Everything is not in its right place as Ted Lasso nears the end of its second season
Which is productive in some stories, but a right mess in others
TV Reviews Ted Lasso
In the opening moments of “Midnight Train to Royston,” we see the results of the penultimate game of AFC Richmond’s season, as Sam basks in the glory of his first career hat trick and another win for the surging Richmond. Through the voiceover, commentators Arlo White and Chris Powell reveal through exposition that Richmond has been playing spectacular football, and are a win away from securing promotion back to the Premier League.
I have to admit that I found this a bit surprising (and not just because y’all in the comments explained that the promotion structure of the Championship is more complicated than this episode implies). After starting the season with a long string of draws, Ted Lasso has mostly had Richmond’s regular season play out off-screen, and the few games we did see were part of the FA Cup and that ended with an embarrassing loss to Man City that one could have imagined as a real momentum killer. Instead, the team appears to have gone on an impressive winning streak, and are now on the verge of achieving the goal that Rebecca and Ted set out for this year at the end of the first season.
Some of you in the comments have tried to do the math on what type of unprecedented performance would have allowed the team to be in such an advantageous position given their weak start, but it’s clear that Ted Lasso isn’t interested in the math. Instead, “Midnight Train to Royston” presents such a rosy picture of Richmond’s performance on the pitch to draw as stark a contrast as possible with the tension bubbling to the surface amongst the team’s employees. At the same time as Richmond is on the brink of promotion, Ted’s panic attacks are a day away from becoming tabloid fodder at the hands of a disgruntled Nate, Sam’s on the verge of a career-changing decision on his playing career and his relationship with Rebecca, and Roy and Keeley are facing down the biggest challenge to their relationship to date.
However, to say these tensions fail to register equally would be an understatement. Built as it is around a pivotal turning point and an uncertain future for the team, this is meant to be the climax for the season’s story arcs, and yet half of them remain illegible and struggle to hold up against much scrutiny. The result is an episode that mostly reaffirms my frustrations with the season thus far, clarifying once and for all which stories have worked as slow-burn developments to fuel character dynamics, and which ones just feel like the show was either missing the mark from the beginning or is missing the pieces necessary to make it work in context of the story being told.
It’s no coincidence that the two stories in this episode that work the best are also the ones that have been more consistently developed over the course of the season. Ted and Nate’s respective journeys have always been linked, even when they have never interacted this year outside of group scenes. That separation is used productively here, as Nate starts to be more comfortable voicing his frustration with Ted failing to give him proper credit around his fellow coaches, and he continues to be mostly shrugged off and lightly corrected by Roy and Beard. Unlike Nate, Roy and Beard are comfortable in their role as assistant coaches: they know what their job is, they know how to fulfill their roles, and they have no ambition to achieve something more if it means being forced to take on more authority or step out of their comfort zones. Nate wants more recognition of the work he’s doing, and is tired of Ted’s patronage—symbolized by the suit—effectively relegating him to a lackey in his own mind and the mind of everyone else (or so he believes). And that would seem to be why, at some point offscreen, Nate told Trent Crimm (The Independent) that Ted lied about his bout with food poisoning, and actually had a panic attack.
It’s a smart convergence of two stories that have been operating independent of one another, but have nonetheless always been in conversation. Nate’s storyline has been frustrating in productive ways for the show, as our issues with Nate’s behavior and the absence of any consequences for Nate’s behavior has emphasized Ted’s failure to recognize and take responsibility for what was happening while he was (understandably) distracted dealing with his own problems. Nate’s betrayal of Ted is going to cut deep, yes, but if there’s anything we’ve learned about Ted this season it’s that he sees the well-being of everyone on his team as his own problem to solve. Just look at how his confrontation with Sharon after she tries to ghost on him plays out: at the core of his anger is the idea that they shared a breakthrough, and thus created a bond that links their journeys together. The fact he didn’t realize how his similar bond with Nate had fallen apart will be as central to the pain he’s about to go through as the news cycle Trent Crimm has set in motion. Whatever hit Ted faces to his professional reputation or his coaching future seems like it will pale in comparison to the personal betrayal by someone he considered his friend, and also his personal failure to see the signs that this was on the horizon.
For Nate, meanwhile, this really is his villain arc, but I appreciate the show’s willingness to let his heel turn play out the way it has. While I thought roping him into the Roy and Keeley nonsense—more on that in a bit—was unnecessary, his story remains one of someone who spent so long getting spit on that a brief taste of notoriety has him spitting indiscriminately hoping it will give him the recognition he feels he deserves. It’s a depressing insight into how the culture of toxic masculinity is so pervasive that someone like Nate is destined to replicate the same behavior that tormented him, and unable to imagine success or authority through a lens other than the one he was under for the rest of his life. It echoes a conversation I once had with a TV writer about the culture of writers’ rooms, and how the abusive behavior of showrunners is so easily passed down to other writers as they gain authority over the course of their careers. It’s not a pleasant story to watch, but that’s what makes it work: we want to believe the culture Ted created within the team would be enough to overcome the scars of Nate’s past, but it wasn’t, and now everyone has to reckon with that.
The success of these two stories is built on the fact we’ve seen those scars develop over the course of both the first and second seasons, and as the story takes this turn we have enough information to understand Nate’s decision even if we don’t agree with it. The rest of this episode, though, struggles to accomplish the same, rushing to deliver comparable climaxes for stories that are just plain not working. This has been particularly true for Roy and Keeley’s relationship, which the show has decided to turn into two love triangles at the last minute. After last week’s declaration of love from Jamie, this week sees Keeley end up a victim of Nate’s shotgun masculinity while a miscommunication about Phoebe’s pick-up from school finds Roy hanging classroom decorations with her teacher and notably not mentioning Keeley when she asks if he’s married. As they sit down for a photoshoot for Keeley’s first magazine spread attached to her career and not her looks, these details spill out, and they’re left hanging in the uncertainty of the moment while the camera flashes.
And look, I won’t pretend that I didn’t enjoy the chemistry that Roy has had with Phoebe’s teacher in their couple of scenes from throughout the season, but I truly do not have a grasp on what this accelerated conflict is trying to accomplish. I understand the broad purpose of the story: the season as a whole has been about testing the limits of Ted’s idealistic philosophy, and Roy and Keeley’s relationship is the show’s closest romantic equivalent of that. But the show already did an episode where they took off the rose-colored glasses on their relationship, and there we saw them learn lessons about clear communication that seemingly brought them closer together. At this point, nothing that’s happening to the characters is emerging from the characters themselves: it is the show’s contrivance pulling Jamie’s declaration out of thin air, exaggerating their funeral argument in ways that lacked motivation, and now tossing in Phoebe’s teacher and Nate’s kiss—which Roy is admittedly rightfully unconcerned about—to pile up so many potential vulnerabilities that even the show’s most ideal relationship is on the verge of collapsing.
But rather than being legitimately concerned about their relationship, I’m distracted by the overloading of story by the writers, whose machinations have disconnected the plot from any clear character motivations, and pulled me out of a story at a time when the show wants to be pulling me in. The scene that precedes the revelations, as Roy sits down with Keeley as she worries about the pressure of finally being seen as herself and not just as a body, is such a clear depiction of the core of their supportive relationship, so why couldn’t that have just been the story? I still do not understand what the show is gaining from layering these contrivances on top of this relationship that couldn’t have been achieved by the two characters on their own terms, especially given that Jamie’s point of view is entirely absent here, further reinforcing how arbitrary that revelation was.
It’s probably less surprising, if you’re been reading these reviews consistently, that I feel much the same about Sam and Rebecca’s storyline. In an episode searching for conflicts to complicate relationships, the most bizarre choice is to introduce an entirely new one for Sam and Rebecca instead of using the ones that already existed in their story thus far. I know I’ve complained a lot about the lack of consequences from Sam’s Dubai Air protest, but there was always the possibility it might come back to complicate their lives later on, especially once he and Rebecca became romantically involved. And the messy power dynamics of their relationship seemed like they would be a natural source of later conflict, should more people become aware of their connection. So it’s strange to see the show drop in Sam Richardson playing Edwin Akufoz—an African billionaire who wants to buy Sam to play for a team in Africa he doesn’t even own yet—out of its hat to generate the threat of Sam leaving the team, completely bypassing existing conflicts to tell a far less interesting story about Sam and Rebecca facing rote dilemmas of deciding whether a relationship is important enough to disrupt other parts of their life.
And yes, my core problem with this story is that I do not buy their relationship: they flirted anonymously for at most a couple of months, spent a few weeks in a secret relationship, and now it’s true love? We needed to see more of those bantr messages if they wanted us to understand that depth of connection, and we also needed more time spent in Sam’s point-of-view: it’s weird to show the start of his conversation with his father here, for example, but not show us how the conversation played out before his final moment with Rebecca. It’s just a fundamentally unbalanced storyline, and to rob us of the chance to see Sam debriefing his experience with Edwin is a missed opportunity to start the process of rectifying that.
But even if I imagine a scenario where I was all in on the relationship itself, nothing about how this story plays out makes sense to me. Why do we never see a conversation where the team’s coaches/management have a meeting to discuss the on-field ramifications of losing a star player, and what it might do to team morale? The show chooses to boil the story down to “Rebecca has to decide if she loves Sam enough to tell him not to follow his dream home to Africa,” but there are clear financial and professional obligations central to this story that the show just sweeps under the rug in the process, and it’s a disservice to the world the writers spent two seasons creating. This is especially true when the show goes so far as to draw a parallel between Rebecca’s admission to Ted that she had been trying to sabotage him from season one with her admission that she and Sam were having an affair, as though those were two equally significant moments in the show’s story arcs.
As soon as I realized what the show was suggesting, it galvanized my frustration with how this story has played out, and the disconnect it’s created between me and the show as a whole. Ted’s message in that scene is that nothing he says matters, and that Rebecca just needs to listen to her heart and her gut, but that is profoundly not true. The choice to have all of these characters collectively ignore the power dynamics of this relationship and the potential workplace implications is incredibly confusing, as is Ted’s complete lack of concern for how Sam’s potential exit would impact his team and their future. Charitably, one could argue we’re meant to judge Ted for this, and see it as another sign of his inability to focus his energy in the right place when it comes to balancing the team and his relationship with his coworkers. But the show has failed to present anyone—Higgins, for example—making a more pragmatic case for handling this situation, and the sweeping romanticism of Sam and Rebecca’s relationship has never wavered or really even been questioned to date. And while there is one remaining episode for all of these consequences to come to the surface, I have reached the point where I frankly do not trust the show when it comes to handling the fallout from this and other story elements that have popped up this season.
I realize with one episode remaining in the season it is possible that whatever Rupert was seeding at the funeral will reshape our understanding of this season, and clarify the writers’ intentions for how we’re meant to see its place in the three-season arc that Sudeikis has talked about having planned for the show and its characters. And as is always the case, as the writers are reconvening to break that third season, they’re going to be exploring the stories from a fresh perspective, meaning that criticisms of a given season may be naturally addressed by self-reflection or the injection of new voices. As such, I want to emphasize—because it apparently needs to be said—that my evaluation of this episode or even the season as a whole is not a wholesale dismissal of Ted Lasso, its philosophy, or those who are enjoying the show more than I am right now.
But given how much trust I held in the show at the end of the first season, it’s deeply disappointing to leave “Midnight Train to Royston” feeling so at odds with the show’s priorities, and its understanding of the stories being told. For me, it’s not as simple as a lack of focus on the football elements of the series, or the tonal swings as we dig deeper into the characters’ pain, or the fiction that a Nigerian player who loses a game protesting a sponsor would only benefit from doing so (okay, you got me, that last one is still a sticking point). It’s the intangible feeling that there are dimensions to these stories that are being left behind or elided for reasons that I don’t understand, which is all the more distressing for a show that I was so in tune with last year.
I’ll be more than thrilled if I feel differently after next week’s finale, but I can’t pretend that I’m currently optimistic about that given what transpired here.
Stray observations
- So, it’s incredibly dumb that a week before that a game that would determine the team’s promotion to the Premier League Ted would have the team learning the dance to “Bye Bye Bye.” I know it’s a fun bit, and we love the show having fun bits, but there is a time and a place for them. But then I realized that part of the point of the scene is that Nate spends the whole time seething at how dumb it is, which is both good subtle storytelling but also deeply conflicting since it means I’m relating most to Nate’s perspective, and Nate is being a right git. We could read this as the show being consciously ambiguous, but instead it just reads as wanting to have its cake and eat it too based on the aforementioned lack of trust.
- Note the clear contrast between Nate and Will, who’s swaying his hips to the music as he holds the speaker.
- Sam Richardson doesn’t get a lot of “comedy” to play with Akufo, but I really enjoyed the physicality of his run from the helicopter.
- “Congratulations, you both just met a cool person”—the “middle-aged man is Banksy” joke was a dud, but I thought it was interesting to see Akufo use one of Ted’s own lines (albeit one he used with Trent during his interview) as a way of making Sam feel more comfortable with the idea of leaving Richmond.
- It would appear that Sam has picked up “Full name sung to the tune of ‘Seven Nation Army’” as his chant.
- We spent all that time speculating in the comments that they would end the season with the team in the Championship play-offs to determine the third promotion spot, but the show has entirely erased any of those distinctions, now just saying they’re one win away. Does this mean they’re in the final playoff game? Because if not, the implication that the next game is “do or die” would be misleading, although they’re also not treating it as very “do or die” given Nate’s the only one discussing strategy. Just very strange all around.
- “Your eyebrows aren’t crazy. They’re psychotic”—this Beard line is fine and all, but I preferred the little moment when he checks his own eyebrows as Roy’s ranting about the photo shoot being picky about his.
- “Unnervingly accurate charcoal sketches of breasts”—It’s Roy’s “nice” when he gets to one he likes that really sells his reaction to these.
- I suppose it makes sense to have Ted be too giddy to resist bringing up the Cheers connection with another “Sam and Rebecca,” but seemed a bit on-the-nose after it’s been discussed online for weeks, y’know?
- Speaking of subtle moments with Nate, on rewatching it you can see the moment where he starts to cross wires between his desire to be in charge and whatever energy he was channeling toward Keeley as she talks about how Roy never wants to go shopping with her. We’ve seen him cross these wires before when he asked out the host at the restaurant after securing the window table, too, so it’s a natural extension.
- “Don’t let-ter get away with it, Ted”—as the dust on the season settles, I’m pretty convinced that the “standalone” episode would have been better spent on Higgins, both because he’s delightful and we could have gained some insight into how the business operations of the club and the team’s performance were weighing on him.
- As a general rule, if I don’t know a character’s name going into the penultimate episode of a season, you can’t successfully insert them into a love triangle. (It’s Ms. Bowen, we learn here.)
- I’m looking forward to flipping through the episode once it goes live to see what the Nigerian painting Sam and Edwin are looking at looks like, since it was just a green screen in the screener.
- So, Edwin’s plan—he claims—is to buy Raja Casablanca and turn the Moroccan team into a powerhouse alongside the major European clubs. I was curious, though, if there is any precedent to an individual buying rights to a player before they’ve actually bought the team in question? I was confused by the reasons he would be doing things in that order, and it made me suspicious that he’s lying. Surely Sam shouldn’t make any kind of decision until the ink is dry on the sale of the team, right?
