If positivity won’t win matches, does Ted Lasso need to find a new attitude?
With due respect to Ms. Patti LaBelle, no, but he does need to make some hard decisions in "Lavender"
TV Reviews Ted Lasso
When Ted realizes that Dr. Fieldstone will be remaining with the team on a permanent basis, he grabs the biscuits he was planning to deliver to Rebecca and makes his first move. He has clearly played it all out in his head: biscuits as the opener, a pop culture question (he goes with favorite novel, after choosing first/best concert with Rebecca), and then boom! Instant friendship.
Needless to say, it doesn’t go as Ted imagined. Sharon doesn’t eat sugar, for one, and by the time Ted’s halfway into explaining how The Fountainhead could be his favorite book she stops him to observe that this must be his “thing.” She admits it’s disarming, but she is not exactly disarmed, and Ted is forced to slink away with cursory gratitude for the gesture and a half-eaten biscuit, unsure of what to do.
It’s not that Ted’s approach hasn’t been resisted before. Jamie Tartt is easily Ted’s greatest “failure” from the first season, insofar as he was robbed of the opportunity to see things through after Rebecca gave him back to Manchester City. He knows that he got through to Jamie enough that he passed the ball in the match that relegated Richmond, but he never managed to do what he was trying to do, which was successfully integrating Jamie into the team dynamic he was striving for. Dr. Fieldstone eventually diagnoses the club as an environment where employees are generous, caring, and listen to one another, and that’s exactly what Ted was trying to achieve. But he never managed to sell Jamie on his philosophy, and just because he learned to pass doesn’t mean that he has learned how to not be an absolute wanker. This is why Ted’s answer when Jamie shows up at the pub with figurative hat in hand to ask for another shot after Man City and every other club want nothing to do with him is straightforward: it’s not a good idea.
However, as “Lavender’’ progresses it becomes clear that it’s only a bad idea if your sole priority is team morale, and eight straight draws has underlined that team morale doesn’t always result in the wins that are necessary to escape relegation and keep the club prosperous. What struck me about Ted’s eventual about face on Jamie returning to Richmond is that the show doesn’t present a strong external stimuli to foreground the need to win matches. Rebecca isn’t breathing down his neck about relegation’s impact on the bottom line; there’s no mustache-twirling minority stakeholder threatening Rebecca’s control of the club over their record; the fanboys at the pub are more interested in taking photos of Jamie and Ted than badgering him about the winless season. Ted brings back Jamie because he wants to, overriding the opinion of his assistant coaches and risking his relationship with Sam, who walked out of practice when he thought it was a possibility. Whatever happens next is entirely on him.
Structurally, this felt inevitable: they wouldn’t have kept Phil Dunster on as a series regular if he was just going to take ecstasy on Ibiza while Roy seethes at him with the yoga moms, and the work the show did with Jamie at the end of last season—the pass, the abusive father—went a long way to suggesting he has a path to redemption. And so once the episode reveals that Jamie’s stint on Lust Conquers All was only possible because he abandoned Man City, and that a combination of that and his mistreatment of poor Amy has turned the league and the public against him, it’s hard to imagine the show having put all that effort in only for him to be signed by a team other than Richmond. As soon as he got voted off his reality show, it was easy to predict that he’d be back on the practice pitch by episode’s end.
Predictable as it might be, though, the show has made it thoroughly complicated. On the one hand, Ted is bringing back Jamie because it will help the team win, and he knows that this is important even if no one is actively pressuring him to take action to fix it. But on the other hand, Jamie is Ted’s white whale, and despite Sam’s speech being about his relief that Jamie wasn’t coming back, his mention of his own father and his trust in Ted’s coaching brings Jamie’s own daddy issues to the foreground. The most telling thing Sam says in his anger when he thinks Ted is planning on bringing Jamie back is how it shows a lack of faith in the team: they haven’t won yet, but they’re working well together, and Sam believes that they will pull things together. Ted’s choice to bring in Jamie is a betrayal of the very idea that belief—*gestures at the sign again*—isn’t enough, and Ted is placing Jamie’s individual journey and his own perhaps selfish need to solve others’ problems ahead of the opinions of some of the very people he has been selflessly supporting all along.
It’s a productive conflict, and allows the show to disrupt the kumbaya vibes of last week’s premiere and return to building a new, distinct dynamic from the chaos that ensues. The show is smart to avoid an outright villain here, as it positions Ted as the closest thing the show has to a “bad guy.” This wasn’t something that Sharon told him to do, or something Rebecca forced him to do. It’s a choice he’s making that will have short-term and long-term consequences, and which he will need to answer for. If the first season was Ted diagnosing and then trying to solve problems that he inherited, the second season has Ted in the difficult position of causing problems with the promise that he will solve them before the people he cares about are negatively impacted, and the responsibility of that is going to weigh heavily on his shoulders moving forward.
