The Ted Lasso Finale: Not Just Another Happy Ending
The Cast of Ted Lasso at the The White House
The White House, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
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The Apple TV Series Ted Lasso has been something—like the team it chronicles—of an underdog story. At face value, the show seems predictable: a comedy combining elements of the fish-out-of-water, a sports feel good theme, and lovable buffoon as hero storylines. And yet Ted Lasso is something more.
I approached the series with a fair amount of skepticism. It sounded like the same tired formulaic plotline the studios have been trotting out since The Replacements, Major League, North Dallas Forty, or Hoosiers (some of which are exceptionally good films). And our first introduction to Coach Lasso (Jason Sudeikis) did nothing to change these expectations.
Lasso, the unsinkably optimistic titular hero, is an American football coach who comes to the AFC Richmond Football Club (soccer for you wankers out there) without a whit of experience playing or coaching soccer. The club’s new owner, Rebecca Welton (Hannah Waddingham) hires Ted because she wants the club—her ex-husband’s pet project—to fail. She wants Ted to fail; everyone else expects him to fail. And then, in a series of brilliant plot turns (and the inclusion of Coach Beard as a sort of assistant coach guru philosopher dude), Ted Lasso started taking some interesting and completely unexpected left turns.
At the beginning of his tenure, Ted does not consciously work to learn the game. He instead focuses on coaching the players as individuals. One of his first moves was to place books (assigned reading) in each player’s locker. Irascible curmudgeon play Roy Kent (Brett Goldstein) is appalled when he learns the meaning of leadership while reading A Wrinkle in Time to his niece. In an act of total good-guy nerdiness, Ted brings a biscuit to his boss every morning. He befriends and eventually promotes kit man Nathan (Nick Mohammed) to assistant coach. On paper, these tactics sound unrealistic and goofy but the writers on the show somehow made it all work.
The players, from Kent to the initially arrogant Jamie Tartt (Phil Dunster) to the ebullient Dani Rojas (Cristo Fernandez) to the kind-hearted Sam Obisanya (Toheeb Jimo) to the self-deprecating Nathan Shelley (Nick Mohammed), become fully developed characters dealing with their own demons and difficulties. The supporting cast, including Coach Beard (Brendan Hunt), Keeley Jones (Juno Temple), and club vice-president Lesley Higgins (Jeremy Swift) are brilliantly cast in roles that stretch the envelope from comic relief into areas of the quasi-surreal.
Over three seasons, these characters fell in and out of love, experienced days and nights of straight-out mind-bending surrealism, dealt with racism, sexism, and anti-gay sentiment as well as somehow managing to win a few games. Which brings us to the series finale which aired last week. I personally hate spoilers and will not give away any specific details about the concluding episode but will, however, set the scene.
Having turned their season around after Ted’s epiphany at an American burger joint, the Greyhounds find themselves in a position to win the championship with a final victory against their nemesis Manchester City. Rebecca is considering selling the club. Roy and Jamie are vying for the affections of Keeley. There is a possibility Coach might not be at AFC Richmond next season. With all these plates in the air, the viewer has a nagging feeling that at least one must drop, that disappointment and sorrow will be waiting at the end of the Richmond rainbow.
Before considering the beautifully written and perfectly fitting ending to this series, we should take a long look at the Ted Lasso series itself. What sort of creature is it exactly? A comedy? Sure. A sports story? Sure. But Sudeikis and the other Lasso creators bent these genres into something more. To say it is a feelgood series is an understatement. Maybe it was the combination of the winning underdog and the genuinely funny characters that made this series so much fun to watch. Maybe it was the evolution of the characters, although I personally did hear some complaints that Roy was becoming too much of a nice guy, that he didn’t seem to be himself anymore, but everyone on the show (with maybe the exceptions of Lesley and Beard) changed. And they mostly changed because of Ted.
Rebecca decided she wanted to keep the team and eventually forgave her ex, mostly because she starts to believe in Ted. The players learned to enjoy and even love each other. The season two episode where everyone ends up at Lesley’s house for Christmas is priceless. When Dani Rojas, an eminently lovable character, joins the team, his positive presence seems inevitable. Roy learns to open up, to channel his anger. And there are many more subplots, but all of them lead to a conclusion that is not only inevitable but gratifying.
It is a conclusion we can only live vicariously. We have struggles and setbacks like Ted and his crew. We have our defeats. What we do not have—and can never have—is a fairy-tale happy ending where everything comes up roses.
The viewer knows what to expect at the end of the sports underdog film or the comedy or the fish-out-of-water tale. Sometimes—not often—our expectations are confounded, but not here. If anything is confounding, it is the absolute enthusiasm and passion with which the creators of Lasso embrace the ultra-satisfying but gapingly unrealistic ending. A conclusion in which every character is happy, satisfied, and fulfilled should be impossible. Not even a fairy tale can give us that. Yet there it is.
The conclusion of this series seems to answer every question and fulfill the audience’s every need. It is what all of us would like to see in our own lives. As entertainment, Ted Lasso is first-rate—funny and heartwarming and surprising and sometimes bewildering. It is always engaging, but it is something more.
“Beard After Hours” is a hard left turn from the series storyline, focusing solely on a very odd nocturnal ramble with the eccentric coach. Parts of it were funny, trippy, and odd, not unlike an acid trip. Why was it put smack-dab in the middle of the series? There is an undercurrent in this series I’ve had a hard time putting a finger on. When publican Mae (Annette Badland) recites “This Be the Verse” by Philip Larkin during a visit by Ted’s mom, it is completely unexpected. The verse is eminently suitable to the situation but coming from Mae at this time is a bit of a surprise.
This was the strength of this series—its sense of surprise. The cynical viewer (like myself) thought he knew what to expect and why. But the series, like its hero, never failed to surprise. In a perfect sort of Lassonian twist, the conclusion to this wonderful series surprised with its very predictability. It became what we had always expected but never anticipated.
Ted Lasso was never what we expected, and it has now forever changed what we can anticipate in a series. It is like any successful team, more than the sum of its parts, a delicious blend of (sometimes raunchy) comedy, brilliant character development, defied expectations, feel-good team building, and surprise endings. It is a winner.