Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Ted Lasso’ Season 3 On Apple TV+, Where Ted And AFC Richmond Take On Nate And Get Used To A New Star Player

Depending on who you talk to, Season 2 of Ted Lasso cemented its reputation as one of the best feelgood ensemble shows on TV, or it went off on story tangents that were annoying to some and treacly to others. We enjoyed it, but wasn’t sure of what the impact would be of heel turn Nick Mohammed’s character Neal in the season finale. In what star/creator Jason Sudeikis says is probably the show’s final season, we see the impact of that move isn’t all that great. But can the show overcome such a creative misstep?

TED LASSO SEASON 3: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Airport sounds. Then we see a closeup of Ted Lasso (Jason Sudeikis) looking forlorn.

The Gist: He’s forlorn because his son Henry (Gus Turner) is going back home to Kansas after an extended stay with Ted in London. Ted gets a text from his ex-wife Michelle (Andrea Anders) saying “I love you!” and for a quick second thinks it’s directed to him. Ted has a session with Dr. Sharon Fieldstone (Sarah Niles) over FaceTime; she is still seeing him despite not working for AFC Richmond anymore.

AFC Richmond is about to start a new season, having been promoted back into the Premier League after being relegated the season before. But every expert and pundit is predicting that they’ll be at the bottom of the league and relegated once again. Of course, Rebecca (Hannah Waddingham) is ticked, and tells Ted she wants the version of him “that’s willing to fight.” The team is listening to all the pundits, too, and is getting distracted. Coach Beard (Brendan Hunt) and Roy Kent (Brett Goldstein), now promoted to full assistant coach, try to figure out the best formation for the team, given how tough their opponents are this season.

Roy got promoted after Nathan Shelley (Nick Mohammed) was hired to be manager of West Ham United by Rupert Mannion (Anthony Head), Rebecca’s ex and the former owner of Richmond, after he bought the team. He’s still angry with Ted and how it seemed his former mentor abandoned him and didn’t give him enough credit for his tactical skills, but he’s also not 100 percent comfortable as the manager of a team that has resources and a rich owner.

Meanwhile, Keeley (Juno Temple) has started her own PR firm, with the help of Bantr, the dating site who has a lot of tie-ins with Richmond. Though it seems that the people she hired are good at the PR game, but bad at having any kind of personality, especially one that matches Keeley’s bubbly persona. She doesn’t really even have time to process the breakup with Roy, though they do manage to tell his young niece, who takes it well.

To help the team, who finds the last-place predictions distracting, Ted takes the team to the London sewers, in an effort to show them how to let that garbage flow past them. A picture of the team descending a manhole leaks on Twitter, giving Nate the chance to let loose a few good insults during a press conference. Rebecca wants Ted to respond; at first he says no, but then he does so his own way, with a lot of self-deprecating humor, including a joke about his panic attack the previous season.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Ted Lasso Seasons 1 and 2, of course. It’s not a coincidence that Shrinking, which was co-created by Goldstein and is produced by Lasso EP Bill Lawrence, has a lot of the same “friends as family” vibe. It’s basically the same vibe Lawrence has fostered since Spin City.

Our Take: There’s a moment during the first four episodes of Ted Lasso‘s third (and maybe final) season where Ted has a bit of a crisis of confidence. He wonders to Beard and others why he’s still in London, especially given the fact that he’s still an American football coach who doesn’t know a ton about soccer.

It’s sort of the feeling we had watching those first four episodes, as well. There were plenty of moments that were the same level of character-driven humor that we saw in the first two seasons, but there were also many moments where we weren’t sure what Ted Lasso, as well as Ted Lasso, really had left to accomplish from a story perspective.

The Greyhounds have already bought into Ted’s program. Rebecca is a confident owner, now eager to beat Rupert’s West Ham club. Higgins (Jeremy Swift) is still very normal for a director of football, but seems to be running football operations well. Even the players are more confident in their roles and abilities; Jamie (Phil Dunster) has actually grown some ability to empathize.

So Lawrence, Sudeikis and their writers are trying to come up with this third and final chapter, and you can tell they’re feeling around. The whole Nate story now feels like a distraction rather than a story of a man who keeps trying to find self-esteem in the judgement of others and always coming up empty. Yes, there will be times when things will connect when Richmond plays West Ham, but to move away from Richmond to see the angry Nate bullying his way through his new job takes viewers away from the chemistry they liked about the show during its first two seasons. Nate being separated from most of that basically puts Mohammed on an island that makes his performance less funny.

Soon, AFC Richmond will be vying for a mercurial superstar free agent named Zava (Maximilian Osinski). Think of him as a Kyrie Irving type, minus the antisemitism. He’s a guy who is undoubtedly a major talent, but he also disrupts the chemistry of every team he’s been on — and he’s been on a lot. If and when he gets to Richmond, they’ll undoubtedly play better, but at what cost?

It just seems that there’s a lot going on in Season 3, and despite each episode in the 12-episode season being in the 45-50 minute range, there still doesn’t seem to be enough time to cover everything with any kind of adequacy. Will Ted be able to better manage his mental health while dealing with a new man in Michelle’s life as well as the pressures of staying in the Premier League? What becomes of Sam (Toheeb Jimoh) after he decided to stay with Richmond and open a Nigerian restaurant, much less the lingering feelings he and Rebecca have for each other? Are Roy and Keeley really through?

Through the first four episodes, we just get this feeling that most of these storylines will take a lot of effort to corral, and none will get the time they deserve. The only thing we hope is that Ted rediscovers his purpose in Richmond, Beard stays weird, Roy keeps his edge, and everyone on the team still works as a team, with some laughs along the way. But we’re certainly not thinking that season 3 will be as good as seasons 1 and 2 were.

Sex and Skin: None, though we do see Jamie’s butt in one of the episodes. He apparently sleeps with a t-shirt on but no pants.

Parting Shot: As he’s FaceTiming with Henry, Ted finds out that there’s a new person in Michelle’s life. “Great,” he says, feigning enthusiasm for his kid.

Sleeper Star: Who haven’t we mentioned? James Lance comes back as Trent Crimm; after getting fired from The Independent, he decided to write a book about Richmond, and somehow gains access to the team’s inner sanctum. Cristo Fernández is back as Dani, of course, whose character kind of goes back to the less-defined character he was in Season 1. Katy Wix is Barbara, the uptight CFO at Keeley’s new firm; Ambreen Razia is Chandi, a friend of Keeley’s from her Page 3 Girl days whom she hires to pep things up at the firm.

Most Pilot-y Line: When Sharon finishes her session with Ted, we see she’s in a silky nightgown. It turns out she was, um, having a gentleman caller over. So was this an emergency call from Ted or a regular session?

Our Call: STREAM IT. We’re not going to tell you to skip Season 3 of Ted Lasso, because there’s more than enough really fun stuff in the various storylines to keep watching. But the first four episodes were a bit overstuffed and frustrating, and we get the feeling that the rest of the season is going to be the same degree of hit and miss.

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.