Ted Lasso’s longest episode yet – clocking in at a whopping 69 minutes – sees AFC Richmond hit the road in order to face Manchester City away, but Ted’s focus is once again split between football and thoughts of home when his mother, Dottie, chooses to make a surprise visit. Read on for our discussion of Ted Lasso season 3, episode 11, ‘Mom City.’

Two episodes of Ted Lasso left, and with only two matches of the season left to play, we find that after an incredible 15-game winning streak, Richmond are in second place on the league title, trailing Manchester City by only four points. In football language, that means that this episode’s match is one they must win in order to have a shot at the Premier League title. If City win, or even draw, they’ll cinch the trophy early, on this very weekend, but if Richmond can prevent City from widening the points gap, then it’ll all come down to the final day, and the results of the two teams’ respective last games.

Most of the Richmond faithful seem to be feeling good, if a bit gobsmacked, about their chances – even Roy Kent, who has settled comfortably into press conference duty as he advocates for his players – but the team’s resident Mancunian is feeling the pressure. The prospect of Jamie’s return to his boyhood club for the first time since walking out on them looms heavily on the horizon – Richmond faced Manchester City in season 2, of course, but it was at Wembley, neutral ground, as opposed to the Etihad, in front of City’s passionate home crowd. Despite being recently named Premier League Player of the Month, and leading the entire league in assists, Jamie appears listless, insular, insecure, and teetering on the edge of a full depressive episode, and all it takes is a little of Roy’s gruff concern to send him over the edge into a full sobbing meltdown.

When Roy recruits Keeley in his plan to try and figure out how to help Jamie, her efforts to uplift him only serve to increase the pressure, and when they catch him sneaking out of the hotel, they follow him through the streets of Manchester and into a rougher part of town. A frustrated Jamie catches them in the act, blows off their concern that he’s up to no good, and allows them to accompany him to his actual destination – his mother’s house on his old council estate. Jamie’s mother, Georgie, is all that you’d imagine her to be and more – youthful, nurturing, and absolutely obsessed with her child – and the reveal of Jamie’s warm, loving step-father Simon is a welcome surprise that adds to the vivid mental picture of what made Jamie Tartt who he is today.

Related: Phil Dunster of ‘Ted Lasso’ delivered one of 2021’s greatest TV performances, and Emmy voters need to remember that

As Simon gives the others the tour (culminating in Jamie’s childhood room, where the posters of Jamie’s childhood hero – Roy himself – and teen fantasy – Keeley herself – both still hang) Jamie shares with his mother that not hearing from his abusive father in the lead up to this game has left him feeling unable to really recognise himself, or to reach the level of drive he once felt – spite being a powerful motivator, after all. It’s clear that the relationship between Jamie and Georgie is extraordinarily close – he shares everything he feels with her, and displays no shame about curling up in her lap like a little boy, even in front of Roy and Keeley. She has all the right things to say, doesn’t hold back her own feelings, and supports him unconditionally. For all his other flaws, Jamie’s always been the opposite of emotionally repressed, and his innate self-assurance clearly comes from being raised by a woman like this.

“Mom City” was also one of Ted Lasso’s strongest footballing episodes – with filming taking place at the Etihad itself and a cameo from real life Man City manager Pep Guardiola, it was a true joy to see Jamie return to his boyhood club and eventually win over the Manchester crowd, with his talent and attitude reminding them that he’s still one of their own. Richmond does win the match, and the show’s inclusion of things like Jamie choosing not to celebrate a goal against his beloved former club, and Pep, his old manager, hugging him as he came off injured, all add to the mix. The episode – and Jamie’s entire arc – is stronger if you understand how deep a real footballer’s relationship with his former club can be. Because Man City may be a worthy adversary, but they were never the enemy, in Ted Lasso. It’s easy to conflate the concept of the club with the concept of Jamie’s father, but “Mom City” finally unpicks the two for all to see – it’s evident Jamie loves the club itself, and probably has done since he was younger than the boys we see harassing him on his estate. City was something that his father ruined for him. But now, he’s rekindled that relationship on his own terms.

