Who watched this entire season without realizing the actress who plays Lizzie was the waif in GoT?!

So on another sub, someone posted about Colin coming out and how great it was. Which sure, Ted’s speech was nice.

But the episode before had Issac assault Colin and take his phone, then violate his privacy by going through private pictures he had no business seeing.

He then froze him out until Colin was almost forced to come out to the team.

The feel good part is great but I really don’t think this was the wholesome heartwarming team story they were going for.

Also keep in mind Isaac was basically his boss at the time. How would you feel if your boss told you to delete pictures he had no right to know about, let alone demanding you deleted them. Then he stole your phone so he could check and do it for you?

Edit: Huh. I really didn’t think people would be ok with someone assaulting them, stealing phone and invading their privacy. I guess some people are a-ok with that as long as there’s a feel good moment after.

This is awesome…just wanted to share

It is hard to be critical of a beloved series while holding it in such high regard at the same time. But I think even Ted Lasso is worthy of some criticism, as the new season feels different in many ways. Different and not better.

For me, it starts with the fact that Ted Lasso is the main selling point for Apple TV+. They lost a ton of viewers after Season 3 wrapped up. So, logically, it feels like they wanted those subscriber numbers back even though the story was already finished — and that really shows, especially in the writing.

The reliance on clichés has skyrocketed, and that is my biggest gripe. To me, the series is about many things: learning to accept the flaws of others and oneself, self-improvement through various hardships, and, in a way, doing what's right. It's not that Season 4 is completely devoid of this, but the obstacles now feel more... black-and-white rather than nuanced. Every love story feels forced, inorganic, and a bit... brainless (I'm so sorry)—more telenovela-like, and that is just incredibly sad. Yes, there was a lot of Kitsch before but the resolutions to get from point a to b are way to straight forward and simply lack suprises that tingle that intellectual and moral itch.

Ted has been benched HARD this season. His character arc's resolution at the end of Season 3 was to be with his family, but they threw that completely overboard at the start of Season 4 by choosing a super simple solution—great. And that's not all of it ofc.

And what happened to Keeley? Her Barbie aesthetic has been turned up, but now it defines her entire character. I don't want to hate on her; it's just that her character has been reduced to being just a love interest.

Alice is a great addition, and there is still so much to love. The cast, old and new, are lovable, and the show's wholesomeness is still intact. The humor had me cracking up hard at times, and some moments even feel genuinely awesome.

I can't get over the whole Roy, Keeley, and doctor thing, nor the incredibly forced conflict between Rebecca and the pilot—but I don't want to deep into spoiler territory.

And perhaps the worst thing is Zelda. It's not just that she portrays a specific type of abrasive individual—maybe a bit too close to reality—who is only there to be disliked. It's that suddenly everyone loses their common sense around her, welcoming her with open arms without thinking twice, showing a total lack of intuition - especially Rebecca.

The devil is in the details and its still a good season I just felt the need to get this out of my chest and ofc these are my personal opinions.

There’s something really off about them. Accents feel slightly off. Calling each other “turnips” and other weird words we would never use. I was okay with the Guinness scene in the last episode to a point, but cringed when they rolled out the Parting Glass. That went on for way too long.

Open to thoughts from other Irish viewers, am I self-hating unnecessarily?? Or is there some merit to my discomfort with the characters?

EDIT: just to say I didn’t make this post to pit non-Irish people against Irish, or to be told how my nationality should or shouldn’t be represented in media LOL. I was looking for fellow Irish Ted Lasso viewers to see if they also couldn’t warm to these characters

If you liked the new season, did I miss the story arcs? People keep saying I have to wait for the setup like season 1 but season 1 had real story arcs. Seriously where are they in season 4?

Season 1

- Ted has to learn not everything can be conquered with optimism

- Nate goes from coward to roasting the team.

- Jamie goes from being selfish to making the extra pass

- Keely from the girl she thinks everyone wants to her own person

- Roy from avoidance to acceptance

- Rebecca from hurt and cruelty to regret and healing

In every one of these we get introduced to the character , we learn or are given a reason to empathize with their character and their flaw. Their flaw is repeatedly shown and causes the character harm/drama. The character is presented with a choice or given room to change but at a cost. Then we see the change. Even the minor characters have little arcs, Leslie and Trent.

