Trent Crimm, independent
How the outlaw became the insider in Season 3 of Ted Lasso
Spoiler alert: OK look. If you’ve clicked on this at all, you know it’s about season 3 of Ted Lasso. If you haven’t seen the whole series yet, I’m going to assume you don’t care about spoilers, otherwise you wouldn’t have clicked on a post knowing it’s about Ted Lasso. Anyway, you’re warned.
Midway through the third season of Ted Lasso, and midway through AFC Richmond’s fictional season, Trent Crimm comes running up to Ted, Coach Beard, and Roy Kent outside of the locker room.
"It's going to work. Total football. And I'll tell you why. The Lasso Way. You haven't switched tactics in a week. No. You've done this over three seasons. By slowly but surely building a club-wide culture of trust and support through thousands of imperceptible moments, all leading to their inevitable conclusion. Total Football. It's gonna work!"
He ends this with a little excited “HEE!” and walks away. Cut to Roy Kent, who says, “What a fucking dork.”
A smiling Red replies, with a giggle, “Yeah. But he’s our dork.”
Our is doing a whole lot of work in that sentence.
It shows just how far the relationship between Trent Crimm and Ted Lasso had come over the show’s three seasons. From adversaries, to mutual respect and admiration, to allies. Teammates even.
Last year, I wrote about the portrayal of Trent Crimm in the first two seasons of Ted Lasso and how it reflects both real-world practices of sports journalists and the portrayal of journalists in pop culture. This year, in finishing a book chapter about Trent Crimm, I added Crimm’s season 3 arc. Like last year, we’re using the SPJ Code of Ethics and Matthew Ehrlich and Joe Saltzman’s seminal book, “Heroes and Scoundrels: The Image of the Journalist in Pop Culture” as our guides.
Crimm is a far more active character in the final season. He’s in all but one of the final season’s episodes, after being in less than half of the first two seasons. His job changes, which brings with it new ethical concerns, a new depiction of a journalist in pop culture, but also a lot of the same values that the show has honored.
Let’s start at the end. The last time we see Trent Crimm is during the series-ending montage. He’s at a bookstore signing copies of the book he’s been working on all year. There’s even a cardboard cutout of him nearby.
The reveal, of course, is the title:
The Richmond Way: The Unbelievable Story of a Premier League underdog. By Trent Crimm with a very brief forward by Roy Kent
But as he closes the book he signed, we catch a glimpse of the cover jacket copy. With a freeze frame, we can see what it says:
The Richmond Way
An intimate look at the unexpected rise of AFC Richmond and the ethos that (nearly) took them to the top. After his storied tenure at The Everyday Independent, award-winning journalist Trent Crimm invites readers behind the scenes of one of football's most unlikely underdog stories. With never-before-heard anecdotes and revealing interviews, Crimm will have readers feeling like they were in the dugout for one of football's most exciting seasons.
The Everyday Independent
"With unprecedented access, Crimm has given us a (blank) book that is (blank) detailed , remarkably reported, and beautifully written.
It’s noteworthy that The Independent‚ the very paper that fired Crimm for an egregious ethical lapse — gave the book an advance review, and a positive one at that.1 It demonstrates the skill and power of the press, the power of Trent Crimm’s work and, by extension, the power of The Richmond Way.
Trent’s Season 3 journey begins at the end of Season 2, in his last conversation with Ted. Remember - Trent not only tells Ted that he was fired for outing Nate as the anonymous source, he also says he admitted it to his bosses.
“I'm looking for something different, deeper,” Trent said.
That something different and deeper is a year-long behind-the-scenes book for McCarthy Books. “I think there’s a story here worth telling,” Trent tells Ted who, despite urging from Rebecca, Keeley and Higgins, agrees. The obvious real-world analog is “The Beckham Experiment,” Grant Wahl’s excellent behind-the-scenes look at David Bechkam’s first year in MLS. Brendan Hunt told CNN that Wahl was instrumental in developing Trent Crimm’s character, especially in this season.
It’s a stark role reversal for Trent Crimm. A character who was introduced as an outsider has become a consummate insider. Literally inside the building and the locker room every day. To use Ehlrich and Saltzman’s terminology, he was an “outlaw” in Season 1 (a renegade, dedicated to the truth) and came off as the archetype columnist whom they found is a popular villain in pop culture depiction of journalists. Now, in Season 3, he is an “official” journalist, (much more respectable, keeping the order of things). In fact, he’s official in a way that is rarely portrayed in popular culture. Journalists are most often shown working for news organization, independent of the people they cover. Crimm is now a part of the team he’s covering.
He spends much of the season in the background of the locker room, in coaches’ meetings. He takes a desk in a small office adjacent to the main one used by Ted and Beard,. His reportorial style this season is less like those of daily sports journalists of prior seasons and now mimics that of Gay Talese and his “fine art of hanging out.”
I want to take a second because this is one of my favorite little things about the show. Remember back in Season 1, when Trent spends a day with Ted for his column? When they meet at practice, Trent is still in adversarial mode. But Ted drops this line: “Watch your back, Gay Talese. There’s a new iconic profile about to be typed up by one Trent Crimm.”