- I enjoyed Roy’s callback to the “Independent Woman” scene from the first season, which might be part of why I reacted so violently to the “Is this the end of Roy and Keeley?!” nonsense right after it.
- Colin Corner: Feels like the chances of them circling back to that random Grindr line are getting pretty thin, but they did close the loop on his Lambo being way too much car for him, so I’m not giving up hope yet.
- “Karma Police” was much too on the nose, but I’ll never be mad at OK Computer needle drops.
- The episode’s title appears to be a play on Sam’s potential departure and the idea that Royston is both an actual location in Georgia and in the U.K.? I think?
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The episode’s title appears to be a play on Sam’s potential departure and the idea that Royston is both an actual location in Georgia and in the U.K.? I think?Sharon tells Ted her train to Royston doesn’t leave until midnight. (Which doesn’t preclude what you said.)
…I certainly galaxy brained too close to the sun on that one.
Yeah. Helps to pay attention to the words, doesn’t it Mr Reviewer?
Were you maybe perplexed that Apple could afford music on a streaming series?
I don’t know who came up with the idea of Nate spitting, writers or actor, but it is so very disgusting. Part of it may be the covid hell we have been in, sure, but spitting is just really gross. I think Nate has only spit three times, but each time it has been repulsive. I hate it It really is just so vile
The consequences of Sam’s protest, Rebecca’s rejection of pressure from Rupert’s crony, and the fraught dynamics of their relationship are all coming together right now, I think, though I can see why you’d be missing them. The billionaire from Ghana is a fake, an actor hired as a catspaw by Rupert and his pal at Cerithium Oil to punish Rebecca and Sam emotionally and to undermine his public profile and her ownership of the team. I suspect that Rupert giving up his stake in the club is a way of avoiding legal ramifications for these shenanigans.As for Roy and Keeley, I think it’s just a matter of them reflecting on how they have options, and since they don’t want to pursue them, what do they want from their relationship? I suspect a marriage proposal in the finale.One thing I genuinely found confusingly out of character: Trent Crimm giving up an anonymous source like that.
Maybe it’s just me, but the scenario you lay out crosses a line of contrivance where I just don’t buy the idea of a real-life, football version of the Red Wedding playing out in such a fashion? The idea that Higgins would have been duped by a fake story, that all this money—the helicopter, the security detail, etc.—would be spent solely as an elaborate plot for revenge…my brain just completely rejects that as a story emerging from what is ultimately a fairly grounded universe story-wise. I have no doubt Rupert has some type of plan, but making him Tywin Lannister would be a bridge too far (Twins-related pun very much intended).
I suspect that Rupert giving Rebecca Prime the shares owned by Rebecca the Second in the funeral episode was to divest himself of a conflict of interest. While Sam Richardson is probably too big of a casting to be a false lead, I think that he and Rupert might be coinvestors in Casablanca, such that Nate and Sam may end up working under Rupert is S3.
Yes, I see that as much more likely a scenario. It’d be pretty difficult to hire an actor to do that deep of a fake (though the jokes that Edwin was constantly surrounding himself with actors would land funnier, I guess) but I can absolutely see Rupert reading the writing on the wall when it comes to Richmond (after all, he, unlike Rebecca, is still in with the “old boys’ club” of owners), selling his shares to avoid any possible comeuppance, and then working with Edwin to buy Raja Morocco and putting the bug in his ear about how best to woo Sam away. He’s definitely not done fucking with Rebecca, but he is probably using other people to carry out his dirty work – just like he used to use Higgins to run interference on Rebecca prior to S1.
I dunno, seeing it laid out like that by grinninfoole, it makes a lot of sense. Is the idea really that outlandish? We saw Rupert engage in similar shenanigans, albeit on a smaller scale, last season, when he (probably) sabotaged Rebecca’s charity event by canceling the appearance by Robbie Williams, then showing up uninvited and taking over the event. The big check he wrote that night demonstrates that he’s willing to invest both time and money into incredibly petty acts of cruelty. (Would the cost of the helicopter and all that be even a minor concern to someone as wealthy as Rupert?) And in this case, his motivations aren’t nearly as petty considering his friendship with the Cerithium Oil guy. Even if it seems a stretch that Rupert would spin this web on his own steam, it’s entirely plausible that the two of them hatched this plot out of shared self-interest.
One thing that makes a touch more story sense if the grand conspiracy is true: the bits about hiring actors for the museum, and the fake restaurant, would then be foreshadowing rather than odd story choices. They do show “how rich” the guy is, I guess, but I can imagine a writer thinking this is clever.
Yes, exactly. Rupert is exactly the sort of person who wants to stick the knife in while he looks you in the eyes.
I don’t think that Edwin Akufoz is an actor, but it wouldn’t be outside the realm of possibility that he’s a pal of Rupert’s (or that his dad was). And Rupert divesting himself of AFC Richmond shares to invest in Raja Casablanca, poaching Sam to get to Rebecca, and then grabbing Nate (and maybe even whispering him into betrayal) to get back at Ted – it is all very in character for him. A mean-spirited game of chess, or a puppet show, or whatever other metaphor you want, but Rupert is a manipulator at his core. I could see the season finale wrap up a lot of narrative threads by going with that as plot.
Why is everyone assuming Rupert is aware of Sam and Rebecca’s relationship? As far as he knows, Sam is just one of the players–and not even the best player–to Rebecca, so I’m not sure how, in Rupert’s mind, targeting Sam is a way of getting to Rebecca. Wouldn’t it make more sense for him to go after Dani or Jamie instead?
I spat this out immediately after watching the episode, and I haven’t watched it again yet, so I’m glad that others see some plausibility here. I have some thoughts on the details of the scam below, but the key potential insight I have is simply that Sam and Rebecca have enemies, rich and powerful people who wish them ill and have both means and motives to actively attack them, and who can wait a few months while they lay their plans, and gather info. I think the show has signaled this in subtle ways, too. Look again at the two scenes of Rebecca and Sam kissing on her doorstep: we’re close, it’s intimate, it fits the tone of the scene, but it could also easily stand in for front-page-of-the-Sun paparazzi snaps. Think about how that would play out for each of them. Rebecca would be the oversexed harpy preying on a nice young man, no wonder she wanted the team so badly she’s treating it like a harem! Sam wouldn’t get too much crap in the UK (though there’d be a strong undercurrent of “jungle fever” hysteria), but I can imagine it destroying his rep in Nigeria, with the interplay of race, sex, age, wealth, and colonialism leading to phone call from his dad about how he’s not angry with Sam, just disappointed.As for the particulars of this episode, the helicopter and security detail are exactly the sort of over-the-top shtick that I could imagine Nate Ford and the Leverage team putting together. How much does it actually cost to rent a chopper for an afternoon, and slap on a sticker with a logo? Add in a couple of black cars and some folks to stand around in suits, and it looks impressive, but how much actually interaction was there?
Then, too, at the museum, Sam asks where the security detail is, and the guy says ‘they’re all actors’—which might be true, but unless Sam makes a scene, how would we be able to tell? And then the “he’s Banksy” moment?After that, we have lunch at a restaurant that’s actually a vacant store front? How expensive would it be to rent a bankrupt restaurant for an afternoon, and then hire actors to sit around and have lunch? So, we have a billionaire who’s openly stating that everything around him is a Potemkin village; how do we know he’s a billionaire? Well, Higgins told us so. How does Higgins know? Internet research. I think we can all agree that it’s unlikely that Higgins knows all about African oil companies, but that it’s also unlikely someone could convincingly create an entirely fake one with an apparent high profile, but they (Rupert et alia) don’t need to go that far. They can take a real company, with a real CEO who just died, and tweak the photos of son who just inherited. It’s all based on truth, and if the guy who shows up looks like the guy in the online pics, who would question it? (Alternatively, the guy could be who he says he is, and is just a west African oil magnate in bed with Rupert and Cerithium.)Ultimately, I think the biggest leap here is a meta-narrative one: we have seen almost nothing of Rupert this season, the Cerithium Oil guy was a voice on the phone in one scene, the billionaire has shown up out of the literal blue… we’re used to stories showing us characters making major plot decisions on camera, or at least signaling to us that something fishy is going on, like Tywin writing mysterious letters. If I’m right, Ted Lasso has decided to focus on the characters we care about and blindside us right alongside them when the evil plan unfolds. All of these people are basically good hearted, and the idea plotting against someone is just not something that occurs to them. (Rebecca last season was an exception, and she sucked at it.) When the empire strikes back, it’s a crushing surprise.
Yeah, my first thought after the initial phone call was: Rupert is behind this.
I have to push back on the notion that Sam wouldn’t get much blowback. The age gap combined with the jungle fever angle would create a hurricane of excrement being blown his way. Spoiled “rich/empowered” kid from west Africa taking advantage of a recently divorced “old” woman? The Daily Mail would be implying elder abuse.
I shan’t argue with the idea that UK media would take a viciously racist and misogynist take on such a story, and I’m sure it would upset Sam greatly. I just think he would care about negative reactions in Nigeria than in Britain.
After that, we have lunch at a restaurant that’s actually a vacant store front? How expensive would it be to rent a bankrupt restaurant for an afternoon, and then hire actors to sit around and have lunch?There’s more to it than just the cost of putting on the production, though. Rupert is.. let’s say, very Tory English. If it were all his plan why would it need to involve a pan-African movement? Why would he bother to get such specificity of the courses prepared in a Nigerian way?
I can sorta believe he could have reasons to be operating clandestinely, but his idea of a can’t-refuse offer is going to be more on the classic European lines of vintage wine and expensive whiskeys, and private clubs and yachts and whatnot.Actually, I think Okofu is the payoff of the Cerithium Oil plotline, just that everyone is looking for the fallout, for negative consequences, and the show is instead focusing on how this opportunity is actually Sam’s reward.
You may well be right, and the little bit of Rupert we have seen might well be a red herring. It would be an unexpected choice, but the show has made several of those already, so…(BTW, I agree that Rupert might not have the specific insight to target Sam so precisely, but he doesn’t need to. Like all upper-class monsters, he has people for that.)
It also strains credulity that someone could just make up a billionaire well enough to trick everyone involved. You and I might be duped for the space of a meeting in a conference room but Google exists. Also, rich people tend to know lots of other rich people, so it seems likely Rebecca would at minimum know a guy that knows him(only two premier league team owners aren’t billionaires so I assume she is, or nearly is).
They don’t necessarily have to invent him from whole cloth. Suppose there’s a real Akufo company in Ghana, whose owner really did just die. How many pictures of his son are there out there? Maybe not that many. So, they just alter the photos of the top hits on google so they instead show the actor you’ve hired, and everything will check out for a cursory search.
It just seems like a bit too much of a cartoon villain plot. I admit it could be a thing but I hope it isn’t.
It is cartoonishly evil, but Rupert has been described as a gaslighting SOB, so a scam like this is in character.
To be fair to the red wedding esque plot, this show is operating essentially a parallel reality where a footballers act of protest results not only in no blacklash to him, an oil company pulling out operations in an oil rich country, a team is somehow on the verge of promotion despite dropping 20? odd points in a championship season with all those draws, and a canadian is starting gk for a premier league team.
I agree with you. That is too outlandish. I think Rupert turned Nate’s head though and thats what the whispering to him at the funeral was about. Rupert is definitely involved in all this fuckery!
i actually think we’ve seen trent grow fond of/respect Ted over the course of the 2 seasons–and i could see him sort of disrespecting the way he got the source (ie Nate’s betrayal) enough to give ted a head’s up.
One thing I genuinely found confusingly out of character: Trent Crimm giving up an anonymous source like that.Well, the implication is that Nate’s not being named as the source in the piece, so it’s also unethical. But also: it’s fucking nonsense. That Tottenham match would’ve been right around St. Paddy’s Day, and this episode takes place right around the start of May. It’s not news, and since I’m not sure how Nate would substantiate it, it’s basically just old gossip at this point.What’s frustrating about it is that what you’d expect in the real world is this: Nate would get fired first and foremost (or demoted/exiled to whatever extent his contract allowed under UK labor laws), and even if such a story ran, the outcome would run from nobody would care to Ted doing some sort of emotional profile advocating therapy/wellness. I have genuinely no idea where they’re going with this.
I gesture at this in the review, but I agree that this news cycle is less of an issue for Ted professionally than it is personally. It would be super easy to resolve in much the manner you suggest: he struggles with mental health, he should have been more open, and he wants to take this opportunity to express that everyone (especially men) should be willing to be vulnerable.
In particular, there’s already a general understanding that football managers are at high risk for mental health problems, and the public is generally supportive of them in this regard. This year is the ten-year anniversary of the suicide of Gary Speed, the Wales manager, which provoked an intense outpouring of grief throughout the game and the wider public, and a lot of talk about these issues. More generally, mental health in football (of managers and players) has become one of the ‘fashionable’ causes that it’s expected managers will talk about – I don’t know whether much is actually done about it behind the scenes, but it’s an issue everyone is eager to claim to be on the right side of. A manager like Ted ‘coming out’ with mental health problems would almost certainly be warmly embraced by the media, by (most) other managers, by their players, and largely by fans.It would, of course, lead to some unpleasant trolling from a small number on social media, and possibly a few ‘old school’ football types through grumpy interviews… but given Ted’s nationality, behaviour and performance at the club, he’s presumably all the abuse already anyway; I doubt this story would actually make things worse, beyond, I guess, making some of the barbs hit a little closer to home.
Ted should have had the presence of mind to immediately write that as his response in the text. Super easy to handle this “controversy” in the press.
My favorite thing in all of this is the hullabaloo they’ve made about the coach leaving the pitch, like it’s the biggest deal in the history of UK football.
Is it possible this billionaire could be executing a hostile takeover of Richmond and attempting to get rid of Ted and installing Nate as the coach with Rupert as a silent investor? He gave up his shares so that he himself is not taken over. Rupert and Nate conspired to leak Ted’s panic attack to gain public pressure to force Ted out.There are probably some holes in this theory, namely why would the billionaire spend all this team courting Sam if he was able to purchase the club. Probably other holes too I guess. Maybe Rupert and the billionaire are purchasing another EPL team, and the billionaire is masking this by saying he’s buying a Moroccan club because he wants to bond with Sam and knows Sam would never leave for another English side.
Stupid question from my lack of attention: do we know that Nate even knows exactly what happened with Ted’s panic attack? My memory is that Ted left the stadium altogether and then everyone sort of agreed to not to press it.
In “Man City” just before the match Ted tells the Diamond Dogs about the panic attack, after which they all make their own confessions (Higgins messed up the transfer window on a player, Beard coached a game on ‘shrooms, etc)
Ted admitted it to all the coaches a few episodes ago. Then they each took turns “admitting” something.
I’m not sure it matters that much, but I’d guess he got it either from Beard the day of, or that Ted addressed it with the coaching staff before he met with the press. There’s no obvious reason at the time that they’d hide it from Nate (or Roy, but it’s easier to imagine him not asking).
Yes, Ted told Nate, Beard, Roy, and Higgins just before the Man City rout.
And do we know that he deliberately told Trent Crimm (of The Independent) that Ted had a panic attack, or was it just a slip of the tongue that he regretted, or perhaps wasn’t even aware of (like if alcohol was involved)?
