"Snooker?" 🎱

Lauren. 33. Writer, disability rights advocate, your friendly neighborhood wine aunt. MAY A SMILE BE YOUR UMBRELLA. WE'VE ALL HAD OUR SOCKS TOSSED AROUND. I'm dead and Kyle MacLachlan killed me (02/12/2015) Brett Goldstein resurrected and then murdered me (23/03/2023 & 14/04/2023) (occasional 18+/NSFW content)

[roamwithahungryheart]

Thinking about all the Casablanca references in 4.01 and how they might tie into the rest of the season, but most importantly the Nora Ephron of it all. Nora Ephron once admitted that she adored the movie. There are two Nora Ephron movies which reference Casablanca; the first by soundtrack only, Sleepless in Seattle, and the second is When Harry Met Sally.

NOW.

'As Time Goes By' is the opening and closing credits theme to Sleepless in Seattle. This is also the movie which includes a character called Dr. Fieldstone. If rumors are true, Dr. Sharon Fieldstone is returning for s4. Sleepless in Seattle also heavily references An Affair to Remember, a transatlantic romance film about two people who start off in separate relationships, strike up a friendship and finally act on the romantic feelings they've been suppressing after a tragedy reunites them. In s3, Ted refers to Sleepless in Seattle as 'the superior Nora Ephron movie'.

In When Harry Met Sally, there's a scene in which Harry and Sally - two people who initially hate each other, then become friends...then fall in love - watch Casablanca together over the phone and debate whether Ilsa should have got on the plane. The thing about that scene is, at the beginning of the movie, Harry and Sally have opposing opinions on Casablanca. In Ted Lasso 4.01, Ted and Rebecca have opposing opinions on Casablanca in a scene where Rebecca is about to board her private jet.

In WHMS, Harry and Sally eventually watch the movie together and both sigh over the ending. They've grown as people and their friendship has blossomed into strong platonic (or so they think) love. Ted and Rebecca are platonic soulmates...or at least, they were. Three years on, we find out that despite Rebecca's repeated attempts to reach out to him, Ted hasn't kept in touch, and while they still clearly get along, they'll have to rebuild their friendship in Richmond. Where will that journey take them by the end of the season? Because there's going to be a New Year's Eve episode in s4...and we all know what happens at New Year's Eve in WHMS.

[emziess]

Jason Sudeikis as Ted Lasso Home, Ted Lasso

[roamwithahungryheart]

They're brothers to me

[roamwithahungryheart]

Not tumblr marking a screenshot of Ted holding a box of Henry's childhood toys as 'mature content' 💀

[roamwithahungryheart]

The only way I will accept s4 ending with a hospital scene is if it's Ted at someone's bedside and not Ted being the one in the hospital bed.

[waddingham]

We want you to coach our women's team. To lay the foundations of the Richmond culture that you created with our men. TED LASSO 4.01

[roamwithahungryheart]

Ted (presumably) jokingly telling his coworker 'I can't go back to prison' and then we literally see him and Beard in prison in the trailer I-

[roamwithahungryheart]

if Ted ends up in hospital in season 4 I'm suing Jason Sudeikis for emotional damages

[roamwithahungryheart]

Fasten your seatbelts, it's time to return to the halcyon days of Lauren's episode analysis posts!

First off, what a mitzvah it is to have Ted Lasso back on our screens in this time of need.

Now, let's get into it.

If you've been following me for a long time, you know the rabbit hole I'm about to go down. As a devoted David Lynch fan, right from the start of the episode, all I could think of was Twin Peaks: The Return. The lighting, the way the grocery store feels like a liminal space, the people Ted encounters...it all felt very Lynchian.

And then there's Ted's neighborhood:

Which immediately made me think of Dougie Jones's neighborhood:

It's the same idyllic, sun-drenched community atmosphere.

Ted's living in a very 1950s, cookie-cutter neigbhbordhood that's the epitome of Modwestern suburbia. And yet. And yet. Much like the classic Lynchian theme of rot beneath the surface of perfection, we see that once the front door closes, Ted isn't as happy as he made out to be. He went out of his way to convince Rebecca, Higgins and Keeley that he was "doin' great and lovin' life", but of course, we knew that wouldn't be the case. He acted like the dad in a 1950s sitcom, but he was masking the whole time, and we see him fend off a panic attack behind closed doors.

He doesn't really care about his job. He's a millionare who doesn't need to work another day in his life, and yet he's taken a part-time job just to feel like he's doing something to help people...before he goes home and has video game marathons with his son and doesn't really have anything exciting to say about his life when he's catching up with one of his former college football players.

In Twin Peaks: The Return, the Agent Cooper we all knew and loved is trapped in the body of a tulpa, Dougie Jones, sleepwalking through a humdrum suburban life with a wife and son and a mundane job in insurance. He's Coop, but he's also not Coop. He exists in an almost catatonic state, and we see glimpses of the real Coop, we see him slowly coming back to himself, encountering small reminders of who he was and still is: the bathroom mirror, cherry pie and coffee...and then he ends up in a self-induced coma before he wakes up fully himself and eager to return to Twin Peaks. To tie another connecting thread to the two, it's like a Wizard of Oz 'Dorothy wakes up' moment.

In Ted Lasso 4.01, Ted is in the same situation in Kansas, sleepwalking through a life he isn't truly himself in. There are constant reminders of his past life: the AFC Richmond scarf he rescues from his mom's yard sale, the fact that he tells his son's coach about "a young fella I used to coach who always used to play in cursive when I needed him to play in print" (we later see a newspaper article - in print - about Jamie on his home office desk), the tea Rebecca gifts him...and the whole AFC Richmond shrine in his home office, which is a totally healthy and well-adjusted thing to have, right?

I think it was entirely intentional that the beeping of the till scanner at the beginning of the episode sounded like a hospital monitor. Rebecca, Keeley and Higgins arrive in Kansas to ask him to return to Richmond, and by the end of the episode, Ted has awoken from his own self-induced coma, ready to go back to the place where he truly thrived and belonged.

[roamwithahungryheart]

Cooking something up to bring back my weekly episode review/analysis posts now that I've had a bit of time to process 4x01. I'm having thoughts and seeing visions and Things™ are connecting 👀

[roamwithahungryheart]

Most beautiful man in all of Kansas (or is it Missouri?)

[roamwithahungryheart]

BILLIONTH WATCH AND I ONLY JUST NOTICED REBECCA GIVES HENRY A DOUBLE THUMBS UP AT HIS GAME I'M GONNA COMMIT ARSON

[roamwithahungryheart]

HELLO BICEPS

[roamwithahungryheart]

I’m still trying to process this: Rebecca was the one who gave the pick biscuit box to Ted and not the other way around?!? It’s been three years!!! She traveled across the ocean with it!!!

SHE FLIPPED THE SCRIPT ON HIM AND I AM UNWELL 😭

[roamwithahungryheart]

HIM!!!!

[roamwithahungryheart]

AND ANOTHER THING - you mean to tell me Rebecca has been in a three year long-distance situationship and she's genuinely happy??? Nope. Absolutely not.

[roamwithahungryheart]

This might be my favorite shot from the whole episode actually.