We’ve reached the last three! That’s right: we’re down to the final trio of episodes that Ted Lasso will ever bestow upon our jaded heads. (Allegedly.) One way you can tell? The length of Ted Lasso Season 3 Episode 10 is jacked all the way back up to 11, Spinal Tap-style, though in this case “11” actually times out to 63 minutes. Devotees will recall that that is the exact same length as this season’s “Sunflowers,” also known as “The Amsterdam Episode,” also-also known as the longest Ted Lasso episode to date. Until next week! If Jason Sudeikis does not give us two supremely jam-packed, feature film-length episodes to round out the series, I will be stunned. And I’ll eat my hat. First I’ll get a hat; then, hat stew. You heard it here first.
To get somewhat closer to the point, though, I’m pleased to report that “International Break” is something of a return to form for the show, which has meandered through its third season like a singing nun on a mountainside and which spent its last two episodes on elaborate Lessons Of The Week that managed to be consistently funny but whose emotional payoff felt largely two-dimensional and / or unearned. In the interstellar journey that is TV production in the year 2023, Ted Lasso always veers close to the Schlock Nebula; its willingness to engage in the seemingly (or outright) hokey is part of what makes the show so intriguing.
But when its episodes focus on a breakup that goes bad for morally dubious reasons (Keeley’s for-your-eyes-only videos in “We’ll Never Have Paris”) or the team learning about a player’s homosexuality (Colin, whose journey has been one of Season 3’s standouts, in “La Locker Room Aux Folles”), its related reliance upon a tidy moral and a happy ending often wind up feeling…hollow. Incomplete. Or, to use a truly bad word, sitcom-ish.
But Ted Lasso, for all its faults, is not a sitcom. And “International Break” does away with the tidiness. It’s a mix of the ball-breakingly funny humor, aesthetically gorgeous visuals, tenderness, and quietly surprising reveals that the show is known for. It’s a mix of the aforementioned “Amsterdam” (in its open-ended lollygagging picaresqueitude) and last season’s “No Weddings and a Funeral” (in its tenderhearted set pieces). And the episode makes for some of the best storytelling Ted Lasso has given us of late.
Keeley After Hours
I am not a fan of how Ted Lasso has treated Keeley Fucking Jones this season. KJPR should have been a chance for her to become her own Ted, to try and scrap together her own AFC Richmond out of bitter PR pros and even more incredulous newcomers. Instead, Keeley’s boutique PR firm has mostly been an excuse for her to fall in love with Jack (ably played by Jodi Balfour). And then for Jack to wave more red flags than a China convention. And then for Jack to break up with Keeley…whose PR firm Jack is still in charge of bankrolling.
In short, Keeley’s Season 3 story has sacrificed character development and personal ambition for a love story that appears to exist solely so it can end badly and she can get back together with Roy. Which I am in favor of! But this was perhaps not the most interesting or amusing or efficient way to go about it. However, since “International Break” *finally* lets Keeley do something other than swoon, I would just as soon put everything else behind us and focus on the here and now. Or, to be more specific, to focus on Keeley getting drunk at the Crown & Anchor before noon because Jack pulled KJPR’s funding. Oh, and DIDN’T TELL KEELEY. Keeley had to find out from Barbara. And from the literal movers literally moving all of her literal tangible PR office shit out of her sadly no-longer-literal PR firm’s (former) office.
Fortunately, Keeley picks the best place in the world to get day-drunk. What makes it the best, you ask? The fact that it’s Mae’s place, that’s what. Mae tells Keeley that she reached the mountaintop, which meant there was nothing left for her but the lightning. Aah, so now Mae is Roy giving Rebecca the ole “struck by fucking lightning” speech in the Season 2 premiere after their disastrous(ly amusing) date with John Wingsnight. Is Keeley ready for the lightning? You tell me, Lasso fans: she buys a snow globe for the departing Barbara “Juicy Babs” Lastname, then accepts a generous and probably misguided offer from Rebecca to get staked again and start the whole PR circus up once more.
Roy and Jamie Spinoff, Please and Thank You
But that’s only two things, and we all know comedy works in threes. Or, anyway, this show does. So – what’s the third thing then? WELL, as luck would have it, Mr. Lightning Speech himself has a long-overdue revelation while flirting with Ms. Bowen, Phoebe’s fit former teacher who we haven’t seen since she and Roy spent a long, flirtatious afternoon together at the tail end of Ted Lasso Season 2. Roy’s revelation is basically that he’s been so stuck in his ways that he fucked up the good thing he had with Keeley by breaking up with her so she wouldn’t have to deal with him.
It’s a late-season Hail Mary if ever one was, but it’s enough to inspire Roy to write an apology-slash-love-note to Keeley while the rest of Richmond and the coaching staff are watching International Break matches and drinking beer. Except that Roy’s handwriting is terrible (seriously, it looks like the handwriting of a dying man scrawling out a plea for mercy while being dragged through the mud to Hell) and Keeley needs Roy to read it to her.
