In the eighth episode of Ted Lasso, the audience is introduced to a confederation of adrift middle-aged men known as the “Diamond Dogs.” The principal members are Lasso himself, alongside the other coaches and executives of the podunk English soccer club AFC Richmond. Every couple of episodes, the crew gathers in the break room to discuss whatever turbulence is rocking their lives: the unsettled shame after a one-night stand; a knotty on-and-off relationship; the destabilizing reverberations of a panic attack. The Diamond Dogs storyline is essentially Ted Lasso’s entire ethos in miniature: It’s a venue where men are happy to become vulnerable in front of each other, in which the characters literally howl and bark in reverie after achieving emotional breakthroughs.
Lasso’s series finale aired last week—bringing an end to Jason Sudeikis’ weekly soliloquies about how it’s OK to Not Be OK—but Shawn Malone, a 34-year-old civil engineer, was eager to keep the Diamond Dogs spirit alive. That’s why he created r/TLDiamondDogs, a subreddit where posters can receive some self-help insight guided by the Tao of Ted, long after its reign is over.
“The core of the show is so uplifting, heartwarming, and motivational, and that tone bleeds through to the Diamond Dogs subreddit,” Malone told me. “Everyone wants to lift each other up on the forum. … The show is therapeutic, and that lends itself so well to this community and the people that want life advice.”
Browse through r/TLDiamondDogs, and you’ll see exactly what Malone is talking about. On its surface, the forum doesn’t look much different from the countless other self-help resources on the internet: There are threads that opine about grief, heartbreak, and career unfulfillment, while a legion of anonymous posters (including 9,600 subscribers) offer their homespun condolences and remedies in the replies. But delve deeper into the stacks, and it becomes clear that the advice administered here has all taken on a distinctly Lassoian texture—like a group therapy exercise or a masquerade initiation ritual—in order to truly bring the show’s winsome worldview (and affirming canine noises) to life.
Many of the threads orbit around Ted Lasso’s seasonslong project of defanging toxic masculinity and enshrining a positive self-image, to the point that the cast was invited to a White House mental health awareness summit back in March. In one post, an author waxes about a difficult year and a messy divorce, which strained the relationship he has with his children. He cites one of the show’s recurring motifs—that nobody can heal if they hate themselves—which helped him face the darkness. “You can’t practice love, substantive love, without practicing first on yourself,” he wrote. The most-upvoted comment is a GIF of Ted Lasso chanting “MVP, MVP.” (“Cheers to a great year and beyond,” reads another. “Arrrrooooooo!!!”)
Another poster meditated on his father’s death, and how the show’s last episode dredged up sorrow in his soul. He and his dad were both huge Cat Stevens fans, and the “Father and Son” needledrop in the finale left him a wreck. “Losing him felt like I lost my anchor, I’m just a jumbled mess right now who needs some support,” he wrote, capstoning a genuinely moving passage. The assembled Diamond Dogs immediately sprung into action: “Woof woof woof I’m so sorry for your loss,” wrote one. “We are here to be your safe family. Woof woof fellow dog and I wish you courage,” added someone else.
In a different thread, a poster deals with post–Ted Lasso depression. A commenter suggested a rewatch with the language switched to Italian, which would allow them to experience the show again while “practicing a new skill.” Someone else said that the Ted Lasso finale inspired them to throw caution to the wind, and leave their job for an MFA offer. (“Looking for woofs here!“) Sometimes, specific episodes of the show spark spirited discussions of the themes therein. A plotline about Nate Shelley, a coach at AFC Richmond, and his estranged relationship with his father, sparked a thread where a poster investigated their own victimhood of child abuse. “Nate’s dad reminds me a lot of my parents,” they wrote. “I do have a therapist but I thought I could turn to you Diamond canines for some solidarity, if nothing else.”
