Why do we watch Ted Lasso?
asserted
we → watch → Lasso
Ever since the series premiere in August 2020, the show has garnered a reputation as a necessary antidote of kindness and caring community that the twin strains of the COVID-19 pandemic and the first Trump administration were trying to erase.
asserted
strains → garner → pandemic
Societal rifts those two phenomena exposed could, if only for a brief moment, be healed by a well-meaning American football coach who just wanted a bunch of English soccer players to be decent people who loved themselves and their teammates.
uncertain
who → expose → themselves
We’ll never know how Ted Lasso would have been received had the pandemic never occurred, but co-creator and star Jason Sudeikis clearly had that desire to “heal the discourse” on his mind as he began developing the show back in 2015.
asserted
he → know → 2015
The events surrounding the first season only amplified what was already driving the show’s ambitions.
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what → surround → ambitions
It worked.
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It → work → ?
Three of the four most-watched seasons of television in Apple TV’s history are Ted Lasso seasons, per data from Nielsen.
asserted
Three → watch → Nielsen
The third season is one of the 15 most-watched streaming seasons, full stop, since 2020.
asserted
season → watch → 2020
Sudeikis’s ambition of kindness hasn’t abated in the revived version of the series, whose fourth season concludes on Wednesday.
asserted
season → abate → Wednesday
Nor has its popularity waned too much: with Nielsen data on its final three episodes still to be released, Ted Lasso Season 4 is one of the 10 most-watched streaming series of 2026.
asserted
Season → wan → 2026
Audiences still crave the message that Sudeikis, new co-showrunner Jack Burditt, the entire writing staff, and the cast have sought to broadcast.
asserted
Sudeikis → crave → message
In anticipation of Wednesday’s Season 4 finale, we should look back on these first nine episodes, how they pushed Ted Lasso forward, and how they repeated many of the mistakes of the show’s first go-round.
asserted
they → look → round
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It matters that Ted isn’t a good soccer coach.
asserted
Ted → matter → ?
Sudeikis didn’t want the character of Ted Lasso to be so spiky when he transformed him from the protagonist of an NBC promotional video into a sitcom lead.
asserted
he → want → lead
He did preserve the character’s ignorance of soccer, however.
asserted
He → preserve → soccer
Indeed, a lot of the jokes in that original promo film remain in the show’s pilot.
asserted
lot → remain → pilot
Set aside whatever verisimilitude the show rejects and focus instead on the uncomfortable truth that Sudeikis’s original choice is, in many ways, the show’s original sin.
asserted
choice → set → ways
Starting Ted from a place of ignorance, under the traditional parameters of mainstream narrative form, should mean that he arrives at a place of knowledge by story’s end.
asserted
he → start → end
There are some ways that Ted changes across the first 43 episodes of the series, but his ignorance of the game hasn’t particularly shifted, so much so that Ted’s stated belief in the power of curiosity doesn’t match up to his other actions very well.
asserted
belief → be → actions
Season after season, Ted continues to be frustratingly unaware of how soccer is played, the rules that govern that play, and the structures that dictate the organization of the league in which those teams play.
asserted
teams → continue → which
That ignorance can’t be very well hidden in Season 4, when Ted is not only out of his depth in the game of soccer, but also in the particular disadvantages with which women’s players are faced.
asserted
players → hide → which
He’s shocked to discover in Episode 2 that “for a sport that asks you to be light on your feet, women’s football sure does seem to have a lot of weight around it.”
asserted
football → ’ → it
More incidents like it criss-cross the season, none more blatantly than the end of Episode 7 when the players list all the reasons that “BELIEVE” carries little weight when faced with paying your bills.
asserted
BELIEVE → criss → bills
So much of Ted’s expressions of ignorance are meant to be engines for jokes, but in the middle of his fourth year in England, how does he not know how to download an app for his phone outside of America?
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he → mean → America
It’s a passing line near the beginning of Episode 4, but it emblematizes the divergence of the writers’ intentions and their ultimate effects.
asserted
it → ’ → intentions
You can’t put a dumb joke like that into a character’s mouth four years into a show whose characters are meant to grow as time goes on.
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time → put → show
That’s what I mean by “original sin”: Sudeikis wanted Ted to have heart, to be a character with depth and complex feelings.
asserted
Ted → ’ → depth
That can’t comfortably sit alongside the goofiness of the original idea, and that discordance becomes more and more unavoidable as the series progresses.
asserted
series → sit → idea
Season 4 lacks a Sam figure, and is worse for it.
Sam Obisanya was the third player on Richmond men, alongside Roy Kent and Jamie Tartt, who got a full arc in Season 1, and he maintained that status throughout the series.
asserted
he → lack → series
has used Gemma Jay (Abbie Hern) as the Jamie stand-in and provided her with more to work with than the rest of the players, but there is no one else who has been given the spotlight and become a protagonist of their own subplot.
asserted
who → use → subplot
Technically, we should probably be getting two such characters, since Roy was still playing in season 1.
asserted
Roy → get → season
Instead, we only get small crumbs of characterization for the rest of the squad.
asserted
we → get → squad
Richmond Ladies thus remains an amorphous entity, where each of the other players with speaking parts — Shannon (Shannon Hayes), Lizzie (Faye Marsay), Boots (Jude Mack), Niamh (Aisling Sharkey), Siobhan (Rex Hayes), Mady (Annelise Heywood), and Margy (Mercedes Assad) — are just walking character traits, rather than fully fleshed out human beings.
asserted
each → remain → beings
The lack of actual soccer doesn’t help to define those characters.
asserted
lack → help → characters
Burditt noted in the Hollywood Reporter’s July cover story that Season 4 saved both the time and money that made Season 3 a somewhat notorious boondoggle by reducing the amount of soccer games filmed.
asserted
Season → note → games
That seems a little strange for a show about a soccer team, no?
asserted
That → seem → team
Colin’s sexuality became a major subplot of Season 3.
asserted
sexuality → become → Season
Isaac got a whole B plot to himself where he actually played soccer in a Season 2 episode.
asserted
he → get → episode
None of the women’s players besides Gemma have had the same attention paid to them.
asserted
attention → have → them
Sudeikis and the writers still have plates to spin with several returning characters, and given the directive from Apple and Burditt for Sudeikis to keep episodes to a manageable length, there isn’t enough story time to go around.
asserted
Sudeikis → have → length
…and 133 more, not listed.
The Aporia
