SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers from the series finale of Ted Lasso, now streaming on Apple TV+.
Heres a scoop: There will be a fourth season of Ted Lasso.Actually, it has already aired, and it was not great.
Ted Lasso grew out a character created by Jason Sudekis and friends for NBC Premier Leaguepromos, a Kansas City-based football coach who somehow finds himself coaching the other football in London for AFC Richmond, a chronically downtrodden franchise.Its a typical fish-out-of water premise, whichis a classic comedy trope, but comes with some limitations namely, when the fish becomes an amphibian and begins to love land life. Mindful of those constraints, Lasso debuted in 2020 to acclaim, with critics lauding its cock-eyed optimism as the world struggled with a deadly pandemic. Season 1s 10 episodes ran an average of 30 minutes apiece, totaling 299 minutes for the season.
Now quarantine is long gone, and we are out in the world crammed into middle seats, intent on spending our last disposable dollar on Maui rentals and a down payment on a jet ski we definitely dont need. Lassos recently completed third season joined the bacchanal. The shows 12 episodes ran 650 MINUTES. That is 78 minutes longer than Krzystof Kieslowskis Dekalog, which dealt with all 10 of the commandments.
Im sure it all began with the best of intentions. Season 1 began with a tight focus on Ted and his sidekick Beard (Brendan Hunt) trying to negotiate their way around a proverbial plate of bangers and mash as they work for Rebecca (Hannah Waddingham), the clubs owner andhersidekick (Jeremy Swift), who think hiring Ted who doesnt know the difference between an offside and a side out is the best way to submarine the team that Rebecca inherited from her super-pig ex-husband. To the side was a love triangle between a ditzy team publicist Keeley (Juno Temple) and two players, Jamie Tart (Phil Dunster), a Ken Doll, and Roy Kent (Brett Goldstein), a misanthrope for the modern age.Ted is oblivious to all, and brings Rebecca biscuits every morning in a merging of Phil Jackson and Being Theres Chauncey Gardiner.
The first two seasons chug along merrily Rebecca apologizes for sabotaging Ted, and they become confidants and there are touching moments as Ted deals with anxiety, divorce and missing his boy back in Kansas City. While I never bought into Temples painfully eccentric character, there were hilarious scenes of conflict, and then grudging respect, between Jamie and Roy. Meanwhile, we watch Nate Shelley (Nick Mohammed) develop from kit man to coaching prodigy to asshole villain who deserts the Lasso gang the only true left turn in the series. Now, none of this reached the excellence of Barry, a show that contained more laughs, ingenious plot twists and WTF emotional turns while sticking to a 30-minute run time. Still, Ted Lasso had its moments and provided a small but comforting video Xanax for these trying times.
Then came Season 3. Maybe out of gratitude for their loyal service, or out of a desire to field a team of 11 potential spin-offs, the folks at Ted Lasso decided to give every character including the kit man who replaced the original kit man their own arc. Keeley opens a PR firm and dates a billionaire! Leslie gets to play a jazz show! Nate works as a waiter!AFC Richmond gets a superstar who at first seems to be a major throughline in the season and then he disappears! Rebecca meets a man in Amsterdam, has dinner, but doesnt learn his name! Trent Crimm the reporter played by the delightfully droll James Lance writes a book about Ted! Sam (Toheeb Jimoh) opens a Nigerian restaurant, and then it is attacked! A gazillionare tries to create a football super league, and it ends in a food fight!
On it went, into at least five hours of extra time the season would have been better if it lost 300 minutes. The few parts in Season 3 that work, besides Trents band T-shirts, is when Lasso sticks to its original mission, a stranger in a strange land trying to find his way on the pitch and in his own life. Mom City, the shows penultimate episode, was the season standout, as Teds mom the sublime Becky Ann Baker arrived unannounced, and the two do a painful dance of politeness because no one on wants to talk about Ted still being haunted by the suicide of his father when he was a boy. Meanwhile, Jamie literally climbs into his mums lap and wails about his alcoholic and abusive father. The episode resonates because it feels earned by two characters who we have lived with for three seasons, and unwittingly damns the rest of Season 3 plot lines that have all the resonance of a generic Love, Actually.
Last nights series finale tried to land the plane, but there were many, many causalities. The team breaks into a musical number to say goodbye to Ted one that any sensible showrunner would have cut and released as a bonus track. (Too bad the showrunner is Sudeikis himself.) Nate completes an improbable season arc that takes him from head coach to restaurant worker to the assistant to the kit man and then nestling back in Teds bosom. The team almost wins the championship, but hey, its OK everyone learned something. Jamies father is now sober, and shares a cuppa with his boy.
Ted then flies home on a nonexistent London to Kansas City non-stop after a tearful goodbye with Rebecca. On the way out of the airport, a little girl falls at the childless Rebeccas feet. She looks up and it is the daughter of wait for it the mysterious Amsterdam man! Who is a pilot?!? The show ends with 436 of the characters showing up for a cookout. Staying with the Season 3 vibe, it should have been an all-you-can-eat Vegas buffet.
I write this while listening to Oasiss Be Here Now, the previous UK-centric champion for a third effort gone horribly wrong. It was cocaine and booze that led the Gallaghers into gross indulgence. For AFC Richmond, it was a lack of discipline.
In the end, Ted Lasso needed a better coach.