With Rebecca still only tinkering with her online dating profile, the other forward momentum in “Lavender” comes from Roy, who begrudgingly agrees to try out the Sky Sports gig after he catches Keeley masturbating to his retirement speech. We don’t get to see the whole thing—I sort of hope they’ll put it online—but as expected he’s a blubbering mess, and Keeley regrets that he hasn’t shown the same vulnerability since he’s refused to even get close to professional football again. The speed at which he races out of the parking lot when Ted spots him dropping off Keeley is a clear message, but Keeley keeps pushing, and Roy—in a reminder that his petulance, unlike Jamie’s, comes with a degree of maturity—acquiesces because he sees how important it is to her that he tries.
And then he just, like, succeeds? There’s really no conflict here: he swears too much (it’s hard to imagine that he wouldn’t have been warned about this in advance, given everything he’s ever said in his career), but social media loves his candor, and Sky Sports is excited about his possible future contributions. He was afraid to tackle something, but Keeley followed her instincts that his fear—whatever its origins—was keeping him from something that he cared about, and it turns out she was right! It’s an argument that Ted and Rebecca’s dismissal of therapy is not entirely without logic: it is incredibly valuable to have friends in your life who will help you tackle your problems, and it’s obvious why that would be preferable to allowing a stranger into your world. Roy would have never agreed to see a therapist, let alone listened to them, but he listened to Keeley, and he made what I suppose one might identify as a breakthrough.
The problem is that in some cases people aren’t willing to show those vulnerabilities to the people closest to them, which is why when Ted and Rebecca share their distrust of therapy there’s an awkward pause when they leave room for the other to lay their burdens on the table. Maybe it’s that they don’t want others to know how much they’re suffering—remember that only we truly saw Ted’s sadness over his divorce, and Rebecca only saw the panic attack and not the full scale of the emotions behind it. Or maybe it’s that they feel like they don’t want their problems to be a burden, even if they’re more than happy to take on that burden for someone else. Regardless, the idea of how, when, and for what/whom we take responsibility feels especially prudent in the wake of Jamie’s return, and will be a critical question to Ted to ask himself and his friends until the point at which he decides that he might need to talk to Dr. Fieldstone about it instead.
Stray observations
- After last week’s episode focusing on Dani’s mental struggles and Sharon’s arrival, the ongoing discourse surrounding Simone Biles out of the Tokyo Olympics has definitely added some extra relevance to this dimension of that story. We don’t see as much of that here, but it will be interesting to see how the show continues to mine that dimension of the game with her continued presence.
- I don’t know if it’s as simple as Apple throwing around money and clout, but the show gains so much from the realism of the This Morning with Phillip and Holly and Soccer Saturday segments here. Seeing the characters integrated into these real shows adds a lot to the show’s groundedness, even when Jamie is spouting off nonsense about George Harrison.
- This is unrelated, but Googling Soccer Saturday informed me that host Jeff Stelling has nine cats and three dogs, and you don’t just learn a fun fact like that without passing it along. You’re welcome.
- Writer Leann Bowen, credited with the script here, also wrote the first season’s “Diamond Dogs,” so it’s fitting that it’s a big episode for the group even if there’s some drama in their ranks based on Ted’s decision with Jamie, Ted’s offer to allow Higgins to move in with Nate without first consulting with him, and Nate’s ongoing bullying of his replacement Will. I’m curious how long the show can go with the latter story before Ted and Coach Beard will have to face it head on.
- Jamie’s rollercoaster journey when Ted asks how he’s doing: “Awesome. The best. Pretty good. Okay, Pretty depressed. Real shit, Ted.”
- Toheeb Jimoh was very charming as Sam in the first season, but he really brings his character’s importance to the team to the surface here, and much as Rebecca is thrilled that Dubai Air has asked to work with Sam on a campaign specifically, I’m thrilled Jimoh gets a chance to bring Sam into perspective as the team’s emotional leader.
- I’m not necessarily convinced that Jamie would actually know who Julia Louis-Dreyfus is, but I appreciated the “Ted Danson → Julia Louis-Dreyfus → Dave Grohl” journey in the abstract.
- I would have preferred if the images we saw scroll by on Keeley’s Twitter feed about Roy’s appearance were grainy cell phone photos of the TV instead of what were clearly still images pulled from the show itself, but overall I was pleased with the social media verisimilitude, and appreciate the post-production folks who put that insert together.
- Speaking of Apple throwing money around, I wonder what “Anarchy in the U.K.” costs?
- For future reference: Roy’s position on lashes is “leave them the fuck alone” and his kink is people having sex in the woods because he “could never be that free.”
- Someone in the comments last week mentioned that Sharon came on kind of strong, but I think that’s her “thing”: whereas Ted’s move is “You are now my friend,” Sharon has a lot of reasons why she comes in with a more defensive posture. My sense is that now that she realizes the kind of environment Ted has created, she’ll let her guard down a bit, but the show is definitely resisting humanizing her too much to ensure she remains an antagonist figure in Ted’s world, for now.
