Good lord but Ted Lasso has a big heart.
When it has a mind to, of course, which, granted is much of the time, although not as strongly in season 3′ first three episodes as had previously been the case.
While the episodes – “Smells Like Mean Spirit”, “I Don’t Want to Go to) Chelsea” and “4-5-1” – propelled the story along nicely with the addition of superstar player Zava (Maximilian Osinski), a massive winning streak by AFC Richmond and some touching character development including —– SPOILER ALERT —– the gentle outing of Colin (Billy Harris) – to the audience, and inadvertently to Trent Crimm (James Lance) who has his own once-closeted story to tell, but not to his teammates or club officials – the episodes weren’t exactly as full on the heart-on-sleeve scale as would normally be the case.
They weren’t bad episodes by any measure with Ted Lasso mostly too well written for that to be the case, but they lacked the full-on emotion to go with the storyline which meant they didn’t go quite as hardcore emotional as is usually the case.
But then along comes “Sunflowers”, the sixth episode which, following revelations in episodes four and five that Nate (Nick Mohammed) regrets the way he left Richmond and that he wants to apologise to Ted (Jason Sudeikis) for his behaviour and Rebecca’s (Hannah Waddingham) abiding sadness that she’s no longer fertile, which takes place in Amsterdam, after an exhibition/friendlies football match, where a lot of small but emotionally vital stories get to be told.
Ted’s, interestingly, is perhaps, the least interesting of the lot; he essentially takes what turns out to be dud drugs at Beard’s (Brendan Hunt) behest – Beard naturally has a riot of a night, ending up dressed as David Bowie with a plastic pig snout on, making him, ahem, “Pig Bowie” – and comes up with a brilliant, if unoriginal new way of playing that may pull Richmond out of their losing slump.
The team too, have some fun moments with a pillow fight of all things – sanctioned by hotel employees who thus spare Richmond a scandal – in the lobby after attempts to do something together outside just don’t work out but the real joy comes from smaller stories focusing on some of the other characters.
Rebecca, mistakenly, walking on a bikes-only path which attracts angry reactions from Amsterdammers, falls into a canal where she’s rescued by an unnamed but kindly, handsome and muscular man (Matteo van der Grijn) who lives on a houseboat and gives Rebecca one of the loveliest, most romantic and sweetly chaste nights of her recent life.
Nothing seems to come of it in the morning but it’s clear that Rebecca is buoyed by her encounter after losing a key match to her arch-rival and ex Rupert (Anthony Head), finding she can’t have kids and regreting letting Sam (Toheeb Jimoh) go, and she settles back into her seat on the team bus looking more renewed than she has in a while.
That’s a characteristic shared by everyone after a big night which also sees Colin and Trent bond over their shared closet identities as gay men, Jamie (Phil Dunster) and Roy (Brett Goldstein) go bike riding, find a windmill and bare their souls to each other (well, as much as Roy will anyway) and Keeley (Juno Temple) racing off to see the Northern Lights in Norway with new girlfriend Jack (Jodi Balfour), the venture capitalist who’s invested in her firm.
They are all small stories but they all pack an emotional punch, and while they run the risk of fracturing the ensemble feel that has made Ted Lasso feel like the story of one big happy but characteristically dysfunctional family, the fact that everyone arrives back on the bus looking and feeling renewed suggests that the cohesiveness of the tea, both players and staff may be all the stronger for their times apart.
It’s a pivotal episode that returned the show to what it does so well, and it makes you hopeful for the final six episodes ever of the show, that they will go back to the group dynamic we love and reaffirm that while we need to figure our own shit out, that doing it together is a far better thing to do.
Ted Lasso is currently screening on AppleTV+
A clip, a clip and a very funny one at that …
And yes, we have an interview here too …
Watching Not Dead Yet feels a great big hug to the soul.
It may not be the greatest sitcom to have ever filled our screens but it has that indefinable something, a sense of very funny and time place, filled with the kind of characters we want to spend time with.
And that I think is key.
Resting on a gloriously simple premise that sees existentially wrought protagonist, Nell Serrano (Gina Rodriguez), return to southern California after a failed relationship took her to the UK and have to start her work and personal life all over again, Not Dead Yet is an ensemble comedy that knows that its appeal rests of the people who populate it.
That’s likely true of most sitcoms, all of which strive for a collection of characters you’ll grown and love, but the trick here is that the humour largely rest on what happens to those characters.
There are a host of run-of-the-mill, cookie cutter sitcoms out there, all laugh tracks and narrative banality that simply use their characters as set decorations to hang limp and tired jokes off of, but Not Dead Yet really works to make the humour flow from its characters and their innate humanity.
Granted, we’re not talking deep psychological explorations of what make these people tick, but then that’s not why you watch sitcoms for; sometimes they emerge through strength of writing and performance such as in Frasier or The Mary Tyler Moore Show or countless others, but by and large, sitcoms happily do their thing on characters who have presence and scope but really just enough to make the jokes drawn from their experiences really pop and shine.
What’s highly enjoyable about these episodes is that they are happy to tell small but thoughtful stories about peoples’ lives, principally through the obits Nell must write in her new low down the journalistic totem pole gig at the SoCal Independent, stories of the dead which come alive (or dead, as the case may be) through the ghosts of the subjects whom only Nell can see.
Naturally being a sitcom, each of these people have a life lesson for Nell, whether it’s honest and true to her dad (“Not Out of the Game Yet”) in which the baseball commentator who provided the soundtrack to Nell and her father’s sport outings when she was a kid imparts wisdom beyond the beautifully enunciated grave, or “Not Friends Yet” where Nell and her roommate on the autism spectrum, Edward (Rick Glassman) sort out in “Not Friends Yet” just where their relationship sits, all while they do their best to be, or not be, their authentic selves.
The lessons are light and breezy, and even when there’s some real emotional import such as Nell’s new friend Cricket (Angela E. Gibbs) scattering the ashes of her dead husband Monty, played by Martin Mull, who keeps appearing as a ghost to Nell (“Not Scattered Yet”) or Nell and BFF Sam (Hannah Simone)’s boss Lexi (Lauren Ash) finally admitting she’s lonely after she and her husband separate, it’s over reasonably quickly.
The thing is, there’s enough depth of humanity to make you like and care for these people, and that’s OK; not every sitcom has to reinvent the artform or push the boundaries of comedy; sometimes it’s enough to have great characters in an endlessly malleable and have fun with that, something Not Dead Yet does wonderfully in these four episodes, all of which make you feel warm and cosy and like you belong and honestly, that’s not such a bad thing in this cold, cruel world of ours.
Do you want a clip? Yes yes you do, especially when it features Margaret Cho as a psychic …