While it's entirely possible that I'm reading too much into this, I think the set design of Rupert's office was quite telling as far as what the show has planned for him and Nate. If you show me a guy wearing all black sitting in a big black chair in a big black room in front of a big, circular window, my mind is immediately going to the Emperor's throne room from Return of the Jedi. And there are certainly further parallels with Rupert promising Nate the one thing he desires the most and drawing Nate further into his thrall by encouraging his worst impulses. Which naturally leads to the question, is the Emperor/Darth Vader parallel intentional? And if so, will it continue all the way through to Vader's redemption at the end of the film (with Ted, the person who sees the good in everyone, as the Luke in this metaphor)?
As big an asshole as Nate has been shown to be, I do see how they could at least engender sympathy for him by revealing that Rupert never believed in him or his acumen, that he only stole him away from Richmond to get back at Rebecca, and that he doesn't actually care about Nate as a person. In essence, having Rupert play the part of Rebecca from the pilot, with the difference being that Nate is no Ted and has no desire to try and turn their relationship into a healthy one (nor is Rupert a Rebecca, as he lacks things like "a heart" or "a soul"). Whether such a play would be enough to pull off a full Nate face turn (or if such a play is even in the cards) is yet to be seen, but I can kinda see the contours of a way in which they could try to make it work.
Nope, you're not reading into it too much. But in terms of Rupert, I see where the parallels exist to season one, but I just...can't get onboard with Nate. I WANT him to realize Rupert doesn't actually believe in him. I want him to be humbled. I just think they tipped the scales too far here.
Yeah, that's about where I am. Given what we've seen, they've done too good a job of selling him as a heel for a face turn to work - it kind of reminds me how The Falcon and the Winter Soldier did too good a job of convincing me that Sam shouldn't want to be Captain America for me to get as excited as I was supposed to when he picked up the shield.
But since I should probably stop tying everything back to Star Wars and superheroes, while I can empathize with the idea that circumstances beyond his control contributed to Nate turning out the way he has, that doesn't absolve him of his own choices or how he let those circumstances affect him. I'm not 100% sure that the show agrees with me.
You're right that they need to be careful not to make everything Ted does "clap if you believe in fairies" magic and at least pay some lip service to the idea that football fundamentals matter. But beyond that I don't care even a tiny little bit about the "realism" of a team at the bottom of the Premier League winning it all, and I sure as hell don't want (and don't expect) the show to turn into a treatise on training best practices. Look at it this way: I assume all the teams in the league (including Richmond) spend 90% of their time doing the same kinds of drills and strategies. A show called Ted Lasso is going to focus on the 10% of time that Ted Lasso's way makes a difference.
It was a good start but necessarily had to spend a lot of time on table (re)setting. This is the first season I have watched live so not being able to move the plot along by pressing the Next button is going to be a little frustrating.
Stray Observations
* I liked that they lampshaded that Rupert giving Nate the car was not intended as a big surprise.
The balance of sports to not sports is always a struggle, but I do think that when you get to additional seasons it becomes even more so. I think at this point, you're right that there's no real expectation of pure realism from a sports perspective, but they've staked too much of the show's larger plot structure on it to abandon it entirely, and I do think enough people care for it to be something they're thinking about.
I get it; I don't care much at all about the ins and outs of Premiere League but head on over to Abbott Elementary to read me quibble about what they get wrong about public schools. Still, at the end of the day it's a TV show with a pretty clear agenda set out at the end of season 1. Richmond is going to contend for the the title this year because that's the story they have promised to tell.
I don't see what Nate has done that is so irredeemable. Sure, he's treated a bunch of people like crap but mostly he treats people under him the way Jamie Tartt and (it's implied) the rest of the team treated him early in Season 1. The worst thing he's done (leak the story about Ted's panic attacks to the press) is on par with Rebecca's behavior throughout Season 1. I'm not excusing his actions. I'm making comparisons to other characters who have earned their redemption on the show. Also I'm glad that Nick Mohammed was given the chance to be Ted's foil and by extension the second lead of the show.