In any other context—and within any other fandom—confronting trauma with dog barks could be taken as a withering cruelty. So I suppose it speaks to the magic of Ted Lasso that here, among the brotherhood of Diamond Dogs, a dash of dorky cringe can be exactly what the doctor ordered.
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“The subreddit just lives and breathes the ideals and values that Ted Lasso instilled in so many people,” Marley Stoner, a 35-year-old in Northeast Ohio, who’s become a frequent contributor to the forum, told me. In particular, Stoner said that she and her husband were struggling with communication and emotional intimacy before Ted Lasso, and the show—with its emphasis on a softer brand of masculinity—helped them both navigate those challenges.
“Within Lasso and the Diamond Dogs subreddit, we were better able to lean into a healthier perspective on difficult subjects, and step into our ability to put positivity into our life,” she said. “And as such, it’s apparent that in the absence of our dear friend Ted, we’re all stepping up to the plate to pick up where the show left off. Everybody needs a Ted, and everybody has the capacity to be a Ted.”
Malone created the Diamond Dogs sub in early 2021 and said that its population started growing considerably as Ted Lasso rounded toward its conclusion. Between May 30 and June 5, nearly 6,000 people joined the forum. Malone came up with the idea for an off-screen Diamond Dogs support group after seeing a number of people use the overarching Ted Lasso subreddit as an ameliorative sounding board—obviously inspired by the show’s eternal theme of violently Feeling Your Feelings around those you trust. (He also makes it clear that unlike the show, Diamond Dog membership doesn’t require you to be a man.) “Whenever anyone would ask for advice over there, I’d post and say, ‘Hey, sorry to hear what you’re going through, we have a community over here for this stuff, and we’d love to have you,’ ” said Malone.
Dr. Alan Jern, a computational psychologist at the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, told me that while people innately relate with others who are similar to them, studies have suggested the specifics of those similarities can be pretty trivial in nature. Yes, communities can be bound by bloodlines, radical political objectives, or sectarian national identities, but a mere shared interest in an Apple TV+ show might be enough for someone to feel comfortable spilling their guts. “Having a common interest or a shared reference point is an easy way for people to quickly build trust,” said Jern. At a moment where Americans are living through a loneliness epidemic, he believes that any coalition—no matter how flimsy—can help us all feel more connected.
This point is echoed by a Diamond Dog named Felix, who said he found catharsis in the subreddit because he “knew exactly what to expect” in a land of Lasso diehards. “With self-help, there are competing frameworks and underlying assumptions. I’m often held back by the risk of getting advice that I’ve heard before and hasn’t helped, because we disagree on the fundamentals,” he told me. “With the Diamond Dogs, I know I’ll get advice that’ll actually help me with my problem.” Recently, Felix took to the forum looking for advice on how to resist becoming indignant during a political disagreement, after losing his cool during a climate change debate. The title of the post was, naturally, “I want to get from Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrowl to a happy woof woof.”
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However, Jern maintains that an affectionate Ted Lasso forum, or a verbose suite of advice columns, can’t be a total replacement of the intuition of an actual mental health professional. He doesn’t believe that the Diamond Dogs possess the bona fides to administer scientifically sound mental health advice, and instead equates it to the casual backslapping commiseration among friends. That’s plenty valuable, but it isn’t exactly medicine.
But regardless of its therapeutic efficacy, Malone expects that his cadre of Diamond Dogs will live on long past Ted Lasso itself. In its final season, the show earned a fair amount of derision for its relentless buoyancy, which clashed with the fetid and caustic Twitter airwaves. Malone, of course, told me he’s never caught wind of any Ted Lasso backlash—the irony-poisoned roasts existed entirely outside of his purview, which frankly put more things into perspective for me than it ought to for him. There are countless Lasso fans who love this show with zero pretenses or controversy—wholly discourse-free—and they’ll continue to plug the holes in their soul with whatever Diamond Dog idioms are right for their latest moment of weakness. Woof woof, indeed.
