Season 2 of Ted Lasso sucks (so far). Will it get better?
Let’s start at the beginning: Ted Lasso was the best thing I watched last year.
From the snappy writing to the wide-ranging cast of complex, fully developed characters, it was an original and terrific piece of television. But it was more than just that.
Season 1 was an absolute godsend. In a TV world obsessed with heavy-handedness and a real world mired in constant crisis, here came a show that believed in bringing out the best in everyone, even when those people couldn’t see what their best selves were. It was an incredible tonic in 2020, a message that even as we felt lost and hopeless and directionless, we should BELIEVE.
But now, four episodes into Season 2, it’s unclear exactly what we’re being encouraged to believe in anymore.
Sure, everybody loves folksy Ted. But the reason his corniness came off as authentic instead of forced is that it was always deployed in the service of a larger goal. What is the larger goal right now?
This is the show’s own fault. In the final episode of Season 1, after the team’s stunning relegation, Ted and Rebecca sit in her office, him expecting to get fired, her insisting he stay, and him boldly proclaiming that the only thing to do was get promoted back to the Premier League and then win the whole thing. The show set that as the North Star. It didn’t have to, but it did. But, through four episodes of Season 2, there seems to be no urgency toward that goal, and hardly even a mention of soccer in general. The team had a string of ties, then a loss, which the players celebrated, because at least they didn’t tie. OK.
There’s been little to no semblance of any pressure to live up to Ted’s statement, other than the occasional questions at a press conference, but even those have been focused more on other plot lines, like Sam’s snub of the club’s corporate sponsor. Ted Lasso has always been a show about much more than just soccer — “it ain’t always easy, Trent, but neither is growing up without someone believing in you” — but its Season 1 finish put the game back in the front and center. We already know Ted isn’t always going to win the big game. But right now, they’re barely even playing games.
More broadly, though, a show that had three strong antagonists in Season 1 — on the field in Jamie, in the front office in Rebecca, and Rupert, hovering in the background constantly threatening general chaos — suddenly seems to have none. This season…who is the bad guy?
Seriously, name them.
Jamie’s largely dropped his macho facade and discovered what it means to be a good teammate. But he was never the true antagonist anyway. Rebecca has turned from the stone cold businesswoman with hints of a heart to a full-on softy, making amends with her goddaughter, lifting Ted’s spirits, and standing up for her player against a corporate bully. We haven’t seen the brilliantly infuriating Rupert all season.
Frankly, the show missed a great opportunity to push Jamie as the wedge further between Ted and Sam, or between Ted and Rebecca. Instead, his return was just kind of left alone after some initial skeptical looks. Dr. Sharon Fieldstone, hired on as the team’s sports psychologist, presents some challenges for Ted, but their ultimate goals seem aligned. She’s not malicious.
Perhaps Dubai Air, said snubbed sponsor, will emerge as the antagonist. But right now, they don’t even have a face, just a name on an email exchange with Rebecca. If that’s the end of that conflict, it feels woefully and unrealistically underdeveloped.
As it stands right now, the show is just about a bunch of nice people doing nice things for each other. There’s value in that, especially in a world increasingly lacking in empathy, but it’s far short of what this show accomplished in its first go-around.
And, yes, we have to talk about the utterly bizarre, Hallmarkian Christmas episode. None of the crises are in any way serious: Phoebe’s breath smells bad! Higgins has to host more players than he expected (but they all brought extra food and somehow there are still plenty of chairs)! It felt like a complete throwaway, the kind of thing 90s sitcoms would plug into the schedule every year because they had to fill 20- or 30-some-odd episodes. Its placement at the end of three episodes that had already failed to really establish a central conflict only made me more anxious. But there is, at least, an explanation for why it felt so disjointed.
The season was originally supposed to be 10 episodes, but was extended to 12, evidently after it had already been written. So this was one of two one-off, disconnected episodes. As such, it would have been almost impossible to go back in and write anything that forwarded the general plot along.
But that doesn’t explain everything, like the fact that even the comedy has suffered thus far. Jokes from Season 1 have been played back, but without any variation or progression. Coach Beard describes another opponent in a singular, not-particularly-helpful phrase. It was a joke that wasn’t all that funny the first time, and feels like a failed attempt at fan service the second time. A funnier line from Season 1, when Sam declines the gift of a plastic army man from Ted and explains that he doesn’t share the same fondness for the American military because of imperialism, is essentially played back word-for-word in the Christmas episode. The humor has not evolved, the same way the characters aren’t evolving.
Roy and Keeley continue to be the best part of the whole show…but that in and of itself is a problem. They have little to do with the club anymore. Roy seems destined to be brought back into the Richmond family one way or another (please, god, not on the field as an emotional, entirely unrealistic call out of retirement), but until then, their B plots are the only thing carrying the season. The only time I can truly remember laughing out loud this season was watching each of their reactions to Roy’s niece’s tragically foul breath.
The nearly unanimous raving reviews of the second season from critics haven’t helped the failure of the show to live up to expectations so far. They, of course, are privy to the entire season at once, the way many of us binged Season 1. And therein lies the hope — which, hopefully, won’t kill us — that the lull in conflict and story through the first four episodes is not, in fact, representative of the rest of the season.
It also took Season 1 a few episodes to hit its stride. Season 1, Episode 4 — “For the Children” featured the team gala that saw nearly every character hit a major transformation that would define the rest of the season. Rebecca opened up to both Ted and Keeley; Jamie and Roy accepted one another; Keeley realized she’d be happier with Roy; Rupert emerged as the true villain. It was a crucial episode that set the tone and laid the groundwork for everything else that worked in Season 1.
Here’s to hoping that’s what the erstwhile Season 2, Episode 4 — pushed to 5 by the Christmas episode — brings us Friday.