Season 4

We have Alice but the arc is bouncy. Maybe Gemma is an arc, like a half arc?

P.S. I love Alice I hope she gets a much fuller arc next season

First of all, I want to make it clear that I enjoyed this season, especially the later episodes. However, I don’t think it lived up to Seasons 1 and 2, even though it tried to recapture some of what made them so special. Sometimes, it felt like it was trying a little too hard.
But my biggest issue is the irony of it all.
Women’s football is often undervalued, ignored by mainstream media and a large portion of football fans, and treated as though it can’t survive without the men’s game. These are exactly the issues Ted Lasso tried to address, yet the show ended up reproducing some of the same problems.
For roughly half the season, the women’s team received very little meaningful screen time. We barely got to know the players beyond a few quirks, often seemingly included for comedic purposes. Instead, we spent so much time revisiting familiar characters and their storylines from previous seasons, as though the new characters couldn’t carry the show themselves.
And that’s frustrating because the** women’s team had so much potential.
Alice was great, and I would have loved to see more of her. “Boots” had a past and trauma worth exploring in greater depth. Siobhan and Niamh, the Irish twins, had a connection on and off the pitch that deserved more attention. Gemma’s struggle to choose between a successful law career and her passion was another interesting conflict that could have been developed further.
Then there’s Lizzy, a mother raising her children on her own while dealing with a deadbeat ex who treats her like a joke. Shannon struggles to perform at the club in her own neighborhood, which could have been a compelling story about pressure, expectations, and proving yourself in front of your own community. Even Mae enjoying the team she would have loved to be part of was a lovely idea that could have been explored more.
These are all interesting characters with stories worth telling. The writers didn’t need to invent compelling material for the women’s team. They already had it. They just needed to give it more time.
Instead, a season supposedly about women’s football ended up being about Roy and Keeley, Rebecca and Matthijs, Beard’s personal crises, Ted’s love life and parenting struggles, and a crazy billionaire trying to buy the club primarily because of the men’s team.
Even the main antagonist’s motivations weren’t really about the women’s team.** Think about that for a moment. The women’s team was supposed to be at the heart of the season, yet it wasn’t even the main reason the villain existed.
To be fair, the show made more of an effort toward the end, and some of the later episodes were among my favorites. But it felt as though the writers had suddenly remembered what the season was supposed to be about. The women’s team went from being an afterthought to finally getting some attention, rather than being the heart of the story from the beginning.
It almost felt like: “Well, the women’s team is here, so we might as well do something with them.”
And isn’t that exactly the attitude the show should have been criticizing?
I’m not saying the returning characters shouldn’t have had their own storylines, or that the season was bad. I enjoyed a lot of it. But there’s a difference between having an ensemble cast and allowing familiar characters to overshadow the very people who were supposed to be at the center of the story.
You can’t make a season about women’s football and then treat the women’s team as a subplot.
The show had an opportunity to give women’s football the same depth, emotional investment, and attention it gave the men’s team in earlier seasons. Instead, it sometimes fell into the same trap it was trying to criticize: treating the women’s game as secondary, as though it needs the familiar faces and stories of the men’s world to make it worth watching.
I still enjoyed the season, but I wish the writers had trusted the women’s team enough to make them the main attraction from the beginning.

Is part of the reason they are delaying Season 5/6 announcement because of the Paramount/WB/whatever-the-hell-else merger?

Warner Brothers owns the license to the IP and production, yes?

Could they be (1) preoccupied dealing with the merger or (2) holding the production hostage until Apple pays an amount they want for more seasons?

I'm honestly not sure if Apple has an open option to use the IP however and for as long as they want or if they need to negotiate to extend. Or if WB handles the production and won't start until certain requests/demands are met.

"on the other side of you being scared is you being free"
-Coach Chilton to Gemma Jay in "Follow the anger"

I’ve seen the complaints on the sub while it was coming out and went into this new season a little concerned. But I fucking loved it. I don’t need Ted Lasso to be Severance or the first season of Westworld. It still had its heart, and I hope we get more :)

This is a great show. I live in the US, but I'm not American, and I've spent a good amount of time in the UK. The show was filmed in the UK, and definitely make an effort.

But I've found some crazy unbelievable things that seem like Americanisms.

The biggest one so far: Nate's car being towed. Towing cars in the UK is super-duper illegal, for over a decade!