To be honest, I have less sympathy for someone who is the victim of mistreatment by their superiors and then completely emulates that behavior when they get a whiff of power. This is amplified by the fact that the whole point of the show is about the example Ted sets for those around him, and Nate had a front row seat for those lessons and then completely ignored them. Weirdly, the final straw for me was when he outright ignored the woman who said hello when he arrived to the office.
It amused me that West Ham are training from their stadium instead of some training ground, for no reason other than they have the rights to use the London Stadium and it looks cool.
I'm amused that they went with West Ham's real sponsor on the front of the shirt given 1) West Ham's position as the "bad guys" this season 2) the spotlight on the importance of front of the shirt sponsors last season and 3) the current gambling sponsor debate.
My guess is that they had to have had a clearer vision of the larger arc, which separates the team itself from Rupert’s ownership and Nate’s actions? Because yeah, I already saw someone note they had West Ham merch and felt weird about it.
Speaking of the "bad guy" point, I noticed Rupert and Nate were still using Apple products, though I'm not sure how much that rule is a) (still) real and b) applies when Apple is paying for the show. They did have black ones, no fun colors at West Ham (and the last few black iPhones haven't looked as sharp as older ones, more of an off-gray).
I know it's probably too much to expect complete realism in how this show handles the football world but I find it truly baffling that everyone at Richmond is offended at being expected to finish 20th when they only just scraped promotion and have apparently signed zero new players. Jan Maas speaks sense - the promoted clubs are always the ones expected to go back down!
Then again, I also can't imagine anyone ever expecting West Ham to finish in the top four no matter who their owner or manager is.
I suppose the latter point is supposed to suggest this is Not Our Reality, but the problem is that the relegation point is a fundamental principle that isn't really tied to any variables. It's a fine line they need to walk, and I do think that the level of offense is a bit overdone for the sake of dramatic efficiency.
Yeah it works for the story they want to tell, although I think you can probably foster the same 'us against them' mentality without everyone needing to seem quite so shocked by the low expectations.
Assuming this show can only end one way (winning the whole thing), is there a possibility the lack of clarity over whether this is the final season actually a tactic to keep some tension as we get closer to the finale?
I also don’t know how you build a season of comedy around this Nate plot. I similarly lack empathy for him. All of the “explanations” for his horribleness are true, but they don’t actually excuse it. The spitting also visually makes it hard for me to enjoy watching him. Yuck. I also think it would be fascinating for Ted to learn and accept that sometimes you have to move on from people who are horrible to you. Even if they come around again in a “redemption arc”. Sometimes it’s healthy to distance and protect yourself.
I really hope the woman who said hi to Nate on the escalator turns out to be a team sponsor or something. Because I feel like that would be an interesting place for the theme of Nate acting subservient to power but abusing those below him to go. Be rude to someone he erroneously assumes to be a nobody, and then have to deal with the repercussions.
I am still hoping that Colin is straight, simply because a) that scene was forced and clunky and annoying in a way this show usually isn’t and b) I don’t love the idea that a man simply knowing what Grindr is and being confident enough to bring it up in conversation means he HAS to be gay, or that being gay has to be a thing that is clumsily foreshadowed. Let someone else be gay! Anyone! Just show up with a male date, no foreshadowing needed.
I take your point on Colin, truly, but at this point I've been willing this to be true for too long for me to give up? And perhaps it's just that I saw Take Me Out earlier in the year and realized how bizarre it is to think that an imagined scenario of a professional athlete coming out written in 2002 still felt contemporary with minimal changes in 2023, but I really don't think that a Premier League player being gay could ever be casual, unfortunately.
Oh definitely agree that little has changed since 2002 and it wouldn’t realistically be casual. I think that’s part of why I am dreading it? Because on the one hand it’s probably wishful thinking to hope everyone would be nonchalant about it (though everyone was unrealistically nonchalant about Sam’s sponsor protest last season, so who knows), but on the other hand I really really don’t want a “very special episode”, even one done Ted Lasso style. I’d rather it be a thing where we acknowledge the scene by Keeley turning out to have made incorrect assumptions, and cue hijinks. And the person who’s gay is Trent Crimm. Or one of the three lads in the bar. Or Will. I don’t know.
