The third (and likely last) season of Ted Lasso finds Nate Shelley (Nick Mohammed) having turned his back—and his newly white hair—on AFC Richmond, trying to embrace nastiness like that of his repellent new boss, West Ham owner Rupert (Anthony Head). In a vicious press conference, Nate agrees with the pundits that Richmond is bound to finish 20th this season, “only because there’s no 21st,” and asserts that it makes sense that the unconventional Ted Lasso (Jason Sudeikis) would take his team on a field trip down a manhole: “They probably have to train in a sewer because their coach is so shitty.”
Affably and dottily, Ted refuses to return Nate’s insults at his counter-presser, instead complimenting his traitorous assistant coach’s skills on the field and leading the media through a series of self-deprecating “How dumb are you?” call-and-response jokes at his own expense. Ted’s press conference is a re-edification of the show’s pun-filled, pure-hearted core and a promise that the creators are committed to “let Ted be Ted,” the perpetual fish-out-of-water Kansan who first cluelessly took the helm of a London football team two years ago.
Episode one, “Smells Like Mean Spirit,” is also, in a sense, a return to the show’s unvarnished sunny roots. By introducing the no-nonsense, ever-perceptive Dr. Sharon Fieldstone (Sarah Niles), season two invited us to see Ted’s outlandishly pleasant goofiness not as the excesses of a TV character, but as the trauma-masking coping mechanisms of a real human being. In pushing Ted to acknowledge his struggles with mental health and to step into his maturity, Ted Lasso boldly asked its audience to step up too, pressing the series beyond a feel-good comedy toward something that transcended its heartwarming but hilarious inaugural season.
Based on the four episodes made available for review, season three is more of a throwback to Ted Lasso’s original formula of silly plus tender, multiplied by wickedly smart. It’s only in comparison to the show’s previous highs that these episodes feel somewhat earthbound.
Ted Lasso’s writers have worked hard to make us learn to love everyone in the Richmond ecosystem—it’s strange to remember that Rebecca and Jamie Tartt (Phil Dunster) were once the baddies—so the series has earned the right to let its characters scrimmage with minimal lasting conflicts beyond Nate’s betrayal. It’s a helpful move, too, to limit the number and centrality of new characters since there’s already not much time to spend on Sam (Toheeb Jimoh) or Isaac (Kola Bokinni) or Dani (Cristo Fernandez), all players with potent storylines in prior seasons.
There’s still plenty of corny mileage to be found from the “Diamond Dogs” relationship advice squad, composed of Ted, Coach Beard (Brendan Hunt), the effervescently grouchy Roy Kent (Brett Goldstein), and the adorable Higgins (Jeremy Swift). But the friendship that glows brightest in these new episodes is between Ted’s boss, Rebecca (Hannah Waddingham), and Keeley (Juno Temple), who’s now running her own PR firm and struggling to build a friendly office culture. Waddingham continues to marry the bravado of her stage background with more intimate nuances that flash across her face: She’s at once larger than life and totally believable.
In the season’s first episode, though, it’s a pair of kids who steal their scenes most gleefully: Gus Turner’s Henry, Ted’s son, at the end of a summer visit to London when the season opens, would seem to have inherited his father’s mix of humble sweetness and playful wryness, and Phoebe (Elodie Blomfield), Roy Kent’s niece, who continues to offer acerbic wisdom to her elders. “My mum and dad split up when I was four,” she explains to Roy and Keeley when they tell her their relationship is ending, “so one of my core beliefs is that nothing lasts forever.”
That includes Ted Lasso, which was always intended to have a three-season arc. If this is indeed the end of the series, it seems bound to go out much as it began, with an indestructible game plan that’s guaranteed to score with its signature mix of warmth and whimsy.
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