still on the fence about whether i want to watch the new season of ted lasso, given how much i Did Not Like the s3 ending. In a nutshell, here’s why:
if ted’s s1-s3 arc is the wizard of oz—innocent from kansas travels to a distant land, meets many strange people, fixes a systemic governance issue with the Power of Goodness, then goes home—that makes s4 return to oz and, uh… 😬
seriously, though, one of my big issues with the erstwhile finale is how it failed to say anything meaningful about the concept of “home.” Ted goes “home” at the end meaning back to kansas, but is that home for him? He leaves the community he built, the people whose lives he changed for the better, the place where he grew and changed as a person, to, what? Coach peewee football with a thousand-yard stare that makes the final ten seconds of this feel-good comedy lean uncomfortably into existential horror? Why? Just because it’s back in kansas?
(because that was The Arc and The Plan and one does not deviate, even when what was planned at the beginning no longer makes sense. Probably.)
anyway, that’s not the point. Point is, ted lasso works far better not as dorothy but as mary poppins. Unconventional educator floats in on the wind, pisses off the establishment with kooky methodology, a spot or two of magical realism, and the unshakable refusal to be cowed by conventional beliefs or what others call authority. And then, crucially, when the Job is Done, they fuck off somewhere new to a new job and start again.
all i would have needed to reconcile me to the original arc’s ending is to have ted coaching not peewee but maybe a college soccer team, one that’s losing due to bad management, low morale, etc etc and needs ted’s folksy wisdom and people-first approach to sort them out. That should have been his calling.
which would make this new season not return to oz but mary poppins comes back, the second in the mary poppins book series and a pretty good sequel from what i remember, having read it *cough* number of decades ago. In short, mary poppins returns because the banks family needs her and she goes where she is needed. She doesn’t need to be coaxed back, she just shows up, because she knows where she needs to be and why. Then when her work is done she’s off again. This is the framework that would suit ted best and what the show ought to have leaned into if it wasn’t going to take him through the process of redefining what home means to him, another far more satisfactory way s3 could have ended.
so yeah. Withholding judgement on s4 until i hear more about the vibe of the season and whether it might actually stick a landing this time.
(did i say in a nutshell? lol)
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