I think the narrative of the show overall is hamstrung by season 1. The players vs the coach is usually the primary engine for conflict and character drama in sports. And when that gets resolved, the team then plays the Big Game and the story is over. Since the show has already resolved player and coach conflict, it hasn't found a substitute to create drama. That's why season 2 felt adrift to now in the season premiere, Rebecca became the mouthpiece for the "we should be trying to win" conflict.
What the show is trying to avoid is having Ted win over the team again, even though it should be the players wanting to win to secure their futures and doubting Ted is the guy that will allow them to do it. The beats of that are too similar to season 1 and we have too much time until the Big Game against Nate for their to be internal conflict within the team. That's why I think most sports narratives, that compression from the resolution of the teams internal conflict to the show down with the rival makes for cleaner drama. It's not necessarily a bad decision, but the show has used up its most compelling conflicts already and made a great season out of TV. However, I think now they are paying the price for it they haven't found new answers or sources of conflict to drive the show.
The shift toward a workplace logic seems like an effort to course correct, but they can't just erase the sports of it all, and so the rebalancing is going to take time. Is 12 episodes enough to recalibrate in? We shall see.
New viewer here who binged seasons 1 and 2 in an obsessively long and very tearful day a few weeks ago. These observations on what the show must accomplish in order to avoid betraying itself had largely not occurred to me but certainly make sense, and now I find myself both anticipating and fearing the tightrope that it will need to walk. But even if it doesn't avoid some errors I know that it will still deliver a lot of lovely and heartfelt moments with its characters, so we'll be all right no matter what.
After reading this review I'm inspired to go back and read all of the previous ones on The A.V. Club. Great stuff.
No reviews for Season 1, sadly, as no one really saw the show coming—as you'll see if you read the comments, I don't know if an average viewer REALLY wanted that treatment, but I really enjoyed the result.
Steven already beat us all to the punch pointing out the Death Star Throne Room vibes Rupert's office is giving off, so I'm just going to say that last week had Mandalorian and Picard both introducing Space Sea Life, and now this week has Mando and Ted Lasso sharing a Biscuits with the Boss; all this to say, it really feels like Kang is out there fucking up the Multiverse. Happy to have you back doing the last (?) season Myles! Not sure how I feel about any spin-off show without Ted having any compelling reason to exist outside of wanting to hang out with Roy and Keeley, et. al. for a little longer.
i agree that it seems like they are unfortunately going with an ending of Nate getting fired and taking over for Ted who steps down after a “successful” season of finishing 10th.
i do applaud them for recognizing their time is almost up with this story – we wouldn’t want it to turn into poop-eh.
Thank you so much Myles for calling out the potential absurdity of Richmond winning the title this year. I will be thoroughly disappointed if they do that. I already put up with several ridiculous credibility-defying elements, like a football director only coming up with a list of transfer targets in August instead of the moment they qualified for promotion. Or like how last year they dropped their shirt sponsor with no pushback or financial consequences. But having a promoted team win the championship, especially one led by a coach like Ted Lasso, would ruin any semblance of authenticity. When Leicester City won the premier title in 2016 as a 5000-1 preseason longshot, they still were at least a year removed from promotion and had finished a somewhat respectable 14th in the Premier League the previous year, even if they probably were selected to be relegation material ahead of their incredible championship.
Now if they were to go on some incredible streak and qualify for the Champions League (top 4), maybe I could stomach that, especially if they somehow nip West Ham on the last day. But actually winning it? Come on.
I may be in the minority in admiring this show's (and actor's) commitment to making Nate so unlikeable. Nate leans into his horrible behaviour as performance, because he's a wounded, fragile person who's desperate for approval after a lifetime of feeling disrespected and internalising the resultant frustration and anger. He does not recognise that the bridge he perceives himself to be crossing is actually a tightrope, and the wrong wind could send him plummeting into a dark place.
He's got away with being a tosser so far mostly because of Ted's good grace and the typical British reservation of the press, but I have an inkling he's going to upset the wrong people soon enough. It might not be Rupert, who seems to view Nate as his attack dog, but it could be the public - or even his own players.