I too wonder, what exactly is supposed to be the public’s reaction from this ‘scandelous’ story? They aren’t going to shame Ted. And if it calls into question his ability to coach the team… Isn’t that what they’ve been asking since he took over anyway?So that’s the professional side. On the personal side, I have…the exact same questions? His team and friends aren’t going to shame him. If anything, they’ll be super understanding and supportive- like they always are. And if Ted somehow has a problem with this, it will speak to the issue I’ve had with his characterization for this whole therapy storyline. (In short, I think it was an interesting idea on paper, but in practice, they strayed him too out of character imo, fundementally changing how the show operated- as evidenced by how Ted seems less smart, and hasn’t really been able to help anyone all season; a stark contrast from their first year) I am, however excited for the potential confrontation between Ted and Nate. Maybe I’m in the minority, but I have loved Nate’s storyline. Tbt I’m little surprised to see Myles praise it, because there’s been a lot of name-calling, and the general impression that’s its been a negative this year. I think it’s been nuanced, and complicated, and more authentic to real human behavior than anything else the show has been doing with the rest of the cast.
They don’t know why he had the panic attack, so anyone would assume it was because of the game itself, which makes it look like he doesn’t know what he’s doing and can’t handle the pressure. They’d definitely shame him. They’ve assumed worse for less, and mental health issues still carry plenty of stigma.
It’s not news, and since I’m not sure how Nate would substantiate it, it’s basically just old gossip at this point.Isn’t that pretty much the definition of the British press?
Do you think Rupert would go through all that trouble and expense to punish someone? Billionaires usually don’t become billionaires by allows emotion to drive their decision making. Rupert is always shown to be the one that shows no residual emotion over his marriage to Rebecca.Maybe Rupert is the one purchasing the club in Morocco, but if thats the case and Sam leaves that essentially writes Sam, Rupert and potentially Nate off the show as there is little reason an English team would be playing a team from Morocco. Maybe they want to write some characters off the show to give some more airtime to others as its quite an ensemble at this point. But given how much focus has been on developing Nate and Sam I’m not sure if that’s what they are doing.
Rupert is emotionally abusive. He went though the trouble of undermining his fundraiser so he could show up and be the hero to hurt Rebecca. He went to her office just to tell her his much younger girlfriend was pregnant when Rebecca wanted kids and he’d refused. Rebecca’s attempt at games in s1 are clearly the kind of games he plays, they’re certainly not her typical MO. Of *course* he’d do this.
> Billionaires usually don’t become billionaires by allows emotion to drive their decision making.Maybe a billionaire who makes their fortune doesn’t allow emotion to drive them…. but what if someone who is a billionaire (or maybe close to it) got his money from his billionaire father? What if he was already an emotional and psychological mess? Like… say Donald Trump? Even Elon Musk is somewhat in this category too.
Look, even the “catspaw” said that he was breaking up his father’s empire (ie he was inheriting money) so grinninfoole’s “Ted Wedding” theory makes sense to me. You can be a psychopath and still be a billionaire.
Sure, that whole bizarre situation with Elon Musk calling the cave diver “pedo guy” for what appears to be totally petty reasons…and which reminds me, Rupert has even more reason to pull some crazy revenge plot against Richmond, given that he was humiliated by Ted over the dart game last season.
Most billionaires are either ruthless monsters or the children of ruthless monsters, and what better, more satisfying way is there to spend one’s money than to hurt people one dislikes?
Spot on with all takes.
I’m calling this gutpunch theory the Ted Wedding.
“The billionaire from Ghana is a fake, an actor hired as a catspaw by Rupert and his pal at Cerithium Oil to punish Rebecca and Sam emotionally and to undermine his public profile and her ownership of the team.” This seems…implausible. Straight up inventing a billionaire would actually be pretty difficult—did Rupert also gin up some fake google search hits, articles, profiles, etc., or are we assuming that Higgins just read the one thing and no one else independently checked up on the guy? And I’m not certain what the motivation would be here, anyway. Rupert (presumably) isn’t aware of Sam and Rebecca’s romantic relationship or the emotional turmoil separating them might cause, so the hypothetical plan here is to offer Sam a fake position on a team and then I guess rescind it, so that…Sam might feel kind of bad? I don’t really see how anyone is getting publicly embarrassed here or how that would undermine Rebecca’s position. And if Rupert were aware of the Sam and Rebecca romance, wouldn’t it be a hell of lot simpler and more damaging to just leak their relationship to the press?Now, I definitely think Rupert is up to something: most likely he’s buying another team—explaining why he gave away his remaining stake with Richmond—and stealing away Nate and possibly a few other key players. But I don’t see how he could be connected to the Sam drama.
“Is this guy really a billionaire? He’s not on the Forbes list or anything.”“Oh, you wouldn’t have heard of him. He’s from Africa.”
Yes on Trent Crimm. Giving up a source is a truly serious offense in journalism and doing so would be reputation destroying. It is so unrealistic that Trent would tell Ted. It would have been much better for Ted, Beard, and Roy to put it together that Nate had betrayed the coaching staff and team.
That’s what I thought. Unless there’s some seriously convoluted or all-encompassing conspiracy against Ted spoofing these text messages, it seems majorly out of character for Trent Crimm, and dumb to do in medium that leaves evidence.
Agree, “Trent Crimm, The Independent” was always a shorthand for how seriously he took himself as a journalist (even though it was ‘just’ sports journalism). He’s exactly the sort that would consider protecting anonymous sources as sancrosanct and not worth violating for continued access. (If Nate wasn’t promised anonymity that might be a different story, but the preview headline specifically calls him an anonymous source.)
I actually found the stories in this episode to work quite well, at least in isolation. Because even in re-watching season two, there are a lot of things that aren’t unmotivated or unfounded, but they are often missing connective tissue. Yet, I was still swept up in each character thread as it unfolded, rather than what it had to do with the whole. I do think the finale will be—as either another commenter, or Redditor put it—end à la The Empire Strikes Back. Richmond will find themselves back in the premier league, but the team will be in shambles. And that makes sense, as Ted has more or less spent the season on Dagobah with Dr. SMF. At this point, can anything really compensate for, or undo the messiness of the season? Probably not. But I’m also not as bothered by it. I also think there’s a good chance it’ll be about being able to let go and accept an ending with (varying degrees of) grace.Anyway, I like this episode quite a bit. Definitely more of a B+/A- for me.
The ESB sentiment is spot-on. I think it’s a messier season, but it’s been making a lot of good decisions along the way to ensure that it’s engaging and impactful. It’s a darker and perhaps less consistent season, but like you it’s been engaging for me and swept me in.
On the one hand, I basically agree that where the season is heading is not the problem here, and there’s no question that the necessities of sitting down and breaking down every storyline is amplifying my frustrations with the messiness in a way it wouldn’t for an average viewer. Occupational hazard.But on the other hand, I struggle to accept the “Empire Strikes Back Defense” of the season at face value given how contrived so much of the show has become down the stretch. I have no objections to the writers approaching the larger goals of the season through this lens, and fully agree that it could set up a very effective third season, but if anything it just underlines the sense that things are happening less because they’re motivated by character and more because the analogue demands it.
I dunno. Maybe it’s my faith in Ted Lasso or I just don’t want it to have the wheels come off after a stellar first season like so many other great shows have done in the past. But I think (hope) that in the future – either after this season or maybe even after the series ends – we’ll be able to look back on S2 and enjoy it way more than we are enjoying it in the moment. I’m hoping the writers and their show bible are capable of that sort of fishing expedition.
The Banksy joke was great.
The Casablanca situation seems way too close to a real life corruption scandal in Premier League football to be a coincidence, so I suspect that Sam is getting set up.Human suet pudding ‘Big’ Sam Allardyce got sacked as England manager just two months into the job when he was caught on secret camera explaining to an investor how to get around FIFA financial rules. The investor was an undercover reporter posing as part of a sting.The rule he was trying to break was the ‘third party ownership’ rule, which bans investors without a controlling interest in a team from buying players and trading them like stocks independent of their actual value to the club.Is that not basically what the Casablanca guy wants to do, albeit with a yarn about wanting to have him play in Africa?
As I said in the review, the whole things makes me suspicious, so I’m not shocked to learn there’s an actual historical analogue to this. But in this case, I’m bereft because it means that Higgins is extremely terrible at his job for not bringing up this very concern, and I hate that for him (and the show).
“I hate that for him (and the show).”
Yes, we know you hate the show. We know you hate that you’re so baffled by hOw Do AppLE aFFroD moozIk, we know you don’t like the characters and we know you NEED this show to be about the politics of football and the mechanics of running a team rather than being a show about people.
For a little more background: this became an issue in the UK in 2006, when West Ham, a team struggling with relegation, somehow signed two of the world’s best players (Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano); it emerged that both players belonged to a guy (Kia Joorabchian) who had assembled a stable of dozens of players he personally controlled. As a result, it was banned in the UK, and then subsequently banned by FIFA. It’s also been condemned by the EU, though I’m not sure if it’s actually illegal anywhere.[it operates as a form of human trafficking, essentially: young South American and African players are bought by wealthy owners who import them to Europe. The players have a comfortable life, but they have no control over their career path, and a huge amount of their potential wealth is siphoned off by their owners.]I don’t know if this would actually break the TPO rules, if Sam’s not entering into a long-term contract but only an option on a specific transfer. But it would certainly be an issue to consider. There are also issues here around ‘tapping up’ (trying to persuade a player to join your team) – you can’t ambush people with this, you have to follow a specific procedure and go through their existing club. [when you hear about a player being ‘sold’, what the buying club is actually buying is the freedom to TALK to the player about joining them. Obviously informally the player will be kept in the loop, and if they don’t want to move to the inquiring club their owner will shut it down and not waste everybody’s time. But in theory, you can’t even talk to the player until you’ve arranged a fee with their existing club. I don’t know the exact rules and I’m sure they’re often bent but, again, if a billionaire is coming to talk to the player personally to persuade them to join them, that’s at least going to be an issue that someone’s going to have to be worrying about]More generally, this is a problem I have with the show: it portrays Richmond as some sort of ramshackle local club with about five employees who make all their decisions on the fly. In reality, even a Championship team is a big deal: a team like Norwich (who were promoted this year, so a similar bracket to Richmond) has around 300 full-time staff and an annual turnover of £30m, operating in a highly-regulated sector (they have to follow Championship rules, EFL rules, FA rules, EPL rules (or at least get ready to follow them if they want to be promoted), UEFA rules, FIFA rules, UK rules and EU rules).
Yeah there has to be some sneaky ulterior motive as the plan makes no sense. Under the current system, buying a team like Raja Casablanca and turning them into Man City or PSG is practically impossible.European teams attract billions of dollars in sales/tv rights etc and all the best players because they all play in relatively competitive, popular domestic leagues with the Champions League at the pinnacle. Raja Casablanca aren’t eligible to play in Europe and the lack of local domestic competition that’s on a par with a billion dollar club would make it a one-horse race that’s unattractive to both fans and players. Noones’ going to win a ballon d’or or get their hands on a World Cup if they’re wasting away playing lower-level football in the North African desert against players on a fraction of the wages*of course, if the proposed NFL-style European Super League breakaway had gone ahead, I could see them quickly expanding beyond continental boundaries making it a bit more feasible but thankfully that idiotic idea has been kicked to the kerb for now
I mean, Israel is part of UEFA and their teams play in European competitions, so I bet with enough money the Moroccans could fix that…But yeah, it seems like a scam, I guess the question is whether it’s a real scam or a fake scam concocted to burn Richmond. A genuine attempt to subvert FIFA’s rules or a sting operation.
Israel are part of UEFA because the Arab nations simply refused to play them. They also played under the Oceanic federation for a brief period.
The plan makes no sense, but one of the quirks of the Ted Lasso world is that we have no idea how much or how little sense it should make. It’s weird for Sam not to have an agent handling this sort of thing, and it’s weird for the show not to mention Sam’s relationship with the Nigerian national team/youth system, since that’d be a big factor in that kind of players’ career planning, and at Sam’s age and talent level, you’d expect him to be either capped at the senior level or specifically working toward that.
But then this is also a show where the owner of a club scheduled a face-to-face meeting with an international businessman and let him land his helicopter on their training pitch without even knowing what the purpose of the meeting was. Verisimilitude isn’t what they’re going for, so who knows?
As someone deeply broken when it comes to expectations of verisimilitude, my general rule on this is that it’s fine not to be entirely realistic as long as the streamlining of reality makes the story more effective.
And so while I think the national team/youth system might be a bit of a burden to storytelling, giving Sam an agent seems like a layer of verisimilitude that could easily fit into the story as it stands given that we literally saw Jamie with his agent at the beginning of the season, and thus we know agents exist in the show’s universe.
A guy like Sam, whose dad knows about Dubai air and environmental degradation —- he would have at least 7 relatives telling him this “billionaire” does not have a football team and not to trust him. Like letting verisimilitude slide is one thing, but making west Africans look ignorant about something they have experience with and tend to be savvy about: that is something else and a bit gross.
For me (as I think for burnitbreh?) it’s that it’s important to have confidence in what’s intentional and what isn’t.When something weird happens in a TV show, one of three things has happened:a) it’s meant to be weird, they know it’s weird. It being weird is significant. Pay attention people, why is this weird thing happening? This is something you should keep an eye on, all the pieces matter!b) we all know it’s weird, but we’re meant to pretend it isn’t. Don’t worry folks, move along, nothing to see here. We’ve had to blur the lines a little here to streamline things, or make them more understandable. We do know what we’re doing, but let’s just agree not to think too hard about this bit, OK?c) the writers messed up. They didn’t do their research (or sometimes their rational thinking), and as a result they made things weird accidentally. There’s no good reason for this, neither story-internally (it’ll make sense later on!) nor story-externally (we had to cheat here, sorry, but it’s worth it for what it let us do elsewhere), so it’s a problem, and it can be annoying, but we just have to move on and hope they do better next time. (the worst outcome is when the writers think something is an a) issue, when really it’s c) – then they expect us to use reason and knowledge to engage with it, when we can’t, because it’s fundamentally wrong).
The best shows aren’t necessarily the ones that make sure it’s always a), or even those that always avoid c). They’re the ones that are able to communicate tacitly to the audience in a way that always makes it CLEAR whether it’s a), or b), or c) going on. They make clear which bits we should be theorising about, caring about, remembering, and which bits are best glossed over as necessary shortcuts. And when something is a shortcut, they persuade us that at least it’s intentional.The problem with this show this season is that on a bunch of issues I don’t think it’s clear in advance which things are a) issues, which are b) issues, and which are c) issues. It’s not clear when something should be engaged with and when it shouldn’t, and when I can’t take something seriously I don’t trust that it’s at least intentional. So, for example, your bugbear about the protest: you recognised it was weird, and assumed it was an a) issue (what’s going to happen as a result of this weird thing!?), when actually it was probably a b) issue. And now with this shady billionaire, we don’t know if it’s an a) issue (hey guys, what’s up with this shady billionaire!?), or a b) issue (OK guys we know it doesn’t really work like this but bear with us, OK?) or a c) issue (wait, you mean this ISN’T how it works?) – and that makes it really hard to engage with any of it…
Agreed, effectiveness is the point. My main issue with the unrealities of the show is that they seem to serve no purpose. It’s less about subverting expectations and more just passively confounding them.I’m guessing the transfer offer is how the show has been planning on addressing whatever happened with the Ceritheum Oil fallout, but it’s been a choice not to talk about it either directly or in terms of anything about Sam’s professional ambitions since then, especially given how much time the show has spent on him. As writing goes, I don’t like it.The Nate subplot makes considerably less sense. Nate’s ambition is totally normal. If he wants to be a manager, the usual path would be that he’d need to leave Richmond to move up the ladder. And while Ted’s certainly readable as not
incredibly attentive, every time we’ve seen him interact with Nate, he’s
been supportive. So why is Nate now so resentful toward Ted, and who of Beard, Roy and Trent Crimm does he think is going to take his side in this? What is the story they’re even trying to tell here? I half worry that the resolution is that Ted’s going to talk to Nate about how resistant he was to seeing Sharon and how much it ended up helping him, but is that an effective way to do it?