It’s a lovely scene because Brett Goldstein and Juno Temple are incredible in these roles. But it also underscores how adrift both of these characters have been throughout Season 3. Keeley’s gotten the shorter end of things, but Roy has been wicked uneven this season – he’s had some moments of incredible and self-acknowledged growth, and he’s also spent a bunch of time being a fucking weird creepy sadist-slash-bully. So this exchange feels kinda rushed? I’m glad we got here; I just also think the way we got here involved too much time and wheel-spinning and too little genuine movement.
HOWEVER, I am now guilty of burying my own lede four paragraphs deep into this section, because Ted Lasso Season 3 Episode 10 ALSO gave us what is as of this writing my all-time very most favorite scene of the whole entire show. I’m talking, of course, about Phoebe’s “Uncle Day” celebration for her favorite Uncle Roy. This scene is notable for almost too many things; let’s just list them and see how far we get before laughter takes me over:
1. It’s the first time we get a proper introduction to Roy’s sister, Dr. O’Sullivan. (We technically met her in “Man City”; she’s the doctor who treated Dr. Fieldstone after Sharon was hit by a car while riding her bike. But that’s just a clever bit of retconning on the show’s part, since Dr. O’Sullivan – played by the indeed-fit Sofia Barclay – was not introduced as Roy’s sister or as anyone in any way related to Roy or indeed anyone involved with Richmond at all.)
2. Jamie Tartt’s look of delighted teasing satisfaction upon entering the party as Phoebe’s surprise guest.
3. Phoebe telling this to her Uncle Roy: “I had to invite your best friend.” The genuine HOWLS of laughter that I howled. Imagine a wolf being tickled from the inside by the child he just swallowed whole and you will have an approximation of the sound of my laughter from this line alone.
4. Phoebe further explaining her reasoning: “Well, you talk about him a lot. And you spend every day together.” HOWLS, Dear Reader; HOWLS.
5. Jamie giving Roy a genuinely nice, stunningly thoughtful, and delightfully obscene gift: Roy’s kit from England’s 2014 World Cup team, except he had the “E” in “KENT” replaced with a “U.”
6. Phoebe’s look of confusion upon hearing this.
7. PHOEBE’S gift to her Uncle Roy, which is also infinitely cute: a tye-died shirt in red, orange, and yellow (because the acronym spells out his name HOW FUCKING AMAZING IS THAT).
8. Jamie being unable to keep himself from commenting that Roy’s sister is, indeed, “fit.” I don’t think I’m reading too much into this magnificent scene when I say that it feels like Jamie really wanted to say “fucking fit” but managed to stop himself that indulgence at least.
In conclusion, Ted Lasso Season 3 has gotten both the Jamie storyline and the Roy-Jamie storyline 100% right. I will die on this hill; I will cut eyes out on this hill. If you cannot find the joy here, I recommend that you go to the nearest doctor and have them check to make sure your heart is in your chest where it belongs.
Rebecca! (FINALLY)
I was one of many people who wound up rather underwhelmed by Rebecca Welton’s arc for pretty much the entirety of Ted Lasso Season 2. Her character, her direction, her purpose were so focused for all of Season 1 – conspire against this goofy-ass American goofball until he makes it impossible to do so – that her Season 2 storyline – i.e., “Rebecca looks for love” – was rather a letdown. For all its talk of boss-ass bitchery, Ted Lasso didn’t really give Rebecca that many moments to shine on her own as either a skilled businesswoman or a compassionate person or some other combination of any of those things.
Rebecca’s story in Ted Lasso Season 3 Episode 10 is, by contrast, exactly the sort of thing that I’ve been hoping for for literal years now. The infinitely meme-able moment of Rebecca puffing herself up to her true intimidating form from Season 2’s “Rainbow” is given the full-on Ted Lasso treatment in “International Break.” And by “full-on treatment” I mean it’s played again for laughs but even more than that for emotional resonance. Before she goes to the meeting about the Akufo League – and after Rupert‘s invitation, don’t forget – Rebecca pauses in front of her full-length hall mirror to go through her usual routine. And then who should appear in the mirror itself but the tiny little girl in pigtails, perfectly poised to stick her tongue back out at adult Rebecca and eat the world alongside her.
It’s this sort of showing and telling at which Ted Lasso excels; the show has given us any number of amazing moments in which something that had existed primarily or solely as one thing instead gets turned around and we get the full emotional spectrum undergirding its existence. (See also: the biscuit reveal in 1.2; Trent’s article about Ted in 1.3; Rebecca’s apology in 1.9; Dani’s “FOOTBALL IS DEATH” in 2.1; the episode-long not-Rickrolling that is 2.10; &c &c.) And in “International Break,” the move actually serves two purposes. The first is to remind us (and Rebecca) of who she is before this potentially pitfall-laden meeting. And the second comes during the meeting itself, right in the middle of “Is This A Fucking Joke (Rebecca’s Version),” in which the only genuine adult in the room gets a vision of who her audience truly is.
