Welcome back to Ted Lasso, everybody! It’s been one year, five months, and seven days since the Season 2 finale aired. Since then, we’ve been subjected to endless blog agonizing (“blogonizing”) over whether Season 3 will, in fact, be Ted Lasso‘s last; whether Ted and Rebecca (“Tedbecca”) will become A Thing or remain a hugely divisive daydream; whether Jason Sudeikis and Hannah Waddingham have maybe possibly become A Thing off-camera; and when and how often Rebecca Welton will start going to the therapy sessions she so very clearly needs.
But now the show is back and we can shift our prognostications to the back burner. I’m pleased to report that “Smells Like Mean Spirit,” the Ted Lasso Season 3 premiere, is a very strong, very funny, and very weighty Ted Lasso episode. At 44 minutes, it’s one of the show’s longest to date; in true Ted Lasso fashion, though, the episode is so chock full of plot movement, personality tics, character-driven set pieces, and jokes both high- and lowbrow that the time flies by faster than a greyhound chasing a penalty kick (RIP Earl, I still can’t believe they did you that dirty).
So let’s get right into it. We begin as all Ted Lasso premieres do: with the face of this season’s villain. The first character we met in Season 1 was Rebecca Welton, who famously began as Ted’s mystery foil before turning in her villain badge and going full Richmond-till-she-dies. Our first (and last) visage for Season 2 was Nate the Great, whose descent into the dark side was only one of the many Empire Strikes Back parallels that year. And so with whom else could we possibly be greeted for what is all but certainly the show’s final season but Ted Lasso himself? A stubbled, disheveled, fatigued-looking Ted sits lost in thought at Heathrow Airport next to his son, Henry. The littlest Lasso spent six glorious summer weeks with his father; now, it’s time for him to head back to Kansas City. Ted is understandably distraught by Henry’s departure and just as understandably good at hiding his true feelings from his little boy. Who is also not so little anymore! It’s very easy to get a sense, from this scene, that Ted feels maybe like the world is passing him by. Or, at the very least, like he’s not exactly sure of himself anymore.
And if that scene didn’t make it obvious, the ride to his house drives the point all the way home. While Ted journeys back and cleans up the remnants of Henry’s visit, he gets in a therapy session via phone call with the amazing Dr. Sharon Fieldstone. I’m still annoyed that Ted Lasso gave Ted his big breakthrough with Dr. Sharon and then shunted her off to her next client in the very next episode. That sort of thing is a Hollywood cliché, and I expected Ted Lasso of all shows to point out that the real work of therapy is not in the breakthrough but the processing of that breakthrough: i.e., dealing with the shit you just purged and developing new, healthy habits without the purged shit in your life. It’s agonizing and taxing and takes a long time and wouldn’t necessarily make for compelling TV, so I understand the practical reasons for bidding adieu to the good doctor. But I still feel like letting her go was the wrong move. So it’s very nice to see – as co-creator Bill Lawrence assured us in the aftermath of the 2021 Emmys – that Sarah Niles will indeed still be part of the cast for Ted Lasso Season 3.
It’s to Dr. Sharon that Ted admits he feels fairly lost. “Maybe my bein’ here is doin’ more hurtin’ than helpin’ at this point. You know?” he says to her, as he slips the now-familiar little pink box of biscuits into his backpack for delivery to Rebecca. (Gee I dunno – do you think maybe Ted’s connection to Rebecca will turn out to be motivation and / or a compelling reason for him to stay, either with AFC Richmond or just in England?) Ted might not know exactly what he’s still doing in London, and Dr. Sharon might not have an immediate answer for him. But she does remind him that “the wise man once said, ‘Doubt can only be removed by action.'” And then Sharon tells him their time is up and opens her bedroom door, where a shirtless young fellow greets her with a smile and tells her, in a pleased voice, that she “finally got off.” So of course Sharon replies, “Not yet, I didn’t.” Hey – hey guys. Did you hear a minute ago when Sharon used the word “action”? Did you get the double meaning? LOL yeah it’s kinda heavy-handed but also come on, Ted Lasso is back!