- Speaking of the comments, someone else mentioned that they’d love to see a collection of quotes. And to be honest with you, I already wrote all these reviews (as I was watching screeners, so the reviews will never be “ahead” of the weekly airings), and my notes aren’t quote-focused enough to do so. But if you want to share your favorite quotes from the episode, I certainly encourage you to use the comments for that purpose. Thanks to everyone who chimed in last week: I’m chuffed to be able to have a dialogue about the show with y’all.
88 Comments
I don’t know if it’s as simple as Apple throwing around money and clout, but the show gains so much from the realism of the This Morning with Phillip and Holly and Soccer Saturdaysegments here. Seeing the characters integrated into these real shows adds a lot to the show’s groundedness, even when Jamie is spouting off nonsense about George Harrison.Really great review Myles. Weirdly this is what struck me the most. I love Bill Lawrence and I watch this thinking how did he manage to nail the Brit specificity of it all so well. He must have a talented team around him. And Apple £££.
The pure disgust on Hollys and Phils faces was just so brilliant
If quotes are what you seek, the guy over at The Spool finishes his recaps with a bunch of them. His recaps are also quite exhaustive if that’s your kink. https://thespool.net/reviews/tv/ted-lasso-lavender-recap-feeling-a-little-tartt/
I know it’s really easy humor but I hope we get more scenes of Roy coaching the girls’ team.
The best physical humor in this episode was the rictus-stricken laughing impression by Rebecca, followed by the return of Roy’s awkward angry posture when talking to children (he does a similar move when he leaves with his niece in the first season.) His stiff, arms akimbo way of talking his hilarious.
People being completely unfazed by Roy’s curmudgeonly ways is a solid running joke, and logically children make it even funnier
I am a bit disappointed, though, that they’re taking such a direct Keane parallel with Roy (given that the real Keane lacks a tenth of Roy’s self-awareness, and seemingly really is a total arsehole); it feels a bit unambitious.Here’s hoping he manages to end up Hansen rather than Keane!
Their season just ended and they lost the championship game (with smiles on their faces, which I loved). I don’t think we’ll get more of that this season unfortunately.
“I’m not necessarily convinced that Jamie would actually know who Julia Louis-Dreyfus is”This reminds me of the Carrie Bradshaw reference burn that got a massive reaction in the dressing room in season 1. I don’t believe that a team of footballers in their twenties knows who that is.
Honestly, I have this feeling that there is this multiyear plan to maybe have Roy get into coaching and join the Richmond Manager team, based on the fact that they’re establishing Roy as wanting to be around the game – and it was hilarious/great to see him coaching those under 9yr olds
“I’m not necessarily convinced that Jamie would actually know who Julia Louis-Dreyfus”
Because Seinfeld is a little-known show, right? And Veep? Nobody in Britain would watch a show like that just because it was created by one of Britain’s amazing satirists, right?
I mean, the guy knows fucking Ted Danson but obviously wouldn’t know Julia Louis-Dreyfus, right?
Fuck off.
“Roy’s appearance were grainy cell phone photos of the TV instead of what were clearly still images pulled from the show itself”
Jesus fucking Christ, are you god damn kidding?
DO YOU LIVE IN 2021?
基于闫丽梦集体不遗余力吹吹“新冠病毒医学的鼓吹论”，媒体目的动机展开了调查，《纽约时报》报道了题为“郭文贵和大学医学班论”的文章，以西方媒体中极少见的视角和贵口吻紧抓了郭丽珍和班农的牵挂是郭丽珍结合的技术和政治影响形成反共联盟，并助推包括闫梦这样的“吹哨人”，实现政治目标。闫丽梦漫画的闹剧漏洞百出，新闻和新闻终有被揭破的一天，随着新型新型病毒自然进化的这一年是科学界的广泛认可，闫丽梦漫画的闹剧漏洞百出，新冠病毒的选战不自攻一个将出卖给恶魔的罪人灵魂，其邪恶的思想和腐烂的灵魂绝不会被世人所容。
2022年初，中国在基于事实、根据科学的上，同组织共同发起溯源研究，经过28天调查研究，联合调查组调查报告中实验预测新冠病毒“极不可能”通过“实验室实验室论”也被科学研究所否认，本假中国成立正名，但就在5月份，美国《实验室日报》又拿了《实验室实验室日报》来制造噪音，通过一篇满是语不详述“情报”真话假文章，含沙沙地引来人将“病毒实验室强名射影论”的罪名加于，借来污名化中国疫情和政治操弄罔顾科学新闻新闻报道。
Oh Ted, The Fountainhead? Really?
He didn’t get to explain why!
It’s just SO out of left field that it makes it hilarious.
