In lieu of turning every single newsletter into a screed about the new episode of Ted Lasso, I thought I’d give Substack Chat a try to see how people are responding to the latest developments. I have a particular objection or two, but I will save that for the comments to spare the inboxes of people who will not get to watch it until later in the day/week.
Let's leave aside the rest of "Mom City," which on the one hand wasted the great Becky Ann Baker, and on the other hand had a very good Jamie/Roy/Keeley subplot, culminating in one of the better football match sequences the show has ever done (if not the best of those).
I spent pretty much the entire hour-plus wanting to tear out what's left of my hair over the newest developments with Nate. We open the episode with Will and Colin — aka two of the three people (along with Ted) who have the biggest grievances against Nate's Season Two behavior — joining Isaac to invite Nate back to Richmond, smiling as they say the team cast a unanimous vote in favor of the idea. WHAT? Nate was terribly abusive to Will and Colin, and somehow one small gesture and note are enough to earn forgiveness from the former, while the latter does it without any apology at all?!?!!? How did we get here? Why does the show keep insisting Nate can be redeemed while barely showing him doing ANYTHING to earn said redemption?
And then there is the Beard/Nate scene towards the episode's end. It is meant to be this dramatic, poignant moment illustrating just what a special and forgiving man Ted Lasso is, and thus why Beard would want to pay it forward, even though he seems to be the only person on the show who recognizes how awfully Nate treated so many people last year, Beard's best friend most of all. But despite Brendan Hunt's best efforts, it plays as unintentionally comical. It is a whole lot of backstory being dumped on us at once, in a way that is perhaps meant to recontextualize everything we know about Coach Beard. Instead, it feels like the series taking the most radical and abrupt of shortcuts to justify why Nate should be allowed back.
I am utterly flabbergasted. I'm not sure the last time I've seen a show that has such a wildly different view of a character than much of its audience does. Probably Aaron Sorkin's The Newsroom?
That's two episodes in a row where the writers decided that a hugely significant part of the *central redemption arc of the season* should happen entirely off-screen. First Nate losing the coaching gig, now the team wanting him back. What the hell were the writers thinking? I even *want* a redemption arc for Nate, but not if it's handled this poorly!
Alan, intellectually I understand what you’re saying. Emotionally I was a puddle of tears by the end of the episode. I thought despite the context dump, the Nate-Beard scene worked for me. And just because they didn’t immediately explain why Jamie was acting weird, in the end they paid it off.
What I can't understand is how a comedy with hour long episodes can feel so rushed. It seems like so much of the action happens between episodes (nate leaving West Ham, Jack pulling funding for Keeley, the team voting to bring Nate back, etc) that you're wondering if you missed an episode.
The Nate stuff has been absolute debacle - just a total misjudgment from the creative team. I don't see what the problem is with leaving him a "villain" for the season, even if you put him on a path to redemption at the end of the finale. All of this - the team, Jade, etc - seems so unearned. He's a good guy now, because he remembered how to play the violin.
I'm very happy the Keeley stuff seems to be resolved for now. As Alan mentioned, it often felt like a different show, and bounced Keeley's emotions to whatever purpose best served the writers.
I've actually begun to turn on Coach Beard. It feels like a case where a sitcom character's quirks get stretched out to the point that they become a cartoon character like Kevin in The Office starting as a slow-thinking but functional accountant ultimately being confused for a mentally challenged person in later seasons. Even Andy Dwyer in Parks and Rec leaned heavily into his toddler-ness in Parks and Rec. For Beard, the first two seasons did a great job of presenting him as a completely stoic, serious person that other people bounced off of, but, occasionally you'd see some weird quirk about him. Now, it seems like he's only weird quirks and lost some of the comedy that came out of his stoic-ness.
I'm struggling to see what the end goal is for Ted besides him getting back to America. He's just been kind of cruising this season, where one episode he's focused on soccer strategy, another his son, another his mental health, and another where it seemed they're setting up him and his ex-wife getting back together. I just feel like there's been no through line here.
Oh, and apparently Santa and psychics are real in this universe.
After all that negativity, I will say that I've enjoyed everything with Roy and Jamie. They're the only ones who have gotten sufficient arcs and it's actually been great to see how they've developed Jamie over this season and prior ones. Pretty much all the subplots with the players have been good, it's just a shame that we don't spend more time with them.
Ultimately, I really liked this show when it seemed to be on a similar plane to something like Miracle (although more comedic). Lately though it's been dipping into Mighty Ducks territory. I'm actually shocked they didn't have Nate switch from West Ham to Richmond at halftime in the final game.
I've been part of the crowd banging the drum on this over at Episodic Medium, but every single week I think about how much the show misses Bill Lawrence. Even if you weren't a fan of S2, there were these things called "narrative coherence" and "logical storytelling" and "characters interacting with each other" and "ongoing consequences to someone's actions." I don't know if Sudeikis is just in over his head as a showrunner or what, but none of those things are happening this year.
Leaving aside that Ted has somehow become one of the least pleasant characters on TV (is this week the first time he's spoken to Jamie all season?), the Nate storyline is one of the worst in any show that I can remember. This was obviously always going to be the end result, but the route taken has been a disaster. He was such a terrible person that to have redemption, he has to actually see and feel the impact of his decisions. Let him see what his players feel like when he puts them in a "dummy box" or whatever he called it. Let him see how his coaches react when he belittles them and puts them down. Let him see what Rupert's influence has actually done to him, not just in regards to Jade, who might be the worst Magical Girlfriend trope of a character I've ever seen. He needs to actually feel these things and realize his mistakes, not just resign offscreen for reasons that still haven't been shared. He needs to actually confront the people he's wronged, not have them forgive him unprompted with no thought process. (Seriously, Isaac and the entire team were about to murder Nate a few weeks ago, and now it's a unanimous vote to ask him to come back?) This wasn't a redemption arc, this was asking ChatGPT to write your term paper for you because you skipped every class this semester. If this ends with Nate somehow getting the top job when Ted leaves next week instead of Roy, that's probably the final nail in the coffin for me on this show. If there's a Season 4 of Richmond FC or whatever, I can't imagine I'd watch that; if this really is it, that's a decision that would be on par with How I Met Your Mother in terms of retroactively ruining everything that came before.