The second season was a bit wobbly in structure and pacing, but I continue to watch Ted Lasso with faith in its ability to drive its lead characters to interesting places, even if the B stories are sometimes iffy.
I agree that the writers and actor have pulled off Nate's villain turn pretty well. My only concern is that it is TOO believable- like others, I have lost all empathy for the guy, and am fearful of his redemption arc. I think he would REALLY need to atone for his terrible behavior.
Spoiler alert I guess, but I read somewhere that Trent Crimm embeds with the team to write a book this season, so that'd explain James Lance’s presence in the credits.
I am very happy Ted Lasso is back! Yeah, good points about Nate but I still am interested in what happens with him next. It’s a good conflict, something lacking in Season 2. I didn’t see anything definitive about this being Ted’s last season. At least on screen. Just everything I have read in the trades.
Something I thought of tonight: I watched this show with my family *in real time* during the pandemic. It was the ultimate in comfort TV. Both from the ugliness in the political arena and the ongoing stress of the pandemic. It came on every Friday night and just made the empty weekend ahead more manageable. Regardless of how this season swings out, I will always think of what that first season meant.
It is wild that the Ted Lasso reviews started at the Old Site and in the time since, this community has come together. Congratulations, Myles.
I wondered if the small reference to the Purdue family was to suggest Rupert isn’t actively corrupting Nate; he’s just a corruption through and through. That corrupting villainy attracts Nate as it’s the only way he’s ever gotten what he wants? Except for the love of his dad, which, will absolutely be brought up later down the line.
Also, speaking of the AV Club reviews, the person who took over Myles' old beat starts the review of this episode by saying the show had a "near perfect second season," which is a bit flabbergasting to me. Clearly the reviewer didn't go back and read the old reviews; looks like they averaged about a B+ lol. To each their own, but I'm pretty sure most people would not describe the second season as near perfect.
While it's entirely possible that I'm reading too much into this, I think the set design of Rupert's office was quite telling as far as what the show has planned for him and Nate. If you show me a guy wearing all black sitting in a big black chair in a big black room in front of a big, circular window, my mind is immediately going to the Emperor's throne room from Return of the Jedi. And there are certainly further parallels with Rupert promising Nate the one thing he desires the most and drawing Nate further into his thrall by encouraging his worst impulses. Which naturally leads to the question, is the Emperor/Darth Vader parallel intentional? And if so, will it continue all the way through to Vader's redemption at the end of the film (with Ted, the person who sees the good in everyone, as the Luke in this metaphor)?
As big an asshole as Nate has been shown to be, I do see how they could at least engender sympathy for him by revealing that Rupert never believed in him or his acumen, that he only stole him away from Richmond to get back at Rebecca, and that he doesn't actually care about Nate as a person. In essence, having Rupert play the part of Rebecca from the pilot, with the difference being that Nate is no Ted and has no desire to try and turn their relationship into a healthy one (nor is Rupert a Rebecca, as he lacks things like "a heart" or "a soul"). Whether such a play would be enough to pull off a full Nate face turn (or if such a play is even in the cards) is yet to be seen, but I can kinda see the contours of a way in which they could try to make it work.
Nope, you're not reading into it too much. But in terms of Rupert, I see where the parallels exist to season one, but I just...can't get onboard with Nate. I WANT him to realize Rupert doesn't actually believe in him. I want him to be humbled. I just think they tipped the scales too far here.
Yeah, that's about where I am. Given what we've seen, they've done too good a job of selling him as a heel for a face turn to work - it kind of reminds me how The Falcon and the Winter Soldier did too good a job of convincing me that Sam shouldn't want to be Captain America for me to get as excited as I was supposed to when he picked up the shield.
But since I should probably stop tying everything back to Star Wars and superheroes, while I can empathize with the idea that circumstances beyond his control contributed to Nate turning out the way he has, that doesn't absolve him of his own choices or how he let those circumstances affect him. I'm not 100% sure that the show agrees with me.
Yes! I had the same thought: Palpatine's throne room. Exactly! Yes, the implications are intriguing.
The promos already leaned hard into the Star Wars metaphors and this only confirmed they are definitely going all in on it, which I am here for.
