Why I Still Love "Ted Lasso"

Despite its third season's flaws, the Apple TV series still has a very special place in my heart.

As is so often the case, I was a bit of a latecomer to Ted Lasso, and I only started watching once the second season was in full swing. Immediately, though, I fell under its spell, swept up by its irrepressible optimism and its fundamental belief in the goodness of all people. The first season was a delightful romp, and it was a show that knew what it was. Each episode was half an hour, and while there were conflicts and setbacks, the characters also grew and changed as they faced life and the struggles of football. They had their foibles, but we loved them. 

Season two broadened the canvas, showing us a bit of a more sinister and more complex side to these men and women that we’d grown to love. Ted in particular had much to teach us about the importance of mental health and dealing honestly with our struggles, though it was an uphill battle for him. Fortunately for him (and for us), he was guided on this path by the able Dr. Sharon Fieldstone, a therapist brought in to help the team. 

And then came season three. 

I’m sure I speak for many fans of the show when I say that this was a rather odd season of television. Somehow the plucky little sitcom that had been a balm to us in the dark days of COVID had started to morph into something else, some sort of dramedy, perhaps, or even VERY SERIOUS drama. Whatever it was, it wasn’t very much like the two seasons that preceded it. The laughs came ever more intermittently, and the storylines were all over the place. We were suddenly introduced to a queer storyline involving Colin which, though undercooked, still managed to be moving in its understated way (and it was also nice to hear that Trent Crimm is queer, too), and Keeley also got her own sapphic storyline. Less appealingly, we also got a redemption storyline for Nate, who suddenly comes to realize his mistakes, distances himself from the reptilian Rupert, and even reconciles with his father. 

All of this is fine enough, but far too frequently in the third season the story meanders everywhere, with narrative beats that don’t quite land. It’s hard to really get invested in any particular issue because it’s far too frequently dealt with and then never mentioned again. While this is all well and good for a sitcom–i.e., the genre in which this series was located in the first season–this doesn’t work quite as well when it comes to…well, whatever the third season was trying to be. Much as I loved the Colin storyline, for example, and as well as it worked in that particular episode, there’s not a lot of meat to it in the rest of the season.The same can be said of Keeley, who seems to pinball from one crisis to the next throughout the season. This is truly unfortunate, as she was one of my favorites in the first two seasons. We don’t even get to see her spend as much time with her BFF Rebecca, something that it seems both of them regret. 

Despite my frustrations, though, I still found myself returning week after week to the world of Ted Lasso, and not just out of a sense of obligation. As it had from the beginning, the series reminded us of the beauty and the humor and the hope that exists in the world, if we just look for it. In that regard, it’s fitting that Ted Lasso himself is the one character who seems to be the most static. While he’s clearly learned some hard truths over the last two seasons, he’s still the same aww-shucks optimist he has been from the beginning. He is, in many important ways, the guiding light for everyone in the show–and even, I would argue, those of us in the audience–and it’s thus particularly bittersweet when he finally makes the choice he’s been putting off for some time now: to go back to the US, where he belongs. 

In that sense, the finale is everything one could have expected. Ted returns home to be reunited with his son, Henry (and potentially with his wife?) Rebecca sells some of her shares to the fans of the club, giving them a stake in its fortunes. Keeley and Roy and Jamie manage to form a sort of detente, and Nate is at last returned to the team where he belongs. Everyone, that is, is right where they’re meant to be and, if as seems possible, this is the last season of Ted Lasso, it’s the type of emotionally resonant and fulfilling send-off that the series, and the fans, deserved, even as there is plenty of room for another series with some of the same characters. 

These days, my standards for what makes a good show are relatively modest. If a series, whether a drama or a sitcom, has characters that I want to spend time with and a world in which I can lose myself, then I consider it a good show. This applies even to shows where I find the people endlessly reprehensible, e.g. Succession, because there’s something masochistically pleasurable about standing in judgment of terrible people. If anything, Ted Lasso is the opposite of that, but it is still a show that creates a world in which we can imagine ourselves living, one that is governed by an irrepressible faith in both our fellow man and the goodness of the universe. 

Even though we’re not lying under the same shroud of COVID as we were when Ted Lasso first hit our screens, this is still a stark and very cynical age. In a time when we seem to be growing ever further apart as a nation and as a culture, there’s something uniquely pleasurable about being asked to inhabit the utopian world presented by this show, one populated by all sorts of people from all walks of life who, despite their differences, find a way of coming together. And, if nothing else, it’s a divine pleasure to see Hannah Waddingham in all of her statuesque beauty every week.

So, whatever its failings and shortcomings in its third season, there will always be a special place in my heart for Ted Lasso.