The choice to have Ted push Jamie to forgive James is a questionable one, to be sure, and the reveal that the abusive man is now in a rehab clinic, tearfully supporting his son’s success, does not land as fulfillingly as the show perhaps wants it to. Rather, it frames Georgie’s advice to her son – that his father is never going to change – as wrong, and “proves” Ted’s touchline pep talk was the correct, final answer to the question of Jamie’s father. It doesn’t feel particularly like the right call, but at this point, what can you do? Forgiveness without the wrongdoer having already done the work is a strong theme of the episode, and perhaps there’s something in that after all, as Nate’s lack of an actual redemption arc involving the people he’s wronged becomes almost a non-issue when we learn of Beard’s Les Mis-like history with Ted. It seems that the message Ted Lasso is going for is simply to forgive those people who possibly do not yet deserve it, and give them the chance to learn and grow retroactively, once they’re elevated back to a better place in life, with more support.

Ted Lasso, of course, also wishes to juxtapose the close and open relationship between Jamie and Georgie with the rather more unhealthy one between Ted and Dottie. Given the title, “Mom City,” who could be surprised? This is the show that gave us the unforgettable quote: “I love meeting people’s moms. It’s like reading an instruction manual as to why they’re nuts,” and boy, does Dottie Lasso deliver. Dottie is a bright personality, to be sure, just like Ted. Quick to disarm with a joke, quick to embellish a story for a captive audience, quick to deflect any notions of negativity, everyone who meets her finds her delightful, and Ted becomes the straight-man to her clown. He’s deeply frustrated by both her presence and her behaviour, especially as the circumstances are so erratic – she’d been in London for a week without telling him – and as she pretends like everything is fun and normal, he gets more and more wound up about it.

Ted’s experiences with therapy have left him more self-aware about his own behaviour, making it hard for him to deal with the way Dottie tentatively enquires about his mental health journey, and quickly dismisses the idea of therapy for herself. After returning from Manchester, the tension between the pair comes to a head when Ted confronts his mother about why she really came to England and what she’s actually got on her mind. He airs his grievances about her lack of emotional availability after his father died, how the little cheerful things she did for fun did not make up for the lack of real support or processing of trauma – all the things that led to Ted becoming the repressed person we met in the show’s pilot, who uses jokes and aggressive optimism to shield himself from more difficult emotions.

In turn, Dottie does share her real thoughts on Ted’s situation – that his son misses him, implying that he should come back to America – and once Ted has his own breakdown in his mother’s arms, about the all parenting fears he’s been carrying and the emotional distance he’s seemingly intentionally been putting between himself and his son, it’s clearer than ever that the inevitable will happen in order to close out the show’s planned three season arc. It’s time for Ted to go home, and the episode ends on a cliffhanger-that-isn’t-really-a-cliffhanger, the moment that Ted is about to share this news with Rebecca, at their annual bombshell meeting. With Nate’s impending return and Ted’s impending departure, the desperately unclear relationship statuses within the Roy-Jamie-Keeley love triangle, the fact that Rupert Mannion’s ex-wives seem to have unionised, and the small matter of the league title, there’ll be all to play for in next week’s season finale. Until then, catch up with our Ted Lasso conversation reviews so far and read on as we break down every detail of ‘Mom City.’

‘Ted Lasso’ season 3, episode 11 review in conversation

Natalie: So. I truly baulked when I saw the runtime of episode 11, “Mom City.” This is an unreasonable length for a TV episode. It’s not right. Luckily, it is also my favourite episode ever, and I wouldn’t make any cuts to the most important bits. So they can have their fucking HOUR AND NINE MINUTES in exchange for PEP LASSO.

Megan: Yeah if any of those minutes had been dedicated to Ted giving a speech about shitting dip, I might have been more angry. But. PEP LASSO.

Natalie: I cannot BELIEVE they did it.

Megan: This episode surpassed all my wildest dreams and expectations. Well, maybe not all of them. But SO MANY OF THEM. I don’t know how to be normal about any of it.

