Ted Lasso Almost Feels Like Its Old Self Again. Almost.

5 min readI recognize the tone of my Ted Lasso recaps have been negative. But as I said last week, the show deserves it. If a high-profile TV series wants to honestly interrogate the struggles of women’s professional sports, from the specific needs of female athletes to the systemic forces that undermine them, then the show oughta be held to a high standard. What’s the alternative? Arguing that it’s “just a comedy” isn’t only a poor excuse—comedies are capable of depth, too—but a disservice to the real causes it clearly wants to champion. If Ted Lasso wants to advocate for women’s sports, then it better be a good show.Which is why I’m appreciative of the comparatively tighter ship that is this week’s Ted Lasso.“Greyhound’s Day Off” is not exactly about enjoying some time off. With the whole episode cleverly framed around a podcast hosted by Trent Crimm (James Lance) and his guest Dr. Fieldstone (Sarah Niles), coaches Ted (Jason Sudeikis), Beard (Brendan Hunt), and Alice (Tanya Reynolds) face a harsh truth that only comes after you assemble a team: getting players to behave like one. The locker room is divided into Mean Girls-style cliques, with petty squabbles over sweaty socks and jersey numbers enough to blow up party lines. So Ted has a bright idea to solidify cohesion: Pub trivia.It’s a cute solution, I guess. (I would have gone with paintball using Battle Royale rules, but there’s a reason why I’m not a coach.) “Pub trivia to strengthen team dynamics” is a plot that screams peak early Ted Lasso, and I wouldn’t be shocked if this turned out to be a discarded season 2 storyline that’s been salvaged for parts. Naturally and almost expectedly, Beard is a trivia wizard, and his victory is almost certain until he comes face-to-face with an old problem.Colin Hutton//AppleThe coaches get their bickering players to engage in pub trivia, and it actually works.Meanwhile, Rebecca (Hannah Waddingham) and Keeley (Juno Temple) pick up the B-plot that is seeding something bigger down the road. The two meet Zelda Southport (Tracey Ullman!!!), a self-made millionaire ex-punk who bankrolls women’s sports while throwing up a middle finger to the stuffy, chinless (her words) men in suits who think they’re above the industry.With Rupert way, way out of the picture now (especially given the recent tearful loss of the actor Anthony Head), Ted Lasso has needed a new unpredictable figure whose pocketbook might be deeper than Rebecca’s. In walks Zelda, whom everyone is swiftly charmed by except for Rebecca. I was inclined to chalk it up to her cynicism toward other rich people, but as the episode goes on, it becomes more clear it’s about some jealousy over Keeley’s enthusiasm about her. “I’m just saying, we can’t be naive and jump into business with everyone we meet,” Rebecca posits, which I’m inclined to agree with. Though Keeley takes it differently.Their problem is resolved fairly quickly, but sweetly nevertheless, as they make up in the stands of Richmond’s stadium. Keeley says that she’s only interested in Zelda because she’s so excited “to be building something with my best friend from the ground up.” When Rebecca apologizes for always telling Keeley no to her ideas, Keeley says it’s simply an opportunity to think differently. “And, it’s always better. Always.” As sugary as this scene is, I like it. Truly. It’s a callback to the sweeter parts of early Ted Lasso, back when the show wasn’t afraid to wear its heart on its sleeve without going full-blown folk maudlin nonsense.Sadly, Ted Lasso can’t always be this graceful anymore. Roy (Brett Goldstein) gets a baffling C-plot when he’s challenged by Keeley to date other women, and more seriously, before deciding to get back with her. Keeley makes a great point about refusing to stand on the pedestal Roy has her on, but Roy reductively sees it as a challenge to meet a minimum number of dates—and he wretchedly chooses to squeeze them all in one night of strictly scheduled appointments.I can almost see where Roy’s heart is for Keeley. But for a show whose most ardent fans insist this show is about kindness and growth, Roy’s behavior screams immature and even craven to me. This thing he does this week is straight up a tactic Barney Stinson would have pulled off in late-era How I Met Your Mother to convince Robin or whoever to date him. Roy has never been a Barney type, never mind their penchant for black wardrobes. This whole thing is just too out of character and too random for a deeply established component of the show’s machinery.Despite the poor optics, Roy’s situation ends on an interesting note: turns out, one of his short-term “dates” could actually be a longer-term thing. But it’s a long and stupidly winding road to make that point, and I fail to see a reason why I should want Roy to have a good ending here. That the show’s season trailers tease Roy and Keeley might actually tie the knot also means we’re basically just waiting things out until the inevitability rolls around.Back at pub trivia, Ted’s solution to encourage team-wide unity basically works—almost too well, actually. After some dipshits egg on the women, the loose cannon that is Boots (Jude Mack) ignites a bar brawl that gets everyone arrested, coaches included (even Alice, who spends most of the episode playing third fiddle). What could have been disastrous for the men’s team winds up being no biggie thanks to Zelda, who waves off the whole affair with her money and connections. It’s painfully convenient, and a more severe consequence than Ted making the women clean up the bar (which we don’t see happen) would have meant something. And you can bet your bottom dollar that Rebecca is irked that she now probably owes Zelda back.As for what got Beard all shook up at trivia, he shows Ted a flyer for an acclaimed one-woman show by Jane, which is ominously titled Whatever Happened to the Baby, Jane? Until now, the mystery of Jane’s whereabouts and the dissolution of Beard’s marriage has been relegated to background noise. Finally, we’ll know soon enough what had Beard feeling like garbage at the start of this season. We can intelligently guess Jane lost her baby, but the circumstances behind it—and why the stand-in for Beard frames him as her antagonist—are what has me interested to find out.I remember when I was hooked on Ted Lasso, line and sinker. Maybe it was my pandemic blues, maybe it was a cultural temperature of a time that now seems so alien. But Ted Lasso is no longer the show I watched back then. The show I saw was thoughtful and challenging. It knew comedy could be the means to wisely tackle all the thematic buzzwords we’re used to saying about worthwhile, binge-able television. I admit there’s hardly a clear connective tissue here, but the passing of Dolly Parton has got me thinking about popular art that looks glam on the surface but offers a wealth of emotional complexity when you engage with it for more than five minutes.Once upon a time, Ted Lasso felt like that. But since season 2, the show has been a painful caricature of itself, and season 4 has only calcified all of its worst attributes. This week’s episode doesn’t come close to telling me the show is on any course correction—we’re too far away for any miracles to happen now—but I have a glimmer of hope it can recapture some of its bygone brilliance yet. But I know, I know. It’s the hope that kills you.