As of today, Ted Lasso has ended its fourth season with a long, dreary, and at times emotionally manipulative hour-long ordeal. (A down-tempo cover of the theme by Brandi Carlile? Come on.) Season 4 as a whole has felt like a stretched-out epilogue for season 3’s big ending, ten episodes in the spirit of those one-line tags in an ’80s comedy’s credits. (“Jane wrote a whole play based on her failed marriage to Beard. Nate became the head coach of the Polish national team.”) Though there have been seeds for bigger things—and times I was convinced Lasso had turned a corner in its quality—this anticlimactic finale reveals how rudderless this show has become.
What even is Ted Lasso anymore? Is it even about Jason Sudeikis’s main character? Is he searching for love or trying to be a better father (who doesn’t lie to his kid)?
After five years, does he finally know what offside means in soccer? I don’t mind him having different things at once. But when a whole-ass season ends with no resolution and no inkling about the title character, I call into question if we’re watching a television show or a desktop screen saver.
We finally find out about three quarters of the way through the episode, when Zelda (Tracey Ullman) suddenly reveals her scheme as the new sole owner of Richmond AFC at a nearly empty shareholders meeting. Because—drumroll—she’s a woman, and she wants to prove herself in a man’s world. Her shtick of “women helping women” at the start winds up being more selfish than she let on, because the woman she was helping was herself all along.
This would be devastating. Unfortunately, we’re watching Ted Lasso. Because this is a show about unrealistic people, Higgins (Jeremy Swift) and Rebecca (Hannah Waddingham) feign shock and anger until they quickly turn the tables back on Zelda.
They’ve known it all along, apparently, and secretly bought their shares back from Zelda’s minion, adding them to the shares Mae left to Rebecca in her will. (Also, the three dweebs who loiter around Mae’s pub are now its owners, which is nice. Like I said, this show is like the end credits of an ’80s movie.) And of course Rebecca forgives Zelda, even though she would be very justified in tossing her out of the room. With that storyline going out like a wet fart, the rest of the ho-hum finale treads ground that is just as directionless.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