For a real-life example: clubs in the middle east, china, and to a lesser extent the US do offer players insane wages to get them to join. Middle Eastern clubs in particular try to assemble galactico squads. And it works, players do go there……when they’re old and have lost hope. Nobody goes to these clubs when they still have a future, because why would you? Players want to win the Champion’s League. And they want to win the World Cup, which you do by getting picked for your country, which you do by being noticed, which you do by playing in the Champion’s League. And they’d quite like to win a major domestic league – England, Spain, maybe Germany – and possibly the FA Cup. If you’re south american, you may want to win the copa libertadores at some point as well, but that’s usually way down the list. And if you grew up supporting a local club, you may fancy winning the national league with your home club – but again, that’s what you do when you’re a legendary multimillionaire who’s looking for a way to spend your last couple of years in the game. Nobody’s going to give up a shot at the Premier League in exchange for a shot at winning the Moroccan, Emirati, Chinese or American leagues…[plus, I’m not sure that ‘play in Morocco!’ is really going to be the same sort of draw for Sam as ‘play in Nigeria!’ or even ‘play in Ghana!’ might be. Africa’s a big and diverse place, and christian black west africans don’t necessarily have a close fraternal feeling for muslim arab north africans…]
Kinja’s general awfulness only posted your first paragraph in my notifications which was a bit triggering. Glad I scrolled through the hundreds of comments to find the rest of it. I remember growing up and reading about the New York Cosmos who with the likes of Pele, Carlos Alberto and Franz Beckenbauer in the ranks, gave young me the impression they were some kind of invincible super-team when in reality they were just a glamourous knackers yard. Also agree on the Morocco conundrum. As a North African country it’s more Arabic than what we could consider to be ‘African’ and I’m not sure it would have the same appeal to the likes of Sam. That said, in a hypothetical (and non-Ted Lasso) world where the European Super League had gone ahead, I reckon within the first few years you would have a push for expansion and some teams (or franchises as they’d probably be known by then) would be moving continents in search of bigger fan-bases and I reckon Casablanca might be a viable candidate. A team in the Muslim North stacked with a lot of largely Christian, West African players (and presumably Mo Salah) would be a good showcase for African unity and it’s closer to Madrid and Barcelona than Manchester is.
Heh, yes, sorry, dramatic pauses don’t work well with Kinja STOP I think we’ll have to start adding telegraph codes to our messages STOP you’re also right about the superleague in theory though I think it would take a while before they were ready to expand to Africa STOP plus it is at least true that Morocco has very close ties to the EU (negotiating free market for goods and services) so it would make more sense than for, say, an Egyptian team END MESSAGE.
Yes, Casablanca’s proximity to Europe and connectedness (Casablanca has more direct routes than any airport in Africa), including to West AFrica make it a solid strategic choice for the kind of club that would try to break into Super League even though, symbolically, Morocco may not shout ‘One Africa.’ Another possible point in its favor (recruitment-wise) is that apart from Kaiser Chiefs, the recent African Cup finalists all hail from N. Africa (Al Ahly, Zamalek, Espérance, Wydad).On the other hand, this kind of makes the relationship drama moot, no?. Sam, just go to Casablanca and become the global figurehead for African soccer! Your home matches are only a 3 hour first-class flight away from London. Rebecca, you live in decent proximity to Heathrow and you’re at the very least a multi-millionaire, so while normal Twickenham residents might be annoyed that the Express goes all the way to Picadilly first, you’ve probably got a private car picking you up. (Plus you are no longer having an affair with an employee!!)
“so I suspect that Sam is getting set up.”
Because the show has always been about the politics of football.
What is bad about Roy and Keeley’s relationship? What aspect of it isn’t working? The show has never even tried to answer these questions.All we’ve seen is that they occasionally have arguments that they resolve with amicable maturity, and they don’t share all of each others’ interests. That describes literally every happy couple.They’re asking the audience to be invested in a story without bothering to say what the conflict is. It’s just so bizarre.
I agree. All of a sudden, they realize that there are other people that they might be attracted to, but surely they can talk through that like anything else.
Bizarre is the right word for it. As you say, the show’s previous approach to conflict in their relationship was fairly organic: a change (Roy working with Keeley) caused small tensions that forced them to reevaluate, and once they worked to communicate about it they found the mature resolution.But now, the show is almost in panic mode, as though there can’t be meaningful conflict in a relationship unless there’s all these knee-jerk external pressure points. It can’t help but register as a huge storytelling regression.
It annoys because I enjoyed how they avoided or subverted the commons sitcom and soap operatic tropes in Season 1. And now it feels like they’re throwing them at random into the story for no good reason.
I think the best explanation I’ve heard— in these comments, indeed— is that it’s not so much about driving a wedge between them as it is making them realize that practically speaking they’re committed to one another and that they have to decide whether they’re okay with that and with closing off other options. (I think they will be.)i.e. for Keeley it’s not “Do I still have feelings for Jamie?” so much as it is “Am I going to make this thing with Roy permanent or do I want to leave other options, which I have, open?” But I think her position on the matter was pretty well summed-up in her line in season 1 before she started dating Roy— “I was 19 and dating 23-year-old soccer players; now I’m 30 and still dating 23-year-old soccer players.” She wanted a more mature, adult relationship; now she has to decide if she is ready to make a more lasting commitment to this adult relationship.
I agree entirely. The funeral declaration from Jamie made a certain amount of sense. He’s getting to understand himself better, he always valued Keeley, at least enough that he wanted her advice after breaking up, and he has an established dislike of her and Roy’s relationship, although whether it’s the, together or simply Roy was never clear to me. Keeley’s momentary conflict or shock when told made sense too. I can totally buy her having a fleeting moment of nostalgia for a past relationship. But the look she gave Roy afterwards seemed to close the door on that, so I’m a little confused that it’s now A Thing. I’m hoping this is a feint and we see them level up, instead.
I always got the sense Jamie had big feelings for Keeley and just hadn’t realized it, and the way she says hello to him when they cross paths make me think she has fondness for him (though not enough to choose him over Roy, for sure). Nothing about the Jamie side of this felt out of nowhere to me.
I so wish the show had done more with Jamie’s arc this season because it’s clear he’s working to understand himself more and to grow emotionally. That really could have let to a more organic moment where he declares that he loves Keely, but goes on to realize that maybe he’s not in love with her so much as he’s finally ready to be good for somebody. Jamie is such an interesting character that the show has done fuck-all with outside of that one stellar scene in the locker room with his dad. It’s a shame, really.
I hope so too. I want Roy to proposed to Keeley. I love them together and pretending they don’t work all the sudden wouldn’t make sense given what we have seen.
I hate it when I can see the writers pulling the strings so clearly, and that’s what’s happened with these last couple episodes re: Roy and Keeley. It’s particularly annoying because they were doing so well writing the characters up until now. It’s like how shows like Brooklyn 99 will blow up their premise at the end of each season just to have some drama to bring people back.
100% this. My wife is very much not the person I thought I would marry, yet I’m exponentially happier with her than anyone else I ever dated. We’re distinct individuals that don’t share every interest, but she supports me in mine and mine in hers, and we are committed to the relationship and work at it when there are bumps.
Something I’ve liked about Keeley and Roy is how they seem to have that real sort of relationship, as you said. It makes contrived drama between them all the more frustrating because they’ve shown to be pretty solid together.
I knew that teacher was going to come back. She lingered a bit too long in a scene when she first appeared, and I wondered if it would actually be the last we saw of her.
In my mind, the conflict between Roy and Keely is that their relationship has gotten too good and, as a result, too boring. Their boredom with each other is why they’re thinking about the other options that have appeared.
Writers can’t let a single moment pass without a pop culture reference.
And the bit about the teacher knowing when to take the paintings away from the kids was lifted straight out of ‘Six Degrees of Separation’.
I’ll just say this, as theres enough comments talking about the finer details of the episode and a full review:I really loved one of the first scenes in this episode where Sam walked out of the Richmond building after the game just like you would walk out of any work space. Well, before the plague, that is. Although having to go back to the office now… ya know…
Because that’s what it is at the end of the day, right? It’s a job. A very specific and taxing job. Not doing a billion excel tables or shooting people or bringing new people into this world or mowing the grass. It. Is. Still. Just. A. Job. Sure, sports and other general entertainment businesses have made their “superstars” just that. If you think about it it is such a weird concept, hey? Sometimes rightfully so. But I would also high five an engineer after figuring out how to make life better for humanity, even if they have to go back to their shitty condo and eat microwave meals. Always.If you go in to the news room to do the weather or whatever, you are, as a matter of fact, just going to work. Sure, going to work in an abattoir at minimum wage is very different from going to work as a footballer in your Tesla (I was going to go with Maserati or some supercar but Sam is just better than that!), but there was just something that really stuck with me with that clip – walking out of your building after a hard slog and saying good night to people. Some weird pseudo-humanising thing… There’s been a few of those kind of details in this show and it’s absolutely lovely. “Humanising” is the key word here, me thinks. Anyways. End rant.No lovely old ladies take sneaky selfies when I walk out of the office but hey, can’t have everything!
Good scene, and also a strong argument for using Episode 9 to build a collection of similarly humanizing moments for the rest of the team, as long as my brain continues to imagine hypothetical choices on how to deal with Apple’s late episode insertions.
Sam is not anyone walking out of any job, for crissakes. Yes, he is not (yet) a unalloyed superstar with all the money, etc that goes with it..still, the odds of being a star athlete, let alone one of his origin playing where is now, him being are frickin astronomical.
The only episodes I’ve really liked this season are the Christmas episode and last week’s. I’m predisposed to like Christmas togetherness / found family type stuff, and last week’s had some good emotional content. This week I liked the Ted & Sharon storyline and the Nate storyline, but yeah the other ones fell flat. I dunno, I hope this show can get back to being really good next season like I felt like it was in the first season. And maybe they can pull off a good ending for the season next ep, but I’m not invested enough in Rebecca/Sam to care about that ending (other than wondering just wtf the writers are up to).
Ted – “You spelled favorite wrong.” 😂
Ted’s reading of Sharon’s note had me in tears, I thought that was really powerful from Sudeikis. I also wonder if we will have an payoff on the suggestion of Sharon’s possible drinking problem. I love your reviews, Myles, but I’m glad I don’t get as bothered as you by some of these closing arcs. I think for me, I’m so much enjoying the Ted/Nate storyline finally converging, the Roy/Kelley stuff doesn’t bother me so much. That, and Goldstein and Temple sold the hell out of that final scene.
Based on Sharon casually enjoying a beer at the bar, I don’t think the show intended for the wine bottles to suggest alcoholism?And honestly, I hope people understand that I think it’s good if people are less frustrated with the show? While I acknowledge there’s a natural instinct to want validation for feeling a certain way about something, I present this case primarily as an honest reflection of my reaction to what’s unfolding with the goal of generating dialogue. “That’s bothering me less” is both understandable and healthier.
Yeah, I took the bottles at her condo as meant more to illustrate that she hadn’t bothered to clean or decorate or socialize or anything since arriving, not so much that she’s a “problem drinker” necessarily.
Same, I understood it just to be a slight peeling back the professional façade to show (us, but also mostly Ted) that there’s a real person under there.
It honestly surprises me how much certain fans of a show ostensibly about positivity and kindness lash out at a reviewer not giving out perfect scores to the show.
We’ve veered so far into “Let People Enjoy Things” territory that we now require course correcting toward “Let People Not Enjoy Things” or even just “Let People Enjoy Things, But to a Lesser Extent and/or in Possibly Different Ways than You Enjoy Things.”
Yeah, I’ve loved this season, but I appreciate your reviews. I agree with you about Sam/Rebecca, dropping the Dubai Air thread, and keeping the team’s progress so completely offscreen, and whatever this episode was trying to do with Roy and Keeley; I just don’t see them to be quite as problematic, especially since I love everything else.
I’ve generally been more positive on the season, although you’ve given me a lot to think about with regard to some of the more rushed plots and why they haven’t worked as well (which is something I’ve noticed, too). Maybe I’m more positive because the good moments and stories are so good. Or maybe it’s because season 1 was so perfectly paced that even a downgrade from that is still a good show.
Like I say, I love your reviews regardless of whether I’m enjoying this season more than you or not. I think you’re a fantastic critic and cop heat from some people who may experience the show differently. In regards to this show’s relationship with alcohol, I’m not yet sure it knows what it’s doing. A vast majority of these characters appear to be problematic drinkers, and that scene at Sharon’s was a red flag to me that she had a drinking problem. But yeah, like you say, the casualness of her having a pint at the pub didn’t play like that so it sent mixed signals. I think it would be rewarding for the show to delve further into its characters relationship with alcohol because alcohol is so much intertwined with a lot of the mental health themes it’s currently digging into.
“You spelled ‘favo[u]rite’ wrong.”
That slipped in there so perfectly I think it was my favo(u)rite line of the night.
That made me laugh.
I really like that we don’t hear what was in it except for one word (and no context for that word) and her saying she addressed all his feelings. It made his selling of the moment that much more powerful.
It feels to me like the show is building to Ted and Sharon both dealing with their drinking problems. Ted is definitely a problem drinker, to the point that Beard knew to have multiple beers waiting for Ted after Ted had a bad day. And Ted definitely noticed the signs of problem drinking at Sharon’s apartment, he made a little noise to indicate that he understood what he was seeing. If they had focused on that aspect a little more it could make a very satisfying season three arc.
Ted’s reading of Sharon’s note had me in tears, I thought that was really powerful from Sudeikis.That was a powerhouse bit of acting from Sudeikis and I’d really like to know the behind-the-scenes details on that. Was he reading something? If so, what? If not, what we he thinking in his own head?
I thought Sudelkis did some wonderful acting there – no words, just the changes across his face…
I didn’t really read the Ms. Bowen/Jamie thing as the show setting up love triangles.I thought it was a way to set up that Roy and Keeley are questioning whether or not to take the next step.Keeley clearly felt something when Jamie confessed his love, so she’s wondering if she’s ready to commit. Roy decided not to tell Ms. Bowen about Keeley so he’s questioning if he’s ready to commit.Up until meeting each other, they’ve never had anything but flings and one night stands. So the idea of marriage is scaring them.