You're right that they need to be careful not to make everything Ted does "clap if you believe in fairies" magic and at least pay some lip service to the idea that football fundamentals matter. But beyond that I don't care even a tiny little bit about the "realism" of a team at the bottom of the Premier League winning it all, and I sure as hell don't want (and don't expect) the show to turn into a treatise on training best practices. Look at it this way: I assume all the teams in the league (including Richmond) spend 90% of their time doing the same kinds of drills and strategies. A show called Ted Lasso is going to focus on the 10% of time that Ted Lasso's way makes a difference.
It was a good start but necessarily had to spend a lot of time on table (re)setting. This is the first season I have watched live so not being able to move the plot along by pressing the Next button is going to be a little frustrating.
Stray Observations
* I liked that they lampshaded that Rupert giving Nate the car was not intended as a big surprise.
* The Roy and Keeley nonsense... can we not?
The balance of sports to not sports is always a struggle, but I do think that when you get to additional seasons it becomes even more so. I think at this point, you're right that there's no real expectation of pure realism from a sports perspective, but they've staked too much of the show's larger plot structure on it to abandon it entirely, and I do think enough people care for it to be something they're thinking about.
I get it; I don't care much at all about the ins and outs of Premiere League but head on over to Abbott Elementary to read me quibble about what they get wrong about public schools. Still, at the end of the day it's a TV show with a pretty clear agenda set out at the end of season 1. Richmond is going to contend for the the title this year because that's the story they have promised to tell.
I don't see what Nate has done that is so irredeemable. Sure, he's treated a bunch of people like crap but mostly he treats people under him the way Jamie Tartt and (it's implied) the rest of the team treated him early in Season 1. The worst thing he's done (leak the story about Ted's panic attacks to the press) is on par with Rebecca's behavior throughout Season 1. I'm not excusing his actions. I'm making comparisons to other characters who have earned their redemption on the show. Also I'm glad that Nick Mohammed was given the chance to be Ted's foil and by extension the second lead of the show.
To be honest, I have less sympathy for someone who is the victim of mistreatment by their superiors and then completely emulates that behavior when they get a whiff of power. This is amplified by the fact that the whole point of the show is about the example Ted sets for those around him, and Nate had a front row seat for those lessons and then completely ignored them. Weirdly, the final straw for me was when he outright ignored the woman who said hello when he arrived to the office.
It amused me that West Ham are training from their stadium instead of some training ground, for no reason other than they have the rights to use the London Stadium and it looks cool.
I'm amused that they went with West Ham's real sponsor on the front of the shirt given 1) West Ham's position as the "bad guys" this season 2) the spotlight on the importance of front of the shirt sponsors last season and 3) the current gambling sponsor debate.
Really feels like West Ham did not know what they were signing up to on this.
My guess is that they had to have had a clearer vision of the larger arc, which separates the team itself from Rupert’s ownership and Nate’s actions? Because yeah, I already saw someone note they had West Ham merch and felt weird about it.
I would never bet against Premier League clubs not doing due diligence, especially one as frequently dysfunctional as West Ham.
Speaking of the "bad guy" point, I noticed Rupert and Nate were still using Apple products, though I'm not sure how much that rule is a) (still) real and b) applies when Apple is paying for the show. They did have black ones, no fun colors at West Ham (and the last few black iPhones haven't looked as sharp as older ones, more of an off-gray).
I had that weird thought about them using Apple products too lol. Not sure how I feel about being conditioned to notice that however.
I know it's probably too much to expect complete realism in how this show handles the football world but I find it truly baffling that everyone at Richmond is offended at being expected to finish 20th when they only just scraped promotion and have apparently signed zero new players. Jan Maas speaks sense - the promoted clubs are always the ones expected to go back down!
Then again, I also can't imagine anyone ever expecting West Ham to finish in the top four no matter who their owner or manager is.
I suppose the latter point is supposed to suggest this is Not Our Reality, but the problem is that the relegation point is a fundamental principle that isn't really tied to any variables. It's a fine line they need to walk, and I do think that the level of offense is a bit overdone for the sake of dramatic efficiency.
Yeah it works for the story they want to tell, although I think you can probably foster the same 'us against them' mentality without everyone needing to seem quite so shocked by the low expectations.
