This review of season 4 of Ted Lasso will include spoilers. Please be advised!
As news of season 4 of Ted Lasso began to take shape, people had questions. Jason Sudeikis had said that he only envisioned three seasons for the series, and despite the clamoring from the fans, he seemed pretty set on that. But after a three-year hiatus, the show that made being nice something aspirational has returned, this time with a new team to coach. While the new season has a rocky start, with some significant pacing issues, once it gets going, we see what made it so special to many in the first place.
When we left Ted Lasso (Jason Sudeikis) at the end of season 3, he was moving back to the United States to be closer to his son, after spending several years in London coaching the AFC Richmond Greyhounds. At the start of season 4, he is working as an assistant manager at a local grocery store, co-parenting Henry (Grant Feely) with his ex-wife Michelle (Andrea Anders).
Despite his obvious joy at being close to his son, when Rebecca (Hannah Waddingham), Keeley (Juno Temple), and Higgins (Jeremy Swift) offer him the head coaching job for the new Richmond women’s league, he feels the pull back to London. When he asks Michelle and Henry to join him in London, they agree, and he heads back to coach the Lady Greyhounds.
When he arrives in Richmond, he meets Alice Chilton (Tanya Reynolds), a woman who was passed over for the head coaching position. She agrees to stay on as an assistant, along with Coach Beard (Brendan Hunt), while Roy (Brett Goldstein) is coaching the men’s team. Much of the season is spent assembling the women’s team, with Keeley trying to figure out how to get them the funding and support that they need to succeed, even with the odds stacked against them.
One of the ways that Keeley tries to help the team is by seeking out Zelda Southport (Tracey Ullman), a financier and managing partner at Scorpio Sports. Rebecca eventually brings her on to help provide another perspective on the inner workings of the club, not recognizing that she has some ulterior motives for wanting to become involved with the team.
The start of season 4 of Ted Lasso is pretty rough. There are plenty of good moments, but the pacing of the episodes feels really off. Most of the episodes this season are between 45 minutes and an hour, but in the early episodes, it feels both like there are a million things happening and nothing happening. It also feels very much like it is trying a little too hard to recapture the magic of the original three seasons with some gratuitous cameos, particularly Dr. Sharon (Sarah Niles) and Trent Crimm (James Lance). Do I love those characters? Of course. Did they belong in episode 4? No, they did not. Ultimately, they just got in the way of us spending more time getting to know the new characters.
This season also has a running will they/won’t they storyline between Keeley and Roy that feels dragged on entirely too long. I’ll be honest, that kind of arc is always going to grate on me. Where it finally ends up, with both Roy and Keeley confronting their fears about relationships and self-worth, is quite rewarding, but the mechanism by which they reached that place felt incredibly forced.
The other aspect of season 4 of Ted Lasso that was a struggle was the entire Zelda storyline. It felt like a long way to travel for Rebecca to have her own Ted moment at the end, without really contributing much to the overall arc of the season. Tracey Ullman is always a delight, but Zelda Southport felt like a bit of a misstep. I would have been far more interested in seeing Rebecca address some of her unexamined biases against women, rather than a story that really doesn’t go anywhere.
My final frustration with the season was the relationship between Matthijs (Matteo van der Grijn) and Rebecca. I am not a Ted and Rebecca shipper, so I have no issues with Matthijs as a love interest, but it felt glossed over in ways that cut it off at the knees. A fear of marriage after being married to an abuser is very legitimate, but there wasn’t any work through of that, instead, it was just a revelation at the end of the season without any deeper context, making it feel like another throwaway story, when it actually could have been worth exploring.
Now that I’m finished with my complaints about this season, let me tell you what I loved about season 4 of Ted Lasso. Because there was a lot to love about this season.
Despite it being rather silly, Beard’s arc this season was really quite wonderful. He has always been a bit of a weird guy, and I love that when he got rejected for being too old, he channeled Jamie Tartt for most of the season. I love that the simple act of being told that he is fine the way he is from someone who isn’t Ted helped him find his way back to himself.
Naturally, the entire storyline with Mae Green (Annette Badland) was wonderful. Knowing that she is a shareholder in Richmond stock, but was always working at the pub during their games, made it all the more powerful when she revealed that she had season tickets for the Lady Greyhounds. Her joy during their games, even to the end, was absolutely infectious. And I will forever be weeping at her reading of Mary Oliver’s “When Death Comes” in the finale.
I also appreciated the way that this season of Ted Lasso addressed any remaining resentments and misunderstandings between Michelle and Ted. Their story felt somewhat incomplete in the first three seasons, and I liked seeing their easy friendship this season. Understanding more about Dr. Jacob from season 3 was helpful as well.
Watching Ted himself become more vulnerable this season was also quite helpful. There is an assumption that because Ted is kind, he is open, but we have seen how he plays a lot of his most sensitive subjects close to his chest. Seeing him open up, not just to a therapist, but to people around him, was truly lovely.
The new players are a lot of fun. I would have loved more time with them, rather than some of the less important stories that we followed, but of the women that we got to know this season, they all bring a lot to the show and give a different context for some of the elements that people remember from the previous three seasons. One of the best things that happened this season was how the iconic “BELIEVE” sign was used.
But my favorite aspect was undoubtedly Alice’s arc. Something I’ve always loved about Ted Lasso is that as characters access “The Lasso Way,” they never lose their innate sense of self. Watching Coach Chilton break down the barriers that she put up after a disappointing end to her own soccer career is one of the most rewarding aspects of the season. Tanya Reynolds plays her with an exceptional blend of humor and seriousness that nails this character.
It can be tough to expand on a show that has so many ardent fans. There will be a yearning for what was, rather than looking at what’s in front of you. Season 4 of Ted Lasso definitely struggles with balancing that dynamic, especially in the front half. But as it settles in, it gives audiences, like the women of the Lady Greyhounds, an opportunity to “yes, and” that which came before, which is the strength of the season, as well as the show as a whole.
Ted Lasso Season 4 is now streaming on Apple TV.
Learn more about the show at the IMDB site for the title.
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