Exactly this. Keeley especially is kind of freaked out about the future, I think, between the thought of old age/death at the funeral and the realization of her career ambitions. It’s not that they need to have other options again, it’s that declining them means reinforcing a commitment to each other.
THIS. It felt to me like both of them having some fear at the idea of permanently closing off all other options in their lives (especially Keeley, since she’s become such a different person, in some ways, in a fairly short period of time). It’s not about any “love triangle.”
Spot on. And thematically the Roy/Keeley hesitation to take the next step works well with Rebecca’s fear of happiness.
I’m also fascinated by all the obsession with the football arc. Ted’s explanation of getting “promoted” and then winning everything I take as a contract with the audience for what’s going to happen with the competition angle. It’s saying, don’t worry about the sports part—worry about the people.
I suspect this means that while Keeley/Roy relationship will end the season happily (marriage proposal and/or pregnancy) alongside everyone getting promoted, the Nathan and/or Sam plot will end unhappily, as the show likes to give bitter with the sweet.
Also: Is it not clear that Rupert is also buying a team? His gift to Rebecca allows him to not have a conflict of interest. He’s probably poaching Nathan and/or whispering poison in his ears. He may have set up the Trent Crimm connection, an analog to Rebecca setting up Trent Crimm with Ted in the first season. The show loves to surprise as much as it loves symmetry. This season has been about fathers. Next season: Mothers.
I think the problem with the football arc is that ultimately a lot of the story IS about it – it drives the situations characters are in, and it’s what the characters are making decisions about. But we don’t get to see it, so it feels rather arbitrary… [it worked well in the first season]
This was my takeaway. When Roy got to the photoshoot he had the look of a man who is deciding if he should propose or not (which is amazing considering how little emotions Brett Goldstein lets through).
Incidentally, I feel that since the teachers know that Uncle/Coach Roy is the famous Roy Kent, they would also know about his relationship with Keeley, which would have been all over the gossip papers after she split from superstar Jamie Tartt. (It just occurred to me that Roy/Keeley, and even Jamie/Keeley, have a touch of David Beckham and his wife, the former Spice Girl, to them; that seems like vaguely Keeley’s previous fame level.)
I don’t get the sense either that Kent is Beckham-level, or that Keeley was Spice Girl-level. I mean, until I just looked it up right now, I didn’t even know that the real Roy Keane was married.I’d guess it’s more like if Roy Keane started dating Rebecca Vardy? It would be in the papers, but you could probably miss it easily enough if you didn’t read the gossip pages?
Nailed it.
Agree entirely.
I was a bit miffed at Myles read on this. It seems so overt that these are not love triangles, not least because they have introduced three possible choices instead of just one.
I thought the scenes with Ms. Bowen and Roy were particularly good as they clearly have developed rapport and can easily spend three pleasant hours with one another and Ms. Bowen shows she could be interested and Roy still doesn’t care about it at all. Similarly there seemed to be nary a shred of caring about Jamie on Keeley’s part.
This is all about them struggling with commitment, even as we’ve seen strong personal growth in each of them, leading to a decision needing to be made, and in particular how people well aware of their own personal growth can be caught off guard with the pace at which life asks them to grow and learn more.
EXACTLY. I’m so confused by all these people seeming to read these as serious attempts at love triangles. I didn’t get any indication of that — just that these are two people in their first serious relationship, and it’s clearly on the verge of becoming more serious/leading to marriage/some sort of permanent commitment, so they’re both questioning some things, even though they love each other and are very into each other. I’m interested to see where it goes, but it never read to me (especially after this episode) as the show trying to create a “love triangle.”
Also, I think this episode really cemented how low Nate’s self esteem is. And rightly so. Even though he is a team coach, he is not really taken seriously by anyone.Heck, when Keeley told Roy about the kiss, Roy was like, “hmm, awkward.” No jealousy or anger. He doesn’t consider Nate as a threat. And Keeley…Nate’s face was 5 inches away from hers and the look on his face was smitten. I saw that kiss coming from a mile away, but Keeley didn’t even notice cuz she kinda thinks of Nate as a cute little mascot.People constantly fix his tie. He gets “infantilized”. So his descent into darkness is very realistic to me.I’m not sure what his purpose was for telling Ted Crimm though. Is he hoping to get control of Richmond? I just figured he’d leave for another team.
I think we’ll get a bigger sense of the machinations of Rupert in the next episode. I don’t think the writing is as sloppy as people think. Lawrence, Goldstein, Hunt, Sudeikis, et al have been doing this for a while. I predict that Rupert has been running a long con to either sabotage Richmond (like Rebecca 1 in S1), but in a different way. All is not forgiven with him after being bested by Ted at Darts, as could be seen by his stink eye at Ted during the funeral. It also must grate on him that Rebecca has thoroughly gotten over him and has actually thrived.
I think this is somehow an underground way for Rupert to buy the team back. Remember how the billionaire said he was going to pay so much extra for Sam that Rebecca and the world would be shocked at his stupidity? So much, perhaps, that it would be a fair amount for a whole team?
I do agree with everything you say. However, I think people infantilize him because they sense, either consciously or unconsciously, that he lacks parenting. He comes across as childlike from day 1. The actor does a wonderful job with it; if you ever watch an interview with him, you’ll really see the difference. The show does a great job of showing how behavior & attitude contribute to a response from others, which further confirms & entrenches the behavior.
This season has been such a trainwreck that I literally looked up who was writing each episode, because I was so sure that an entirely new writing staff had been brought in after season 1. Season 1 felt so much more focused, and the growth of the characters felt earned as the stories actually built on top of each other. But this season…it’s just so disjointed and sloppy. I really want to blame it on COVID-19 and doing business over Zoom calls rather than in person, and I hope that’s the reason. Similar to how Arrested Development’s 4th season on Netflix was such a mess because the actors’ schedules forced a shift in how the stories were told.Sam and Rebecca’s relationship? What a mess. It could have been a season-long thing showing both of them searching for love (to be fair, they show Rebecca searching), but it just pops up and then, an episode and a half later, it’s over. There was just nothing leading up to this relationship in season 1 and half of season 2, then it smacks you in the face out of left field and, again, feels unearned. And, as you’ve stated, they never really addressed the power dynamic there. The whole DubaiAir protest? One of the constant, ridiculous, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it, “ripped from the headlines” stories that this season throws out there and never touches again.Nate has been so insufferable this season that I am on the verge of fast-forwarding through his scenes now. He had ONE redeemable moment when he apologized to Colin on the field after berating him the night before, and then he goes right back to being an ass. Nate had his moment of lashing out at the players in season 1, but it was done so much better, both as a team-building exercise and as a confidence booster to Nate. The berating of Colin was so undeserved and out of left field that it was stupid. I do disagree with you about one point though. I don’t see Nate’s arc as some indictment of “toxic masculinity”. It seems more like an indictment of the evils of social media, especially considering they show Nate constantly scrolling through social media looking for any and all mentions of himself. To borrow a line from one of my favorite movies, L.A. Story, Nate is constantly “looking to the outside for verification that what he’s doing is alright.” Roy and Keeley’s constant annoying relationship tidbits are just that: annoying. And pointless. Where is the exploration of Sharon and her obvious need for a therapist herself? I mean, the show has her calling her colleague, and we get a bit of insight into her own self-doubts. The show alludes, several times, to some drinking problem with Sharon, as well, but they don’t explore that. Empty bottles everywhere, even spilled wine on her chair-side table when she must have been a bit too tipsy to pour it into the glass cleanly.One of the best storylines so far this season in my mind has been Ted and Sharon’s professional relationship moving from animosity toward genuine caring and friendship, exploring Ted’s past and having Sharon be the only person he trusts entirely to tell. I also loved the totally underexplored Jamie Tartt arc. The show occasionally checks in with Jamie for some truly great moments, but then they segue to completely stupid stories. Jamie gets verbally abused by his father in front of the entire team, Jamie punches him, and then breaks down crying, while hugging Roy? Amazing moment, and the next episode just throws it away in order to show Beard having an out-of-nowhere drunken night on the town, bouncing from one stupid moment to another, in some horrible attempt by the writers to justify Beard’s relationship with Jane, which every single character on the show thinks is a bad relationship?I have zero confidence that the final episode here will somehow, amazingly, pull all of this together in a meaningful, satisfying manner. It’s just so sad considering how well done the first season was.
You’re right that Nate’s story has other dimensions, but to me his reaction to the social media conversation is a byproduct of the toxic masculinity he’s allowed to drive his worldview. Allowing a single tweet—we haven’t seen him check social media since—to trigger something like his attack on Will does certainly indicate an unhealthy relationship to public perception, but the nature of his response to it to effectively start bullying and intimidating the people around him is telling about the ideologies he’s bought into on how to be successful.
I find Nate uncomfortably relatable this season. As a deeply insecure youth, I once received a positive comment in passing from someone famous in my field, and holy shit did I obsess over it exactly the way Nate did with the “wonder kid” situation, and developed a massively inflated ego that only years of sustained humbling by life managed to beat back down. And I do agree that it has a great deal to do with toxic masculinity; in my case, I had internalized models of behavior from the male figures I idolized, and wasn’t even conscious of how I was acting them out until long after the fact, when I started reading discussions of toxic masculinity. I do think that the social media and public attention aspect of it is a factor here, as well, and that it’s not either/or but working in vile synergy.
Look, I loathe what Nate is turning into, but I’ve gotta give it up to Nick Mohammed for selling it so fucking well. In the hands of another actor, I could see it happening with a shit-ton of mustache-twirling or cartoonishness. But the thing is, I think we as viewers see Nate heading down this path, being consumed by the temptation of power (which corrupts absolutely) and exposure that he’s never enjoyed before – but thanks to Nick’s nuanced acting, we can see him doing it like someone holding onto the reins of a breakaway horse rather than someone actually in control of things. The scene where Nate kisses Keeley was cringe as hell (as was intended), but when Nate gets back into the dressing area… what a scene, man. That single tear running down his cheek, the anguish in his look, the absolute mortification in his body language, and the tremendous double entendre of his subsequent spit on the mirror that is at once a psych-up and an expression of self-loathing… it’s good stuff.
One thing I’m with Sam on: stop calling that suit “the suit that Ted bought you [a goddamn year ago]”. It’s belittling.
I keep thinking about his reaction to bantr when he set up and deleted an account because he’s picky and then said women are picky too. He clearly is struggling with his self-image and can’t seem to reconcile the way he sees himself with the way others see him. I’m actually really annoyed at his fellow coaches for not addressing the matter before it came to a head. Beard especially has been observant but has held back in spite of how many instances he’s observed (I can only imagine there would have been more over the course of a season that we didn’t see). So even if that one particularly awful incident with Will wasn’t seen, it’s been an on-going issue. In light of what happened today with the NWSL, it does seem like the sort of thing that would get other coaches fired for turning a blind eye.
I think you’re right about toxic masculinity being the main driver of Nate’s behaviour. It wasn’t until you said it in the review that I connected the dots between his act of making himself tall being to spit (usually on himself reflected in the mirror!).
I see your point of view regarding Nate’s motivations, but I just disagree. This may simply stem from different definitions of “toxic masculinity”. I’ve always understood toxic masculinity to be when a man acts in an overly aggressive, hyper-macho manner because he feels pressure from society and/or his peers to act in such a way. I don’t feel Nate is acting this way because he feels pressure to act “more like a man”. I feel like he’s acting this way because he simply wants people to constantly kiss his butt because he had a few good ideas. He feels more like a petulant child than someone who is simply trying to fit into a misguided view of how he believes society wants him to act. Which just makes him a general, run-of-the-mill jerk, and it’s the reason his storyline makes me want to fast forward past his scenes.Again, I see where you’re coming from, and I can see how Nate’s journey can be interpreted through the lens of toxic masculinity. I simply disagree with that interpretation. Regardless of his motivations, can we all agree that he’s just being a grade-A jerk this season?!
He’s always had jerk tendencies even before he became an assistant coach, he was just too cowed to do anything about it. Like when Ted let him make the pre-game speech that time, his “truth bomb” criticisms were way harsh. He was obviously just venting on his former abusers more so than trying to offer helpful criticism, but luckily it just happened to work. He also needs to remember that he’d still be the kit man of Ted hadn’t seen something in him and gave him a chance. And who was it who gave him the credit for the win the time they first used one of Nate’s special plays? Ted, who called him “Nate the Great.” I still like him, though, or at least feel for him. I don’t think the show will allow him to go full villain, and I see a redemption arc for him, probably not this season, but next season.
Yes, like you I see Nate’s problem more as one of entitlement and ego than of toxic masculinity. Toxic masculinity may play a part, but I think arrogance and ego are much more to blame.
These issues seem to go really well together, and him using any instance of power or positive reinforcement to go in for the kiss or to ask the waitress out is indication that it’s at least an ingredient in the Nate’s dysfunctional stew.
Nate is toxic as hell. He’s outwardly sympathetic but inside he’s nothing but rage and resentment. This is the same arc as Walter White, whose petulance and insecurity destroyed his family. Beware the “meek” man who lives under the impression he’s owed more and better.
A midnight train wreck?
“To borrow a line from one of my favorite movies, L.A. Story, Nate is constantly “looking to the outside for verification that what he’s doing is alright.””To be honest, that’s probably tied into the more or less complete lack of feedback that Nate gets from Ted, Beard, or Roy about the quality of work he’s doing and the lack of approval from his parents.Which goes back to the whole “Ted Lasso is a really horrible coach” thing for me. He is…he was only interested in Nate when Nate was the equipment guy getting picked on. Now that he’s the guy proposing innovative strategies or saving the team in a game with an unconventional defensive formation, Ted’s barely paying attention. So the validation he gets from social media (and, to be honest, Nate’s work performance in general has deserved praise, even if he is a jerk) is all of the validation he gets and the only way he can tell what people think about the job he’s doing. He only seems to get feedback from Ted in the form of some cheesy ‘80s reference or feedback from Beard when Beard is annoyed with him…so his non-social media feedback is either negative or dismissive.
One subtle note I liked from earlier in the season is that Nate clearly felt a little threatened by Roy joining the staff, but Roy’s given him no reason to be at all— indeed, when Nate’s unconventional strategy worked, Roy made sure to throw all the praise to him when he spoke to the media.
In the suit buying scene he’s basically wearing one of Roy’s black on black suits when he kisses Keely. I never really gave a second thought to him being threatened by Roy earlier in the season but he certainly seems to be trying to emulate him(or something?) here.
Yeah, that’s interesting, I hadn’t even connected that.Another thing I like, thinking about Roy and Nate as coaches, is something I’m not sure I’ve thought about more than the writers (because we’ve gotten so little of the football activity this year), is that the other reason Nate shouldn’t feel threatened is that Roy fills a different role and they’re very complementary— Nate is a strategist; Roy is a player’s coach. Nate understands designing lineups and plays; Roy, as an ex-player, understands individual players and what it takes to keep a player motivated and developing to be their best.