Oh, and all the negative things I've said about the show? None of them apply to Jamie or Phil Dunster, who has been an absolute delight and the clear MVP of this season.
This is minor in the spectrum of issues with this season mentioned by Alan and many here, and I know that suspension of disbelief has to happen a lot on this show, but taking out the fact that the team somehow forgives Nate because he cleaned the locker room once and left a note, but they are quite literally on a 15 game winning streak, playing better than they have literally ever played in their lives, and their thought process is "you know, I think adding another coach to our locker room right now is the best move for the team (nevermind he has a toxic history)"
Again, suspension of disbelief is required a lot with the soccer aspect of this show and that isn't even the worst part about them asking him back but that really just killed me.
Nate’s redemption has been a complete misfire for me. All of his scenes feel forced and rushed with key scenes not being shown. We barely saw him as a coach or treat his players poorly. Why don’t we see him get fired or the team chose to bring him back. I refuse to believe the team was ready to bring him back after they red carded themselves after seeing Nate destroy the sign. Roy Kent, the angriest man in the world has no qualms with bringing Nate back? He musters a half apology to Will and suddenly all is forgiven. The show didn’t put in the work to redeem Nate and just softens him up.
I actually really enjoyed this episode. This season has been a mess and the Nate stuff has been baffling for sure but the Beard stuff at the end worked on me. I'm assuming (big risk I know) that they will explain Nate quitting next episode when he talks to Ted. Maybe I liked enough of the episode this week that I'm willing to just accept whatever is going on in order for the Nate story to just end with his obvious redemption.
I agree with the general criticism that some plot lines have lurched wildly this season, and that more of Nate’s redemption should have occurred on screen. But I have many more issues with the Keeley plot line than the Nate plot line, and I did not think the Beard scene was comedic; I actually found it pretty moving, and it explains a lot about how his character has behaved since Season 1. And the show has established this season that Ted’s approach to football and coaching are working, so it figures that the players would treat Nate the way Ted would. It’s a bit sappy, but the show has always been sappy. This season has been a bit of a mess, but I’ll be sorry to see it end.
The show has no idea how to handle anything. Nate is just one of them. All season long Jamie has been shown to be working towards both being a better person and teammate while also working on his game.
All of a sudden he’s depressed for no real reason, and they play it for laughs to show Roy and Keeley skeeved out by his strangely cozy relationship with his Mom. Is this the serious plot line, or the comedic one?
I think the problem with this season is that even when it messes up, it does it well enough that you want to forgive it. And it definitely feels rushed, as if they committed to doing just one more season and then realized they couldn't do everything they wanted to do in that time.
I have no problem with Nate's redemption. I don't think Ted was ever angry at him, just sad and confused.
OK, so I'll take one of the team here, as a bit of a Ted Lasso apologist. I'm probably way more sympathetic to Nate's character arc than anyone else on this thread but I don't think the Nate redemption arc is at all out of sorts with the overall theme of the show.
Hear me out: Seeing Nate "earn" redemption would be very satisfying for us as viewers. But it would also seem to contradict Ted's core ethos. Hurt people hurt people, right? You don't have to earn forgiveness. It's not something you give the other person, it's something you give yourself. That speech to Jamie was Ted's speech to himself over Nate. And so from Ted's point of view, Nate doesn't have to earn forgiveness. It's Ted's to give. And by not seeing Nate earn it, we take the same journey as Ted does. In a way.
As far as Jade, she's kind of a stoic, British tweak on the Manic Pixie Dream Girl. She's throughly unimpressed by Nate, in the best possible way. She's the first person who likes/loves him regardless of what he accomplishes but rather for who he is. The first person other than Ted.
Now the execution has been weirdly paced. The start of the last two episodes (Nate quitting, the guys visiting Nate) have given off real THE DEAD SPEAK! vibes. But thematically, I think they work (and like the last Star Wars flick, I enjoyed it a lot once I said "Oh, that's what we're doing here? Sure, go with it."
Part of popular culture is accepting things for what they are. Their has been some poor foundation laying this year, I will not argue that. Like a lot of shows it displays senioritis and, paradoxically, let's more (longer run time) be less (bad story discipline.) But Ted Lasso is not Better Call Saul. It was always a story about forgiveness. And in those contexts, well to quote "this might be all that we get"
It's Richmond and Man United? No mention of a big slide for West Ham? It seems like West Ham's slide would have needed to be at least as bad as Richmond's was and would, at least, be worth mentioning in the commentary segments.
It seems like the writers are actually telling on themselves and their industry by portraying how a genius/ ‘wunderkind’ can/will be forgiven for bad behavior without making any meaningful amends.
No shortage of superstar talent assholes getting many chances in professional sports, so I guess in that sense it tracks. But man is it hard to watch.
For all the things in this episode that had me baffled (some terrible, some okay), the one that left me laughing hysterically was Pep Guardiola getting the corniest line this show has ever given us, and that's saying something. And that moment I realized what this show is: a Saturday morning cartoon.
Do we all agree that Nate's relationship with Jade is imaginary? Like, she's a real person, but their relationship is just a fantasy of his he dreams up to fill his loneliness? I felt the episode definitely kept hinting toward that, at least.
(If it's the case, I have no idea what the show expects us to do with that.)