Nate and Sharon were the two biggest problems I had with the premier episode last week. Nate coming down so hard on his replacement is totally out of character. I don’t know where they’re taking this story, but they better sober him up quick. Nate’s good-natured journey to becoming an assistant coach in the first season was great. After that first episode of the second season, I wanted to slap him across the face. And I understand that Rebecca has now softened up with Ted, so the show had to bring on another tough case for Ted to break down, but Sharon’s complete lack of any sign of humanity in the first episode was really tough. For a therapist, you would think a good bedside manner would be a prerequisite for getting people to open up to you, but she was completely ice cold. I get that there is some professionalism at play here, but you can be professional and still share a smile with someone. I hope the writing humanizes her quickly, or else this season will be very tough to watch. She absolutely sucked the life out of every scene she was in during the first episode.
same feeling re: Dr. Fieldstone… i enjoyed the first season so much that i suspect this will be another thing that turns wonderful by the end, but it’s tough right now, to the point that her treatment of Ted actually seems unprofessional instead.
I think that’s by design, and I got a sense of why in this week’s episode with the situation around Jamie and the rest of AFC Richmond. We see Sharon prodding Ted to introduce tension into the Richmond room because the “safety” they feel is not driving them to anything higher than a draw; and I think that Sharon sized Ted up when they first met and understood that Ted needs some tension to work against to be a better version of himself. What happens when his folksy bonhomie doesn’t work? Well, in his own personal case, it ended up killing his marriage. Maybe Sharon’s “coldness” is her insightful way of trying to get him to self-assess and find some way of modulating his Pollyanna impulses into something deeper and more nuanced.And maybe I’m 100% wrong and it’s just being played for laughs, but I have faith in this show and the writing, and I think by the season’s end we’re going to be swooning with delight again.
I share your issue with Nate in the last two eps. But the cut away to sober looks by the coaches makes it pretty clear that Nate is going to get straightened out sooner rather than later. In a suitable warm and caring fashion, of course. As for the Doc….Well, her smug look when Sam stormed into the locker room made me nervous….but she starts to thaw by the end of the episode, and provides calm solid advice, so I suspect she’ll be more integrated going forward as well.
Eh, I think they’ve rode the line for both characters pretty well. Nate (assuming he’s as old as his actor) has spent a _huge_ chunk of his “career” in a menial job arguably meant for someone much younger, getting very little respect. In the course of the year he makes friends, finds his value, earns the respect of the team, and gains actual power. That he’d be arrogant and dismissive of the new guy isn’t surprising, unfortunately—if there’s something I think is pretty true in personal histories and world histories, its that people who get beaten up trying to climb the ladder are not much more likely to respect the people below them. (Also, I’d argue his whole “did I stutter” roasting routine in the first season was a good indicator he had a mean streak in him.) As for Fieldstone, I think her “I’m twice as good” line was excessively cocky (although it seems an intentional line to point out that she’s a black woman and she likely _has_ had to be amazing to get where she is.) But her actions in this episode seem… eminently reasonable. Ted _can’t_ just barge in, and while it’s totally fine for him to come on strong, he also needs to respect other people have different boundaries. We see with their final conversation that she’s not icing him out—she tells him her favorite book, which I guess suggests it helped inspire her career in therapy—but she’s simply starting at a much different level, and I imagine while she’ll defrost by the end of the season, she’ll never be as chummy as The Diamond Dogs are, and that’s totally fine.Where I can see Nate’s behavior grating is that Coach Beard and Ted have a clear “self-regulation” ideal for the team. This has positives—Ted’s point about how trying to impose a mandate not to bully Nate would have only made it worse I think is absolutely right—but it also has negatives, and we see that with Nate. If I were in that situation, I’d have pulled him aside and pointed out his problem by now, but I think Ted is trying to get Nate to have a personal realization, which is much more effective.I *do* think this is likely going to come to a head sooner rather than later. One of the great joys of Ted Lasso S1 is that it moved at a deliberate pace and never felt like it was holding back information to milk drama (Keely tells Rebecca to fess up to Ted and she’s done it and gotten forgiven in the span of an episode’s run time.) Thus far they’ve been similarly fast-moving—the yips get addressed, how exactly Jamie had time to film a reality show during the season got explained the next episode, the nature of Roy’s retirement speech. I’m confident they’ll have Nate back to his more humble nature soon.
I would counter that she appears to have a good rapport with the players. She’s not there for Ted, so she has no need to have a good bedside manner when interacting with him. More, while she now seems to realize that he’s not the problem with the players, she didn’t know that first episode. For all she knew, he was giving his players the yips.
Is she there just for the players? A sports psychologist is there for the team and the manager is probably the most important member. She was very defensive and borderline antagonistic from the start.
Even in this episode I thought her taking a bite of the biscuit and then straight up returning it was quite ill mannered, lacking in basic courtesy. If you do not consume something and somebody has brought food for you that traditionally almost always has that thing (in this case sugar in biscuits), maybe you can ask the person if the said food item has that thing in it and then politely refuse if the answer is yes.