Assuming this show can only end one way (winning the whole thing), is there a possibility the lack of clarity over whether this is the final season actually a tactic to keep some tension as we get closer to the finale?
I also don’t know how you build a season of comedy around this Nate plot. I similarly lack empathy for him. All of the “explanations” for his horribleness are true, but they don’t actually excuse it. The spitting also visually makes it hard for me to enjoy watching him. Yuck. I also think it would be fascinating for Ted to learn and accept that sometimes you have to move on from people who are horrible to you. Even if they come around again in a “redemption arc”. Sometimes it’s healthy to distance and protect yourself.
I really hope the woman who said hi to Nate on the escalator turns out to be a team sponsor or something. Because I feel like that would be an interesting place for the theme of Nate acting subservient to power but abusing those below him to go. Be rude to someone he erroneously assumes to be a nobody, and then have to deal with the repercussions.
I am still hoping that Colin is straight, simply because a) that scene was forced and clunky and annoying in a way this show usually isn’t and b) I don’t love the idea that a man simply knowing what Grindr is and being confident enough to bring it up in conversation means he HAS to be gay, or that being gay has to be a thing that is clumsily foreshadowed. Let someone else be gay! Anyone! Just show up with a male date, no foreshadowing needed.
I take your point on Colin, truly, but at this point I've been willing this to be true for too long for me to give up? And perhaps it's just that I saw Take Me Out earlier in the year and realized how bizarre it is to think that an imagined scenario of a professional athlete coming out written in 2002 still felt contemporary with minimal changes in 2023, but I really don't think that a Premier League player being gay could ever be casual, unfortunately.
Oh definitely agree that little has changed since 2002 and it wouldn’t realistically be casual. I think that’s part of why I am dreading it? Because on the one hand it’s probably wishful thinking to hope everyone would be nonchalant about it (though everyone was unrealistically nonchalant about Sam’s sponsor protest last season, so who knows), but on the other hand I really really don’t want a “very special episode”, even one done Ted Lasso style. I’d rather it be a thing where we acknowledge the scene by Keeley turning out to have made incorrect assumptions, and cue hijinks. And the person who’s gay is Trent Crimm. Or one of the three lads in the bar. Or Will. I don’t know.
I think the narrative of the show overall is hamstrung by season 1. The players vs the coach is usually the primary engine for conflict and character drama in sports. And when that gets resolved, the team then plays the Big Game and the story is over. Since the show has already resolved player and coach conflict, it hasn't found a substitute to create drama. That's why season 2 felt adrift to now in the season premiere, Rebecca became the mouthpiece for the "we should be trying to win" conflict.
What the show is trying to avoid is having Ted win over the team again, even though it should be the players wanting to win to secure their futures and doubting Ted is the guy that will allow them to do it. The beats of that are too similar to season 1 and we have too much time until the Big Game against Nate for their to be internal conflict within the team. That's why I think most sports narratives, that compression from the resolution of the teams internal conflict to the show down with the rival makes for cleaner drama. It's not necessarily a bad decision, but the show has used up its most compelling conflicts already and made a great season out of TV. However, I think now they are paying the price for it they haven't found new answers or sources of conflict to drive the show.
The shift toward a workplace logic seems like an effort to course correct, but they can't just erase the sports of it all, and so the rebalancing is going to take time. Is 12 episodes enough to recalibrate in? We shall see.
New viewer here who binged seasons 1 and 2 in an obsessively long and very tearful day a few weeks ago. These observations on what the show must accomplish in order to avoid betraying itself had largely not occurred to me but certainly make sense, and now I find myself both anticipating and fearing the tightrope that it will need to walk. But even if it doesn't avoid some errors I know that it will still deliver a lot of lovely and heartfelt moments with its characters, so we'll be all right no matter what.
After reading this review I'm inspired to go back and read all of the previous ones on The A.V. Club. Great stuff.
No reviews for Season 1, sadly, as no one really saw the show coming—as you'll see if you read the comments, I don't know if an average viewer REALLY wanted that treatment, but I really enjoyed the result.
