Ted Lasso

Watching the last 15 minutes now after a 90 minute city wide power outage.

 

Was the clue "It's a great honor for you to meet me."?

 

Unpopular take: Finally got around to watching the first two episodes. Family loved the cleverness of the first two seasons and will force ourselves to watch episode 3, but if the show doesn’t improve we’ll have to throw in the towel. Painfully unoriginal; the actors are fantastic but the characters are stuck in a rut.

 

Now that it's gone full Zava, it feels like they've kicked into gear for the main arc of the season.

 

I cried laughing a couple of times. The guy with the Z name, that definitely isn't someone who played for LA and now for Milan, was the spark the show needed. That self-absorbed faux humility is going to be a great disruption to the status quo.

 

Zava is a great character.

It’s jarring that Ted has coached an English team for two years without ever hearing about Juventus or a 442. I get it, the show is primarily aimed at American non-soccer fans but they got to let Ted evolve as a character. He’s a smart guy, he’d figure some things out over time.

Looking forward to Zava’s arc, which ought to be amusing

 

My good high school lacrosse coach was like the east coast version of Ted. No real tactical insight, never paid attention to what else was happening in the sport, didn't scout opponents before games, and didn't seem interested in that stuff. What he did know was how to help us increase out skill, work as a unit, and adapt to in game situations. We didn't run a single set play on offense in 2 years and defense was left entirely to his assistant coach. In two years we went from winless to a 1 loss team that won our district. To this day I'm not sure if he ever changed from that approach.

 

The Amsterdam episode was the best of the season so far, and one of my favorites of the series.

But this week’s episode was very much a mixed bag, which it unfortunately has in common with most of the season so far. The dick ropes were funny for about 5 seconds, and then it went on for several minutes.

At least they didn’t win their first game playing “total football” after training it for a couple days. I get that the idea is that the bond and camaraderie Ted has fostered is what makes that style of play possible, but part of me is still like “really?”

But like was said above it’s hard for me to let go of the silly soccer stuff, and that’s not really what the show is about.

 

This show should have just stayed down after the second season. This third season has been sh*t. The Amsterdam episode was, at last, a Ted Lasso episode, but just about everything else has been dreck.

Zava was awful. He chewed up stage time, offered nothing, and then was gone after four episodes. He was, in essence, a shaggy dog story, only with a stupid avocado-farm punch line. Shandy was the same. Just another unlikeable character who took too much screen time and offerend nothing.

I mean, other than Jamie and Roy's bromance, is there any relationship, any character who is more fully developed this season, more interesting, had a better story arc than what they had over the first two seasons? The whole is so much less than the sum of it's parts. And really, Jaimie and Roy were so much better when they were antagonists than this.

And the soccerness of it sucks. How far do you have to go down the professional ranks before you would find players who would actually allow their dicks to have strings tied to them? And implementing total football in half a season? Yeah, right. It took the Bulls a couple of years to get the triangle offense down in hoops, and it's much easier in that sport because you only have to concentrate on the offense.

And the shows have gotten way too long. Which means crappy lazy editing which gives, for instance, three scenes about a goat crapping in the conference room.

I really loved the show for two years. And I loved streaming it. This waiting for a single crummy episode a week is the pits. If my wife weren't into this show as well, I'd have given up by now.

 

Jamie/Roy has been fun this season and I like where they're going with Nate the last few episodes for his obvious redemption arc. Otherwise, it's lost a bit of the wholesomely optimistic tone as evidenced by nothing really redeemable about either Zava or Shandy (both of whom were introduced really well and then...). The Sam/restaurant/Dad stuff last episode was pretty good as well.

It almost feels like Covid gave them too much time for this season and then they didn't edit down to just the stuff that makes the show good. There are a handful of names in the director and writer slots for episodes that are completely new or had a part in 1-2 episodes in the first two seasons that are prominent so far this season. The only episode written by the Kelly/Sudeikis/Hunt combo was the Amsterdam episode, which explains why it felt like Ted Lasso. Thankfully they've got the final two episodes so the ending should be great.