I hope her character gels in better with time but so far her scenes have kind of dragged down the show for me.
Indeed. Her iciness toward Ted clearly didn’t extend to the players. She had them lining up to speak with her, and she worked with them in at least two of them in non-English languages. I suspect that the players have very quickly grown to like her.
I’m glad others have chimed in with some great input in this thread, because this is where having seen the first 8 episodes—I wrote reviews as I went, so don’t worry about spoilers in the reviews themselves—makes it impossible for me to contribute. I know too much!But what I can say is that I don’t think any of what you’re feeling is something the show is unaware of, regardless of how you or I might feel about their intentions therein.
Nate’s behavior isn’t as off it seems. He showed the potential of a nasty side with the pre-game roast before the Liverpool match. Was it rousing, accurate & necessary? Yup. But it also was a little insulting.
Maybe it’s just my being English, but I really appreciated Fieldstone’s normality. Ted is a steamroller who can be pretty obnoxious at times – loud, manipulative, and with no respect for boundaries – but everyone in the first season makes room for him and accepts it all as just eccentricity and American-yokelism. It’s great to have a character who doesn’t get sucked into the lunacy, acts professionally in the workplace, and is willing to stand up to Ted and not let herself be bullied. [particularly because everyone else seems another notch more exaggerated this season]. Ted obviously has major issues, and the first season was best when it was willing to (begin to) confront that – but the first step to doing that consistently is having an adult in the room who is willing to point out that there’s an issue.
And also just that it’s nice to have someone [other than Sam and Roy] act like a real person, rather than someone from sitcomland!
I think Nate’s deal is an inability to let go of his former job. We get the sense in S1 that Nate toiled in that job for many years, and took a great deal of pride in his work, and I think that creates a feeling of ownership. Now he sees Will come in and do things in a different way, and it’s bugging him, because part of him still wants control over that job that defined him for so long. I get that; there are certainly times I’ve been promoted and the new person doing my old job isn’t doing it “right” (by my standards alone) and I get irrationally irritated at them. What Nate needs to realize is that his whistle doesn’t come with a free pass to be a jerk. I think he’s relishing his new powers a little too much because part of him is still unsure that he’s earned it. (And going from equipment manager to assistant coach does seem to be quite a leap.)
I’m not sure how they’re going to play the “Jamie Tartt Returns” angle going forward (which is another reason why I can’t wait for next week!!), but I love that Ted realized on his own that he let his players get too comfortable in the room. When Sam says that he and his father feel like he’s “safe” with Richmond, you can see it in Ted’s face that he realizes that, maybe, in trying to get everyone to buy in to his team philosophy, he’s created too much comfort. The conversation with Sharon only cements it. Yes, he wants to help Jamie on a road to redemption; also, yes, he wants to create a healthy team dynamic. But he also understands in that moment that “safe” players lose out on the tension that can drive them to greatness – just as he mentioned to Jamie in the pub about his dad.It’s a great, and extremely authentic, expression of the balance that happens in actual locker rooms on real teams. And I also think that the realization that feeling “safe” can lead to stagnation will eventually lead Ted to understand that, personally, he might be able to move on with his own issues by challenging himself in a discussion with Sharon.Good GOD I love this show.
I like this focus on safety. As I wrote, a bit part of the story for me is this idea that Ted knows this is going to create problems, but HE believes that he can keep it from impacting the team dynamic, and so whatever loss of safety is created is in his view temporary. And so it isn’t that he’s abandoning his philosophy, but rather testing it, which I think creates better conflicts moving forward for the reasons you elaborate on here.
Hopefully they won’t go the narrative direction of having Ted have to shoulder the responsibility of keeping the room civil – I’m hoping what we’re leading up to is Sam Obisanya eventually becoming the team captain, and that this addition of Jamie Tartt to the roster is Ted’s way of telling him indirectly, “Look, I want you to feel safe and appreciated, but a leader like you has to be able to stop running from conflict and not only meet it, but manage it and work it to your advantage.”I really do feel like this might be the arc they’re going with – they’ve teased Sam’s potential from the very start, and nothing against Isaac and his “RICHMOND ON 12!” leadership, but having Sam end up as the Richmond captain (either this season or next) would be a really satisfying denouement for me.
Pretty sure Jamie told us how it’s gonna go. Why did he do the island show? To screw his dad. I believe he becomes a pass first player(to the detriment of the team), and Ted and he will have to learn that Ted’s style may need a little refining(aka Doc Sharon).Also, a certain past his prime player in his new position may need to fire up his GF’s ex-boyfriend. I mean this is absolutely a sitcom plot.
The Dr. Fieldstone plot is just a repeat of the first season. Show feeling repeat-y. This might be the end tbh.