I’ve been an apologist for the show with my friends, but we got to the scene where Will, Colin and Isaac show up at the restaurant and I immediately texted my friends that they were right. I kept thinking the show would put in the work for the Nate redemption arc and time after time it has failed. I know this episode was all about forgiveness and redemption (beard’s story, Jamie’s feelings toward his dad, seeing Jamie’s dad in rehab, even Ted and his mom) but we are supposed to think that because Nate was “hilariously” hiding under Ted’s desk for hours it’s a good enough reason to forgive him and bring him back? That’s not how any of this is supposed to work! For a show that can be so good about emotional intelligence, this plot line feels like it was written by someone working on a completely different show. I keep hoping they’ll do right by these characters in the finale but it definitely feels like it’ll be too late.
I understand Nate wants redemption and that the whole time the show was pointing to that end, but it's lazy writing. What are Nate's motivations to change? Feeling lonely? Missing Ted? Why did the team forgive him after his West Ham stint when he was an idiot? We can accept this is not a soccer/football show, it's about people, but they had so many plots that just wasted time, Rebbeca looking for her soulmate and then? Nothing, Keleey struggling with her business, and then? Nothing. It's so frustrating.
TL's mom was a reminder of why the show was so fantastic during their first two seasons; now we have to deal with a TL that suddenly it's the best coach in the world but can't understand his wife moved on him. Jaime Tartt is a superstar, but it's sad because his father will boo him. Thank god this shows ends; sadly, it will end on a mediocre note.
The show wants the audience to forgive Nate, because Ted is going to forgive Nate, but hasn’t really done anything to address why Ted should forgive Nate, beyond the fact that Nate is a football genius. He did seem to understand that Rupert’s behavior is bad, and he seems to have had regrets about how he treated Ted and the team, but what has he done to understand his own actions and try to better himself? I could see a world where I forgave Nate, but that world has not existed on the screen Ted Lasso has shown us in 2023.
I think the show has had issues beyond Nate, but the stuff around AFC Richmond has largely been fun, if inconsistent. I could see a show devoted to Richmond being fun and hopefully a tighter 30 minutes. But I really don’t want Nate coaching that team, and I suspect that I won’t get my wish there.
I enjoyed this latest episode overall, mostly due to spending more time with Roy, Keeley and Jamie. And the soccer match was entertaining.
I'm starting to think the Nate subplot is being written on a dare. I've never seen an arc before where every single major plot event/turning point happens offscreen.
It's a great example of an argument I have with my parents over the shows we watch. In my parents' minds, as long as a show has a good message, then it's a good show. And the message at the end here about forgiveness and not judging someone by their worst moment is tremendous. I love that. But you can have a good message and still be poorly written or display bad storytelling.
I feel like the show has tipped over too many times this season into driving home a message (forgiving others, slut-shaming, acceptance and tolerance of gay teammates, etc.). Seasons 1 and 2 did a much better job of incorporating those themes into the plot and storytelling to make them feel organic to the story.
Between Jason Segel in Shrinking, Seth Rogen in Platonic, Thomas Wilson's BttF archival footage in Still, and now Becky Ann Baker in Ted Lasso, Apple TV+ seems to be assembling a piecewise Freaks & Geeks reunion.
I'm obviously in the minority here but I've found that the one constant in the three seasons of TL has been a belief in the concept of human kindness. As for the Nate arc, forgiveness is not always "earned", but it is something that is "given". That's the lesson to be taken away, regardless of if he earned it.
First things first. One thing Ted Lasso cannot do is football. Your 1-0 up with 10 mins to go against City and your striker takes a knock you don’t wait 5 mins to see if he’s ok, you’re getting another defender on the pitch (and your fans aren’t sat in the pub saying we are done for - there is 10 mins to go dudes!)
The Nate storyline has been really poor this season and this eps was the worst bit of it. The redemption comes from nowhere and as others have said, for a show with some really long episodes this season, it’s weird to feel like you’ve missed a couple because of storytelling gaps.
But overall I can’t get away from just how well done so much of it is. Yes there are flaws - agree with some who have said the writing around Ted has been poor - but it still makes me well up and laugh more than any other recent comedy. So many of the performances are so good - Roy/Beard/Rebecca/Higgins in particular - and the writing nails a lot.
Despite all the flaws, am I anticipating the finale as much as any episode of television this year. Undoubtedly! But do I accept that some of that is influenced by the goodwill generated by a first season that may have been as well timed as any single piece of entertainment in history in the context of the pandemic and the sheer pure hearted goodness of those first episodes. Yup!
Hope next week gets more right than wrong - it clearly won’t reach the pinnacle (not least because Sam Malone’s final scene will never be beaten) - but I feel it’s earned it’s place pretty high in the pantheon for my money.
I think oddly the shows greatest strength, it's unwavering belief in the value of human kindness and the inherent goodness of people, has crippled it in the home stretch here. Everyone in the show has fully embraced the Lasso Way and are all perfectly nice that you can't really have conflict. Like the Colin getting outed storyline: I didn't want everyone calling Colin slurs and kicking him off the team, but they built up his fear of coming out for episodes and the reaction of almost everyone came offscreen. Have someone be uncomfortable or a bit skeeved out and have Ted give his speech about caring about Colin for who he is to help convince the person they're wrong and it would have hit more powerfully. Same thing with the vote to bring Nate back. If they had actually shown it to us, some of the players would have had to be wrong and spiteful and hold the grudge. Would a scene of half the team being angry and refusing to let Nate back until Colin stepped up and backed him the way the team and Isaac backed him for being gay even though Nate was especially cruel to him have worked? Extremely well, but they've committed to making all the characters such sensitive progressive souls that they can't realistically make any of the players the "F*** Nate, don't let him back" flagbearer, which ends up making Beard less like a friend who can't forgive someone who screwed his friend over, which we all can relate to, but instead the one asshole holdout. Instead, they've worked back from the place that Nate is obviously going to be forgiven by Ted at the end of the season, and just assumed the audience would too, without having to do any work.
