By Colleen Glatfelter aka Geek. Dad. Wife.
Passion. It can describe love, crime, or fruit.
Prog-mess. Does it describe Ted, the team, or the season thus far?
My sister texted me yesterday that she thinks Ted Lasso has lost its spark this season. I then read a comment online that shared a similar view. I wondered if other viewers felt the same way and wanted to share my perspective. I love Ted Lasso. I love the characters and I love the refreshingly positive direction the show generally takes. Rather than go the drama route, characters in conflict chose mature ways to deal. There was redemption and growth.
I get the criticisms that season 3 has a darker tone. I do. Because it does. We’re not used to seeing our characters not have resolution or a path to resolution. The episodes are longer so they’re not neatly wrapped comedies and storylines. They’re allegedly trying to set up spin-offs, so we’re getting a lot of new characters. I didn’t feel it until this week’s episode, but I think all of these factors make season 3 feel more like any other show on TV, for whatever that’s worth. Whether or not Ted Lasso has lost its charm remains to be scene. I’m still along for the ride.
“Big Week” was my least favorite episode of the 3rd season. There were plot holes and everyone behaved completely uncharacteristically. Why didn’t Ted call a time out to tell Richmond to tone it down? We see Ted find the ripped up BELIVE poster on his desk in the season 2 finale! When we saw it back up on the wall in the season 3 premiere, I just assumed that he’s the one who taped it and put it back up. Did Roy, Beard, and company just think that Nate changed his mind and taped it back up when the cameras weren’t rolling? Like…WHAT?!
“Big Week” was written by Brett Goldstein (Roy Kent) and since he’s also a write and executive producer on the show, I am guessing (hoping!) that maybe this is one of those necessary evil episodes that propels our characters forward down their final path in the series. At the very least, I smell a setup for a Roy-less Keely sequel co-starring Shandy, Barbara, and Jack Danvers (Jodi Balfour). I really want Roy and Keely (and Phoebe) to get a happy ending but those are not the vibes I’m getting at the moment. Someone make a case in the comments as to why I’m wrong.
Okay, I’m already running long so let me try to do the rest of this recap/review quickly:
Bromance in the Making?
The episode bookends with Roy showing up to Jamie’s house at 4 a.m. In the opening scene, Jamie protests having to practice at such an early hour but Roy sports a headlamp and tells him to get ready or he’ll start “flicking your balls.” We think this is just a funny Roy-ism until Jamie walks away and the camera pans out on his naked butt. Jamie sleeps without pants on because he gets “cold upstairs and hot downstairs.”
After doing 100 burpees (my own personal workout hell), Jamie throws up. However, at the end of the episode, Roy shows up in the evening to see if he wants to do one more practice before dinner. Jamie happily meets him at the door, headlamp ready, with a “Let’s go, Coach.” Season 1 Jamie, this is not. (And Keely notices it too.)
Ted vs. The Wonder Kid
The main storyline of “Big Week” is the match between Richmond and West Ham to see who’ll knock the mighty Manchester City out of the #1 spot. Nate is struggling with his guilty feelings about how he left things with his old team, especially Ted. He confides in Rupert Mr. Mannion that he thinks he owes Ted an apology but Rupert tells him he owes Ted nothing because he “earned this job.”
Ted is eerily calm about the match but Beard and Roy are freaking out. They’re trying to outthink Nate but instead are psyching themselves out. They don’t understand how Ted is not angry with Nate for how he left.
Nate and Ted finally come face-to-face during an elevator ride in which the two coaches find themselves alone on the way to their respective locker rooms. Nate starts to apologize to his old mentor but is cut off when the doors open and Rupert is standing there.
Later on, Nate purposefully rejects Ted’s handshake at the start of the game and then inadvertently ignores Ted’s attempt to shake his hand after the match is over. When he finds out from a reporter, he tries to make it right by approaching Ted as the team is getting on the bus. He’s again interrupted – this time by a Rupert’s assistant – and when he looks back, Ted is gone.
