Brendan Hunt, Jason Sudeikis and Tanya Reynolds in Ted Lasso.Apple TV/Supplied
There’s a short ad for Ted Lasso’s new season, which starts on Apple TV Aug. 5, that’s being shown every commercial break as I suffer through Blue Jays losses on Sportsnet+ these days.
It bugs me to no end.
The ad begins with that older British male AFC Richmond fan who was always heckling Lasso approaching the sunny American coach on his return to London.
“Welcome back, coach,” he says. “Too bad you’re coaching a bunch of girls.”
Lasso, played by Jason Sudeikis, shrugs this sexist comment off with a smile – and then the ad turns into a soulfully soundtracked montage. We see the unreasonably chipper coach and all of the soccer-themed transatlantic comedy’s other main characters cheering, cheers-ing, kissing, hugging and lowering their sunglasses to give goofy, loving looks to one another.
This Ted Lasso ad irritates me for a couple of reasons. The first is just that familiarity breeds contempt; the more you see it, the more treacly it seems. It is the fate of most streaming ads to become hated.
The second is that the old man’s sexist comment, reiterated every half-inning, is starting to penetrate the consciousness of my young son, who often watches baseball with me.
My son doesn’t really get what’s going on; he’s only ever heard men on Sportsnet speak highly of our local pro women’s sports teams – AFC Toronto, the Toronto Sceptres and, now, the Toronto Tempo.
I can see the Ted Lasso ad actively reframing his seven-year-old perception.
I will say this for the ad, however, having now seen the first four episodes of the new season: It is a perfect encapsulation of Ted Lasso after a three-year absence.
Instead of channelling the exciting energy that’s in pro women’s sports right now and finding a ripping story to tell about them, the “Lady Greyhounds” – as the new women’s team is nicknamed – are simply a pretext for getting the old gang that worked with the Richmond’s men team back together.
The show’s writers seem so petrified of giving any of the original characters flaws or challenges to overcome that the season feels like a montage of characters we used to know and love being nice to one another.
The new characters, meanwhile, are stuck in an underdog sports story that is entirely pro forma.
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All that is conjured in the way of conflict are these minor male characters who pop up at regular intervals to talk about how boring women’s sports are. They pop up on the street, in the pub, in the press room.
Everyone else shrugs, smiles and then gets back to referencing bell hooks or putting up Post-it notes with Virginia Woolf quotes on the locker-room wall.
It’s a shame because Ted Lasso, the character, getting involved in Richmond’s women’s soccer makes sense.
He’s from Kansas City, Missouri – which is home to the only private stadium built specifically for professional women’s soccer in the world.
In the first episode of the new season, AFC Richmond owner Rebecca Welton (Hannah Waddingham), head of marketing Keeley Jones (Juno Temple) and head of operations Leslie Higgins (Jeremy Swift) visit Kansas City on a fact-finding mission.
They’re also there to lure Ted back to teach the women’s team the “Richmond Way.”
After a few years absent from screens, it’s at first a treat to reencounter these folks again. The performers can all be funny in their own ways – with Swift a comedic stand-out as the constantly astounded Higgins.
Hannah Waddingham and Juno Temple in Ted Lasso.Apple TV/Supplied
Sudeikis’s Ted is, happily, no longer mired in anxiety – and is back to essentially being a sports-coach reincarnation of Ned Flanders, with a particular knack for an unusually upbeat phraseology and an uncommonly deep knowledge of old-school hip-hop.
The whole reason Ted left England at the end of the third season – to be close to his young son – is easily solved in the first episode and he’s a pleasure to hang around with.
But many of the others quickly wear out their welcome. The writing in the scenes between Rebecca and Keeley seems to be driven by the desire to show two women being endlessly supportive of one another. It’s exhaustingly girlboss o’clock 24 hours a day in their scenes.
Meanwhile, Keeley and former soccer player Roy Kent (Brett Goldstein), now the men’s team’s manager, are back in a will-they, won’t-they situation that’s more contrived than ever. This is boring – and predictable.
The main new character is Lady Greyhounds interim coach Alice Chilton (Tanya Reynolds) – who’s constantly described as unfriendly, which in the Ted Lasso universe means she just seems to not smile all the time. She hands in her resignation upon the appointment of Ted as head coach. You don’t need a spoiler to know where this plotline goes.
Same thing with an early episode that sees the women’s team suddenly divided into “cliques” as attackers, midfielders and defenders. Do you think Ted will find a way for them to bond?
Ted Lasso feels like it’s simply going through the motions. The fourth season seems more interested in putting the old characters back on screen than developing the new ones. In the first episodes, side characters such as sports psychologist Sharon Fieldstone and journalist Trent Crimm get more dialogue than most of the women soccer players.
The overt message of this season is “women’s sports rule!” but the subtext is: Too bad Ted is back coaching a bunch of girls and can’t rejoin the men’s team.
None of this exactly pushes the series – and certainly professional women’s sports – forward.