Natalie: I wanted it so much, but it seemed like an unreasonable thing to expect. But GOD. The things I have seen. It’s like they saw all my desires for Jamie’s life – his deep childhood love for Man City that wasn’t totally tarnished by his dad, a cameo and display of affection from Pep even though Pep is not a fucking actor…

Megan: Can we give Pep an Emmy? Like, for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy?

Natalie: His mum being an amazing person he is close with, the poster on his wall, Roy and Keeley looking after him… And they said you know what? You can have all that, and you can also have a really sweet loving stepdad who’s been around for most of his life. You can have a level of Mummy’s Boy-ism that is beyond anything you’d ever imagined. You can have Jamie – despite first getting booed – getting a loving ovation from the home crowd at the Etihad which makes him cry, and proving his own love back to City by refusing to do a goal celebration. You can have his version of “acting out” being a hilarious crying meltdown in Roy’s arms, and you can have him NOT be forced to deal with his father in another traumatic confrontation, only worry over the idea of him. Also, you can have the whole Roy poster thing stated to be the only one Jamie always kept, among other players – that he really was as big a hero in Jamie’s life as you’d imagined and wanted him to be. And you can also have it juxtaposed with one of Keeley’s old glamour model posters, meaning he was obsessed with BOTH of these people before he met them and stared up at them both from his bed every night until he left home. You can have all those things, and then you can have an extremely suggestible moment that may legitimately imply that something Went Down between the three of them the night before the match. Oh, and by the way, you can also have Roy Kent immediately entranced by Jamie’s mother in a way that might be psychosexual or might just be a yearning for that kind of love when seeing that Jamie grew up absolutely smothered in love at home, because Roy grew up in a billet or a dorm in Sunderland.

Megan: Maybe both? A little of column A, a little of column B, either way are both excellent options.

Natalie: Just, like the stepdad, a delightful wildcard. But what a fucking moment for little Jamie Tartt.

Megan: This episode is ridiculous, and when you list it all out like that… What the fuck. Alright Ted Lasso, you got a bit wobbly for me in the middle there, but this? Fucking hell. Simon is wonderful, we love Simon. Good job Simon.

Natalie: I mean I think you have to have a deep level of Jamie Tartt brain disease to really be as into all this as we are, but Simon! The implications of Simon are amazing. Okay. We have to go back to the beginning though. Because they really just… Wow. Congratulations, fellow Jamie enjoyers. This went above and beyond even my hopes and expectations, and they were fucking high.

Megan: You are in for a treat. What I am getting here is that the more worried you are ahead of an episode, the more perfect it will be. So even if you’re not worried about next week, please work yourself into a worried frenzy ASAP.

Natalie: I will do my best. So the first scene involving Jamie and Roy also included Sam! What a delight for them to all be doing pre-match press. And the promo photo wasn’t anything like what we expected, though Roy’s shock is so valid.

Megan: Yes! I was surprised and delighted to see Sam there! The scenario was right, in that it was a pre-match presser. And sidenote: love that Roy is doing more of those now. Really sets up my preferred future for Roy’s career at Richmond nicely.

Natalie: With only two matches left, Richmond are 4 points behind Man City, which means that if City won or even drew this weekend against Richmond, they’d cinch the title overall – Richmond wouldn’t have the chance to gain back enough with only 3 more points on the plate after that. But if Richmond won, then they’d be 1 point behind City, and the very last match of the season would define the winner.

Megan: I have to say I’m glad the current real life Premier League is wrapped up now. I couldn’t cope with real life football stress AND fictional football stress.

Natalie: For the record, given that they did win this week – in the final game next week, for Richmond to win the title, they need to win their match and City needs to draw or lose against whoever they play.

Megan: I can’t believe I’m rooting against City, but I am. Sorry Pep. Forgive me.

Natalie: There is also a circumstance where City lose again and stay on 76, and Richmond only get a draw, meaning they’re also on 76, and it would come down to goal difference. The season 1 finale also involved a relegation battle that included goal difference, so I’m not putting it past them, because Ted Lasso has always had some focus on draws (or ties) and how Ted feels about them. So if they won the league by getting a tie, that could be interesting. But listen! Even if City win the title, Richmond are guaranteed Champions League entrants! They are going to Europe next season. Roy and Jamie can tour so many other places together.