At Richmond’s offices, Rebecca is looking for action of a different sort. She’s rather less than pleased that literally every single football pundit has picked her team to finish dead fuckin’ last in the Premier League table. Even Higgins’ youngest son, who fancies himself an amateur pundit-blogger (and whose efforts toward that end enable the Higgins household to declare their kitchen a home office for tax purposes. This whole exchange tickles me delightfully; Jeremy Swift, I missed you more than I knew). And it quickly becomes clear that she’s taking these predictions a little too seriously. Because it’s not just that Richmond is picked to finish last – West Ham, which the charming shitbag known as Rupert Mannion purchased at the end of Season 2, is also predicted to finish in the top five. Rebecca can’t stop conflating the team with its owner, asking Ted, “How are we going to beat him?” She does this with such urgency that Ted points it out to her; she does this even after acknowledging Ted’s point.
Rebecca also has to remind Ted that it wasn’t all that long ago he sat with her after the disastrous 5-0 loss at Man City and reminded her that Richmond was “gonna win the whole fuckin’ thing.” Ted can’t even remember saying it. Geez, he really is adrift. “That,” Rebecca tells him, “is the Ted Lasso I want coaching my team this season – the one who’s willing to fight.” Ted responds dutifully, assuring Rebecca that he’s ready to “float like a butterfly and sting like a bee.” And yes, while that is a reference to Muhammad Ali, I feel it’s important to point out that Ali is a legend not just for his boxing but for his refusal to become a little green army man and go overseas to fight for the U.S. in the Vietnam War. After “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee,” I’d say that Ali’s most famous, most enduring quote is “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong.” Which he said after refusing to enlist on religious grounds and with full knowledge that his refusal meant the New York State Athletic Commission could strip him of his heavyweight title and ban him indefinitely from professional boxing. So, Rebecca, just realize that Ted’s willingness to “fight” might not be what it seems.
Downstairs, Coach Beard is reading the first referential text of Ted Lasso Season 3 (!).
It’s Joe McGinniss’ 1999 book The Miracle of Castel di Sangro, a semi-legendary chronicle of the super-tiny Italian team Castel di Sangro Cep. From 1993 to 1996, Castel di Sangro progressed from the barely-professional Serie C2 up two entire divisions to the Italian Serie B, which is roughly the American equivalent of the Toledo Mud Hens qualifying for the Olympics. It’s handy, then, that Beard is reading this for (presumed) inspiration, since Richmond’s entire locker room is almost as angry as Rebecca about the pundits’ picks. (Though Captain Isaac, contrary to rumor and widespread speculation, is not quite ready to throw it all in and sign with Bayern.) Between Miracle and Beard and Roy’s brief discussion of Hoosiers, it’s almost as if Ted Lasso wants its audience to start thinking critically about how scrappy underdogs can achieve huge things in the face of long-ass odds.
Speaking of asses, we then pivot to Nate the Hate beginning his day for West Ham over at the super-shiny London Stadium. Nate rolls up to work (still) in his janky-ass green car, the one he managed to cram Beard and Ted and all their luggage into in the pilot episode. (I’m not claustrophobic but seeing Beard wedged into Nate’s backseat like a piece of fruit in a smooshed-up lunchbox will always scare the hell out of me.)
Anyway, Nate pulls up alone. He walks inside alone. He ascends to his office alone. He’s greeted by only one other person and ignores her completely. He strides into his office and immediately scrolls Twitter for any and all mentions of himself.
A bespectacled goofball clearly meant to be West Ham’s answer to Higgins tries a kind greeting, but the instant he uses the term “Wonder Kid” Nate orders him out without looking up. The soundtrack to all of this is Eric B. and Rakim’s “Follow the Leader,” which is appropriate because it couldn’t be more obvious that Nate is pretty fucking far from being a leader himself.
And of course he’s not the only one with new digs. In her first scene, Rebecca may have been consumed by the threat of Rupert, but that didn’t stop her peacing out in a huge hurry so she wouldn’t miss her afternoon appointment with one Keeley Jones, Chairman and CEO of the sparkling new public relations firm KJPR. (I almost wish Ted Lasso were set thirty years earlier, so KJPR could be Keeley’s radio station.) At first glance, Keeley appears as happy as ever. But there are some cracks in the veneer. For one thing, she calls her staff “poets and geniuses” but they’re all pretty stiff and plenty of them roll their eyes at her and she seems to be trying to make the best of things with them. For another, she got her office at a discount because the previous tenant got fired for “pinching the employees’ butts all the time.” So Keeley’s own office comes complete with a remote control that turns the exterior window opaque. Handy for handsy folks! Perhaps less immediately useful for Keeley.