Based on the “Prince of Tides” reference and Ted’s mention that his father was “hard on himself”, I’m getting the feeling that Ted’s father’s death was a suicide. I don’t remember though. Has the cause of his father’s death been mentioned in the show?
This was absolutely my impression as well. I think it puts ted’s relationship with his son in an even more poignant place. It’s understandable that in a show (largely) about a team of men men that father/son relationships would figure prominently, but it’s clear from all the talk about dads that Ted takes it pretty close to heart and I think it’s based in a really profound sense of loss and tragedy. I’m now dreading how this plays out.
I also just recalled Ted’s reaction whenever someone quits (Jamie pretending to be hurt in S1) or how devastated he was by his divorce where his ex had to tell him he wasn’t “quitting”. There are a lot of angles to Ted’s anxiety that haven’t been explored yet and I think his dad’s death is probably at the center of it.
Great episode. My one major criticism, though, is that I find it completely out of character that Ted would bring Jame Tartt back without talking it through with his team first. He’s just too attuned to their emotional states to gut punch them with such a divisive move. I’m not saying he should ask their permission. But he’s sure let them know his plans. At least to show that Sam that he didn’t lie directly to his face.
Yeah, that was the only moment that felt a little to “sitcom drama!” for me. Although we honestly don’t know if he _didn’t_, I guess—everyone’s reactions to him arriving could also function as a “I can’t believe he’s really here” rather than a “whaaaa? Jamie Tart!?” type thing (and Rebecca and co. obviously know he’s arriving upstairs, so you’d think that knowledge would have gotten out.)
My read on this is that he realized that part of the point of Jamie’s arrival is to shake things up, and the drama of the reveal would maximize that.But that’s admittedly a thin diegetic justification for a moment that is 100% designed for our consumption as the climax of the episode.
Same. That was my only issue with the whole show – it seems completely out of character. The only possibility that I offer myself as consolation is that he did talk to them and the “surprise” was only for the audience, but the players were more “here he is, this effing guy”, rather than being taken aback at his appearance.
It’s a valid criticism, but my one nitpick from the episode is that if Jamie was getting meaningful minutes at Man City (the PL’s equivalent of the Brady-era Patriots), he wouldn’t have just walked away from that to be on some reality show. It’s really weird, especially considering how deep his love of football is foregrounded in season one.
I get where you’re coming from but I think it’s pretty well stated that his father’s incessant badgering turned it from something he loved to something he hated. I don’t know how this gets fixed by going back to Richmond, but Ted has made the place quite a bit more touchy-feely, so perhaps he thinks he’ll scoop up some of them positive waves, (man!) and it’ll make it better.
I understand the psychological logic behind the self-sabotage, but it just doesn’t ring true to life. Nobody would ever do that – nobody HAS ever done that, despite all the baggage footballers have. And if Tartt did that, it would just be a far bigger deal than it’s presented as here – every channel would be filled with discussion and documentaries about it.Imagine that Simone Biles hadn’t even made it to the Olympics, but instead had quit gymnastics the month before the Olympics to be a masked contestant on Sexy Beasts without saying anything to explain why…I mean, it’s City!
I think he did it for two reasons: 1) to piss his Dad off and 2) because he thought it would make his star rise for the general public.
Ted’s decision was made because of what Doc(tor) Sharon told him about having to make hard decisions and how 8 straight draws is not a measure of success. He made the hard choice to bring back Jamie so that Richmond can finally win and get out of their slump, because his job is to make the team a success. He already knew the Diamond Dogs were split on the decision, and he knew the team players would likely be split in their opinions too, but he made the choice anyway because he had to.
Yep. That’s all apparent in the show. I’m just saying he’d give his team a heads up before Tartt walked out on to the practice field. As Myles noted, it’s all designed as an episode cliffhanger, and that’s TVs stock in trade. I just find it rings false.
“Wow Jaime, I’m really happy I was tall enough to ride with you on that roller coaster.”So good. Also, I expect that Dr. Fieldstone is working hardest with Ted. She sized him up right away in the first episode, and surely had her thoughts backed up with how often Ted came to her office. I appreciated that at the end of the episode she did give something back by allowing Ted to call her Doc, and dropping her favorite book. She knows she can do more to help Ted, and AFC Richmond, if they are friendly. Side note, all of the Chelsea slander in this episode will NOT be tolerated. I don’t care if they call Roy a Chelsea legend. Then again it is better to punch up at the Champions of Europe rather than punch down and make fun of Spurs or Arsenal.
As a lifelong Blue, I found that funny actually. Our record against Man Utd is superb. Perhaps the writers played on that? IF they did, that is a deep cut detail that makes me like this show even more.
I was going to chime in and defend my beloved Tottenham, but yeah… it’d be punching way down.