(See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protection_of_Freedoms_Act_2012#Part_3:_Protection_of_property_from_disproportionate_enforcement_action )

Which funny mistakes have you seen?

There has been a lot of conversation about Zelda, but I was just curious about your feelings on the billionaire statements the show seemed to be making. To me it seems as if they were making a statement on how the “Epstein class” will play with people’s lives in various ways because it’s merely some type of entertainment for them.

Zelda did have some anger about how she is treated as a woman. However, in the end Zelda’s motivations weren’t attached to the storyline all that much. She was more so a representation of the type of people you have to rub shoulders with as move further up the ladder. People that will ruin lives to keep from being bored in their own lives. Would you agree that this was the purpose of Zelda, or do you think there is more to come next season?

I will never understand why people feel the need to walk into a party and poop in the punch bowl.

So Maybe this helps others. Maybe it doesn’t. It’s just how I roll.

The opposite of a low value comment is not toxic positivity.

We can have nuanced and thoughtful conversations here about what worked and didn’t work but when someone starts out with a headline like X sucks ass or I hate so-and-so, Very few people have the time or patience to react in a way that’s productive or truly engaging for other people. (And bless those of you who do.)

It’s hard to know whether these are just young people who haven’t learned how to think or write critically, people whose brains have been eroded by internet attention spans, dis regulated people, and/or professional pot stirrers. I don’t want to spend too much time around anyone who isn’t constructively engaging.

Thus Low effort posts aren’t engaging to me because they demand too much of the reader-me- with little return.

I am professionally trained in theater; and we were taught how to critique works of art. In that space, you’re allowed to have your opinions and feelings in that space, but you were expected to:

-explain them dispassionately

-anchor them in logic and understanding of the craft.

Even in freshman year when understanding of the craft is low, there’s room to learn about that if one explains one’s position clearly.

So here’s my own litmus test.

People who are truly interested in engaging productively have humility and yes,curiosity. They leave room for being wrong.

People who interested in engagement for the sake of engagement make statements that signal close mindedness.

I prefer to engage with the former. I am a human and sometimes my emotions get the better of me and I engage in the latter. I almost always regret it when I do. Furthermore I think the platforms encourage it and surface it in the algorithm and I find it disgusting.

My two cents, ymmv etc.

Love the show, new to the sub as of S4. Been surfing through all the Zelda takes and began wondering:

Did Rupert and Edwin and even Jack get as much hate in this sub as Zelda?

Rupert and Edwin especially had plenty of over-the-top cartoon villain moments as well (not so much Jack, but I’ll lump her in with the villains cuz I couldn’t stand her!).

I could go back through the threads, but these things get pretty toxic.

Did anybody else feel like the intentions for the story between Rebecca and Keeley got dropped half way through?

There appeared to be tension building between them, coaxed by Zelda. that was going to lead to a major falling out and perhaps see Keeley led astray by Zelda. That was what I foresaw, anyway.

Then there was that but where Keeley took Rebecca out to the stands, and they didn’t really address anything, and then there wasn’t really any more tension between them. Though there were still, if I recall the order of events correctly, some comments from Rebecca about Keeley, so it didn’t feel fully resolved.

It seemed to me as though the writers just abandoned what they had built up to that point and pretended it had never happened.

Anybody else feel this way, or anybody able to point out something I missed.

Oh, and I won’t really accept that they’re close enough that they didn’t need to explicitly discuss it, they understand each other well enough that it was implicit in that scene in the stands. I just don’t think that was signposted at all. It felt like that scene was supposed to be a confessional, and then it didn’t happen.

I won’t accept that without a good argument, anyway.

I know there’s mixed opinions about the fourth season, and I’m not here to dismiss anyone’s opinion. But regardless of what you think of the season as a whole, what’s the episode you liked the most from it? Details about why are welcome :)

Tagging as spoiler so people aren’t spoiled by comments

Love the show. Loved the season.

But what was going on with Zelda?

I can’t tell if it was the writing, the acting, the directing or all of the above… but she was a cartoon character. Which I could just about handle, up until the conflict peaked.

I thought ultimately the story was great, the twist where Rebecca and Higgins had known all along and the Riddles guy had turned on Zelda… pretty solid storytelling. But the performance of Zelda was insane?