And Keeley does start crying out of nowhere. Rebecca reassures her, but Keeley only says she’s so busy that she has to work crying into her schedule. Jeez, that’s a decent joke but like so many of Ted Lasso‘s jokes I can’t help worry that there’s an entire river of anxiety and doubt beneath it and the dam holding that river back is going to burst a few episodes from now.
Nor is Keeley the only one ready to break. At training, the Greyhounds are uniformly distracted by the pundits and their prognonsense. (I just came up with that. I feel pretty good about it.) Ted and Beard pivot to a schoolteacher metaphor, positing that on this particular day the team could use a class period outdoors. Roy reminds them that they’re already outside. I am in stitches over this line. Brett Goldstein delivers gruff incredulity like nobody else in the game right now. Ted asks Will “Balance Beam” Kitman to please go retrieve the team’s driver – who, it turns out, lives at Richmond’s training facility; you might want to look into that, Ted, and help the guy out – and have him bring the bus around for a little field trip.
Back at Keeley’s office, she and Rebecca are full of mirth, having cried out a good one and moved on to lunch. (Rebecca calls crying “an orgasm for the soul.” That’s a great line, but also aren’t orgasms orgasms for the soul? I’m just saying.) Rebecca enjoys a lettuce-strewn, sadly cucumber-free salad. She claims that Rupert isn’t in her head “the way he used to be” because she no longer wants to destroy everything he owns and loves and all other traces of existence. Now, she just wants to win. “That’s growth, right?” Not really! Get to therapy!
Hats off to Keeley Jones, though, in this scene and in all scenes. I knew I needed Ted Lasso back in my life but, as with Jeremy Swift above, I didn’t realize how much I had missed Juno Temple’s performance. She just does an extraordinary job conveying kindness and goodwill and uncertainty and confidence and more uncertainty and a little bit of hope in every facial expression and every line. She earned the hell out of her Emmy nomination for Season 2 and I hope she gets another one this time around.
These scenes also introduce us to Keeley’s Season 3 foil: Barbara, a humorless apparatchik the venture capitalists that staked her PR firm installed as its CFO. Barbara has a nit to pick in the form of Keeley wanting to spend £200 per week – three whole figures! on flowers so the office will be a slightly more pleasant space and not just somewhere for sad sack shitbags to sit at their desks while their amazing boss drums up business for them. But flowers, says Barbara, “are for two things, Miss Jones: dead people and dead marriages.” Barbara is every ounce a sad sack shitbag, but I hope we get more of her Oscar Wilde-ian quips as the season progresses.
Back at West Ham, Nate is running practice about the way we all expected. He stands on the sideline observing things less like a hawk and more like a twitchy pigeon and then out of nowhere calls one off-screen player over and orders him to stand on a blue out-of-bounds line. This line, Nate announces, is “the dum-dum line,” and it’s “where dum-dums go.” Stirring stuff, Nate; I hope Pep Guardiola is taking secret notes. Then Rupert’s assistant summons Nate for a meeting with Rupert himself, and, as he scurries along behind her, we see further evidence of exactly how insecure Nate still is.
Of course, Rupert is also just as charming a devil as ever. And he’s just as consumed by the pundits’ predictions as his ex-wife. Which is how you know this attitude is not healthy, Rebecca Welton and also Ted Lasso‘s audience! Plus, Rupert is the literal dark side. His office is black; his suits are black; his decor is black; his window is a facepalm-obvious allusion to Darth Vader. And his soul is black! But fuck me running if he isn’t a sweet, sweet talker. Anthony Head, you will always be famous.
When Rupert asks Nate if he can believe how shit-upon Richmond is, Nate responds in the affirmative: of course Richmond is predicted to finish 20th; it’s because “there’s no 21st.” Rupert is in love with this joke. Rupert is in love with himself above all, but for Nate he’s laying it on as thick as a wine-drunk baker with his own anniversary cake. Rupert insists that Nate tell that joke at the afternoon press conference. This is the Ted Lasso equivalent of a made guy ordering a new associate to kill someone in order to ensure that the a new guy isn’t a rat.
But the press conference starts out horribly. From the first question – “How are you and the team getting on?” – Nate chokes about as badly as Ted did in his introduction to the press. The difference here, though, is that Ted was giving straight answers but oblivious to how soccer works; Nate has to lie and backpedal into a musical reference that he knows only by cliché (“I’ve been getting to know them. Getting to know all about them. Getting to…like them.”) because of course he isn’t getting on well with the team; he is a tiny dictator and has no idea how to get on well with anybody anymore. So, Nate hides. And he thinks about how he got to where he is. He remembers Richmond, but only pre-Ted – when he was a joke to the rest of the team. He thinks about his father’s face. And then Nate does what he does when gets fed up with himself.