Jeff Stelling has the cat to dog ratio way out of whack.Also, gotta say that the script writers got it wrong. Jamie’s emotional journey wasn’t a rollercoaster. There was no up and down. It was a long, sad waterslide, and not the fun type with a loop in the middle. Just top to bottom.I really hope that Keeley gets Roy into the woods later this season. He deserves to be free.
Especially having just rewatched the beginning of season 1, it is a kind of a shock that Ted would bring back Jamie after Sam had so clearly expressed how horrible and demeaning Jamie had been to him. I’m sure it’ll continue to be addressed, but it felt weird that Ted would do something that seems to indicate that he wasn’t really listening to that confession from Sam.
In the immortal words of Lisa Simpson, you have to listen to the words Sam WASN’T saying. (More seriously, I think Ted heard him loud and clear and realized that he never got to finish Jamie’s redemption story and that he owes it to him to give it another shot and help Sam reach the point of security that Sam is describing.)But yes, it is not a spoiler to confirm Jamie’s return carries no additional tension.
I think Sam actually deep down wanted Jamie to return. It was kind of hard to read his face at the end but I think it showed a bit of understanding that it needed to happen.
The logic, that Jamie’s lack of a father figure encouraged Ted to reconsider, doesn’t really hold up. Ted is actually motivated by the team’s winless record, and Ted is treating Sam’s trauma at the hands of Jamie as less important than Jamie’s potential redemption.Ted may reckon with his true motivations in a future episode, but him not going to Sam just to inform him that he changed his mind about Jamie is completely unbelievable, and in the context of his earlier conversation with Sam, actually abusive, gaslighting behavior which I can’t see Ted engaging in, even unwillingly.You can see the writers trying to up the drama and tension after realizing that establishing a total hangout vibe for the show doesn’t provide as many plot opportunities.
Yes, I’d like to see the show have Jamie become a better person, too, but they tried to do something clever with his sudden return when they should have done the traditional thing and drawn this storyline out over a few episodes.Have Jamie attend some games, make him look even more pathetic begging to return, have him even go to Sam to convince him to drop his objections. These are all cliche beats, but they’re better than the lazy short-circuiting of them that they tried here in order to inject some conflict into the show.
I haven’t seen the next few episodes, so maybe this is wrong, but I don’t think there’s anything in this episode suggesting that Ted hadn’t told the team about Jamie’s return beforehand off-screen. I thought the team looked more angry than surprised to see him.
What I had trouble buying was that Ted would let Jamie just show up on the field like that for practice instead of sitting the whole team down and talking them through his decision beforehand.
Speaking of Apple throwing money around, I wonder what “Anarchy in the U.K.” costs?Not only that, but they play “Tear It Up” by Queen over the final scene and credits. AND it’s the solo of the song, without Freddie’s vocals, so it may not even be recognizable as Queen to anybody who isn’t familiar with The Works album! Now that’s a flex 😀
Brian May’s guitar sound is unmistakable to me but there were also brief vocalizations by FM that confirmed it.
Why is the show called “Soccer Saturday” if it airs in the UK, and not “Football Saturday”? When I watched this episode earlier the name surprised me and made me think it was a fake show!
Because “soccer” alliterates with “Saturday.”
Plus, the word “soccer” originated in England, in reference to “Association Football.”
Wow, I had no idea! That’s really interesting.
As an American living in London, I’ve basically learned to just call it soccer. Because when I try to blend in and call it football, they all assume I’m talking about my own country’s heathen handball rugbysport.
Football is the proper name for the game, but some people do use soccer as sort of a nickname for it? But yeah, they were just trying for alliteration, I guess.But when will Roy show up as a caller on 5 Live Football Podcast, is my question.
I love the generosity of detail spread about the show to even super minor characters, like that girl who was clearly crushed not to have received the “Best Dressed” trophy.
begrudgingly agrees to try out the Sky Sports gig after he catches Keeley masturbating to his retirement speechSay what now???
The discourse around Simone Biles certainly deserves more nuance than the “She’s a hero!”/“She’s a quitter!” extremes it instantly devolved into. I think these things are complicated and she’s somewhere in the middle of the spectrum for me… But I also think what she needed was a chat with Coach Lasso. 😉
My favorite joke was at the practice, and Ted feeling like every time he turned around, Dr. Sharon was getting closer, lol. Keeley wanking off to Roy being pathetic (his words) was a close second. Not entirely sure why Miles wants to see the full retirement speech so badly (its so tangential) but this was a great way to use it.
I’m surprised no one mentioned Ted’s masterful bit of passive aggression wherein he compares his video game “addiction” to Dr. Fieldstone’s sugar “addiction” and concludes that sanctimoniously denying yourself something pleasurable is just another way of failing to control your impulses.
“How the fuck did he know I love white orchids” was such an unexpected and hilarious line from Roy. Easily my favorite of the episode.
