits are even mirrored–and the way she shoots and frames the horror set-pieces, as Candyman picks off his victims, is often highly inventive. One stunningly realized sequence is filmed at a distance through the windows of a luxury apartment block, while another is glimpsed in the reflection of a dropped hand-mirror. She also uses the striking shadowy puppetry of Kara Walker to explain the backstory of various characters. One of the movie’s main themes is the nature of storytelling, particularly the way urban legends morph and shift over time, and using shadow puppets is an ingenious way to both represent this and avoid clichéd exposition and flashback scenes.

Abdul-Mateen II is superb as the artist who finds recognition and inspiration only when people around him start dying. Anthony’s frightening decline–both mentally and physically–is well handled, and there are standout supporting performances from WandaVision star Parris (who DaCosta will next direct in the MCU movie The Marvels), Domingo, and Nathan Stewart-Jarrett as Brianna’s brother Troy. There are also appearances from Vanessa Estelle Williams, reprising her role as Anne-Marie McCoy from the first film, and, of course, Tony Todd as Candyman himself (briefly).

The film, unfortunately, stumbles toward the end. The last 15 minutes are packed with dark revelations, surprise villains, and baffling character decisions which seemingly only occur to move the plot forward rather than make any logical sense. For the first time, the blend of biting topical commentary and traditional horror feels confused and awkward, diminishing the movie’s overall effect. While a brisk running time is often a good thing for a horror movie to maintain tension, a slower build towards the climax might have helped deliver an ending as effective as the rest of the movie.

While iconic horror and slasher villains are often one-dimensional figures, Candyman remains one of horror’s most fascinating and complex characters, a tragic figure birthed through prejudice and rage. This latest movie shows that there’s plenty more that can be done with the character, and despite the fumbled climax, it does hint at where the subsequent films could take the series. Candyman 2021 might not hit the heights of the original movie, but it’s very likely we’ll be saying his name again soon.

The Xbox Mini-Fridge is still on track to release in Holiday 2021, according to Microsoft. In response to someone asking about the mini-fridge, the general manager of Xbox game marketing Aaron Greenberg confirmed that it is still set to release this holiday and the company will share more when they can.

Shown as a “World Premiere” during Xbox’s E3 2021 showcase, the Xbox Mini-Fridge is shaped like an Xbox Series X console and appears to hold about 10 12oz cans inside. It had been previously confirmed to be in production after Xbox narrowly beat Skittles in a social media brand competition. The fridge was originally made to capitalize on people saying the console looks like a fridge, with a full-size one given to Snoop Dogg. The full-size version was also added to Dirt 5 as free DLC for all Xbox Game Pass Ultimate members.

People may have been concerned that the mini-fridge was going to miss its Holiday 2021 release window since it did not make an appearance during the Gamescom 2021 Xbox stream or during Gamescom Opening Night Live. Microsoft did announce other hardware coming this year to celebrate both the launch of Halo Infinite on December 8 and the 20th anniversary of Xbox. Microsoft announced the Halo Infinite Elite Controller and the Halo Infinite Xbox Series X, both of which are limited-edition items.

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