It’s a move that elevates Rebecca without dehumanizing her opponents or reducing them to caricature. (Indeed, their sexist commentary does that work for them.) In the heat of this moment, Rebecca sees with perfect clarity that a billionaire is nothing more than a little boy who got lost somewhere along the way. And while I myself have a few issues with that particular reading of entrenched wealth, I have to tip my still-uneaten hat to Ted Lasso for going with The Lasso Way here, in a scene from which Ted could not be much farther away.
OH – and then Rebecca gave Rupert the warmest, gentlest, most matter-of-fact brush-off of all time. The fact that he misread the situation so incredibly poorly is way more hurtful than any insult Rebecca could have cooked up. Or, at least, I think it was. Rupert is now neutered. Ted Lasso didn’t even wait until the series finale to conquer its villain!
Nate…Exists
If Keeley drew Ted Lasso Season 3’s very shortest straw, I feel like Nate maybe got the second-shortest. Because Season 2 went to extreme, often-uncomfortable, almost always-successful lengths to turn Nate the Great into Nate the Hate. And we all knew he was going to get a redemption arc this season, because Ted Lasso brings newfound transparency to the phrase “telegraphing their passes.”
But what I didn’t expect was a complete about-face from Nate the Hate with functionally no demonstrated growth. Which is a somewhat indirect way of saying that for pretty much all of Season 3, Nate has just been…a good guy again. And I am as all-in on that outcome as I am on Nick Mohammed’s continually stellar performance of Nate. (After the abuse that man suffered from rather ignorant fans last season and again throughout Season 3, I feel I need to make the following very, very plain: what I am saying here is is not in any way a critique of Nick Mohammed.)
I just think that it’s a great big missed opportunity for Ted Lasso to not show Nate really working through any of his anger or self-loathing issues, either in therapy or on his own or through Jade. Instead of any of that – instead of the equivalent of Ted going to therapy last season – we’ve seen Nate work up the courage to ask Jade out on a date, become involved in a serious, loving relationship with her, and turn back Rupert’s sleaziest guys night entreaty.
These are all major personal developments, so how were they able to happen so healthily, given where we left Nate at the end of Season 2? Why is he all of a sudden impervious to Rupert and the Dark Side of the Force? It was a very nice gesture, sneaking back into the Richmond locker room and doing Will’s morning work for him, complete with a note of apology. I guess I don’t yet believe that the Nate who ripped the “BELIEVE” sign in half on his literal way out the door is the same Nate who tried to make it up to Will.
In sum, it feels to me like we’re missing at least a half-season of serious soul-searching. Everything we’ve gotten from Nick Mohammed this season has been stellar, and the violin-and-piano sequence in “International Break” was this episode’s answer to the eulogy-in-song from “No Weddings and a Funeral” last time around. But since it feels like we’ve begun more toward the end of it, I am having a hard time getting fully invested in Nate’s journey.
Richmond Errata
–LOL of course Rupert is in Rebecca’s phone as “The Devil”
–Since Ted already joked that Rebecca’ “talked to God” (i.e., the owner of the Sun) and we just found out she keeps the Devil in her phone, who will be the third person + pseudonym, the one to park this Rule of Three at its punchliney home?
–Sam Richardson does the best funny-creepy face in entertainment. Also, just, Yes to everything he does in this episode. I don’t know that I could handle an entire Akufo spinoff; that character is a lot. But I would be interested as hell to check it out.
–Yes, I understand that Ted Lasso (the character)’s whole deal is inspiring other people and being generous and sharing glory and getting teams to work together (i.e., like a team). But would it have killed Ted Lasso’s writers to give us just a smidge more Ted this season and specifically in this episode? Other than a few scenes with Rebecca – which are always delightful – Ted’s presence in “International Break” is largely ceremonial. Much like the tea that Rebecca spits back in his face in the episode’s penultimate scene. For a character whose arc is supposed to define the entire season (recall that Ted’s exhausted face was the opening shot in the Season 3 premiere, just as Nate’s nervous face was the Season 2 opener and Rebecca’s defiant face [basically] ushered in Season 1), it really feels like we just haven’t gotten as much of Ted as we maybe should have. And of course part of the reason I feel that way is because even though Ted Lasso is all-in on expansive episode runtimes, the rate at which it expands its own universe and its use of formerly secondary and tertiary characters is faster still.
–”I hate to break it to you, Rebecca, but those children are dead.” If it weren’t for Phoebe, Higgins would absolutely have had the line of the episode.
–Sure, Beard is from Peoria – but which Peoria?