Megan: That is HUGE. To go from relegation and promotion to the Champions League in one season? Unheard of. Jamie can teach Roy something new in every city.

Natalie: Given that Ted Lasso hasn’t spelled out that significance at all, we seem to have missed the week where they would have qualified? But they must have, if the title is this close. I don’t think getting into the UCL will be taken by the audience as Richmond’s “big win,” but really, they’d celebrate this! It’s an amazingly big deal for them, whenever that place was confirmed. Sam’s very excited about Richmond’s success, rightly. Jamie… less so. Poor angel. Apparently for him, impotence of the soul means a complete and utter removal of any kind of healthy pride. Despite being Premier League Player of the Month! My baby! And leading the league in assists! Roy and Sam are so horrified.

Megan: I wasn’t entirely sure where they were going with this. I thought maybe the pressure was getting to him? Like, he knew how much he was doing to drive the team, he’d won these awards, they were so close to winning the league, but then they had City and his dad coming up and he was just too overwhelmed. But I really was very confused and concerned. However, Roy immediately responding to Jamie’s self deprecation with praise was very, very good for me. For Roy, that was extremely effusive.

Natalie: It was all done quite comedically, but the poor boy. The media, and the fans who’ll see this video, must think he’s gone mental. The core issue seems to be that he’s unwilling to accept praise or treat himself as important or special, even when he’s being so important and so special. He is trying to minimise himself while also feeling a lot of pressure to carry the team forward. He’s out of whack in terms of recognising his contributions vs the credit he can take for them.

Megan: Yeah. I honestly think maybe he’s just exhausted! He’s had a very long season of like, pushing the team, of being there for Roy, of being there for Keeley.

Natalie: And also, consciously or subconsciously, he is freaked out about City.

Megan: Yeah, he’s so burnt out and then knowing City is just up ahead – it’s all too much for him. So we get this hilarious, but concerning, breakdown.

Natalie: He is truly the baby boy of my life. And Roy’s.

Megan: Roy jumping in to end the press conference – with zero swearing! – before Jamie says something else that sends Football Twitter into a meltdown? Definitely protecting his baby boy.

Natalie: He handles this so well, actually. Again, it’s all very funny, with Jamie apologising for accidentally scoring a goal and saying it should be struck from the records. Apologising to the kids. Sam and Roy just looking at each other like “What… the fuck…. is going on?” Both of them trying to big him up and speak about his achievements when he won’t, and the Roy finally just being like “Yeah, I am getting him the fuck out of here.”

Megan: Everyone in that room is extremely confused, including Jamie.

Natalie: I wonder if the audience was confused by Van Damme’s magic mask. Nice touch to include it, though. I can’t tell if the clear is weirder than the usual black.

Megan: Yeah, I enjoyed the fact that a) there was a nice bit of continuity from last episode in the form of Van Damme’s traumatic international break and b) the football realism of making them wear masks to protect their face rather than, I don’t know, benching them until such time as they can play without a mask and not risk death.

Natalie: We saw this most prominently, recently, with Son Heung-Min at the World Cup after he was recovering from, what was it, a shattered eye socket?

Megan: Yeah a fractured eye socket that needed surgery to fix. Poor boy.

Natalie: I feel like a goalie has even more risks of facial trauma than other players! Well, Van Damme seems very bitter about his nose. Dani is still oblivious.

Megan: He’s so happy with his kebab, waving to his good friend Thierry, who he has nothing but love for.

Natalie: Another amazing dressing room scene, and another Richard corker.

Megan: He doesn’t get many lines, Richard, but every single line slaps. I agree with Jamie, I think it’s more important to be safe than look cool, but clearly this is a very concerning comment for everyone else.

Natalie: Yeah, and not wanting to tease someone? These are signs that something is very wrong with Jamie, according to Roy, who uses his love language to call him into the boot room.

Megan: It did look like Roy actually did a quick glance around the room before starting, this time! They’re finally learning to look for William.