He sits back up at the table, apologizes for having to tie his shoe, and insults a reporter for asking “such a stupid question.” Having found his footing, Nate then fields a question about AFC Richmond being picked to finish last across the board. Instead of saying “I am completely unconcerned with any preseason prognostications and especially those about other teams. My only focus is on West Ham,” Nate repeats his line about Richmond finishing 20th only because there’s no 21st. The press eats it up, and Nate continues on his sad campaign of destruction.
Then, someone asks him about the just-circulating photos of Richmond descending into the London sewer system. Because this is the field trip that Ted had in mind: he’s loaded the Greyhounds onto the team bus and taken them across town to go on the same curious-yet-curiously-relevant field trip that Ted and Henry went on just weeks before. They’re going into the sewers! It’s a metaphor!
As they do so, a pair of utility workers across the street from the manhole wonders if that’s Roy Kent standing there. One of them shouts out, “Roy Kent! Is that you?” Roy responds, “Get fucked.” Identity confirmed, the workers photograph the team and put that shit right up on Twitter, because that is how one responds in situations like these. And, since Ted Lasso is a TV show, social media works at the speed of light, and so Nate can be asked about Richmond and sewers as the whole thing is unfolding. Nate is a less-than-gifted improviser in this particular venue; all he can come up with is that he’s not surprised by the photo because Richmond’s coach “is so shitty.”
But Richmond has no idea about any of this (yet). They’re too busy learning about the Great Stink of 1858 and sewage treatment. Oh, and the reason Ted brought them all down there in the first place: you see, right now, the players’ brains are just like the old sewer system:
Yes, they’re all blocked up by “poopy,” except the way Jamie says it it sounds like “pooh-payh” and rhymes with how he says “Keey-layh” and I would like to give Phil Dunster an Emmy for this pronunciation alone. But! Ted reminds them that they need to let all the prognostications just float along through the sewer (their minds are sewers) and flow out to the treatment plant (good mental health). Where, as their guide informs them, it can then be dumped back into the ocean, where we swim and fish for food. This is, to quote Liz Lemon through a mouthful of food, “a weak metaphor.” But it’s also a fun one, and the show runs with it playfully. (The real lesson of this scene is there’s no escaping the world’s shit – yours and everyone else’s – but that will have to be the work of a different show.)
So of course when they get back to their more conventional training ground and find out about Nate’s shit-talking, the team is outraged. At first! And then, literally like seven seconds later, this happens:
Jamie Tartt, you are the most mature boy-king in all of television. And because Jamie is Jamie and Richmond is Richmond, of course the rest of the team follows his lead and relaxes. Is it a bit pat? Sure. But I also 100% buy that Jamie is the one to step up and declare that this kind of shit is really not important and they shouldn’t pay it any mind. Because it isn’t! Nate is a turd and preseason rankings are a waste of time. They really do exist solely to give pundits something to talk about before the actual games begin. All pundits should be required to plant trees during the off-season. The world would be so much better off.
One person not interested in Ted’s teachings or Jamie’s learnings is Rebecca. She orders Ted to her office via stern text, then tears into him for calling off pitch-based training in favor of the sewer field trip and ensuing PR debacle. She insists that the world is laughing at the team and laughing at her. And that Rupert, specifically, is laughing at them.
Ted looks about as chastened as we’ve ever seen him. He seems genuinely unsure of what to do. We know Ted isn’t a fighter in the sense that Rebecca means: she’s still reeling and wounded, very deeply, from Rupert’s horrible emotional abuse, and dying to lash out. And Ted may have won the darts game, but Rupert is still a billionaire, still adored by the press (and presumably by loads of people, in the way that billionaire douchebags always seem to be) – and he’s still picked to finish well above Richmond in the Premier League.
So Ted, in a stunning act of self-flagellation that I will have many more thousands of words to say about in a separate article, calls his own press conference and makes fun of himself.