What the season arc should have been is showing us Nate very little, only through the eyes of the other characters, and have Ted slowly and subtly convince everyone to forgive him. Have *everything* with Nate happen off screen, have us only hear about it through rumors and news reports. Make us wonder why Nate quit. Have Ted have little scenes with the main characters like he did this week with Beard, since the message the show seems to be trying to give us is that people can't "earn" forgiveness, its something you give freely to others. Have it culminate with this week's speech between Beard and Nate as the first time we actually see Nate interact with one of the other main characters off the football pitch being Ted's biggest defender and the last holdout of the "No Nate" crew as the culmination of the idea that "It doesn't matter what Nate does, offer him forgiveness anyway". Then have Nate come in for whatever big tearjerker speech we are going to get next week from Ted and take over for him.
I think that's why the "Fappening" locker room scene was so awful, and my least favorite of the series. Every single character had to take a turn lecturing everyone else on the exact right opinion. Locker rooms full of testosterone fueled, macho athletes all in their early twenties are not all going to have the right opinion on deleting their one night stands DMs. Some of them at least would be sharing them and bragging about their kill counts. The episode felt like it wanted to make it a "twist" that Jamie is the one who got hacked to release Keeley's video, but because he has the exact same opinion on deleting the photos that Sam, Isaac, Colin, etc. all have, the episode doesn't end up doing something with that info. Imagine a scene where the players have a more realistic discussion on the issue. Have one of them say "Hey, she sent it to me unasked for, it's her fault if it gets out", and Jamie pops into the conversation to say he deletes everything. Given how much of a cad he seemed in S1 that would be a bit surprising, would lend his character some depth (he cares more about his women than he lets on) and then would make the final reveal with Keeley make more sense, he did try to do the right thing but still is feeling guilty, and would make Keeley's instant forgiveness mean more, she really is behaving like Ted in that moment. But that would have been uncomfortable, we might have disliked a character for thirty seconds and we can't have that.
Pretty clear Ted's general sadness stems from missing his son/family after being in London for 2 years. Interesting to me that so many (mostly men) find things surprising or hard to understand that have been seeded throughout the season/series. Also the recent episodes comments on other review sites are much more positive. This season definitely strayed into odd subplots and wasted too much time there, and it can never tie up all the loose strings, but overall it's improved a lot over the season and it's still a wonderful show. And the Easter eggs and music are the fab icing.
Lots of comparisons between Nate and Jamie but that’s not the right season 1 comp. Compare Nate’s arc to Rebecca’s. She hires Ted and Beard hoping they will fail, she actively undermines them, she hires a PI to dig up dirt on Ted, uses the photos the PI takes without regard for the impact on Keeley Jaimie or Ted (who I believe was still married), transfers Jamie to a different city to make the team worse without regard for the impact on Jamie, and fires Leslie (or forces him to quit) when he doesn’t want to go along with the plan anymore. She did much more bad acts than Nate and treated the other characters far worse. What did we see of her redemption? What happened on screen beyond her confessing to Ted and apologizing? Who complained when Ted (and everyone else) instantly forgave her?
No, the issue with Nate isn’t that they aren’t showing enough content to redeem him. It is that they pointlessly set him up as a villain only to change their minds almost immediately. Now we are spending precious screen time away from characters we love so they can bring Nate back from the spot they needlessly placed him. It was a pointless story line that took all season -- possibly the final season the the show -- to bring us back to the status quo. Of course he is going to be forgiven. Forgiveness is a major point of the show. The steps getting there are boring. Put them all off screen and give us more time with Danny and Sam and Isaac and VanDamme and all the other major and minor characters who do have interesting stories to tell.
So the obvious end game here is going to be Ted goes back to America, Nate takes over as the manager and this isn't actually the shows final season just Jason Sudekis' final season right?
It is the only possible explanation for the Nate storyline to me as it just seems to need to breeze past all the issues of last year so everything can be good with all the main characters again.
This episode could have been fantastic if not for the long drawn out sequences. They've been over extending great scenes to an unbearably ineffective point all season, is it on purpose so they can reach the 60 minute plus point????
I have my quibbles with this season (Nate leaving West Ham happening between episodes, Jack) but the overall Nate story is fine. Nate was awful, but he didn’t commit murder.
Why would Ted play with 10 while waiting for an injured Jamie with 8 minutes to go? They needed 11 men to defend the 1-0 lead. I loved the final sequence but either make the injury earlier o make it a tied game before the goal.
Ted has always been presented as a guy who forgives and forgets quickly. The team now has absorbed that mindset and now plays the best they've ever played. So, I'm not surprised that the team and coaches are welcoming to Nate.
All of Nate's story lines this season have been toward defusing the pride, anger, and jealousy that motivated him to leave at the end of S2. (Rejecting Rupert's invitation to party with ladies, making peace with his dad, and opening up emotionally to Jade.) So, the final question is how does Nate forgive himself and partner with Ted again.
I have absolutely no issues with the Nate stuff this season
I didn't know until recently that Lawrence hadn't come back for this past season. As many issues as I had with Scrubs, the guy knows how to sustain narrative momentum. It's just incredible to me that even with all of these supersized episodes, the plots still feel crammed in there. I like the season more than most but it's definitely the weakest of the 3.
Also, the show itself is in a weird place. It's clear they're setting Ted up to leave Richmond but it also seems like Apple will back up the Brinks truck for him to protect its tentpole franchise. Has to put Sudekis in a weird spot and I think this season has shown the show can't function effectively without him. Plus, this could just be my perception but Ted Lasso feels like a writer's show more than most. Brett Goldstein and Brendan Hunt are both fun performers but I think they approach most creative projects as writers. So they might sit out the strike even longer than most. Could be a few years before the show comes back and that might change things altogether. Just feels like its trapped creatively on all sides.
