Opinion
Critics have been out in force for Ted Lasso’s third season but just like a real English Premier League team, it’s too early to judge whether this campaign will be a success.
Episode four aired on Wednesday night for what is likely to be the third and final series of the unlikely global hit and critics, viewers and keyboard warriors have been vocal in their belief that the storylines have veered too far into the dreaded realm of nice.
Anyone who has watched the first two seasons shouldn’t be surprised – this is a feelgood show based on a preposterous notion.
And anyone who thinks any part of the series has been realistic has probably only seen soccer in video game mode.
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Let’s start at kick-off. An American coach from college football (their kind) is signed by an English Premier League club to be their new manager.
Jason Sudeikis as “Ted Lasso”. (Photo by SAGAwards2021 via Getty Images )
There’s your first sign that this is a work of fiction.
OK, it’s a fanciful premise but the viewer should be willing to suspend their disbelief.
The club gets placed in the hands of the former wife of the owner and she wants to run the team into the ground. Well, that’s slightly different to the 1989 baseball movie Major League – the owner in that instance dies and his former Las Vegas showgirl widow tries to lose on purpose so she can trigger a clause to relocate the franchise from Cleveland.
If you look hard enough there are telltale signs that this is an American-produced show about a very English pastime.
The very fact that they try to pass off West Ham United as the competition’s rich villains doesn’t sit well with fans, particularly Hammers supporters.
My particular bugbear is the pompous Trent Crimm character. He’s what people who don’t know anything about journalism think reporters are like.
He writes a story about coach Lasso having a panic attack during a game then texts him to let him know it would be in the next morning’s print edition after sending him a URL for the story that’s already online.
“As a journalist, I had to write that. But as someone who respects you… My source was Nate.”
Puh-lease.
Most of the action scenes have looked authentic but if you caught the latest episode which aired on Wednesday, the supposed rough play by the Richmond players against West Ham had a touch of the rock and roll wrestling to it.
Anyway, all the not quite right attention to footballing detail can be overlooked.
Ted Lasso is essentially a workplace comedy, set in a professional football club with many of the same relationship issues, comic premises and plotlines associated with well-scripted programs.
It has a lot of the Scrubs DNA which the series co-creator Bill Lawrence also produced with a dash of his Spin City ensemble hallmarks.
There’s also a story arc which was also seen in a galaxy far, far away.
Viewers who have even a padawan level understanding of Star Wars will see the similarities between the two storylines from vastly different universes.
Season one of Ted Lasso was its version of the original Star Wars movie (A New Hope for the sticklers) – an unexpected hit which became a worldwide sensation.
The darker second instalment was The Empire Strikes Back, much more critically admired as the subject matter got more serious.
And now we’re onto season three and it’s got a Return of the Jedi vibe, tying up loose ends with the heroes trying to defy the odds against a reprehensible duo.
In the third Ted Lasso episode of season three, there was a clear nod to Return of the Jedi when viewers get their first glimpse of resident antagonist Rupert Mannion’s office.
Dressed in all black, the fictional owner of the real world West Ham United imparted his wisdom on his protege, Ted’s former Richmond assistant coach Nathan Shelley, in front of a window that looks eerily similar to the one that Emperor Palpatine looked out upon before daring Luke Skywalker to strike him down.
Which makes Nathan his Darth Vader, a young innocent who was converted into a villain by his repulsive mentor.
Not that Star Wars invented the three-act play structure – set up the story, create confrontation before ending with resolution.
Although it did happen a long time ago, so maybe Star Wars was the first.
Ted Lasso. (Apple TV+)
The characters range from innovative anti-heroes like the gruff Roy Kent to the not so well constructed like “Nate the Great”.
His transformation from timid kit man to undermining assistant to despicable rival coach is an intrinsic part of the overall plot but some of the scenes border on the ridiculous, such as the one in episode four which aired on Wednesday when he’s dressed in West Ham kit playing with toy footballers lined out on a table beside a calendar with the date of their game against AFC Richmond circled in the most obvious red pen fashion imaginable.
Like many viewers, you were probably like me and hoping he’d get his comeuppance when he delivered the most venomous of verbal sprays to Ted at the end of season two.
But the coach, as happens often in the series, chose the higher ground, apologising to him when he had nothing to be sorry about.
That common theme of being nice instead of nasty runs throughout the three seasons.
It’s a sad, yet instructive, situation that we find ourselves in this age of supposedly being aware of toxic masculinity that being nice is seen as being weak.
Ted’s eventual openness about his mental health struggles is a sign of bravery.
And Ted Lasso himself Jason Sudeikis was even invited to The White House recently to meet Joe Biden and first lady Dr Jill Biden to talk about the importance of mental health reforms in the US.
Jason Sudeikis and members of the cast of Ted Lasso at the White House in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Sarah Silbiger for The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Fellow cast members Hannah Waddingham (Rebecca Welton), Brett Goldstein (Roy Kent), Brendan Hunt (Coach Beard), Cristo Fernandez (Dani Rojas), Toheeb Jimoh (Sam Obisanya), James Lance (Trent Crimm), Billy Harris (Colin Hughes) and Kola Bokinni (Isaac McAdoo) also met President Biden, who Sudeikis used to impersonate during his Saturday Night Live days.
“No matter who you are, no matter where you live, no matter who you voted for, we all probably, I assume, we all know someone who has, or have been that someone ourselves actually, that’s struggled, that’s felt isolated, that’s felt anxious, that has felt alone,” Sudeikis told the White House press briefing.
“I know in this town a lot of folks don’t always agree, right, and don’t always feel heard, seen, listened to but I truly believe we should all do our best to help take care of each other. That’s my own personal belief. I think that’s something that everyone up here on stage believes in.”
What remains now is another eight episodes to see whether Ted Lasso ends with a dramatic bang or whether it gets relegated to the list of shows that went one season too many.
Sticking the landing for any TV show is a near impossible task as pretty much every variation has already been done to death, from the schmaltzy everything gets wrapped up nicely to the shock twist ending.
And even if they do go for the little battlers shock the world and win the trophy, that’s also been done already when Leicester played out their own Hollywood script in 2016.
As Ted would say, be curious, not judgemental.
It will be a bumper occasion, there will not be a spare seat in the house and of course, Sydney FC could well produce a miracle with their backs against the wall.
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