And we got another glimpse into why that bothered Nate as well in the finale…when Nate tells Roy he kissed Keeley and Roy’s response is basically “Yeah, whatever…all good.” He doesn’t fundamentally respect Nate as a man, so he doesn’t see him as a threat. He’s just the guy who got picked on who Ted gave a pity promotion to.And Nate realized that Ted had no real faith in him because when the team was struggling he immediately took on Roy instead. Ted respects Roy. He feels a general affection and sympathy towards Nate, but not respect…and there’s not really a way for Nate to earn that respect, because Ted doesn’t care about football or wins and losses. If I had a boss like that who I’d busted my butt for, I’d be pretty resentful too.
Sharon does have a therapist of her own, that’s who she was talking to in the opening of the episode with her bike. Many if not most therapists have them. Her lack of terminating the patient-client relationship with everyone, especially with someone like Ted, is very weird – but so is Ted being able to just call her whenever and stalk her to her house with no consequences, I guess.
> This season has been such a trainwreck that I literally looked up who was writing each episodeThe funeral episode, written by Jane Becker, was a good episode.
I think for me, “trainwreck” is too strong, but I agree with you somewhat. Last season the episodes were tight. This season they’re bloated and messy. There have been many great moments this season, but a whole lot of head scratching moments also.
To me, the first season felt like someone thought up a story, then broke it into 10 chapters. It had direction and a good flow from one episode to the next. It was like a good novel. Season 2 has felt more like an anthology, with tangentially-related stories written by various authors. What little connective tissue exists between episodes is just strained. Which would be fine, if this were a sitcom, where there are no consequences week-to-week. But it’s not a sitcom, and this feels sloppy.
Just as the centerpiece of Season 1 was Ted winning over the team one-by-one, Season 2 should have been entirely Ted dealing with his shit and how he can never be enough for all of the needs of everyone around him.
Sharon should have been his guide, the mentor in his hero’s journey—played just as they player her. But all of the other storylines should have been sprouts from Ted’s story. Roy’s observation about Jamie—Ted ruined him and made him predictable is a perfect example of what could have been.Nate, because Ted’s not taking care of the day-to-day. Rebecca, because Ted’s “winning doesn’t matter” had caused her to disregard her duty as an owner and management. Beard and Roy not really held accountable for their jobs (remember when Beard knew the details and kept Ted looking good?). All great plot lines that were ignored or were let to grow wild without being grounded in anything.
Yes to all this. I would like to see your Season 2 of Ted Lasso, because this has been the main issue all along. The show has lost both it’s center and it’s balance. Whether the writers like it or not, it is a problem that a central conflict doesn’t clearly emerge for the viewer until episode 11 out of 12. Season 2 could (and should) have been about centering Ted’s problems and how they bleed into the team. We should have explored how Ted’s trauma-induced worldview both nurtures and hamstrings people. How it gets in the way of doing his fucking job. The writers maintain that Ted Lasso is not a sports show. OK, fine. But it has to be a little bit of a sports show, otherwise you get moments like in this week’s episode where the audience gets whiplash because the only real moments of soccer we’ve had have been a long streak of mediocrity and a crushing defeat. Then they give us a 30 second voiceover that says the team has been killing it—they’re close to promotion. What?! Giving the viewer more of the team doesn’t make it a sports show, it grounds Ted in a reality that he cannot escape through his persistent positivity. That’s what the panic attack episode showed so well. But the show doesn’t sustain it even though the soccer would could have been such rich territory for them. If we see more of the struggle of the season, maybe Nate’s heel turn feels more organic because we’ve seen Ted continually overlook him. And maybe we could get more development out of Phil Dunster’s Jamie Tartt. That character has been criminally under developed, and you’re right, an arc about how Jamie can or can’t perform under the “Lasso Way” would have been so, so good. Likewise, Jamie’s residual feelings for Keely could have been better used not as a wedge for Keely and Roy, but as a sprinboard for Jamie to grow and realize that while he missed out on Keely, he can now be good for somebody else. The breakdown of Ted’s core philosophy, and the way that impacts his life and the team, should have been the focus of the whole season. Instead we got…this. And it’s not good. I tried to hold out hope for a long time that the writers knew what they were doing. But I don’t have confidence in that anymore. The Sam/Rebecca story has been badly handled (and was bad to begin with). Jamie Tartt’s character has been neglected. The manufactured drama in Roy and Keely’s relationship is cheap and lazy in ways that season 1 of the show never would have allowed. The result is a season that is a mess from both a narrative and thematic perspective. I am so bummed.
Double response here, but IMO the audience isn’t meant to think Beard’s relationship with Jane is a good idea. (It’s probably part of what has him too distracted to help keep Ted focused.) If you look at those texts from her in the ep, they’re highly abusive. Talking about her in the church, it felt like Beard was discussing an addict’s relationship with drugs or alcohol. We’re not supposed to be okay with them, but it’s been so in the background I’m not sure what the payoff is going to be, if it’s in this season at all.
I was late to Ted Lasso so I binged Season 1 when Season 2 already started, loved it, thought it was everything everyone said it was, and am now completely baffled by what this show is trying to do. They add these over the top touches for absolutely no reason. Ted and Sharon reaching common ground would have been way more satisfying without the Hail Mary of the bike accident. The moment with Jamie’s father would have worked for me more if the man wasn’t given the opportunity to unload an entire manifesto in a private locker room. That should have been shut down in two seconds! Everyone letting that go on and on was bizarre. Have Roy catch the same scene in the parking lot or something! Roy and Keely’s “drama” is inexplicable and why the hell would anyone anywhere bring up that stuff in the middle of a couples photo shoot that was going well. No human would do this. Was it really necessary that the Mysterious Benefactor from Africa *also* pay actors to wander around a museum?! Like…WHAT?! And even the most slow burn plot with Nate escalated in a weird direction. It would make perfect sense for his beef with Lasso to be his seeming indifference to coaching as opposed to being liked, leaving the heavy lifting to the staff. But “stealing credit?” What?! When does a lower level coach even get the kind of attention he’s already received in the first place?! I’m sad that I’m apparently joined up with the toxic fandom camp but it has felt like this show was written by aliens in Season 2 who love the human race but don’t quite understand it.
I work a job that has me working later in the day, and so I usually watch these episodes not too long after they drop (thanks Apple for doing midnight Eastern instead of midnight Pacific). I audibly yelled out “That son of a bitch!” at a volume that may have been a bit loud for an apartment building late night for that scene.With regards to the actual on-pitch action, I have to believe the writers are choosing to ignore how the actual EFL Championship promotion structure works. Unless the final match (which one would assume we would watch some of) is at Wembley, they clearly aren’t following the real-world structure (the EFL playoff championships, which determine the final promotion spots in the Championship, League One and League Two, are all at Wembley).Part of me thinks/hopes Roy had planned to ask Keeley to marry him up until she mentioned Jamie. Maybe I’m reading into the situation all wrong, but to me, it felt like the conversation with Phoebe’s teacher only helped him realize he wants Keeley more, but maybe I’m eternally optimistic.On the Sam/Rebecca front, I am shocked by this latest development (/sarcasm). I enjoy both characters, and I quite enjoy the individuals inhabiting the respective roles, but good God was this just so bland with the “I can’t ask you to stay but I don’t want you to go”. I’m less optimistic they will stick the landing here, but who knows.Finally, to come full circle, Nate never learned the rules of the street when it comes to snitching. I know Ted won’t do it but I genuinely hope he gets a punch to the face.
I think they probably mean if they win they’re gonna finish 2nd and go up
“So, it’s incredibly dumb that a week before that a game that would determine the team’s promotion to the Premier League Ted would have the team learning the dance to “Bye Bye Bye.””
I hate you, you are the genuine worst.
Another messy Ted. The midnight train reference is about someone returning to their roots so Sam be ing enticed to go back to Africa fits. Sharon is taking a midnight train, obviously, no need to pack or anything. The love dodecahedron is a non thing for the sake of drama. Nate the snake is the only plot that has been developed the whole season an it is still weak. I did enjoy that he was in full Roy cosplay when he tried the kiss. The show definitely had a sophomore slump, here’s hoping they can reignite the spark in season three.
Nate is the hero of season 2, Ted Lasso should be fired for
being a horrifically bad coach, and Nate should get his job.Seriously, that’s my takeaway from this season. Is Nate
petty, vindictive, and backstabbing? Absolutely…and so what? What
he is great at, though, is focusing on football, while none of the other
coaching staff much seem to care. And coaching football is the only
reason that any of Ted, Beard, Roy, and Nate are supposed to have jobs. It’s not to spout platitudes about caring and
family and friendship, it’s to win football games. Period. If they can’t do that, in any sport, being a nice guy who really really
cares amounts to precisely zero…you lose your job and the club hires someone
who can win, because if you can’t win, you don’t belong in charge. Ted’s failed at that role, miserably…he
failed last year when he got the team relegated, he failed when he ran off a
series of ties (because he’s spending all of his time obsessing over his
personal problems and desperately seeking approval from others), and he’s
failing now because he barely pays attention to his own staff relationships and
can’t even be bothered to figure out basic stuff like rules and formations in
football…like any competent coach would. He’s too busy organizing stupid dance practices to actually manage the
club to play and win football games.This season
has pretty much ignored the football side things all year, resulting in AFC Richmond
set up to get possibly the most undeserved promotion in the history of the
Championship. You know what I’m betting
we’d have seen if they’d looked at the planning of any of these games? Nate carrying the load of the planning and
strategy while Ted jabbered about pop culture references, Beard ignored
everything and spouted off pseudo-philosophical nonsense about trees being
socialist, and Roy (who rarely seems interested in actually coaching the
players and can’t be bothered to read scouting reports) just sits around being
Roy. I don’t blame Nate for being
resentful…he’s the one doing the work while the others apparently coast off of his
efforts. He’s still treated like the kid
people have to feel sorry for, but the team’s winning efforts appear to have
stemmed from when Nate started designing and proposing formations and looking
at matchups. Ted isn’t doing any of
that. Beard is somewhat involved, but
doesn’t really care. Roy doesn’t care. And none of them seem interested in doing
anything to help Nate land a coaching job elsewhere after the season. Seriously, Ted and Beard have zero contact or
networking with other managers and there’s no room for promotion for Nate…why
would any promising assistant want to stay there and work for a guy who doesn’t
put in work if he’s not given any credit for what it does? Likely, if it wasn’t for Nate’s work, that
team would be nowhere near promotion to the EPL, and Ted and Beard would have
been fired by now.As for Nate
being a backstabbing jerk, it’s hardly a secret that there isn’t a strong
correlation between being a nice person and being a good football manager. Lots of great managers are despised by their
players. Jose Mourinho was and is a
colossal jerk who screws with players’ heads. Alex Ferguson was a jerk who screwed with players’ heads. Brian Clough was a colossal insecure jerk who
screwed with players’ heads. But they
also won, a lot…so even if their players hated them, it didn’t matter, because
in the end it’s about wins and losses, not friendship and little feel-good
moments.And if Nate
hadn’t been around doing the work for Ted and Beard, I strongly doubt that
there would have been many wins for them to celebrate during the season. Which is why this season has been a
frustratingly bad drop-off in quality from season one, most of the characters
come off as appallingly inauthentic, and Nate is the hero of season 2.
The narrative says they’ve had a supernaturally good winning streak. You’re assuming that’s on one dude, who is a self-obsessed ticking time bomb BTW, out of four – but we don’t see who it’s on because the focus hasn’t been on the games, it’s been on the things you clearly think are irrelevant or boring or whatever. Deciding the wins are solely because of Nate because he’s an asshole and that must mean he’s the only one who cares is certainly a choice.
Well, viewers can only go by what’s been established, so even if the narrative insists Richmond is good actually, it doesn’t track with the information we’re given about how this team is managed. When Sam soaks in crowd adoration after a spectacular hat trick game, a viewer shouldn’t have to call bullshit on what they are seeing. I try to be charitable about what’s going on offscreen, but I can understand for those who feel like only coach seems to care, and he’s the one everyone’s crapping on
I can understand the idea that they’re not providing enough game focus and not justifying the sudden winning streak. I can understand the jokes of Ted not understanding things coming across as him still not learning the sport he’s hired to coach, though I think this is jokes/exposition dovetailing poorly with how things would be in real life. But to say that means Nate is the only coach who cares is a reach. Nothing indicates Beard and Roy don’t care or they have no talent as coaches. It’s in character for Roy to refuse to read reports about a part of things he finds boring, but that doesn’t translate to no engagement on the field, and Beard clearly has attachment to what happens and everyone’s futures. Until his suggestion this ep we haven’t seen anything amazing come out of Nate since ‘park the bus’ either. He wasn’t exactly verbally abusing Colin for the team’s benefit.
I agree with this. As I said to the OP, I think the coaching staff should get the benefit of the doubt (largely thanks to Roy), but I won’t begrudge the opinion that people are being hard on Nate. Even if he’s not the only one who cares, I think they’ve clearly presented him as the one who cares the most. Or at least, in his own mind. It certainly doesn’t justify his bad treatment of others, but there’s so much self pity in him as it is, I can’t bring myself to vilify the character
“I can understand the jokes of Ted not understanding things coming across as him still not learning the sport he’s hired to coach, though I think this is jokes/exposition dovetailing poorly with how things would be in real life.”Yeah, something you just have to accept with this show is that it’s always going to joke about how little Ted knows about soccer. Someone is always going to be explaining soccer to Ted—partly because he makes a convenient (American) audience surrogate, and partly because Ted’s fish out of water schtick is one of the comedy cornerstones. The thesis about Ted’s coaching will always be that he’s a great coach not because he knows the game, but because he knows the players, and inspires them to succeed.
What’s to call bullshit on, though? Richmond are in their first year in the championship, have held their roster together, and now they’re in the mix for promotion and made an FA cup semifinal.The weird bit was all the signaling about the string of draws and the focus on the individual player quirks. It’s not especially satisfying from a narrative perspective, but Richmond are more or less right where you’d expect them to be right now.
It is remarkable that Ted, who had a hugely memorable speech about “curiosity” last year during the darts scene, has been manager of this team for 2 years and has managed to apparently learn nothing at all about the sport.
Yes. YES! DonBoy2 gets it!
Oh, we’re just begging for stars now? (It worked.)
And who, preytell could possibly fire Ted? He’s got Rebecca and Higgins in the palm of his hand! lol. I think Nate’s been underrated this year, on that I agree. But I still think we should give the coaching staff the benefit of the doubt. Especially with Roy Kent there. And the players do seem to have talent. Maybe that’s all they need. My takeaway this season is that soccer is pretty easy, even with a bad coach.
Its still a team of Premier league players in the championship, quite often relegated teams bounce right back up
Spot on. Sudeikis is an avowed fan, devotee, admirer of John Wooden, specifically, Wooden’s, “Pyramid of Success” a drivel philosophy for both sport *and* life. Wooden was the legendary US college basketball coach, who really is responsible for popularizing all the new age, people first nonsense in sports. Not unlike Phil Jackson’s coaching and his triangle having any responsibility for the success of Jordan, Shaq, and Kobe, no one would knew Wooden ever existed, if not for winning 10 championships because of Karem Abdul Jabbar and Bill Walton.
He’s been an assistant coach for just over one year, and you’re ready to give him all the credit and promote him? That is bonkers.
sounds hilarious!
