Ted Lasso recap: Has this show lost its way?

Last week, I was thrilled when Ted Lasso went back to its season-one roots and remembered it was a soccer show where its central sport served as a metaphor, yes, but also needed to serve as, you know, an actual sport being played and coached. Any inkling that such an episode would spell what was to come after was dispelled with “We’ll Never Have Paris.” This one, yet again, felt like three intermittently interlocking shows strung together by a game ensemble who have had the difficult task of playing specific scenes without any regard for what their characters would have done an episode or two ago.

Namely, I think I’ve watched enough of this final farewell season to confidently say that this Emmy-winning darling has lost its way. Am I about to base that entirely on the “tell don’t show” faux pas that characterized that saccharine “Hey Jude” singalong wherein Coach Beard spelled out not only the lesson of the episode but also the reason why the busker was singing that iconic Beatles song, all while a child of divorce drama played out in front of him? I wish!

This episode was full of moments, scenes, and outright storylines that made me wonder what had gone so terribly, terribly wrong with this once affable kindcore fish-out-of-water comedy series about a bumbling American football coach in London.

At least we got that last part in spades this episode. Ted’s entire schtick is his homegrown folksiness (see: that endless Paris, Ohio bit), and, if nothing else, we got to see him yet again out of his element. I will admit I did not for one second buy that Ted, who has done so much work on himself over the past two years, would suddenly become the kind of rom-com sitcom stooge who hires (or gets his boss to hire) a private investigator. But even if I did buy such a plot point, this episode didn’t really end up having a serviceable ending: Co-parenting with an ex is hard; watching said ex move is hard; doing both at the same time (with grace!) is incredibly hard. But beyond that, what else did we learn this episode? Other than that Ted is a big Beatles fan and that Henry is as well?

Maybe I’m just getting tired of these personal B-plots feeling so needlessly maudlin and so situation-specific (as opposed to character-driven) that I found myself out of patience with this episode barely moving the needle forward after what felt like a decisive storytelling shift with “The Strings That Bind Us.” I keep hoping there’s just a lot of table-setting for the final episodes because so far…we just shuttle between plots with little rhyme or reason.

Cut to: Nate and his budding relationship.

I really hoped Nate’s storyline would pay off this episode (and it got so close!) but it truly feels like he’s in a spinoff that’s been smuggled into Ted Lasso, replete with a bunch of new characters who we’d complain couldn’t measure up to the OG series regulars. What do we often see in Nate’s scenes if not an attempt to be either the anti-Ted or the new-Ted? At least he gets a more interesting romantic scenario that seems to be moving in some positive direction. (Just as in the wider Lassoverse, it’s wrapped up in self-help platitudes he’s supposed to import into his coaching and right back into his life.)

Because, yes, I know the takeaway is that he’s slowly realizing he needn’t see Ted as an enemy and that he clearly misses the camaraderie at Richmond. But boy was that Love Hounds meeting hard to watch. As was the Diamond Dog ones; find me with Roy right outside annoyed at all the howling.

Cut to: Keeley and her leaked tape.

If Nate is in his own little bizarro Ted Lasso spinoff, Keeley seems to live in a “Can a girl have it all?” one wherein she’s started a new agency, started dating her boss(!), and only interacts with our series regulars when they drop by for glorified guest starring cameos. (Her bit with Rebecca was a joy to watch, a reminder that squandering Juno Temple’s comedic chemistry with the likes of Hannah Waddingham, Brett Goldstein, and, yes, Phil Dunster is a disservice to actor and show alike. Notice how those three interactions were the highlights of Keeley’s plot this time around?)

What I’ll point out about Jack and Keeley’s breakup storyline was how rushed it all felt. Wasn’t Jack the one who a few weeks back was squashing office romance rumors by confronting Keeley’s employees and telling them they were dating? Why did she become a corporate wallflower who introduces Keeley as “her friend” to an acquaintance and refuses to be empathetic about Keeley’s plight as she deals with such a blatant breach in privacy?

Halfway through the episode, I wondered why we were getting such a nothing drama of a fight between them only for the writers to handily dismiss Jack and her relationship with Keeley with such casual flair that I now worry I have to complain about a same-sex relationship being used as a plot device so that Keeley falls back into the arms of Roy—or, more likely, as she does here, Jamie. In either case, good riddance to Jack, whose murky ethical compass was clearly the biggest red flag you could ever find in a partner.

At least her moment with Jamie was quite lovely. Maybe next episode we’ll see Keeley back on her feet and perhaps (shocking, I know) working on anything whatsoever while she’s at the office? We can only hope.

Stray observations

• I guess everyone knows Dave Grohl learned to play the drums with pillows?
• If you missed it on first view, the two comments under her viral video that made Keeley furious were: “My wife wants to know why we’re out of tissues” and one that basically read, “I bet she released it herself.”
• “The Great Awankening”: for a show known to go oh-so-low to find the easiest wordplay to make, it seemed odd to so single out this horrid pun, no?
• Speaking of, the conversation between the players around what constitutes consent, ownership, and the various ethics surrounding nudes and NSFW content was… fine? It felt like a rapid-fire debate team match up rather than an organic locker room conversation. (It also felt particularly, dare I say, aggressively heterosexual? Like, is “delete everything” really the only solution here?)
• Which brings us to Colin. First Trent, now Isaac…looks like our closeted footballer won’t be in there for too much longer.
• Love the Jamie detail wherein he thought password with two s’s was a good enough password.
• Sometimes Ted-is-a-folksy-American works for me. Other times (like when he says “mercy buckets”), I worry I’ll hurt my eyes from rolling them so hard.