Natalie: He certainly did. I really wasn’t expecting a Comedy Crying scene from Jamie in this episode – I figured we would deal with some serious issues for him, and we do, but this isn’t like the events of “Man City.” This time, when Roy holds Jamie while he cries, it is hysterical, in all senses of the word. The combination of the comedy levels of face scrunching and wailing, and how Phil Dunster plays it so seriously for Jamie, talking about the Sisyphus Red Bull advert… Like, Jamie is so serious about not conditioning his hair! But honestly, the way he just starts having a meltdown and is yelping “I don’t know, I don’t know!” actually felt very real among the silliness. Like, this is funny to watch, but it’s clearly actually a big issue and I’ve had periods of time when I’d get set off sobbing from nothing too. Sometimes actually laughing then sobbing, like start laughing then start crying – not like hahaha crying, a full transition from one extreme to another.

Megan: I agree! When you’re so stressed and so exhausted and you don’t know why and you don’t know what to do and then someone yells at you – even if Roy is doing it in a love language way – and the only reaction is hysterics. It was very funny, but I got it. The way his face starts wobbling, and then physically shaking out his hands and spinning on the spot. Just nervous energy and he doesn’t know what to do with it, so it’s this.

Natalie: He’s got some issues going on and he’s tired and not feeling well and the things he’s feeling aren’t even really things he’s identified. It would be the subconscious stress of this match coming up and also the league season ending, and maybe even what will happen next for him. There’s too much. And like, thank God for Roy holding him through it or not saying any stupid shit or flinching or anything. Even when he asks “What’s wrong with you,” it’s not scathing. He is shocked, but not like, judging. He was judging Jamie’s lack of fire when they came in, but he pivots to deeply concerned. Jamie’s so serious about the Red Bull ad. Roy is trying very hard to be good to him here.

Megan: Yes! Roy is way out of his depth, but he rolls with it!

Natalie: Just nodding along and petting him.

Megan: He didn’t shove Jamie away for coming at him too fast and then squishing his face.

Natalie: I feel like Phil must have absolutely murdered Brett in this event. Like Brett would not have coped.

Megan: Nat, I cannot begin to imagine that.

Natalie: Probably took 50 takes. Maybe 500. That’s why the season was so late. They were trying to get this scene. For months.

Megan: If we get no other bloopers, this is the one I need. How many insane things did Phil do, physically, to make Brett laugh?

Natalie: The face squashing especially. Was that part scripted or did they just go insane? He literally pushes his thumb into Brett’s mouth.

Megan: I just feel like the physical stuff was probably a lot of improv from Phil, and a lot of Brett standing there trying his hardest not to die.

Natalie: Look. I loved this, but I feel like if this is the one big hug we are getting, we could have got a less farcical one too, for Jamie’s call up last week? But maybe more are to come. Jamie gets SO many cuddles in this episode.

Megan: Yeah I would have liked something a bit more tender, but there were other tender moments this episode. So I’ll let it slide.

Natalie: Even though this was a joke, it is still meaningful and tender that Jamie feels so safe and open, and basically demands Roy’s affection when he needs it.

Megan: Yes! He’s not putting on any kind of front, and he knows that Roy isn’t going to get angry at Jamie for squeezing the shit out of Roy’s face!

Natalie: If you compare it to the last time we saw Jamie try to hug Roy in the boot room… He knew he wasn’t going to get pushed away this time, LOL.

Megan: No, haha.

Natalie: It strengthens the idea for me that they hug a lot in day-to-day life, at the matches and stuff. This can’t be their First Big Hug since the last one. It just didn’t happen onscreen for us.

Megan: Yeah they must be very comfortable now with classic match-day affection and the like. I wish we had gotten to see more of it, but I like knowing it must exist.

Natalie: I think Jamie felt open about this because he knows Roy is his person, but also because he was at a high level of derangement.

Megan: He is at breaking point, and Roy yelling at him (lovingly) was the final straw.

Natalie: He’s been bottling it up for a while. He’s just a baby. And it is relatable honestly, like the intangible feeling of wrongness that can sometimes happen when knowing something is looming but not being directly actually upset about it. Just feeling frazzled and anxious and moody, and I loved that he was honest about not really knowing what was up with him.