Ok actually don’t even know where to start with this episode so will keep it to the football aspects for now that are driving me crazy. I realize that the sports economics is complicated but never in a million years would a player in his prime choose to leave an EPL team if they weren’t upgrading to a continental power like Real/Barca(questionable nowadays cuz… with what money)/PSG/Bayern/Juve. A few episodes ago, they said Sam was 21 and this would never enter into the realm of possibility (let alone the fact that Sam would’ve come from the Nigerian league direct to EPL without cutting his teeth in Netherlands/Belgium/Italy/Germany). Also, just how difficult it is to get promoted, the struggles of keeping players and club together would’ve been great for the drama of this show but instead, its completely glossed over like… why doesn’t every team just work harder so they can get promoted? Frankly its an infantilizing and semi insulting way to view this game and league that is closely followed all over the world.And all this coming from an American who didn’t grow up with this…PS – as a club owner, you’d never allow a player to be tampered with, without a transfer fee already agreed to. this applies for all professional sports and just lazy writing.
Nate is the hero of season 2, Ted Lasso should be fired for being a horrifically bad coach, and Nate should get his job.Seriously, that’s my takeaway from this season. Is Nate petty, vindictive, and backstabbing? Absolutely…and so what? What he is great at, though, is focusing on football, while none of the other coaching staff much seem to care. And coaching football is the only reason that any of Ted, Beard, Roy, and Nate are supposed to have jobs. It’s not to spout platitudes about caring and family and friendship, it’s to win football games. Period. If they can’t do that, in any sport, being a nice guy who really really cares amounts to precisely zero…you lose your job and the club hires someone who can win, because if you can’t win, you don’t belong in charge. Ted’s failed at that role, miserably…he failed last year when he got the team relegated, he failed when he ran off a series of ties (because he’s spending all of his time obsessing over his personal problems and desperately seeking approval from others), and he’s failing now because he barely pays attention to his own staff relationships and can’t even be bothered to figure out basic stuff like rules and formations in football…like any competent coach would. He’s too busy organizing stupid dance practices to actually manage the club to play and win football games.This season has pretty much ignored the football side things all year, resulting in AFC Richmond set up to get possibly the most undeserved promotion in the history of the Championship. You know what I’m betting we’d have seen if they’d looked at the planning of any of these games? Nate carrying the load of the planning and strategy while Ted jabbered about pop culture references, Beard ignored everything and spouted off pseudo-philosophical nonsense about trees being socialist, and Roy (who rarely seems interested in actually coaching the players and can’t be bothered to read scouting reports) just sits around being Roy. I don’t blame Nate for being resentful…he’s the one doing the work while the others apparently coast off of his efforts. He’s still treated like the kid people have to feel sorry for, but the team’s winning efforts appear to have stemmed from when Nate started designing and proposing formations and looking at matchups. Ted isn’t doing any of that. Beard is somewhat involved, but doesn’t really care. Roy doesn’t care. And none of them seem interested in doing anything to help Nate land a coaching job elsewhere after the season. Seriously, Ted and Beard have zero contact or networking with other managers and there’s no room for promotion for Nate…why would any promising assistant want to stay there and work for a guy who doesn’t put in work if he’s not given any credit for what he does? Likely, if it wasn’t for Nate’s work, that team would be nowhere near promotion to the EPL, and Ted and Beard would have been fired by now.As for Nate being a backstabbing jerk, it’s hardly a secret that there isn’t a strong correlation between being a nice person and being a good football manager. Lots of great managers are despised by their players. Jose Mourinho was and is a colossal jerk who screws with players’ heads. Alex Ferguson was a jerk who screwed with players’ heads. Brian Clough was a colossal insecure jerk who screwed with players’ heads. But they also won, a lot…so even if their players hated them, it didn’t matter, because in the end it’s about wins and losses, not friendship and little feel-good moments.And if Nate hadn’t been around doing the work for Ted and Beard, I strongly doubt that there would have been many wins for them to celebrate during the season. Which is why this season has been a frustratingly bad drop-off in quality from season one, most of the characters come off as appallingly inauthentic (perhaps by design, to show just how much of a mess Ted really is), and Nate is the hero of season 2.
When we saw Colin struggling with his too-much-car, I sort of halfway expected us to learn that he died in a car accident, perhaps a la Bobby Phills, perhaps just in a situation where he simply couldn’t control it. I felt like they sort of lampshaded that when someone yelled “watch out” (or something like that) as he was leaving.Fortunately, I was wrong, though I suppose there’s still one more episode for that not to be the case. It would be absolutely gutting, and I feel like they have the ability to handle it just so.
I don’t think the billionaire from Ghana is a fake, but he’s definitely hiding something from Sam and everyone else. I feel like he’s legitimately interested in raising the profile of soccer in Africa and bringing Sam in for that reason, but I think Rupert still has something to do with this. I expect Rupert is in the background, guiding Akufoz to buy the club and sign Sam and guiding Nate to tell Trent Crimm (The Independent) about Ted’s panic attack and offering him the Casablanca coach position, to try to fuck over Rebecca Prime for pulling out of the Dubai Air deal, since he’s friends with the owner of Cerithium Oil.I could also just be overthinking ALL of this for the sake of trying to explain things in my head.
A couple of other things:The top 2 teams in the Championship automatically go up, with the next 4 teams going to the Playoff. If they just need to win the next match to automatically go up, this would mean that they have the Playoff “safety net” if they were to lose/draw. While it would be better to just win and be in, Ted might be more relaxed knowing that there are options.When Akufoz walked up to Ted, he said “I was told you would be finished with practice by now” while they were practicing the “Bye Bye Bye” dance. I took that to mean that practice was finished for the day, but everyone wanted to stay and learn the dance. We’ve seen her help everyone on the team throughout the season, so – while over the top – everyone taking time out of their lives to do something big and memorable for Sharon isn’t too farfetched for the world of Ted Lasso.
I wasn’t convinced of the fake billionaire thing, until I remembered the throwaway lines about hiring actors for the museum and the restaurant. Everything Akufo said was about what he was going to do, not what he has done. Typical language from a con man, or recently replaced politician.
Akufo is explained to Rebecca as someone who “just inherited 1.2 billion pounds and loves football.” Certainly there are some offputting things about his approach (and it’s utter bloody nonsense), but I can think of nothing about this show that would get better if there’s a Big Bad, and it’ll be a disservice to Sam to have this resolve in any way other than in terms of what he wants.
I wasn’t sure if there was enough evidence to conclude some malevolent plot by Rupert, but today I just remembered the Cerithium Oil guy specifically wanting Sam off the team, and that has me mulling over the possibility again.
“Yeah, get him off the team! And put him on a new team, with a higher profile! designed to make him a global face of sport! chosen as the leader specifically because of his political stand! That’ll show him.”I mean… maybe Casablanca pulls a move like Zidane benching Gareth Bale for years, but the sales pitch just seems way too over the top for that.
Colin Corner: Feels like the chances of them circling
back to that random Grindr line are getting pretty thin, but they did
close the loop on his Lambo being way too much car for him, so I’m not
giving up hope yet.
Personally I don’t think the Grindr mention was anything more than a throw away joke. Not much different to the Welsh Independence reference.I think we’re meant to view Colin as the quirky guy who just knows and does random stuff. In the big reveal of Sam being the person Rebecca had been messaging on Bantr, we’d just seen Colin singing along to Jumpman. Now that’s a song that I’m too old and out of touch to know about, but Twitter seemed to be impressed by it.Colin like Woody Boyd or Coach, but not quite as dumb.
Getting fixated on things that don’t matter is how Lost fans watch TV
Honestly, the lack of any queer footballers has become conspicuous at this point. Like, to the point where even if the show comes back around to Colin’s Grindr line, it’ll feel like too little too late. Like, here’s a show that’s wearing its (at least superficially) progressive heart on its sleeve, with a season-long story about a dating app, and yet there’s no real reference to a queer player? What? How’d that not get a story but rote love triangle stories made it in there?
Very interesting title next week. “Inverting the Pyramid of Success” The original pyramid has “Competitive Greatness” at the top and things like “loyalty” and “friendship” at the foundation.I guess maybe after next week, they will have “competitive greatness” to build upon, but will have to repair the “trust” “loyalty” and “friendships”. Thus next season the Pyramid will be inverted.
the show goes so far as to draw a parallel between Rebecca’s admission to Ted that she had been trying to sabotage him from season one with her admission that she and Sam were having an affair, as though those were two equally significant momentsI liked this episode mostly, but yea, that was… Yea…Anyway, as usual I loved all the Nigerian stuff, and even Sam Richardson’s Ghanian accent was perfect. Like, brought-a-tear-to-my-eye-and-made-me-miss-home perfect. I liked the Roy/Keeley stuff, which didn’t feel so much like a wedge to me as it did part of their next step. And even though I haven’t loved Ted’s storyline this year, his scenes with Sharon were sweet. As for Nate? What can I say? For whatever nasty lables people want to slap on him for his behavior, I 100% believe these are all things he feels about himself anyway. Along with guilt and unworthiness, this is a character with a lot of self-loathing, and the look he gives himself after that kiss… It cuts deep. This season wanted to talk about mental health with Ted, and totally picked the wrong character focus on. I think the Nate stuff has been so fascinating, I can go wherever this story takes me. Redemption or downfall, they’ve handled it well enough to justify either outcome.
Then as a West African, would you mind offering your thoughts on one of my comments elsewhere? It seemed strange to me that Akufoz, someone clearly very proud of his Sub-Saharan Africa heritage and wishing to elevate it and “Africa” on the world stage, would aim to purchase a Moroccan club as part of that effort. Doesn’t it seem like he’d try to develop a club in non-Arab Africa, or are the barriers to entry just lower by purchasing the more known and successful clubs from the countries along the Mediterranean? Sincerely wondering.
Great call on Edwin. I got The Last King of Scotland/Idi Amin vibes from that whole thing. Not that he’s a secret soon to be dictator, but that he’s certainly not at all what he wants people to believe while simultaneously being the biggest purchaser of his own bs.
I’m not a soccer whiz, but it seems a bit bizarre to try and by a player before you have a team. To try an lure him to a contract but not tell him where he’d be playing. And then everything he did while in London was bat shit crazy.
He lands his helicopter on the pitch, which seems like it’d be taken as an intentional insult.
He hires out the museum and hires actors to create the most unnerving fake production of a good time.
He opens a restaurant and then fills it with only friends.
And he tells Sam about this like it’s something that would be great instead of something that should set off all the red flags.
“I’m a billionaire who doesn’t believe in billionaires…” followed by some pretty manipulative wild stuff, combined with the desire to exert huge influence does not a delightful and benevolent cake make.
I have been explaining to people that season 2 is a surprisingly good show for a bad show, or a surprisingly bad show for a good show, I’m not sure which.Despite that nearly nothing in the show is working, it is still a very pleasant show to watch (although less funny now that they are so earnest about wrapping up the season). The SECOND they brought in the superhot teacher I was like “Are they breaking up Roy and Keeley?” Before Christmas the club was on the brink of financial ruin, and they just dropped that storyline. Now they’re playing great? Didn’t we just check in with them after Beard’s long descent when they got crushed? What the fuck?And how about Rebecca? Not only is she only in the season to be looking for love, she first dates one of her players, then is too immature to be open about it, and now might be putting that ahead of what is best for the team that she owns. What a cock-up.
If nothing else(and I don’t agree with this review, for the most part), the acting’s still superb. Sudeikis earned that Emmy win. That letter-reading scene and him reading Trent’s messages were amazing.
“I was curious, though, if there is any precedent to an individual buying rights to a player before they’ve actually bought the team in question?”
No this highly dodgy. It might well be setting up something for next season. Sam leaves and then has to return to Richmond next season?Also it’s not inconceivable that Richmond could go on a strong run and get promoted. We haven’t heard or seen enough of the teams results since the run of draws to know. But the fact that Richmond were relegated and managed to keep all their best players and get Jamie back means that they would be one of the strongest teams in the division.
Sam Richardson is such a delight. I look forward to seeing him stretch his wings a bit more in dramatic and/or comedy-adjacent roles.This was my favorite episode of the season—it felt like storylines were moved forward in a more natural way, rather than just a spinning-plates-point-A-to-point-B type of way. It also showed what could have been, in my opinion. There was so much more depth to mine in Sharon’s and Ted’s relationship, both professional and personal. Ah, well, maybe she’ll return for season three.I even liked Beard in this episode!
I expected to hate this episode, but I actually liked it a lot.
I think the show works best when it starts asking harder questions, and it got its characters seriously thinking about where they wanted to be. You can’t have choices mean anything if there aren’t genuine dilemmas.I don’t think it solved the basic poor design of Sam and Rebecca’s relationship, but it did a good job of offering him a meaningful path away, even if I thought Edwin’s methods were really poorly written — c’mon, create a restaurant and fill it with actors? Really?I thought the Roy-Keeley subplot was the best stuff they’ve had to work with. And Ted-Sharon was really well done.
The episode struggled with some of the problems in its setup from previous episodes. But despite that, I really liked it.
The team brought in a sports psychologist and then went on an historic tear. Why in the world aren’t they offering her a 5-year contract?
These reviews and the comments are hard to get through anymore. The hyperbole in them edges on the absurd.
Remember, Keely told Roy that Nate “tried to kiss” her, not that he HAD kissed her. That may be why he didn’t react strongly to it.
Granted, this is a sports fantasy comedy series. We should see it in that context. It’s not a documentary. They can do ridiculous things for the sake of entertainment and, whether it works or not, it’s still okay (see Beard’s episode, and much of the Ted-like dialogue from the people around Ted – actually both seasons are peppered with ridiculousness). Still, I’m curious to see where they take the tabloid article about Ted’s panic attack. Yes, Nate was not lying when he told Trent Crimm about it. And on the surface it seems like a major revelation for the soccer world’s fans who study everything that happens in that world so closely. However, I can’t remember anyone in the press, tabloid or not, so freely revealing confidential medical information about any celebrity, at least nothing which comes from a single, unverifiable source. In this case, it looks like a jealous low-level wannabe coach is backstabbing Ted for career advancement, maybe to get Ted out of the way so he can move up. I think Trent Crimm is going out on a shaky limb by running such an indefensible, privacy-violating, crap story. It makes him look like he’s being used to publish an easily deniable, slanderous personal attack on Ted.All Ted has to do is say Nate deliberately lied about why Ted ran off the field – sure, Ted was as tense as everybody else during the game he ran out of, but he left because he had food poisoning. He just needed to get to a toilet in the locker room. And Ted could add how mental health is an important issue today which affects so many of us, so let’s all support those who struggle, whoever they may be. Nate should be put on leave for a while then fired from the team. Who could even say Ted didn’t have food poisoning, much less prove it? Sharon is the only person who could verify Nate’s hearsay story, and I bet she’s not going to reveal private discussions between Ted and herself. If this scandal hurts Ted’s future earning potential in any way he would have a great lawsuit. If this were the real world and not a sports fantasy comedy series.
They doubled down on the spitting in public mirrors thing. And I’m pretty tired of them propping up Beard when honestly he is just awkward and uninteresting.
I kind of like how Will continues to needle Nate about the fact that Ted bought Nate a suit. It shows that he’s clued into Nate’s insecurities and is perfectly willing to press those buttons. Will is no pushover y’all.