Let's leave aside the rest of "Mom City," which on the one hand wasted the great Becky Ann Baker, and on the other hand had a very good Jamie/Roy/Keeley subplot, culminating in one of the better football match sequences the show has ever done (if not the best of those).
I spent pretty much the entire hour-plus wanting to tear out what's left of my hair over the newest developments with Nate. We open the episode with Will and Colin — aka two of the three people (along with Ted) who have the biggest grievances against Nate's Season Two behavior — joining Isaac to invite Nate back to Richmond, smiling as they say the team cast a unanimous vote in favor of the idea. WHAT? Nate was terribly abusive to Will and Colin, and somehow one small gesture and note are enough to earn forgiveness from the former, while the latter does it without any apology at all?!?!!? How did we get here? Why does the show keep insisting Nate can be redeemed while barely showing him doing ANYTHING to earn said redemption?
And then there is the Beard/Nate scene towards the episode's end. It is meant to be this dramatic, poignant moment illustrating just what a special and forgiving man Ted Lasso is, and thus why Beard would want to pay it forward, even though he seems to be the only person on the show who recognizes how awfully Nate treated so many people last year, Beard's best friend most of all. But despite Brendan Hunt's best efforts, it plays as unintentionally comical. It is a whole lot of backstory being dumped on us at once, in a way that is perhaps meant to recontextualize everything we know about Coach Beard. Instead, it feels like the series taking the most radical and abrupt of shortcuts to justify why Nate should be allowed back.
I am utterly flabbergasted. I'm not sure the last time I've seen a show that has such a wildly different view of a character than much of its audience does. Probably Aaron Sorkin's The Newsroom?
That's two episodes in a row where the writers decided that a hugely significant part of the *central redemption arc of the season* should happen entirely off-screen. First Nate losing the coaching gig, now the team wanting him back. What the hell were the writers thinking? I even *want* a redemption arc for Nate, but not if it's handled this poorly!
Alan, intellectually I understand what you’re saying. Emotionally I was a puddle of tears by the end of the episode. I thought despite the context dump, the Nate-Beard scene worked for me. And just because they didn’t immediately explain why Jamie was acting weird, in the end they paid it off.
What I can't understand is how a comedy with hour long episodes can feel so rushed. It seems like so much of the action happens between episodes (nate leaving West Ham, Jack pulling funding for Keeley, the team voting to bring Nate back, etc) that you're wondering if you missed an episode.
The Nate stuff has been absolute debacle - just a total misjudgment from the creative team. I don't see what the problem is with leaving him a "villain" for the season, even if you put him on a path to redemption at the end of the finale. All of this - the team, Jade, etc - seems so unearned. He's a good guy now, because he remembered how to play the violin.
I'm very happy the Keeley stuff seems to be resolved for now. As Alan mentioned, it often felt like a different show, and bounced Keeley's emotions to whatever purpose best served the writers.
I've actually begun to turn on Coach Beard. It feels like a case where a sitcom character's quirks get stretched out to the point that they become a cartoon character like Kevin in The Office starting as a slow-thinking but functional accountant ultimately being confused for a mentally challenged person in later seasons. Even Andy Dwyer in Parks and Rec leaned heavily into his toddler-ness in Parks and Rec. For Beard, the first two seasons did a great job of presenting him as a completely stoic, serious person that other people bounced off of, but, occasionally you'd see some weird quirk about him. Now, it seems like he's only weird quirks and lost some of the comedy that came out of his stoic-ness.
I'm struggling to see what the end goal is for Ted besides him getting back to America. He's just been kind of cruising this season, where one episode he's focused on soccer strategy, another his son, another his mental health, and another where it seemed they're setting up him and his ex-wife getting back together. I just feel like there's been no through line here.
Oh, and apparently Santa and psychics are real in this universe.
After all that negativity, I will say that I've enjoyed everything with Roy and Jamie. They're the only ones who have gotten sufficient arcs and it's actually been great to see how they've developed Jamie over this season and prior ones. Pretty much all the subplots with the players have been good, it's just a shame that we don't spend more time with them.
Ultimately, I really liked this show when it seemed to be on a similar plane to something like Miracle (although more comedic). Lately though it's been dipping into Mighty Ducks territory. I'm actually shocked they didn't have Nate switch from West Ham to Richmond at halftime in the final game.
Phew, rant over
I've been part of the crowd banging the drum on this over at Episodic Medium, but every single week I think about how much the show misses Bill Lawrence. Even if you weren't a fan of S2, there were these things called "narrative coherence" and "logical storytelling" and "characters interacting with each other" and "ongoing consequences to someone's actions." I don't know if Sudeikis is just in over his head as a showrunner or what, but none of those things are happening this year.
Leaving aside that Ted has somehow become one of the least pleasant characters on TV (is this week the first time he's spoken to Jamie all season?), the Nate storyline is one of the worst in any show that I can remember. This was obviously always going to be the end result, but the route taken has been a disaster. He was such a terrible person that to have redemption, he has to actually see and feel the impact of his decisions. Let him see what his players feel like when he puts them in a "dummy box" or whatever he called it. Let him see how his coaches react when he belittles them and puts them down. Let him see what Rupert's influence has actually done to him, not just in regards to Jade, who might be the worst Magical Girlfriend trope of a character I've ever seen. He needs to actually feel these things and realize his mistakes, not just resign offscreen for reasons that still haven't been shared. He needs to actually confront the people he's wronged, not have them forgive him unprompted with no thought process. (Seriously, Isaac and the entire team were about to murder Nate a few weeks ago, and now it's a unanimous vote to ask him to come back?) This wasn't a redemption arc, this was asking ChatGPT to write your term paper for you because you skipped every class this semester. If this ends with Nate somehow getting the top job when Ted leaves next week instead of Roy, that's probably the final nail in the coffin for me on this show. If there's a Season 4 of Richmond FC or whatever, I can't imagine I'd watch that; if this really is it, that's a decision that would be on par with How I Met Your Mother in terms of retroactively ruining everything that came before.