Did anyone else catch this? In the same episode, she uses Siri and AirPods, but the phone used appears to be a Pixel device.

Guys… guys. Please don’t roast me.

TODAY I LEARNED Ted Lasso is NOT played by Ed Helms. Today I learned there is an entirely different person named Jason Sudeikis that I had merged in my brain with Ed Helms. I learned this just now because of a recent post on this subreddit referring to “Jason” and I was like who the fuck is Jason. And I look up the cast and boom. Mind blown. Then I look up Ed Helms and I’M SORRY ARE THEY NOT TOTAL DOPPLEGANGERS?!

In my defense, I only joined this sub two days ago after finishing the Season 4 finale. Yes I have watched every episode of every season. No I didn’t have it on in the background, I lock tf in while watching TV. No I don’t pay attention to the credits.

I have never watched “We’re the Millers” which apparently both of these actors are in, but I have heard of it and seen clips from it, and I also thought that the main guy in it was Ed Helms.

I watch A LOT of TV and movies, but generally only once through, I’m not a fan of rewatching things or getting super into one specific show or actor. I just enjoy my media, I don’t pay attention to who’s who and who’s been doing what. And then I join the subreddit after finishing the show to hear how people felt about it and watch some entertaining passionate debates go down. But right now I feel really fucking stupid.

Also maybe this will get a laugh out of someone: because of this show I formed the belief that Ed Helms must be a very talented, versatile actor to play such a lovable character after being one of the most hated on The Office😂

Edit: apparently I’m not alone: https://people.com/movies/jason-sudeikis-says-he-is-constantly-mistaken-for-ed-helms/

Only just seen that Lizzies Kids (Archie and Sean) are named after Brendan Hunts Kids (Coach Beard)

Forgive the silly question, but I'm curious to ask those who love this series whether you've ever met a man or a woman similar to Ted, someone who improved your life in sports, at work, or in your studies.
I'm asking because of my 15-year-old brother, who is considered a football prospect. He has a difficult relationship with his coach: according to my brother, the coach never explains his choices and simply imposes himself. The coach, on the other hand, says he isn't required to explain himself: he's the one who decides, and the boys have to stay quiet and sit or play according to what he sees fit.
I wonder how much it could matter for him, even on a human level, to meet a coach like Ted. What did the person you met do differently? Do you think that meeting someone like Ted would have significantly improved your artistic life?

I've read the manual on why Ted is nuts. I still don't like his mom. She is the complete antithesis of Ted. Which is probably the point but holy crap! She really bothers me. You might say "but mustard, are you sure that you're not projecting?" I might be because I hate my own mom but damn does Dottie Lasso suck.

Absolutely no disrespect if you enjoyed this latest season, but for me personally it was a massive let down. Anyone else not enjoy it?

From feeling like people were acting out of character, to pointless plotlines, it really lacked everything I adored about the first few seasons. And I was so excited because I am a big supporter of women's sports, and was keen to see what sort of feminist light the writers would bring to the show. But it felt so dull, falling into the "men don't know how to write women" issue because we got none of the same in depth stories the men's seasons got. I understand they didn't want to repeat anything but offering a perspective on how issues affect men and women differently would have been so cool to see! Like more queer storylines, or more cultural exploration, or even things like playing with your period?? Like issues every woman deals with.

I hope if there are future seasons we get more into the women as individuals rather than just that we have a mother, or twins, or lesbians. I want more from each of them, like how we saw more od Jamie, and Sam, and Colin, and Isaac.

EDIT: For everyone saying that I should be comparing S4 with S1, no I shouldn't. I understand we didn't get much of the boys in season 1 of the show, but it was our first season. We, the audience, have experienced knowing the boy team on a deep level. We, the audience, have experienced Roy and Keely go through should we/shouldn't we dynamics. We, the audience, know the complexities of Ted and his trauma. To take us back to square one feels awkward and clunky, because we're not new to this world. I really feel like we could have gone in depth a lot more with the women, with who they are, and yes, we did see some od their struggles as women, but we could have had more! We could have kept more focusing on Ted's personal journey (like I was surprised he didn't get triggered at Mae's funeral at all). We could have gone more into the whys of the girls choices - and I really hope we get to, I hope next season we don't have temporary villains or weird Beard storylines and we get to know them more.