Ted Lasso recap: The show gets back to focusing on some damn soccer

This Ted Lasso episode is titled “The Strings That Bind Us,” and I wouldn’t necessarily bring that up in the first sentence of a recap if I didn’t find it so needlessly ironic. For if there is one thing this third season has proven over and over again, it’s that this Emmy-winning series seems content with managing its many disparate storylines with only the most imperceptible strings threading them together. Last week’s foray into Amsterdam may have made that blunt in that we really did have several B/C plots happening all at once in that picturesque European city. But now that we’re back, it’s hard to shake off the feeling that every Ted Lasso episode feels like a clown car, with its hourlong runtime housing one too many plots for my taste.

At least I’ll say this about this episode’s A-plot: This was vintage Ted Lasso. In a way, this was a close-to-perfect season-one episode about Ted coaching the team in an unorthodox way that made its players embrace their own senses of community and humanity (also, it was all about soccer!), But it needlessly had to jockey for attention with Keeley and Jack’s “love bombing” deal, Nate’s protracted date with his favorite hostess, and even with Sam’s Twitter feud with a U.K. politician intent on keeping immigrants out of the country. As with almost every other episode this season, there was little cohesion to these various storylines. Honestly, is there a reason why we’re following Nate around these days? He seems to be existing in an entirely different series and no matter how grounded this bumbling dating scenario felt for dear sweet Nate, I couldn’t shake off the need to want to fast-forward through his bits so I could get back to what was going on at Richmond.

Mostly because that’s where the show excels. Maybe this makes me as much of a dork as Trent Crimm but the idea that “Total Football” (or the “Lasso Way”—could this be Crimm’s book title?) is a years-long practice that’s finally paying off is more interesting to me than seeing what needless sitcom-y setups the writers have cooked up for the show’s ancillary characters. I mean, initially, I was so excited to see Jack and Keeley’s relationship bloom and evolve, but watching Keeley need to navigate how, uh, someone is really into her and overstuffs her with love and attention feels so slight in comparison. Especially when it’s hilariously if unintentionally juxtaposed with a heavy-handed take on British politics that’s as cartoonish as it is convenient.

Compare, for instance, how Colin’s wrestling with his sexuality was carefully laid out and threaded through several episodes with the suddenness with which we were supposed to grapple with Sam’s radicalization (and amateur political Twitter posting: “I’d rather be a mediocre player than a world-class bigot”—not to mention quick response to the all-too-believable blowback he got with his trashed restaurant). I will say, if nothing else, Sam’s father visiting made for the best Rebecca moment of the episode—even if it just made me wish “Sam recognizes how crippling the burden of the model immigrant can be” was given the airtime it deserves.

But back to Richmond.

After Ted’s Amsterdam epiphany, we knew it was going to be an uphill battle to get the team to embrace this new kind of way of playing. And that was before Coach Beard offered a requisite history lesson on said strategy and Ted made the intentional mistake of telling us there’d be four steps to figuring out Total Football in, well, just a few days. After all, they’ve spent the better part of this season relying on one player alone to get them to win. Needing to be nimble and fluid and versatile as Total Football requires them to be would be tough regardless. But that’s an added wrinkle made almost worse by the way Coach Beard and Ted start treating Jamie as the one player exempt from what’s required of everyone else.

It would make sense that it’d be that adorable little shithead who’d finally realize that, if the team is to succeed, they’ll have to stop going to him and start going through him. In true Lasso form, the line feels as pointed whether taken as a sports strategy as much as a life lesson (ergo the way the team ends up helping out Sam at Ola’s at the end of the episode, as Richmond is a team in and outside the field). That’s what Trent so astutely recognizes and clearly what the show has been slowly building out. It’s a pity that, again, such a lovely message couldn’t stand on its own. Sure, there are threads to be traced in these various subplots (most tellingly, there’s the question of how best do we show love—to a partner, to a crush, to a team, to a country…) but they’re so flimsy they feel inadequate.

But maybe I’m just miffed we didn’t find out Rebecca had somehow found a way to fly in her hunky Dutch hookup and his perfectly decorated boat and start on a new exciting romance. There’s still time, though!

Stray observations

• It was refreshing to find this episode so focused on actual soccer. Often (as, say, last week), Ted Lasso seems to forget (ignore? decide to be indifferent toward?) the fact that it’s a show about soccer, so it was surprising and quite welcome to actually watch these players run around the field and see some sports action.
• “Stop going to me and start going through me.”
• So many “Yes, chef!”s at Ola’s made me feel like I was watching The Bear.
• It had been a while since I so adored Keeley’s outfits; no one pulls off pink girlboss fashion quite like Juno Temple. Though kudos to Phil Dunster who made Jamie’s pink tracksuit outfit for almost stealing Keeley’s thunder on that count.
• Speaking of Keeley, I would’ve pegged her more of an Emma fan than a Sense & Sensibility one—and not just because she’d likely be more of a Gwyneth fan than a Winslet/Thompson one. Heck, wouldn’t she love Keira’s Pride & Prejudice best instead?
• It was nice, at least, to see more of Nate’s family (even if I did end up cheering on the car that stomped on his makeshift date box because…well, there’s a corny line I don’t think even Ted Lasso can make me cross).
• “Shut up and dribble.” (Did my mind immediately go to Shut Up And Sing, The Chicks’ documentary from 2006? Of course it did.)
• Roy yelling out “whistle” will never not be funny.
• That said, in between puking gags and “red string in the dick” jokes, I did wonder whether Lasso had gone a tad too blue for my taste. But hey. To each their own.
• “We are two consenting adults. And I’m get-away-with-murder rich.” I can’t believe Jack’s making me get on Barbara’s side because there is a level of murky ethical territory here, no?