Megan: Yep, and I think not knowing is what makes the physical reaction seem so realistic. He doesn’t know what’s wrong or how to fix it and it’s just translating into such a weird explosive outburst.

Natalie: Which Will catches the tail end of.

Megan: That was just the icing on the cake. Roy’s “You missed a good one” made me shriek, and Will looked so angry to have missed it.

Natalie: Will being like “Dammit!” killed me! The acknowledgement that Will is known to love lurking… Roy’s kind of nosy too, maybe he gets the appeal. How often do Roy and Jamie come in here to talk? Or Roy and Isaac? Or whoever else? We know it’s like a thing, but it really is a Thing.

Megan: I get the impression it happens a lot. Will’s going to have to get better at stealthily hiding himself in there though, if Roy is going to start looking before speaking.

Natalie: Maybe Roy will see him, nod at him, and allow him to stay. Sometimes Will has good advice.

Megan: And maybe one day somebody will want some bubblegum.

Natalie: Jamie often chews gum. Maybe Will is his dealer.

Megan: Hah! Yes actually, I bet Will carries gum around to give to the players.

Natalie: Anyway, I’m absolutely obsessed with the fact this is happening with Roy and Jamie. Like, that’s HIS fragile little bitch, thank you very much. In seriousness, isn’t it absolutely fucking fantastic that Roy isn’t using that kind of language anymore to describe Jamie’s, well, fragility, either to himself or to others? His assessment earlier in the season wasn’t exactly wrong, it was just a mean way of putting it. But he cares about that Precious Moment and is willing to be gentle for him.

Megan: Yeah, he is taking it very seriously. He’s genuinely very concerned about his little figurine. I really loved that, the whole way through. Like, it’s played for laughs to a certain extent for the audience, but none of the characters are laughing about it.

Natalie: And Will catches a glimpse of Jamie in tears. Which means he knows more than Ted does.

Megan: I feel like kit men are the holders of all the best club gossip. They could bring a club down, if they wanted to.

Natalie: I found it interesting that Roy went out to seek help about Jamie without telling Ted that there’s something wrong with Jamie. Is it that he doesn’t want Ted meddling or something? If he wanted Ted to talk to Jamie or to encourage him, he probably would have asked Ted, but it seems he does not want to share Jamie’s feelings with Ted, or maybe even let on about the level of friendship they have? I just found it interesting that he was like “None of your business,” when it’s to do with the star player that they’re all depending on. I’m not mad about it, because Jamie isn’t Ted’s player, he’s Roy’s, at the end of the day, and I’m a little iffy on the small Ted and Jamie scene that comes later anyway, so I’m glad he wasn’t brought in on it. But it felt to me like Roy didn’t tackle it as a coaching moment. He just wanted to look after his friend.

Megan: Yeah I think… Roy and Jamie are just closer, right? I think they get each other. I also think Roy is clearly very concerned, and maybe doesn’t trust Ted to handle it in the right way. He doesn’t want Ted to try and, at worst, bench Jamie, or try and do a three minute speech full of metaphors about some American sports team. And he also likely wants to respect Jamie’s privacy, hence the “none of your business.”

Natalie: I love him for it, honestly.

Megan: Same. It’s also just a very good episode for hints that Roy would do a good job taking over in the future. The press conference, showing concern over a player – although it is a bit personal with Jamie, LOL – and some bits later. It’s very good for me and my future Roy wishes.

Natalie: He chooses instead to connect with Keeley about Jamie, and – we learn this more concretely over the course of the episode – it turns they are not together. It seems like the sex was a one off. Weeks have passed since then and they are just friends. I had a strong feeling last week that they wouldn’t launch into Happy Dating after the hook up, but what did you make of these vibes? Plus Barbara, of course.

Megan: Barbara was of course perfect from start to finish, and I could watch her and Roy interact for hours. Roy starting his sentence with “We need to talk” and Keeley immediately looking panicked did make me think they maybe WERE back together, because it felt like Keeley thought he was about to break up with her again, but I think it was more just that the two of them are in this kind of careful friend place and not 100% certain about each other. Obviously as the episode progresses you get more clarity on where both of them stand, but at this moment I wasn’t fully sure. But I love how happy Keeley is when she discovers Roy wants her help with Jamie. I think she is very proud at this moment, and honestly this, way more than being told how nice she looks, is what I think would get her wanting to date Roy again. Seeing his growth and love for Jamie.