Oh, and all the negative things I've said about the show? None of them apply to Jamie or Phil Dunster, who has been an absolute delight and the clear MVP of this season.
This is minor in the spectrum of issues with this season mentioned by Alan and many here, and I know that suspension of disbelief has to happen a lot on this show, but taking out the fact that the team somehow forgives Nate because he cleaned the locker room once and left a note, but they are quite literally on a 15 game winning streak, playing better than they have literally ever played in their lives, and their thought process is "you know, I think adding another coach to our locker room right now is the best move for the team (nevermind he has a toxic history)"
Again, suspension of disbelief is required a lot with the soccer aspect of this show and that isn't even the worst part about them asking him back but that really just killed me.
Nate’s redemption has been a complete misfire for me. All of his scenes feel forced and rushed with key scenes not being shown. We barely saw him as a coach or treat his players poorly. Why don’t we see him get fired or the team chose to bring him back. I refuse to believe the team was ready to bring him back after they red carded themselves after seeing Nate destroy the sign. Roy Kent, the angriest man in the world has no qualms with bringing Nate back? He musters a half apology to Will and suddenly all is forgiven. The show didn’t put in the work to redeem Nate and just softens him up.
I actually really enjoyed this episode. This season has been a mess and the Nate stuff has been baffling for sure but the Beard stuff at the end worked on me. I'm assuming (big risk I know) that they will explain Nate quitting next episode when he talks to Ted. Maybe I liked enough of the episode this week that I'm willing to just accept whatever is going on in order for the Nate story to just end with his obvious redemption.
I agree with the general criticism that some plot lines have lurched wildly this season, and that more of Nate’s redemption should have occurred on screen. But I have many more issues with the Keeley plot line than the Nate plot line, and I did not think the Beard scene was comedic; I actually found it pretty moving, and it explains a lot about how his character has behaved since Season 1. And the show has established this season that Ted’s approach to football and coaching are working, so it figures that the players would treat Nate the way Ted would. It’s a bit sappy, but the show has always been sappy. This season has been a bit of a mess, but I’ll be sorry to see it end.
The show has no idea how to handle anything. Nate is just one of them. All season long Jamie has been shown to be working towards both being a better person and teammate while also working on his game.
All of a sudden he’s depressed for no real reason, and they play it for laughs to show Roy and Keeley skeeved out by his strangely cozy relationship with his Mom. Is this the serious plot line, or the comedic one?
When I saw the episode was 1 hour 9 minutes long, I knew it was going to be bad.
I think the problem with this season is that even when it messes up, it does it well enough that you want to forgive it. And it definitely feels rushed, as if they committed to doing just one more season and then realized they couldn't do everything they wanted to do in that time.
I have no problem with Nate's redemption. I don't think Ted was ever angry at him, just sad and confused.
OK, so I'll take one of the team here, as a bit of a Ted Lasso apologist. I'm probably way more sympathetic to Nate's character arc than anyone else on this thread but I don't think the Nate redemption arc is at all out of sorts with the overall theme of the show.
Hear me out: Seeing Nate "earn" redemption would be very satisfying for us as viewers. But it would also seem to contradict Ted's core ethos. Hurt people hurt people, right? You don't have to earn forgiveness. It's not something you give the other person, it's something you give yourself. That speech to Jamie was Ted's speech to himself over Nate. And so from Ted's point of view, Nate doesn't have to earn forgiveness. It's Ted's to give. And by not seeing Nate earn it, we take the same journey as Ted does. In a way.
As far as Jade, she's kind of a stoic, British tweak on the Manic Pixie Dream Girl. She's throughly unimpressed by Nate, in the best possible way. She's the first person who likes/loves him regardless of what he accomplishes but rather for who he is. The first person other than Ted.
Now the execution has been weirdly paced. The start of the last two episodes (Nate quitting, the guys visiting Nate) have given off real THE DEAD SPEAK! vibes. But thematically, I think they work (and like the last Star Wars flick, I enjoyed it a lot once I said "Oh, that's what we're doing here? Sure, go with it."
Anyway. I'll stand alone on this one.
Part of popular culture is accepting things for what they are. Their has been some poor foundation laying this year, I will not argue that. Like a lot of shows it displays senioritis and, paradoxically, let's more (longer run time) be less (bad story discipline.) But Ted Lasso is not Better Call Saul. It was always a story about forgiveness. And in those contexts, well to quote "this might be all that we get"
On the football side:
It's Richmond and Man United? No mention of a big slide for West Ham? It seems like West Ham's slide would have needed to be at least as bad as Richmond's was and would, at least, be worth mentioning in the commentary segments.
It seems like the writers are actually telling on themselves and their industry by portraying how a genius/ ‘wunderkind’ can/will be forgiven for bad behavior without making any meaningful amends.
No shortage of superstar talent assholes getting many chances in professional sports, so I guess in that sense it tracks. But man is it hard to watch.
For all the things in this episode that had me baffled (some terrible, some okay), the one that left me laughing hysterically was Pep Guardiola getting the corniest line this show has ever given us, and that's saying something. And that moment I realized what this show is: a Saturday morning cartoon.
Do we all agree that Nate's relationship with Jade is imaginary? Like, she's a real person, but their relationship is just a fantasy of his he dreams up to fill his loneliness? I felt the episode definitely kept hinting toward that, at least.
(If it's the case, I have no idea what the show expects us to do with that.)
