Ted Lasso: S3 is Here… But Does it Still Matter?

By Liam Lacey

Rating: B+

The return of a hit television series hardly rates as news, yet Apple TV+’s Ted Lasso is a special case.

After winning back-to-back Emmys as the best prime time comedy on television, the show returns, starting today (March 15) for a new 12-episode season, 17 months since the second season, and in a different world than when it premiered in 2020, in the early months of the COVID pandemic.

The series was co-created by and stars Saturday Night Live star Jason Sudeikis as Lasso, an aw-shucks American Kansas football coach hired to manage a British soccer team, AFC Richmond, despite having no experience.

The team's owner, Rebecca Welton (Hannah Waddingham), hired Lasso with the plan that he would fail, as a means of exacting revenge on the team's previous owner, her husband, Rupert (Anthony Head). Against the odds, Ted’s cringy folksiness and positivity cut through the English reserve and turns the team into an improbable success, eventually moving them up to the Premiere League as we start Season 3.

The series was widely celebrated, not just as heart-warming and hopeful, but a kind of tele-therapy that met the historical moment. It became the opportunity for dozens of journalistic and psychology blogs about leadership styles and the pros and cons of excessive positivity.

In Season 1, Ted was a cheerful nerd reminiscent of Ned Flanders character from The Simpsons. In Season 2, we learned that Ted’s positivity was a form of over-compensation, that he was dealing with psychological challenges including the pain of his recent divorce, separation from his son, and a trauma relating to his father.

During the second season, he reluctantly agreed to accept counselling from the team psychologist, Dr Sharon Fieldstone (Sarah Niles) and work on that “be a goldfish” philosophy. (Another AppleTV+ show, Shrinking — the Jason Segel vehicle created by Lasso producer Bill Lawrence and writer-actor Brett Goldstein — took this theme even further.) Though Ted still conducts sessions with Dr. Fieldstone via computer, he’s dropped his emotional mask, just as we dropped our COVID masks. Cue the existential crisis.

As he says in the first episode of the new season, after dropping his son off at the airport following a summer vacation, “I guess I do sometimes wonder what the heck I’m still doing here.”

Judging by the first four episodes made available for review, it’s not yet clear how the show will go psychologically deeper, though it certainly expanded its canvas. Each episode now is 44 to 50 minutes, as opposed to the 30 minutes of the first two seasons, a shift that makes it keyed more to drama than comedy.

Ted isn’t the only one in a rut as we begin Season 3. The new problems faced by the AFC Richmond extended team all repeat issues from the past. After its triumphs, the team is once again the butt of the English media pundits.

Jamie Tartt (Phil Dunster), the young hotshot of Season 1, has to deal with a potential new superstar on the team, just as Roy Kent was overshadowed by Jamie in Season 1. Keeley (Juno Temple) has graduated from celebrity girlfriend to being the boss of her own PR firm, while her brash new assistant seems to be a version of Keeley’s younger self, for good and bad. The saturnine soccer journalist, Trent Crimm (James Lance) is back in a new role, chronicling the team over the course of a season.

As well, all romantic relationships are back to square one. Rebecca has paused her affair with the sunny young player Sam (Toheeb Jimoh) who is busy running his new restaurant. She is once again focusing her energy on trying to defeat her ex, Rupert, who has bought the rival squad, West Ham, and hired Nathan, the former kit boy turned “wonder kid” as its coach.

And for those who want the old hits one more time, Ted continues to find new ways to amaze the naysayers, the press, and saboteurs with his corny humour and kindness. Personally, I hope he starts to move over the eight episodes and get over his anger with his ex-wife. The seesaw of vulnerable emotional breakthroughs and inspirational moments gets exhausting.

If Ted Lasso feels less close-to-the-bone than it did two years ago, that’s not a bad thing. The writing is still witty and the satellite characters colourful and vital enough to star in their own shows. Also, I appreciate any program where characters can take time out to debate their favourite Julie Andrews role.

Waddingham’s Rebecca is especially pleasurable, a magnificent giantess in a power business suit, whose bared teeth smile at her ex-husband suggests she’d happily bite off his limbs and toss him in the Thames.

The potentially most complex storyline so far is that of Nick Mohammed’s Nathan Shelley, who betrayed Ted and his team, and now burns with paranoia and mania as he gains the accolades he craves. Finally, there’s assistant Coach Beard (series co-creator Brendan Hunt), Ted Lasso’s deadpan alter-ego, a man of mystery, who may be the series’ secret MVP.

Ted Lasso Season 3, Episode 1 available now on AppleTV + with new episodes added each week.