Natalie: She definitely looks happier about what he says about Jamie than what he says about her looking nice, to a noticeable degree. Like it is a grin and then face-fall moment. It stood out. I actually do not think Keeley wants to date Roy, or at least not in this current configuration. More on that later. But it really stood out to me, the way she looks when he asks her about Jamie vs the compliment.

Megan: Yeah, whatever is going on there, she doesn’t want to jump back into a relationship with him, but she is SO pleased and proud that Roy wants to help Jamie. And then Babs being so flattered by his compliment, whilst loudly eating an apple. I really, really love how much more relaxed Barbara is here. I think, outside of the Juicy tracksuit, this is the first time we’ve seen her without a blazer. She’s so relaxed.

Natalie: I would also brag about my cheap second-hand shopping.

Megan: Yeah, look, you and Babs are honestly eerily similar. You love a good charity shop find.

Natalie: I also liked the fact they’re working together in the middle of the space. I suspected it would be like that, not weird office silos.

Megan: Yeah, if it’s just the two of them, it makes way more sense, and I think it means they’ll be so much more collaborative.

Natalie: All the better to be on the lookout for pipe people. Now we just need Barbara and Jamie to meet.

Megan: Oh god. I can’t… I think they would get on PERFECTLY.

Natalie: Keeley’s next birthday party will be a weird mix.

Megan: Can Simon and Georgie come too?

Natalie: Yes. Phoebe, Dr Sullivan, Rebecca, Sassy, Jamie and Roy, Jamie’s parents, Babs. I’m sure she has other friends, but that’s my starter list. She would probably invite Ted too. She could hold it at her new friend Maybe’s pub.

Megan: Some of the himbos can come. Leslie! I’d like to be invited – I’d like to watch Roy watch Jamie and Georgie.

Natalie: He’s so entranced. But before that… Keeley and Roy teaming up to fix their boy can be something so personal. Richmond are still apparently driving their bus to aways, and now Rebecca is going to ride with them! That’s fun. But poor Jamie. He’s not doing too well with the fans, at the seeing off.

Megan: He is not. Taking himself out of the photo with the fans because I guess he thinks he looks shit? Accepting a high five to the face. All while Roy and Keeley watch in concern.

Natalie: I don’t think it’s because he thinks he looks like shit – I think it’s because he is totally devaluing himself, like in the presser. That he is unimportant. “Why would you want a pic with me? I can take a nice one of you!”

Megan: Yeah, it’s like he thinks he brings the picture down, he’s not adding anything to it. I really really did not expect this to be Jamie’s issue, a complete lack of self confidence and self worth. But it does actually make so much sense with the year he’s had.

Natalie: I don’t think it’s so much that in those words. It’s hard to put my finger on what I think it IS, but a lot of it is actually wrapped up in the song choice they use for him later. Which I will talk about then. But it isn’t a lack of confidence exactly. It’s more like… Well when he says later, impotence of the soul, I felt he meant like he just lost sight of how to… be, really. I don’t think it is like, “self confidence.”

Megan: No, you’re right, it’s hard… Like he’s lost enthusiasm? Or… motivation? But even that’s not quite right.

Natalie: It is something to the side of that. He isn’t doubting his ability to play well, to serve the team. He is somewhat doubting his own individual worth, and thinks he should ONLY exist to serve the team, but I think he’s just got the horror. Like the existential dread of seeing the scope of your life at an important moment, and just being frozen.

Megan: I feel like the horror is some distant relative of the yips.

Natalie: He certainly has some depression, and it’s just a moment where these things have built up and he realises he has no idea how to handle them.

Megan: Enter Roy and Keeley, except…they also don’t quite know how to handle them.

Natalie: I mean, Keeley says she will talk to him, and she gives it a go by clearly laying out some of the issues he’s handling. But thinking about them just makes him faceplant on the bed. Mood.

