Ted Lasso, Season Four
⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
Rating: TV-MA
Stars: Jason Sudeikis, Hannah Waddingham, Juno Temple, Brendan Hunt, Jeremy Swift
Streaming on Apple TV
Movie critics seldom give themselves over to reviewing episodic TV shows, but please humor me just this once as Ted Lasso, the eternally chipper soccer coach we thought we’d seen the last of, pokes his grinning noggin into the late summer movie slog.
In theaters this week, Greek gods are wreaking havoc, yellow Minions are crashing steam trains, bickering toys are engaging in mad chases, and space aliens are turning the world on its head.
Enter Ted Lasso – created and played by Jason Sudeikis – as laid-back a character as anyone has ever imagined; a Xanax in a zany world, the calm in every storm. In an entertainment universe that barely lets us catch our breath, Ted – with his doe-like eyes, unwrinkled brow, and goofy smile – invites us to pause, exhale softly, and simply take a much-needed beat.
The return of Ted Lasso for a fourth season was pretty much unthinkable. The original three-season arc – which ended more than three years ago – concluded with Ted, an endlessly good-natured Missouri football coach transplanted to London, returning to the States to raise his young son after having achieved undreamed-of success on the soccer pitch.
The original series had a traditional three-act movie structure, albeit spread over three seasons. One of the most satisfying things about its conclusion was the fact that there were no loose ends to tie up; each of the show’s half-dozen or so major characters was afforded a respectful final bow.
And so, here we find Ted back in Kansas City, working the checkout at a local grocery store (why a soccer coach, legendary for his team’s rags-to-riches success, could not find suitable work on these shores will, I hope, be explained in an episode beyond the one made available for preview by Apple TV). He is his old chipper self, offering life lessons to kids on the staff and chatting up the customers with typical gusto.
It does not take long for three of Ted’s old British buddies to show up on his front lawn: his no-nonsense yet sweet-natured old boss, team owner Rebecca (Hannah Waddingham), her bubbly business partner Keeley (Juno Temple), and the team’s bumbling general manager Leslie (Jeremy Swift).
After a jovial Kansas City barbeque lunch during which fashion maven Rebecca drips sauce all over her silk blouse, the point of the visit – and the plotline for this new incarnation of the show – is revealed: Hannah wants Ted to return to England and coach her new women’s soccer team.
Ted is understandably torn: The grocery store gig is, of course, eminently abandonable. But how can he leave his now-adolescent son, whose custody he shares with his ex-wife (Andrea Anders)?
That’s the personal dilemma that faces Ted in Season Four, Episode 1, but we all know the main arc here is going to be his stewardship of a women’s soccer team, which will presumably be populated with a gallery of characters analogous, in everything but their gender, to the guys Ted coached for those first three seasons. Since Brendan Hunt (Coach Beard) and Brett Goldstein (Roy, the foul-mouthed ex-soccer star) are mentioned in the credits, we have to assume they’ll show up soon.
For those who love Ted Lasso as much as I do, though, plot mechanisms are hardly the point. It’s the show’s endlessly kind, steadfastly supporting, unfailingly upbeat characters who keep drawing us back, like a bunch of friends with whom we have a weekly date. Ted Lasso is a show without villains (and those who are even fleetingly unkind are considered more pitied than scorned). Each and every character, to their core, wants only the best for their friends, plus proportional measures of happiness even for those they barely know.
In that sense, Ted Lasso is a fantasy set squarely in the real world. Arriving at the time of COVID-19, the series plugged into not only a worldwide yearning for connection, but also for universal civility at a time when global nerves were dangerously frayed. It may well be that co-creator/star Jason Sudeikis, beyond the inevitable payday involved, sees a similar need for that utopian realm of milk and honey in a world where everyone who disagrees with you is a hooligan; every argument earns a red card.
Ted Lasso is back. Good for him. Good for us.
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