What were you expecting, âSuccession?â
âTed Lassoâ ended Wednesday â maybe â with a sweet finale that wrapped up loose ends in tidy little bows. If you were expecting gritty realism, some sort of bitter denouement, boy did you wander into the wrong show by mistake.
SPOILER ALERTS ABOUND. (Not that anyone seems to bother anymore.)
As the penultimate episode foretold, Ted indeed went home to Kansas City to be with his son. But there was business to be taken care of in Richmond first. There was the matter of the match against West Ham for the possibility of winning the Premiere League championship. (Close, but no title.) And then there were the myriad off-the-pitch matters to contend with â matters that have always made up the heart of the show, with football a mere backdrop for the rest.
Some were satisfying, others were not. The showâs biggest mystery remains why so much energy went into turning Nate into some kind of supervillain, and then reversed course and made him good olâ Nate again. Presumably this was to set up the whole second-chance and forgiveness arc (along with the âcan people change?â query in the final episode).
It was a big swing and a bigger miss, and it colors the rest of the season. Although the sap in me did enjoy the team pulling out one of Nateâs early, unorthodox plays to give them the win (one of many callbacks, not the least of which was Tedâs victory dance).
Thatâs just it â to really enjoy âTed Lassoâ you have to be a sap, at least a little. Either you felt moved when all the players brought out scraps of the âBelieveâ sign and put it back together, or you thought it was treacly. The show doesnât leave a lot of room for middle ground.
Never was this more true than when the team sang âSo Long, Farewellâ (the title of the episode) from âThe Sound of Musicâ to Ted and Beard. At least Ted didnât sing âEdelweissâ at the airport.
Roy and Jamie fought over Keeley, who wisely kicked both of them out. (âYou mean I get to choose?â was a great line, even if her incredulity was lost on the two men.) Beard stayed behind. Rebecca sold part of the club to the fans, made a fortune and â deus ex machina alert â ran into her mysterious man at the airport. And Rupert finally made an ass of himself in such a way that he couldnât recover from it.
Itâs hard to overstate how important this show felt when it debuted, in the midst of a global pandemic. It was essential. Its message of hope, of just being a good person and trying to do the right thing, resonated in a way that would have been impossible at any other time in history.
But there it was, right when we needed it.
We changed. The show changed. It happens.
For all that, there were definitely moments that could still make me weepy, even as the show got sloppier with its storytelling, and pulled a little too hard at heartstrings. There werenât any such moments in the finale, though when Ted began his halftime speech to the team with, âI want you all to know what an absolute honor itâs been to be your coach. Getting to work with yâall the last three years has truly been one of the greatest experiences of my lifeâ I thought, eh, maybe. It sure sounded like Sudeikis talking to the cast and crew, not just acting.
It was an ending you could predict a mile away. If it wasnât particularly ambitious, it was comfortable. And making viewers comfortable is what âTed Lassoâ has been about since the start.