A Prog-mess
Sassy spent the night with Ted. Clearly still wounded from last week’s revelation that his ex-wife is dating their former marriage counselor, he asks her if she’d like to go on a proper date with him. She laughs and tells him no because he’s a mess. Ted is taken aback but in a session of the Diamond Dogs, Beard, Higgins, and Roy all affirm that yes, he’s a mess. “Holding onto pain will poison you,” Beard wisely says.
“I’m a work in prog-mess,” he later concedes to Rebecca.
KJPR
Keely’s story finally moves ahead a little bit. The introduction of Jack and lack of any sort of payoff for her character being there screams “spinoff setup” to me. We had a weird moment with Shandy asking if she could bang Jamie and a hilarious scene in the bathroom with an unknown Tampon Santa who ended up being none other than the venture capitalist funding KJPR.
Shandy-as-a-foil finally came to fruition this week when she took matters into her own hands and changed the tagline on Bantr’s site to “Wanna bang a celebrity?” This completely misrepresents what the company wants and I wonder if we’ll see some big consequences in upcoming episodes.
Losing the Plot
Despite Zava’s insistence that they ignore the press, the team is psyched out. Isaac tells them that they have to believe, but as he hits the poster, it splits in half, revealing the damage Nate did last with his parting temper tantrum.
Trent suggests that they pull the security tapes. Beard and Roy show Ted the video of Nate ripping it up. Ted is unfazed (BECAUSE HE ALREADY KNEW AND HAD TO HAVE TAPED IT BACK TOGETHER!) but his coaches want to show the video to the team to motivated them.
Despite Ted’s wishes, they show the team the video to motivate them during halftime and it backfires spectacularly, leading to probably the cringiest sequence in the entire series. They come back out for the second half extremely aggressive. Red cards galore. “They’re playing like Italians!” Baz gleefully proclaims.
After the disastrous match, Roy and Beard want to be yelled at but Ted declines, “Shake it off, fellas. Lot of football left this season.”
Good Riddance, Turkey
Meanwhile, Rebecca is in full on freakout mode, wanting nothing more than to beat Rupert. Ted wisely tells her that she’s already won for getting “that turkey out of your life.”
Those are just hollow words, however, as Richmond’s owner spends the entire episode barely holding it together. She goes down into the locker room area during half-time to desperately, maniacally tell Ted, “I believe in you!”
But in her devastation after their loss, she sees Rupert cheating on Bex with his assistant, Ms. Kakes. As they’re leaving, she tells him that she saw the two of them, whispering, “Your daughter deserves better and so does Bex. Stop f*cking around.”
And that was the moment that Rebecca realized she has already won by getting that turkey out of her life.
Highlights:
• Ted to Trent: “May a young Robert Redford portray you in a film someday.”
Trent: “Probably Dustin Hoffman.”
• Rupert’s ultimate comeuppance would be Bex taking over West Ham, right?
• Omggg Zava’s kids are named Smingus Dingus, Angry, Dirty, and Ugly.
• “Dream big, and you may never wake up.” -Zava
• I love how seamlessly everyone accepted that Zoreaux now wants to be called Van Damme. One of the core affirmations of Ted Lasso is acceptance without questions or conditions.
• The club that Nate meets Rupert at after the match, Bones and Honey, is the club from last season’s Beard-centric episode.
• Keely in the bathroom: “I’m so happy that it’s a super and not a skinny. Who are those even for? It’s not like my vagina is on a diet. I’m on my f*cking period.”
• Keely puts tampons in funny. Or maybe I’m the one who has been putting them in the wrong way this whole time.
• OMG the exchange with Higgins giving the old emergency room doctor riddle and each woman having a different was hilarious: “Because she’s a woman.” (Keeley) “She’s gay.” (Rebecca) “Sperm donor.” (Barbara) “He lives in a simulation.” (Shandy) “I guess that’s a bit dated now.” (Higgins)
• “2011, friends be f*ckin.’” The exchange between Ted and Sassy about Friends with Benefits vs. No Strings Attached has to have been directly inspired by those two trending online last year. I can’t remember why but know I read about it.
• **Worth noting**: This episode was dedicated to sports writer Grant Wahl, who passed away during the 2022 World Cup. In the episode, Beard is carrying around a book written by Wahl. Wahl helped them create Trent Crimm, and you can read more about it here.