Here’s the thing: A Gay Talese reference is a bit of a deep cut for the journalism nerds. He’s famous in our world, but if you ask non-journalism people who Gay Talese is, you’re gonna get some strange looks. It’s my theory that this was the first crack in Trent Crimm’s armor. I can see him thinking “Gay Talese. OK. Maybe there’s more here than I realized.”
Anyway, throughout season 3, Trent is often seen at his desk writing and editing or he’s asking questions When Ted’s mother visits Richmond, he eagerly starts peppering her with questions about Ted’s youth. While very different then the routines of daily sports journalist, the work Trent is depicted doing remains in line with how a reporter does their job.
That work is threatened immediately by Roy Kent, who tells the team in Roy Kent fashion that no one is to talk to Trent or when the writer is around.
This comes to a head at halftime of a game when Richmond is losing, and Ted forces Roy to address the issue for the good of the team. Roy takes Trent into a side room, pulls out his wallet, and removes a well-folded, well worn piece of news print. It’s a column Crimm wrote about Roy Kent’s first game in the Premier League many years ago:
“‘Newcomer Roy Kent is an overhyped so-called prodigy whose unbridled rage and mediocre talent rendered his premier league debut a profound disappointment.’ I was 17 years old. This fucking wrecked me.”
Of course, this put a new twist on Roy’s season 1 comment about Trent having always been a colossal prick. What played at first to be just Roy Kent being Roy Kent, and establishing that Trent was an established soccer journalist, now played deeper.
It’s another example of Ehrlich and Saltzman’s notion of the depiction power in journalism. They wrote that in pop culture, “the notion that the press is a uniquely potent force to do ill or good is consistently underscored.” The press is so powerful that the words written by a reporter deeply wounded a man as skilled and tough as Roy Kent and, presumably, fueled some of the anger that became Kent’s defining trait.
Crimm was humbled by Kent’s confession. “I thought I was being edgy. I was trying to make a name for myself. All I really did was look for the worst in people. I'm sorry.” It’s a powerful moment of self reflection from Crimm, an inversion of the world view that fueled his career.
Kent accepts the apology and tells the team they can talk around him. The team, and the story, move forward.
Objectivity and the embedded journalist
Midway through the season, Crimm declines to offer advice to Lasso and Coach Beard about tactics, citing his need to remain objective.
But throughout the season, that idea becomes stretched. He discovered security camera footage that showed Nate was responsible for ripping the iconic Believe sign and eventually did offer suggestions on tactics. He even becomes part of the Diamond Dogs.
One of the more dramatic moments happens when Trent surreptitiously sees Colin Hughes, a closeted gay player, kissing his boyfriend. Trent sees this at the end of an episode, opening the possibility that he might out the player. Several episodes later, when the team is in Holland for a friendly, Trent follows Colin to a gay bar. Colin frantically leaves the bar when Trent speaks with him, but Trent tracks him down in the street.
Colin I already knew. I’ve known for months. I haven't said anything to anyone. I must have a good reason for that, mustn't I?
Later, the two share a conversation over a beer, where Trent comes out to Colin (and the audience) and offers the player support and a sympathetic ear. Trent serves as an advisor of sorts to Colin throughout the rest of the season and his coming out to the team.
These moments show the push and pull between journalistic norms and values that happen with an embedded reporter.
Is Trent acting unethically here?
So interesting note — while objectivity has been seen as the most important journalism norm, that word does not appear in the SPJ Code of Ethics. This code speaks to accuracy, fairness, and avoiding conflicts of interest (or at least the perception of them), but not specifically objectivity.
Two precepts that could apply here are “Be Accountable and Transparent” and “Act Independently.” Getting behind-the-scenes access is not necessarily an ethics violation, provided that no promises or guarantees of positive coverage are agreed to that leads to a potential conflict of interest. No such promises are shown, and so as long as Crimm addresses this openly in his book, explaining to readers how he got the access and how he used it as a journalist, there’s no ethical violation.
By the end of the season, Crimm sees Lasso reading a draft of the book and sheepishly tells, “I just want you to like it.” It’s an interesting journalistic moment. Yes, we want to be independent truth tellers. But when you are writing an in-depth story about a person you like and admire, it’s totally natural to want the person you’re writing about to like what you’ve written. It’s a push and pull inherent to being a journalist.
It’s also a remarkably stark contrast to the attitude Crimm displayed in his first interaction with Lasso. Over the course of three seasons, Crimm has gone from openly mocking Lasso, asking if this was all a fucking joke, to open admiration.
When giving early copies of the manuscript to Lasso and Beard, Trent tells them that he’d be happy to hear if there’s anything they would want to change.
“I won’t take it out, but I’ll be happy to tell you where you’re wrong,” he said.
Of course, he does make a significant change. The original title is The Lasso Way, but he changes that at Ted’s suggestion.
But that moment is a demonstration of the ethos that has driven the character for the entire run of the show. No matter what access he has, no matter who close he has become with the team, no matter how much has come to admire Ted Lasso and been changed by him, Trent Crimm remains independent.
One thing I’ve wondered is how Trent’s firing would have been covered and received. Surely, he was a big enough figure in the world of association football coverage that his leaving The Independent would have been newsworthy, and there’s no indication that he was keeping the reason a secret. Did the UK version of Poynter and CJR writer scathing pieces about his actions? If I were to write journalism fan fiction, this would be the topic. It would also be the lamest piece of fan fiction in the history of fan fiction.