While I’m in agreement with everyone that the further we dive into season 2, the more and more it appears that the plotting has been devised by a writing room full of headless chickens, I’m personally still of the view that a good sitcom really only has to achieve one thing and that’s to make me laugh. Ted Lasso in spite of it’s increasingly baffling plot meanderings and attempts at trying to force drama through unnecessary love triangles thankfully still manages to do that with just the right amount of fantastic one liners. “Here’s one with no shit in it”
“I suppose it makes sense to have Ted be too giddy to resist bringing up the Cheers connection with another “Sam and Rebecca,” but seemed a bit on-the-nose after it’s been discussed online for weeks, y’know?”How could it possibly be on-the-nose? The season was shot and completed before airing, it’s not like they’re shooting episodes week to week and could react to online discourse.
Is it just me or have we seen Coach Beard noticing Nate’s behavior and finding it a problem? I feel like we have and I wonder why he doesn’t say anything – either to Nate or to Ted. He’s not one to be shy about expressing his opinion.
The show has touched on the guy’s code not to tell something they should be noticing with Beard’s relationship with Jill, and I think that extends here too.
Higgins rightfully called this code into question, but I could believe Beard would wait for Ted to bring it up.
I think he even spoke directly to Nate about it at some point, after he bullied the new kit man, but he hasn’t brought it up since, although he’s certainly noticed it.
I saw it mentioned in another comment, so I ‘m not the only one expecting this, but I think the Roy/Keely complications are going to end up with them getting married. That way the Jamies and Nates of the world know Keely is committed and not just having some fun and if someone asks Roy if he’s married, the answer is yes.I actually was surprised the photo shoot scene didn’t end in a proposal.
It always, always bugs me when writers for a sports show don’t give two shits about the sport. The first step should be to map out the season and make sure results are realistic. And then write around it.This season of Ted Lasso has had its fair share of issues – it starts with not caring about the sport it centers around IMO. You can’t make me care about Richmond’s promotion status when the entire season has felt like a writer using a random result generator synced with the mood they want to convey in an episode. It’s utter garbage writing.
“intangible feeling that there are dimensions to these stories that are being left behind or elided for reasons that I don’t understand”? How about Ted abandoning Henry to long distance zoom day camp for 2 years and likely more. On and on goes this core travesty of blind irresponsibility central to the main character and no one gives zero f*ks. Kindness as Henry faces a future of psychic turmoil and unending rage at his father.
Well I really liked this episode.The N’Sync opening was just joyful. I like how Beard is looking at the players and telling Ted that they just aren’t “in sync” doesn’t land until rewatch when you realize he means N’Sync. This is a show that has built in stuff I will be discovering on re-watch for years.As someone whose therapist passed away many years ago, I felt Ted’s anger at thinking Fieldstone just left him without a decent goodbye.Can we give Will credit for realizing what a sore spot his Ted-bought suit is for Nate? Clearly Will learned from Nate’s attack against him that Nate’s achilles heel is his insecurity and Will is sticking that blade in every chance he gets.Nate’s betrayal hit even harder for me because Ted had just gotten home from his night out with Sharon. His willingness to be vulnerable had paid off for him big time and then *BAM* here’s what happens when you trust the wrong person. I can’t wait to see how the others react to what Nate did. The Diamond Dogs are going to be a pack.Keeley’s photoshoot outfit was atrocious.
OH PLEASE! You trash the show in paragraph after endless paragraph and it still gets a rating of B-?? Honestly, I think you just love the sound of your own blathering. Stop overthinking! The show is wonderful. Period.
I think the title was just a reference to Sharon’s departure – she literally said her train to Royston doesn’t leave until midnight before she asked Ted if he wanted to get a drink.
The show’s relationship with football is baffling. The Championship playoff is one of the most cinematically thrilling events in sport (known as The Richest Game In Football given that the winners will earn millions in the Premier League.) Unlike league matches, the playoff final goes to a penalty shootout if the game ends in a tie. Penalty shootouts make for great TV.
Also, it’s entirely credible that a team could start poorly, have a great run after Christmas, and then scrape into sixth place in the league. Last year’s sixth-place team, Bournemouth had 11 draws and 13 defeats.
My theory about billionaire Edwin’s desire to buy Sam’s contract is that Edwin is doing the bidding of Dubai Air. Once Sam’s rights are controlled by Edwin/Dubai Air, Sam is going be put on ice as punishment for his protest. Would a reporter give the subject of a bombshell story a heads up AND the name of his source? I don’t think a high school reporter would even do that. Yeah, this season has been all over the place. The showrunners needed to dial in on key characters and tightened up their arcs. Chalk it up to “second album syndrome.” Hopefully things do completely off the rails in the final episode s there’s a chance to right things in season 3.
I’m absolutely boggled at the fact that no one has any reservations about Sam and Rebecca’s relationship. Sam is 21 years old and ramping up what looks like will be a star career. Rebecca is more than twice his age and owns the team he plays for. Even if we leave out the age difference (which, yes Sam is legally an adult, but there’s still a couple more years left for that frontal lobe to finish developing. They couldn’t have at least made him 26 or 27? Like they met when he was literally a teenager), this relationship- which we’ve actually seen next to zero proof is the deep and meaningful connection they’re trying to sell- could be a huge liability for the team. Say they do get back together (in which case, what was the point of Rebecca’s revelation last episode that she needs to figure out how to be happy on her own and breaking up with Sam?), how do they see this playing in the media? When Rebecca spent the last two years getting absolutely railroaded thanks to Rupert? She’d be absolutely framed as a predatory cougar preying on young men in her employ. You’re telling me the same women who’s had to deal with being “Old Rebecca” wouldn’t have thought about how the press would treat this?And Sam? Every achievement- every match he starts, every sponsorship or media opportunity he gets, the entire start of this promising career- would be seen as the result of sleeping with the boss. If Ted needed to bench Sam, what’s to stop Rebecca from overruling him and demanding her boyfriend be a starter? What’s to stop her from demanding Isaac give up his captainship and name Sam? And if they break up? That’s a walking sexual harassment and coercion liability. This isn’t even touching on how the racial dynamics of ‘middle aged white English woman and much younger Nigerian man’ would be framed by the UK press. Like, what’s gonna happen when the minority owners find out the player who Rebecca dropped Dubai Air as their sponsor for is also the guy she’s sleeping with??? No one’s thought of that? Wouldn’t this be part of the job Keeley’s supposedly so good at???I don’t think Rebecca needed to be raked over the coals or anything, but I just can’t believe in a post #MeToo world, not a single one of these characters has gone “Woah, wait a second. You’re dating who? Are we sure this is a good idea?” The fact that it was actually Ted in this episode who’s shown the most hesitation about the whole thing, and even that was muted, just beggars belief and I can’t believe the writers didn’t think about this at all? Even outside of all those ‘football league’ issues, do they think a 47 and 21 year old couple wouldn’t raise some eyebrows in their respective friend groups at all?
I have enjoyed every episode of Ted Lasso (even Beard’s night out) but while I was watching this instalment, I kept thinking I’d missed an episode prior to it. I hadn’t but it felt like some stuff should have happened on-screen to lead up to where we were now.
Less personal drama/interaction, more enthusiastic sports based fish out of water action please. I literally fast forwarded through the Rebecca/Sam, Keely/Roy and Sam/Akufo stuff.Kind of a waste of Sam Richardson. He’s a delightful national treasure.
The hardest thing to believe in this episode is that a high profile young footballer on the verge of returning to play in the Premier League would be interested in moving to a club in Morocco, no matter how inspirational the owner.
If he was 31-32 maybe he’d shift for a nice fat contract, otherwise he’d be effectively retiring.
I think the racially-, culturally-charged nature of what the offer symbolizes has a lot to do with it.
But racially and culturally changed to Moroccan Arab? Morocco has as much to do culturally with Nigeria as Turkey does with Laos.
Realize I’m a few days late, but I agree with Myles that the way this episode discussed their promotion possibilities is frustrating.On the one hand, it’s possible that this was the semifinal of the promotion playoffs; they do after all take place at the home stadiums. (The final is at Wembley.) However, if they had just clinched their spot in the finals, the players probably would’ve been celebrating a bit more and/or Arlo White would’ve said something. On the other hand, it’s possible it just means they’re 3 points away from clinching one of the top two automatic promotion spots. But in that case they’re almost certainly guaranteed a play-off spot if they lose, and thus a loss in the next game would not be the end of the world. So hopefully the finale treats that correctly, though at this point considering how the season of television has ignored the season of football, we’ll probably find out the team’s fate off the pitch.Also, on the subject of real football, I strongly agree with GregTheStopSign (https://www.avclub.com/1847780549) that it’s almost literally impossible for Raja Casablanca to become as big as United, PSG, Bayern, or Barcelona. Unless he’s trying to create some sort of African Super League, there just won’t be enough across the board talent in the Moroccan League to maintain interest and competitive integrity. Also, I did find it slightly weird that a Ghanian would buy a Moroccan team and make that the symbol of all African football success. Yes Raja is one of the best African teams out there, but there probably is a successful sub-saharan team that would be a better fit. All’s that to say, perhaps it is some sort of set-up involving Rupert. I don’t buy that Akufo is a complete fake. But it’s possible he’s a coinvestor with Rupert.
One thing I’m seeing in a lot of comments is the disbelief of a young player (Sam) leaving Richmond and the EPL for the Moroccan league. If Edwin is legitimate, this could very well be like what happened in the Chinese league a while back, where teams were spending millions upon millions of dollars to sign stars from around the world, simply to build up the prestige of the league. Hell, in 2016/17, Shanghai Port spent $67 million in transfer fees, along with $400k/week, in order to sign Oscar from Premier League giants Chelsea FC. There is a real world equivalent for something like this happening, but not with someone trying to buy a player before they actually own a team.
I had a different reading of the Roy/Keeley scene at the end. (And I am definitely not saying mine is the right one, just that it is something I’ve experienced.) Nate’s kiss attempt is not even a blip on Roy and Keeley’s relationship (God knows Keeley is not interested, and Roy’s reaction – “That must have been very awkward for you” is precisely the correct reaction to hearing about it), but yes, the Jamie and Funny Irish Teacher reveals were more serious. But when Roy pondered that he didn’t say he was dating someone – I think there’s a point that you reach in a serious relationship where you’re not sure exactly where you’re at. You aren’t married but your relationship is also not as casual as a term like “I’m seeing someone” or even “my girlfriend” might suggest. Although we haven’t had strict confirmation, it seems at this point that Roy and Keeley are living together and they’re taking this relationship pretty seriously. But that can be a hard relationship to define when you get to that point – does the world understand that you are very serious about that person? What terms do you use to convey that? (Girlfriend? Live-in girlfriend? Partner?) I don’t know – I think what I read from that scene is that Roy and Keeley are at a crossroads, but it’s more of a “how do we define this relationship moving forward” type of crossroads and not a “we’re breaking up” type of crossroads. We see Roy’s discomfort about the photo shoot early in the episode – “at home with the footballer boyfriend” – and to me that discomfort was more about the scenario or idea that he feels a little reduced to the boyfriend role when he feels like more than that.I don’t know; like I said, I could be way off base here. But I’m not sure we’re looking at a pending breakup so much as a pending proposal.Nate, my god, you suck so bad, dude. I’ve seen a lot of comments about how Trent Crimm (The Independent) can’t reveal his sources, but that’s not true. A journalist cannot be compelled to reveal their sources. If Trent wants to tell Ted about Nate because he thinks Nate’s being a jackass for revealing Ted’s private medical health information, then he’s well within his rights to do so. (Also, no one wants to watch an episode devoted to Ted trying to figure out who said it, I think.)Ted and Sharon’s farewell hangout had me feeling very teary. (Also I don’t think we needed to learn any more about Sharon’s drinking? The point was that Ted realized that Sharon did not have her life together anymore than he did and was clearly struggling with things herself. That is what helped him let his guard down. Not everything has to be resolved.
Sins & Blessings:*Criminal under-use of Sam Richardson (sin)*Offhand shout out to I May Destroy You (screen was small for me; maybe it was Kwame?; blessing)*Nate’s villain arc giving me serious Walter White resentment vibes (blessing)*Dr. Fieldstone’s farewell (loved the dimension, but it was time for a goodbye; blessing)*Not enough soccer — Friday Night Lights (the series) did a masterful job of balancing on-field and off-field, letting the two spheres drive and comment on one another; given that Ted Lasso so clearly draws on that show it’s too bad they don’t harness its lessons better (sin)
Overall, this season has been a let down. For me, it cruised on the goodwill and freshness of the first season, but went off the rails…lost direction and focus? I will likely watch a third (might depend on how this season ends), but I have no excitement for it nor do I care if it gets a fourth.
Genuine question, as a white guy from the American suburbs: would a Nigerian player really feel an emotional connection to playing “in Africa” for a Moroccan team? North Africa’s basically an entirely different culture.
It’s so surreal to thoroughly enjoy a TV show week after week, only to read recaps and reviews explaining what a complete and total disaster it is.
I suppose it makes sense to have Ted be too giddy to resist bringing up the Cheers connection with another “Sam and Rebecca,” but seemed a bit on-the-nose after it’s been discussed online for weeks, y’know?
Are they filming these as the season is underway? I thought the standard MO was to have them all in the can ahead of time nowadays.
I don’t think Jamie, Nate, and Ms. Bowen are being placed in-between Keely and Roy to create a triangle of love triangles. Those characters are here to show us that there are some (very teeny) cracks in their relationship.
Bah. I love soccer and I love this show and the unrealistic portrayal of the team and the league structure doesn’t matter to me at all. I wish you would just get over so many things. Do you get paid by the complaint?
I haven’t read the other comments, so forgive me if what I say is repetitive, but I find it unbelievably lazy that the Ghanian who wants to buy out the contract of a Nigerian with the sole purpose of building an African powerhouse team is looking at buying a team… in Morocco.
Geographically, Africa is Africa, but culturally and socio-economically, North Africa is predominately Arab (and Berber and others, but for the sake of simplicity). The “Africa” one would assume the billionaire wants to elevate is that of Sub-Saharan Africa. I’m definitely inserting my own interpretation here, but the character seemed very proud of Sub-Saharan, and particularly West African, cuisine, culture, pride, etc., so basing his dreams in Casablanca doesn’t seem to fit the character.
In fairness, though, North Africa is home to the better club teams on the continent, so maybe he’s just hedging his bets.
It might just be classic western reductiveness by treating “Africa” like it’s one country bereft of nuance and regional, national culture and language, but I have no idea why the writers didn’t have the character want to build up a Black African powerhouse from either South Africa, the DRC, Nigeria, or Ghana.
Again, not trying to be thoughtless about complicated things, but it rang false to me.Oh, and getting an African team to win the World Cup isn’t as far-fetched as the characters want us to think. We must be forgetting Ghana in 2010 and Senegal in 2002.
Most excellent review sir. You’ve summed up my feelings very well. I streamed it, but I had the same enthusiastic response at the outset of season one, but steadily find myself disappointed with only the Season 2 finale to go. If it wasn’t for the superb cast, this thing would just be a story-telling dumpster fire at this point. It’s just not that good. It’s neither as funny as a Brit-style Ricky Gervais production, and it certainly isn’t a drama or black comedy. It has become a disjointed amalgamation of all three in some show runner’s mind.