Ted Lasso Will Be Back
We don’t need the show anymore in 2023, but we will again…
When Ted Lasso premiered in August of 2020, I’m not sure there had ever been a better show/market fit. The initial and utter shock of the pandemic was starting to fade and we were settling in… but no one knew for how long. It was looking quite possible that life had changed forever. We needed content. A diversion. It was, to say the least, a depressing time.
And then in comes that mustache. The show was as ridiculous as it was adorable. So earnest and yet based off of an ad campaign. One of the first created by Apple. In no way should it have worked. Yet it did. It was… just nice. A tall glass of ice water in our collective hell. Which we needed, in California especially, because the sky was on fire.
Fast forward to the summer of 2023. It’s the end of Ted Lasso’s third season. And, possibly — presumably? — the end of the series. Narratively, I’m not buying it. But tonally, I am. We needed Ted Lasso three years ago. With the pandemic now seemingly behind us, we don’t need him as much as we used to. Perhaps not at all. But I suspect we will again. And I suspect he’ll be back when we do.
That’s my read on the situation having just watched the finale. To be honest — and I know I’m not alone here — this past season has been a bit of a slog to watch. Naturally, I feel like the show has been getting worse, but I’m also not entirely sure it’s any different than it was three years ago. Again, I think it may be just as much that we don’t need it anymore. Ted Lasso in 2020 was perfect. Ted Lasso in 2023 is a bit, dare I say, cringe? The jokes fell flat. The dialogue rang a bit lazy. There was a sense they were trying to balance the earnestness with crude jokes and profanity. It all felt like it was trying to be two times too cute — and largely failing at that.
Or maybe we’re just cynical bastards again.
My initial critique when Ted Lasso launched was simply that it was too short. Again, we all wanted more, more, more. I doubled down on that assertion a year later, quite literally. And guess what? The shortest episode this season was 43 minutes. Most were closer to an hour. And a handful were well over an hour. Such extensions did not, sadly, make the show better. It seemingly just gave the writers reasons for superfluous subplots that ultimately did not matter — Keeley and Jack, Nate and Jane, etc. The season was given too much rope with which it hung itself.
Even weirder, whereas the previous diversions from the core plot lines — “Carol of the Bells”, “Beard After Hours” — didn’t work, this season, the episode in that vein, “Sunflowers”, was arguably the best.
What was going on?¹
The finale, to me, showcases that I’m not sure anyone knew. There are so many rush jobs, laughable plot holes left unfilled, and a full Easter basket of other oddities here, that again, I simply can’t believe it’s the end. I mean, how the fuck does Ted give Rebecca a biscuit for every single goddamn episode for years until they part ways? They haven’t said goodbye before she showed up at the airport? Nate just falls right back to being a kit man after being a manager — and a successful one at that.² How is Ted not at Beard’s wedding?!³ There’s no resolution on Keeley and Roy. Or Jamie, for that matter. “The Richmond Way” by Trent Cringe — a once compelling character that they totally sidetracked. I could go on and on and on…⁴
To me, this whole season felt as if they were going down a path, realized it wasn’t working, and so attempted to course correct while at the same time, deciding that it may be a good time to just end the entire thing. You can’t really do that. And they didn’t really do that.
At the same time, I’m not sure it matters. Because again, the show mattered tonally more than it did from a plot perspective. And all my nits aside, the ultimate tone of this finale was correct. It was a goodbye to an old friend. One that was immeasurably helpful in getting us through the pandemic. It was sad to watch the goodbyes and now I’m sad that it’s gone,⁵ even though I thought the final season was a mess.
But I don’t think it’s actually gone. I think Ted Lasso will come back.⁶ When we need him again. Which we will. This is what I choose to believe.
¹ I write this with the knowledge that those two episodes from season two were actually tacked on when Apple asked them to extend the second season from 10 to 12 episodes. And it showed.
² The entire Nate arc, in my opinion, was a massive failure. I liked what they tried to set up at the end of season 2, but they totally flubbed it. The tension that existed was all wrong and felt forced. The redemption is laughable and ultimately meaningless. He basically went from a man acting like a little boy to a villain to a man acting like a teenage boy in the span of a handful of episodes. It really annoyed me.
³ I assume this is because that element was part of a dream Ted was having when he woke up on the plane? But it’s not exactly made clear.
⁴ I did, however, actually like the Zava element. Or maybe I just really liked the use of the amazingly ridiculous song “Prisencolinensinainciusol” by Adriano Celentano in Zava’s main montage.
⁵ What I’m really going to miss is that insanely succinct opening credits and great theme song.
⁶ It is, of course, also possible that they keep making Ted Lasso the show without Ted Lasso the character. Or at least, not as the main character anymore. This didn’t really work when Michael Scott left The Office, and his name wasn’t even on the tin of the show. But I suppose they could try here. Roy and Jamie and Rebecca remain compelling enough characters to continue on with. I’m less sold on Beard — who always seemed less of a character and more of a series of trying-quite-hard-to-be-clever-zingerbot-outputs — without his wingman, but maybe.