I’ve been an apologist for the show with my friends, but we got to the scene where Will, Colin and Isaac show up at the restaurant and I immediately texted my friends that they were right. I kept thinking the show would put in the work for the Nate redemption arc and time after time it has failed. I know this episode was all about forgiveness and redemption (beard’s story, Jamie’s feelings toward his dad, seeing Jamie’s dad in rehab, even Ted and his mom) but we are supposed to think that because Nate was “hilariously” hiding under Ted’s desk for hours it’s a good enough reason to forgive him and bring him back? That’s not how any of this is supposed to work! For a show that can be so good about emotional intelligence, this plot line feels like it was written by someone working on a completely different show. I keep hoping they’ll do right by these characters in the finale but it definitely feels like it’ll be too late.
I understand Nate wants redemption and that the whole time the show was pointing to that end, but it's lazy writing. What are Nate's motivations to change? Feeling lonely? Missing Ted? Why did the team forgive him after his West Ham stint when he was an idiot? We can accept this is not a soccer/football show, it's about people, but they had so many plots that just wasted time, Rebbeca looking for her soulmate and then? Nothing, Keleey struggling with her business, and then? Nothing. It's so frustrating.
TL's mom was a reminder of why the show was so fantastic during their first two seasons; now we have to deal with a TL that suddenly it's the best coach in the world but can't understand his wife moved on him. Jaime Tartt is a superstar, but it's sad because his father will boo him. Thank god this shows ends; sadly, it will end on a mediocre note.
The show wants the audience to forgive Nate, because Ted is going to forgive Nate, but hasn’t really done anything to address why Ted should forgive Nate, beyond the fact that Nate is a football genius. He did seem to understand that Rupert’s behavior is bad, and he seems to have had regrets about how he treated Ted and the team, but what has he done to understand his own actions and try to better himself? I could see a world where I forgave Nate, but that world has not existed on the screen Ted Lasso has shown us in 2023.
I think the show has had issues beyond Nate, but the stuff around AFC Richmond has largely been fun, if inconsistent. I could see a show devoted to Richmond being fun and hopefully a tighter 30 minutes. But I really don’t want Nate coaching that team, and I suspect that I won’t get my wish there.
I enjoyed this latest episode overall, mostly due to spending more time with Roy, Keeley and Jamie. And the soccer match was entertaining.
I'm starting to think the Nate subplot is being written on a dare. I've never seen an arc before where every single major plot event/turning point happens offscreen.
It's a great example of an argument I have with my parents over the shows we watch. In my parents' minds, as long as a show has a good message, then it's a good show. And the message at the end here about forgiveness and not judging someone by their worst moment is tremendous. I love that. But you can have a good message and still be poorly written or display bad storytelling.
I feel like the show has tipped over too many times this season into driving home a message (forgiving others, slut-shaming, acceptance and tolerance of gay teammates, etc.). Seasons 1 and 2 did a much better job of incorporating those themes into the plot and storytelling to make them feel organic to the story.
Between Jason Segel in Shrinking, Seth Rogen in Platonic, Thomas Wilson's BttF archival footage in Still, and now Becky Ann Baker in Ted Lasso, Apple TV+ seems to be assembling a piecewise Freaks & Geeks reunion.
I'm obviously in the minority here but I've found that the one constant in the three seasons of TL has been a belief in the concept of human kindness. As for the Nate arc, forgiveness is not always "earned", but it is something that is "given". That's the lesson to be taken away, regardless of if he earned it.
First things first. One thing Ted Lasso cannot do is football. Your 1-0 up with 10 mins to go against City and your striker takes a knock you don’t wait 5 mins to see if he’s ok, you’re getting another defender on the pitch (and your fans aren’t sat in the pub saying we are done for - there is 10 mins to go dudes!)
The Nate storyline has been really poor this season and this eps was the worst bit of it. The redemption comes from nowhere and as others have said, for a show with some really long episodes this season, it’s weird to feel like you’ve missed a couple because of storytelling gaps.
But overall I can’t get away from just how well done so much of it is. Yes there are flaws - agree with some who have said the writing around Ted has been poor - but it still makes me well up and laugh more than any other recent comedy. So many of the performances are so good - Roy/Beard/Rebecca/Higgins in particular - and the writing nails a lot.
Despite all the flaws, am I anticipating the finale as much as any episode of television this year. Undoubtedly! But do I accept that some of that is influenced by the goodwill generated by a first season that may have been as well timed as any single piece of entertainment in history in the context of the pandemic and the sheer pure hearted goodness of those first episodes. Yup!
Hope next week gets more right than wrong - it clearly won’t reach the pinnacle (not least because Sam Malone’s final scene will never be beaten) - but I feel it’s earned it’s place pretty high in the pantheon for my money.
Minor note: Rebecca is super-wealthy and yet she answers her own door bell?
I think oddly the shows greatest strength, it's unwavering belief in the value of human kindness and the inherent goodness of people, has crippled it in the home stretch here. Everyone in the show has fully embraced the Lasso Way and are all perfectly nice that you can't really have conflict. Like the Colin getting outed storyline: I didn't want everyone calling Colin slurs and kicking him off the team, but they built up his fear of coming out for episodes and the reaction of almost everyone came offscreen. Have someone be uncomfortable or a bit skeeved out and have Ted give his speech about caring about Colin for who he is to help convince the person they're wrong and it would have hit more powerfully. Same thing with the vote to bring Nate back. If they had actually shown it to us, some of the players would have had to be wrong and spiteful and hold the grudge. Would a scene of half the team being angry and refusing to let Nate back until Colin stepped up and backed him the way the team and Isaac backed him for being gay even though Nate was especially cruel to him have worked? Extremely well, but they've committed to making all the characters such sensitive progressive souls that they can't realistically make any of the players the "F*** Nate, don't let him back" flagbearer, which ends up making Beard less like a friend who can't forgive someone who screwed his friend over, which we all can relate to, but instead the one asshole holdout. Instead, they've worked back from the place that Nate is obviously going to be forgiven by Ted at the end of the season, and just assumed the audience would too, without having to do any work.