Steven already beat us all to the punch pointing out the Death Star Throne Room vibes Rupert's office is giving off, so I'm just going to say that last week had Mandalorian and Picard both introducing Space Sea Life, and now this week has Mando and Ted Lasso sharing a Biscuits with the Boss; all this to say, it really feels like Kang is out there fucking up the Multiverse. Happy to have you back doing the last (?) season Myles! Not sure how I feel about any spin-off show without Ted having any compelling reason to exist outside of wanting to hang out with Roy and Keeley, et. al. for a little longer.
i agree that it seems like they are unfortunately going with an ending of Nate getting fired and taking over for Ted who steps down after a “successful” season of finishing 10th.
i do applaud them for recognizing their time is almost up with this story – we wouldn’t want it to turn into poop-eh.
Thank you so much Myles for calling out the potential absurdity of Richmond winning the title this year. I will be thoroughly disappointed if they do that. I already put up with several ridiculous credibility-defying elements, like a football director only coming up with a list of transfer targets in August instead of the moment they qualified for promotion. Or like how last year they dropped their shirt sponsor with no pushback or financial consequences. But having a promoted team win the championship, especially one led by a coach like Ted Lasso, would ruin any semblance of authenticity. When Leicester City won the premier title in 2016 as a 5000-1 preseason longshot, they still were at least a year removed from promotion and had finished a somewhat respectable 14th in the Premier League the previous year, even if they probably were selected to be relegation material ahead of their incredible championship.
Now if they were to go on some incredible streak and qualify for the Champions League (top 4), maybe I could stomach that, especially if they somehow nip West Ham on the last day. But actually winning it? Come on.
I may be in the minority in admiring this show's (and actor's) commitment to making Nate so unlikeable. Nate leans into his horrible behaviour as performance, because he's a wounded, fragile person who's desperate for approval after a lifetime of feeling disrespected and internalising the resultant frustration and anger. He does not recognise that the bridge he perceives himself to be crossing is actually a tightrope, and the wrong wind could send him plummeting into a dark place.
He's got away with being a tosser so far mostly because of Ted's good grace and the typical British reservation of the press, but I have an inkling he's going to upset the wrong people soon enough. It might not be Rupert, who seems to view Nate as his attack dog, but it could be the public - or even his own players.
The second season was a bit wobbly in structure and pacing, but I continue to watch Ted Lasso with faith in its ability to drive its lead characters to interesting places, even if the B stories are sometimes iffy.
I agree that the writers and actor have pulled off Nate's villain turn pretty well. My only concern is that it is TOO believable- like others, I have lost all empathy for the guy, and am fearful of his redemption arc. I think he would REALLY need to atone for his terrible behavior.
Spoiler alert I guess, but I read somewhere that Trent Crimm embeds with the team to write a book this season, so that'd explain James Lance’s presence in the credits.
I am very happy Ted Lasso is back! Yeah, good points about Nate but I still am interested in what happens with him next. It’s a good conflict, something lacking in Season 2. I didn’t see anything definitive about this being Ted’s last season. At least on screen. Just everything I have read in the trades.
Something I thought of tonight: I watched this show with my family *in real time* during the pandemic. It was the ultimate in comfort TV. Both from the ugliness in the political arena and the ongoing stress of the pandemic. It came on every Friday night and just made the empty weekend ahead more manageable. Regardless of how this season swings out, I will always think of what that first season meant.
It is wild that the Ted Lasso reviews started at the Old Site and in the time since, this community has come together. Congratulations, Myles.
I wondered if the small reference to the Purdue family was to suggest Rupert isn’t actively corrupting Nate; he’s just a corruption through and through. That corrupting villainy attracts Nate as it’s the only way he’s ever gotten what he wants? Except for the love of his dad, which, will absolutely be brought up later down the line.
Oh right. I forgot about that Sackler family quip.
Also, speaking of the AV Club reviews, the person who took over Myles' old beat starts the review of this episode by saying the show had a "near perfect second season," which is a bit flabbergasting to me. Clearly the reviewer didn't go back and read the old reviews; looks like they averaged about a B+ lol. To each their own, but I'm pretty sure most people would not describe the second season as near perfect.