It’s much more than just that, of course. Ted being Ted, he charms the press in his own way (i.e., by being a decent human being and treating the journalists with decency and kindness). Then, when asked if he has any response to Nate’s comments, Ted…agrees with them. The room is flabbergasted. Ted acknowledges that he’s not a great football coach, and he’ll never have Nate’s aptitude for the game. Then, he pivots from his own shortcomings to Nate’s attributes. He fucking praises Nate, calling him a “junkyard dog” who knows exactly how to attack a team’s weak points. (Ted doesn’t state, he only leaves implied, that this would make him Richmond’s weakest link.)
But that’s not all! Theodore Laurence Lasso then turns to the classic joke structure of “X is so dumb that.” Only in this case, the “X” is Ted himself. Because Nate, to Ted’s surprise, didn’t mock him for any of the stuff everyone else mocks Ted for (“Not one joke about me being a dumb American? I mean, come on, man.”) The press has no idea how this is supposed to work. The above screengrab is what Ted Lasso looks like when he’s just spoken the words “I mean, I’m so dumb” and is caught waiting for a “How dumb are you” that isn’t coming. (Do they not have that joke structure in England? Anyway.) So, for a fleeting, terrible instant, you, the viewer at home, realize that to the entire assembled media posse, it sounds like Ted has for some unfathomable reason decided to say the quiet part out loud.
Ted is still Ted, though. In what becomes one of Ted Lasso‘s most memorable scenes, Ted mocks himself and all his own weakest points, all the most easily stereotyped things about him, with such calm, gentle good nature that he reinforces the entire press corps’ appreciation of him and makes Nate look like the petty little bitch-boy he really is.
But all is not well in Richmond. Remember one year, five months, and seven days ago, when we found out that Roy and Keeley’s relationship was on way shakier ground than we all know it really should be, because they’re perfectly suited for one another and an amazing couple? Well, things have only gotten worse. They’re letting Roy’s niece Phoebe eat a big bowl of ice cream before dinner, which means Phoebe knows something’s up, too. What is it? They’ve split up. Keeley tries to say that they’re taking a break, but Roy – gently – repeats that they’ve split up, and Keeley doesn’t correct him.
And why have they split up, asks Phoebe, the best audience stand-in who ever was? It’s not really clear. By which I mean I think the show knows it’s not really clear, even to them. Roy says that the two of them are too busy. Phoebe points out that they were busy before; Roy says it’s harder now, since Keeley has her own PR firm and Roy has to take over more coaching duties now that Nate’s gone. And those things are definitely true. But more than anything else it seems like Roy and Keeley just aren’t quite sure of themselves (as a couple) as they used to be, and have therefore turned that weird, awful serious-relationship-turned-stagnant corner that we all know so well.
It’s a sad scene. It’s well-acted. And it’s written well enough, too. But Ted Lasso telegraphs its biggest passes. To me, it couldn’t be more obvious that these two, on this wonky rom-com-inspired comedrama that’s about sports the way The Sopranos is about the mafia – are getting married before Season 3 (which, let’s not forget, is supposed to be Ted Lasso‘s final season) comes to a close. So their split simply can’t bum me out too much.
And finally, Ted returns home after yet another long day at the helm of the Good Ship Richmond to get in a few precious minutes of FaceTime with Henry. Who is back home with Michelle, safe and sound, and reminding a still-wondering, still-wandering Ted that the purpose he’s looking for is still right in front of him: he’s in England and not Stateside with his boy so he can “win the whole thing.”
Now, maybe Ted also forgot his rom-com speech in Season 2’s “Rainbow,” when he professed to Richmond his devout rom-communism and assured them that “it will all work out. Now, it may not work out how you think it will, or how you hope it does. But believe be: It will all work out.” And maybe Ted hasn’t seen the Ted Lasso Season 3 trailer, set to the soothing sounds of the Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” for which the follow-up line to the titular line is “But if you try sometimes, you might find – you get what you need.” But I’m thinking that Ted Lasso the show would maybe like to posit at this juncture that Ted Lasso the character will find something other than mere athletic glory to motivate him and get him to rededicate himself to this particular and peculiar British adventure.
And while Ted is thinking about all this, Henry busts out an Infinity Gauntlet and starts playing Thanos, because of course children have the power to destroy their parents’ whole fuckin’ universes without truly understanding it (the universe or their power over it). Ted is delighted by Henry’s new toy. He asks where Henry got it, and his child informs him that “Jake” gave it to him. And who is Jake? Why, Jake is mom’s friend, of course.
Which is exactly how we get from our opening shot of bewilderment, fatigue, and uncertainty…
…to the cosmic swirl of bewilderment, uncertainty, and fresh existential pain that is “Smells Like Mean Spirit”‘s closing shot.
