In the three years since the third and supposedly final season of Apple TV‘s Ted Lasso finished, it’s been pretty well documented that the third season had a lot of problems, from characters being scattered and not interacting with each other as much as they did in the first two seasons, to runtimes that routinely approached (or exceeded) the one-hour mark. Now, the show is back for a surprising fourth season with a new team for Ted to coach.
TED LASSO SEASON 4: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: We hear beeping, and it sounds like a heart monitor. What it turns out to be is a cash register at a supermarket, manned by its assistant manager, Ted Lasso (Jason Sudeikis).
The Gist: Since leaving AFC Richmond three years prior to spend more time co-parenting his son Henry (Grant Feely) with his ex-wife Michelle (Andrea Anders) — done so at the behest of his mother Dottie (Becky Ann Baker) — Ted has been back home in Kansas City. Even working in the supermarket, he’s imparting lessons onto his co-workers, like when he pretends to steal a bunch of stuff then make like he’s going to get caught in order to scare a teenage co-worker who pocketed a pack of cigarettes.
Ted and Michelle get called into Henry’s school because their now-preteen son wrote some Public Enemy lyrics in his notebook. It was troubling to the principal, but his parents feel semi-proud he has become a PE fan.
When he gets home, Ted finds a surprise waiting for him: Rebecca Welton (Hannah Waddingham), Keeley Jones (Juno Temple) and Leslie Higgins (Jeremy Swift) from Richmond have flown into K.C. to observe the women’s pro soccer team, the Kansas City Current, and are paying their old coach a visit.
But, as Ted finds out when he takes them to a meat-filled visit to Gates BBQ, he finds out from a sauce-covered Rebecca that Richmond is starting a women’s team and they want him to come back to coach it. He says he’ll sleep on it, but he knows he’s probably going to turn it down, because he doesn’t want to spend time away from his family at this point in Henry’s life.
The Brits enjoy their time in KC; Keeley gushes to her bestie Rebecca about how nice everyone is while they shop for bedazzled clothes at a boutique, and Higgins gets a lesson about the Negro Leagues at the museum that sits across the way from the American Jazz Museum. Meanwhile, Ted is wistful about returning to the pitch, as we see when he gently tries to talk to Henry’s soccer coach about why Henry was taken out of his last game.
After Dottie tells him how much his late father loved his job and how that made him look like the king of the office when Ted would go with him to work, though, Ted comes up with an idea that will help him coach again while still being there for his family.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Even though Bill Lawrence’s involvement in Ted Lasso isn’t what it once was — Sudeikis is co-showrunner with Jack Burditt in Season 4 — the show still has the same “found family” vibe as other Lawrence shows, like Shrinking or Rooster.
Our Take: With a new story, and Burditt on board to take some of the pressure off Sudeikis, it feels like Ted Lasso is getting closer to the funny, at times moving, feelgood show it started as, even if there are still a few to many side indulgences that slow things down.
The first episode of the new season serves as Sudeikis’ tribute to his home town more than anything else. Sure, it’s funny watching Keeley go all in on looking like a tourist, Rebecca housing ribs left and right, and Higgins getting an education about a key aspect of baseball history, despite him not knowing anything about the sport. But it’s pretty light on plot — Ted gets offered the job on Richmond’s women’s team, and he tries to figure out how to do that and be with his family at the same time — and there are plenty of moments that feel more like a travelogue and less like a dramedy.
That being said, though, we’re looking forward to seeing Ted take everything he learned from being the coach of the men’s team and apply it to the women’s team. We’re pretty sure that not everything will translate, and that Ted, Coach Beard (Brendan Hunt) and — eventually — Roy Kent (Brett Goldstein) will have to make adjustments. There is also the aspect that the team is going to start in a lower-rung league and probably not have the financial resources the men’s club has, which will all be good fodder for the season.
The good news is that most of the episodes, at least the ones Apple gave critics for review, clock in at a robust-but-manageable 42 minutes. What we hope is that those 42 minutes are well-paced and carry the same degree of laughs and emotion that hooked us on the show six years ago.
Performance Worth Watching: We’ve seen a lot of Hannah Waddingham lately (she’s excellent in Ride Or Die), and we couldn’t help but cackle every time she enthusiastically bit into a rib, especially when she sloshed sauce on her designer duds.
Sex And Skin: None in the first episode.
Parting Shot: Ted texts Michelle about the idea of having the entire family move to London. He’s surprised when Henry is the one responding — and he likes the idea.
Sleeper Star: Tanya Reynolds plays Alice Chilton, one of Ted’s assistant coaches on the women’s team. We’re looking forward to seeing how Ted and crew integrate Alice into their dynamic.
Most Pilot-y Line: Higgins is awkward almost all the time, but the awkwardness he displayed with the guy working at the Negro Leagues Museum felt a little too awkward.
Our Call: STREAM IT. We’re cautiously optimistic that the fourth season of Ted Lasso won’t make the mistakes that the third season did. It helps that there’s a new story with a lot of new characters, which we hope brings new life to the show.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.