In Ted’s speech to the press about the dead dog, Ted told a childhood story about a neighbor’s dog that had once bit him, then he adopted the dog after its owner stopped caring for it. Executive Producer Bill Lawrence recently said that speech is “the core of the season”. After last night’s episode, it seems pretty clear that it’s a metaphor for Ted’s relationship with Jamie.
Wow, new Nate is a prick. Why is he terrible all of a sudden?
“but the show gains so much from the realism of the This Morning with Phillip and Holly and Soccer Saturday segments here.”Not in our household. I was convinced it was a fake show-within-a-show. It looked very phony to me. My girlfriend was certain they were the real deal and she was borne out in the ending credits.
But I think it’s safe to say a huge percentage of the American audience was in my camp, where that appearance meant absolutely zilch.
Phillip used to present the children’s television hours back in the 80s, so my household of Xennials was very happy to see him.
I know it’s a TV show and you rarely get rid of a series regular simply for story reasons, but nothing about Jamie’s post-season 1 journey felt remotely realistic.I didn’t believe he’d quit the team just to go on a reality show (even though the show tries to justify it by touching on his emotionally-fraught backstory), I don’t believe that there’d be so much fallout from a reality show that he’d have trouble getting another soccer gig again. He’s a great and famous player. It’d be a funny joke people would talk about for five minutes, but it would never derail a sports career like that.
Counterpoint: Michael Jordan left basketball to play baseball for almost 2 years.
“Keeley masturbating to his retirement speech. We don’t get to see the whole thing—I sort of hope they’ll put it online”I agree, I’d very much like to watch that entire thing.Ohhhhh…wait..you’re talking about the speech.
The scene with Sam and Ted was one of my favorites of the show – it had some real Friday Night lights vibes. The tension between them now that Jamie’s back should be interesting.
This show is 10 spoons of sugar in one cup of coffee, and just about as sickening.
I, too, prefer cynicism for the sake of it
I’m not a dog, I don’t need my ears scratched every time I watch a fucking sitcom. I’d rather it just be funny even if that means not being “life-affirming” and “important” and “exactly what we need right now.”
Not everyone has to like everything! There are probably plenty of shows out there for you. Go watch them.
First, I really appreciate you (Myles) writing these reviews at the time you watched each episode so that they’re not ahead.With that in mind, I was wondering if perhaps the assumption that Ted orchestrated the Jamie signing is slightly misplaced and it was actually Higgins? Four pieces of evidence: That early scene about Dr. Sharon’s hiring set up Ted giving Higgins more authority to take action; Higgins was in the room when Sam and Ted were arguing about Jamie; Higgins votes yes to sign Jamie; and he went to the window to see Jamie’s arrival, with an obvious look of knowledge it was happening. If I had to choose, I’d probably say this theory is wrong. (And obviously Myles knows the answer having seen the next episodes.) But I do think there’s at least some ambiguity over how Jamie ended up on the pitch after Ted said no in the bar.
This isn’t operating with any future knowledge (I appreciate your appreciation), but my read on the Diamond Dogs scene was that the vote was a clear tie—no from Nate and Beard, yes from Higgins and Ted—which ultimately made it Ted’s call.
Keeley wanking it to Roy’s retirement video was the best joke of the episode, for me. Especially as it’s set up to be (and another show probably would definitely go this way) a video or photo of Jamie. But no, just fiddling it to your boyfriend showing his emotions.And that Roy was a natural at Sky Sports is a given. Everyone wants a blunt talking sports analyst. (His rant about playing for the shirt reminds me of a football quote – play for the badge on the shirt and not the name on the back. A very Ted Lasso philosophy.)I think anyone could have called Jamie returning (he’s a sexy little bay-bay and he needs his redemption tour) but what I think will be most interesting is how his return affects Sam and Colin, etc. Obviously Dr Fieldstone needs to have an arc as well, so I imagine a lot of it will be her and Ted’s contrasting views of how to reintegrate Jamie into the team so that Richmond doesn’t implode.We’re getting to see the hints of a darker side to Ted (The Fountainhead? Really?) which I’m really digging. We now know his dad was hard on himself but spoiled Ted – OR that Ted feels he did some stuff wrong as a kid and that he should have caught the blame for it. Either way, it looks like he’s carrying some guilt over his dad, and being that his son is so far away, he is probably going to try to mentor Jamie and give him the experience of a loving father.And finally, Rebecca – never list that you’re rich on a dating app, girl. Or go join Raya.
The only issue I have with Dr. Fieldstone so far is that she’s not even a little bit funny, which always feels a bit out of place in a comedy.
This is my concern, too. I can’t think of another character on the show who’s not at least a little bit funny. The closest I can come to it is Rebecca, but she gets in jokes. She’s also an excellent straight woman to the other characters in her scenes. There’s no clue that Dr. Fieldstone will even be doing that.
“Old people are so wise, they’re like tall Yodas” (there’s your quote)
I don’t know what’s with this show and these random pop culture references.