Top Five Ted Lasso Season 3 Premiere Jokes (in no particular order)
–Will Kitman balancing a water bottle on an upraised thigh while balancing his body on one foot in the background while Roy and Beard and Ted talk about the team. Will is just such a goddamn delight. He’s always doing something touching and hilarious back there while the “important” stuff gets foregrounded (and I promptly miss half of it because I’m too busy giggling at Will). Love love love Will Kitman. Will defend him from Nate the Hate and all other bullies forevermore. I am the Hound; he is my Arya Stark.
–Roy’s bewildered response to Ted and Beard in the same scene, as the two laugh knowingly about “hav[ing] class outside”: “What the fuck are you two talking about. We are outside.” It’s the way Brett Goldstein delivers lines like these with absolutely no question mark at all.
–Coach Beard, on Richmond’s hippie bus driver smoking some toad venom before taking the team on their field trip: “He’ll be forever changed. But he can drive.”
–Everything to do with Disco, Nate’s top assistant coach at West Ham, who has one of the best lines of the episode: “Alright. Just because my name is Disco, doesn’t mean we’re here to party, yeah?” Also, don’t let me bury the lede: Nate’s assistant coach’s name is Disco. I love this plan. I’m excited to be a part of it. This season, I hope we get infinite Disco.
–This isn’t a joke exactly but Juno Temple’s delivery of the phrase “floppy cocks” – as in, all the sportswriters who predicted a last-place finish for Richmond are “a bunch of floppy cocks” – makes me laugh and smile in equal and equally delighted measure. She just says it with such outraged gusto. And it’s the exact right delivery! Never have floppy cocks pleased me more.
–Higgins, to Rebecca: “Why are you dressed like an oomlaut?” It’s a funny line on the page but Jeremy Swift simply excels at making simply funny lines quietly and squealingly hilarious.
–Finally, I hate to give this one to Nate but “Because there’s no 21st” is a pretty solid burn. It’s not worth the giddy, overwhelmed laughter Rupert grants it. But it is a good one.
Ted Lasso Season 3 Premiere Errata
–Henry’s flight number is 822. I have no idea what that’s supposed to be a reference to, but I’m sure it’s a reference to something.
–Ted’s depression shower during the Dr. Sharon phone call montage is the third season premiere depression shower shot Ted Lasso has given us. Last season, it was Dani’s turn; he went straight off the pitch and into the shower with his uniform on, reciting prayers in rapid Spanish and attempting a priestless re-baptism after his penalty kick accidentally sent Richmond’s mascot soaring from this world into the next. And in Ted Lasso‘s pilot episode, it was again Ted taking the depression shower, after a long day of international travel and the derision of the British press (and people).
–I can’t stop laughing at Richmond’s universal scorn for Jan Maas pointing out the statistical reality that, yes, most teams that get promoted from the Championship to the Premier League actually do get relegated back the very next season. Never change, Jan Maas – never learn to read the room.
–No wonder Nate’s such a grumpy Gus, he’s got eyestrain from that much doomscrolling without using Twitter’s dark background.
–Keeley wanting to spend 200 pounds a week on flowers for the office is giving Lily Bart in The House of Mirth, who wanted to spend roughly the same amount (adjusted for inflation) on the same thing (specifically, on lilies-of-the-valley) and whose painful naïveté about money sent her father into the fit of hysterical laughter that essentially killed him. All I’m saying is, just, be careful, Keeley.
–Rebecca’s response to Barbara, Keeley’s CFO – “She seems fuuun” – is the exact same thing Beard said after he and Ted met Dr. Fieldstone all the way back in the Season 2 premiere. And Hannah Waddingham delivers the line with the exact same inflection. Gee, I wonder if we’re going to warm to Barbara the same way we warmed to the good doctor, hmmm, oh Ted Lasso I can see your character arcs coming from a practice pitch away but that does nothing to diminish my love for you.
–Jamie Tartt might have my favorite arc of any Ted Lasso character to this point. His journey from the smarmy, cocky, unsure Prince Prick of all Pricks we met in Season 1 to the purposefully prickish Lasso Way acolyte reminding Richmond that Nate’s words are nothing more than “pooh-peyh” to let flow on past them – it’s a wonderful thing to see. And it would never work without Phil Dunster bringing such charming, well-meaning doofus wisdom to the role.