What the season arc should have been is showing us Nate very little, only through the eyes of the other characters, and have Ted slowly and subtly convince everyone to forgive him. Have *everything* with Nate happen off screen, have us only hear about it through rumors and news reports. Make us wonder why Nate quit. Have Ted have little scenes with the main characters like he did this week with Beard, since the message the show seems to be trying to give us is that people can't "earn" forgiveness, its something you give freely to others. Have it culminate with this week's speech between Beard and Nate as the first time we actually see Nate interact with one of the other main characters off the football pitch being Ted's biggest defender and the last holdout of the "No Nate" crew as the culmination of the idea that "It doesn't matter what Nate does, offer him forgiveness anyway". Then have Nate come in for whatever big tearjerker speech we are going to get next week from Ted and take over for him.
I think that's why the "Fappening" locker room scene was so awful, and my least favorite of the series. Every single character had to take a turn lecturing everyone else on the exact right opinion. Locker rooms full of testosterone fueled, macho athletes all in their early twenties are not all going to have the right opinion on deleting their one night stands DMs. Some of them at least would be sharing them and bragging about their kill counts. The episode felt like it wanted to make it a "twist" that Jamie is the one who got hacked to release Keeley's video, but because he has the exact same opinion on deleting the photos that Sam, Isaac, Colin, etc. all have, the episode doesn't end up doing something with that info. Imagine a scene where the players have a more realistic discussion on the issue. Have one of them say "Hey, she sent it to me unasked for, it's her fault if it gets out", and Jamie pops into the conversation to say he deletes everything. Given how much of a cad he seemed in S1 that would be a bit surprising, would lend his character some depth (he cares more about his women than he lets on) and then would make the final reveal with Keeley make more sense, he did try to do the right thing but still is feeling guilty, and would make Keeley's instant forgiveness mean more, she really is behaving like Ted in that moment. But that would have been uncomfortable, we might have disliked a character for thirty seconds and we can't have that.
Pretty clear Ted's general sadness stems from missing his son/family after being in London for 2 years. Interesting to me that so many (mostly men) find things surprising or hard to understand that have been seeded throughout the season/series. Also the recent episodes comments on other review sites are much more positive. This season definitely strayed into odd subplots and wasted too much time there, and it can never tie up all the loose strings, but overall it's improved a lot over the season and it's still a wonderful show. And the Easter eggs and music are the fab icing.
Lots of comparisons between Nate and Jamie but that’s not the right season 1 comp. Compare Nate’s arc to Rebecca’s. She hires Ted and Beard hoping they will fail, she actively undermines them, she hires a PI to dig up dirt on Ted, uses the photos the PI takes without regard for the impact on Keeley Jaimie or Ted (who I believe was still married), transfers Jamie to a different city to make the team worse without regard for the impact on Jamie, and fires Leslie (or forces him to quit) when he doesn’t want to go along with the plan anymore. She did much more bad acts than Nate and treated the other characters far worse. What did we see of her redemption? What happened on screen beyond her confessing to Ted and apologizing? Who complained when Ted (and everyone else) instantly forgave her?
No, the issue with Nate isn’t that they aren’t showing enough content to redeem him. It is that they pointlessly set him up as a villain only to change their minds almost immediately. Now we are spending precious screen time away from characters we love so they can bring Nate back from the spot they needlessly placed him. It was a pointless story line that took all season -- possibly the final season the the show -- to bring us back to the status quo. Of course he is going to be forgiven. Forgiveness is a major point of the show. The steps getting there are boring. Put them all off screen and give us more time with Danny and Sam and Isaac and VanDamme and all the other major and minor characters who do have interesting stories to tell.
So the obvious end game here is going to be Ted goes back to America, Nate takes over as the manager and this isn't actually the shows final season just Jason Sudekis' final season right?
It is the only possible explanation for the Nate storyline to me as it just seems to need to breeze past all the issues of last year so everything can be good with all the main characters again.
This episode could have been fantastic if not for the long drawn out sequences. They've been over extending great scenes to an unbearably ineffective point all season, is it on purpose so they can reach the 60 minute plus point????
I have my quibbles with this season (Nate leaving West Ham happening between episodes, Jack) but the overall Nate story is fine. Nate was awful, but he didn’t commit murder.
Am I the only one that assumed Jamie’s mom was dead?
Why would Ted play with 10 while waiting for an injured Jamie with 8 minutes to go? They needed 11 men to defend the 1-0 lead. I loved the final sequence but either make the injury earlier o make it a tied game before the goal.
Ted has always been presented as a guy who forgives and forgets quickly. The team now has absorbed that mindset and now plays the best they've ever played. So, I'm not surprised that the team and coaches are welcoming to Nate.
All of Nate's story lines this season have been toward defusing the pride, anger, and jealousy that motivated him to leave at the end of S2. (Rejecting Rupert's invitation to party with ladies, making peace with his dad, and opening up emotionally to Jade.) So, the final question is how does Nate forgive himself and partner with Ted again.
I have absolutely no issues with the Nate stuff this season
I didn't know until recently that Lawrence hadn't come back for this past season. As many issues as I had with Scrubs, the guy knows how to sustain narrative momentum. It's just incredible to me that even with all of these supersized episodes, the plots still feel crammed in there. I like the season more than most but it's definitely the weakest of the 3.
Also, the show itself is in a weird place. It's clear they're setting Ted up to leave Richmond but it also seems like Apple will back up the Brinks truck for him to protect its tentpole franchise. Has to put Sudekis in a weird spot and I think this season has shown the show can't function effectively without him. Plus, this could just be my perception but Ted Lasso feels like a writer's show more than most. Brett Goldstein and Brendan Hunt are both fun performers but I think they approach most creative projects as writers. So they might sit out the strike even longer than most. Could be a few years before the show comes back and that might change things altogether. Just feels like its trapped creatively on all sides.
Minor nitpick: I’d be hard-pressed to find a kicker who rose up the ranks to be an NCAA head coach. 😆