Megan: Yeah look, I watched this moment of Keeley just listing Thing after Thing after Thing and then ending it by pointing out how big a moment it all is and… Keeley, babe. This is not helping. You are sending him into a genuine panic attack.

Natalie: The whole episode, until he gets home to his mum’s, he really seems like he can’t catch his breath. But here, it’s definitely worse. The fact he said he hadn’t actively thought about his dad being there until now tells me that all of this has just been extremely bad vibes before now, just those twitchy, oppressive, unformed feelings of stress. And I get that soooo much. And then she has to reveal that people are shit-talking his hair! Keeley, you fool. He’s already in a space where literally everything is upsetting him. Like suitcases.

Megan: A drawer without a home. What the fuck.

Natalie: Look. I’ve actually cried over a suitcase before. But for a different reason.

Megan: LOL…. Yeah okay that tracks.

Natalie: I don’t wish to elaborate. But I did like that he’s kind of open about things and says that he doesn’t mind that Roy told Keeley he’d been crying and all, doesn’t mind that Roy is worried about him – he’s not shutting them out.

Megan: Yes, same! He might not be able to tell her what’s wrong – because he doesn’t know – but he is okay with them talking to him, and about him. He’s happy to accept their support.

Natalie: It seems that he isn’t having issues with them as a pair, too. They aren’t dating or taking time away from him, he may not even know they hooked up, just that they’re getting to be friends again. He’s fine being open with both of them and fine with them caring about him – they are his people after all. He isn’t pushing anyone away, which, good for him. Roy, take notes.

Megan: Yeah, and I’m glad about that. I did think one element of this episode might be him feeling insecure or jealous. And I really didn’t want that. Whatever the endgame relationship looks like, I just don’t want any more tension between the three of them, about each other, in a negative way. And so I’m pleased that wasn’t the issue.

Natalie: No, they seem so incredibly chill in that regard, and even more so by the end of the episode. I also think it’s interesting that it’s the “good” thing that overwhelms him. That if they win, he will be right on the edge of achieving everything he’s ever dreamed of. Man City won the title in season 1, so he does have a Premier League medal, but it wouldn’t be for like, as big a contribution. Now he is the star player, the true heart of the team and the one responsible for getting them there , in how he directs the games. He’s played for England and he has his own personal Roy Kent.

Megan: Right, like… technically he’s won before. But if he wins it with Richmond, the year they got promoted back up? Thanks in large part to his contributions on the pitch? That is HUGE. It’s a lot for one person to handle, especially when that person is baby.

Natalie: It’s not like the year he won it before was a good experience, so yeah this is bigger. And he’s so baby. They are really threading the needle here with how silly this is and how emotional it is from Phil. Like, this is not “Man City,” played deadly serious. This is a more heightened and comedic take on Jamie being deeply upset. But it still feels so great, in terms of quality. And the issues he’s having, as much as I can’t find the words properly, I feel them.

Megan: Yeah because the thing is, he’s just not being very rational, so the silliness works to match the mood. And that doesn’t make it less serious or concerning for people like Keeley and Roy – he’s clearly not okay! But the way it’s being played just goes to enhance the ways he isn’t okay, as undefinable as they are.

Natalie: It isn’t Ted Lasso at its most upsettingly dramatic, but I love it for Jamie. I love that he’s not experiencing the same kind of trauma we saw before, frankly. This is all sweeter.

Megan: I agree. It’s not actually being downplayed by the people around him, they aren’t treating it like a joke. It’s just a very weird time for Jamie and he doesn’t know how to act.

Natalie: No. It’s still serious for him! It’s just slightly funny for us. I can both take it seriously and find it funny, I contain multitudes. And if we’re talking awards, I mean… this episode was written with the wholeass intention of getting Phil nominated. They’re really gunning for it, the Apple awards guy is obsessed. They were making sure to get the material for him and while last year, “Man City” was profound, it was so dark and dramatic. And yes, people have won for dramatic moments in comedy, but I think they wanted to cover every base here. They gave him a stellar season where he’s the most memorable part of nearly every episode, then when it comes to voting, they’ll submit one episode – and it’ll be this one – for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy. And I bet they wanted to make sure the episode he was submitting contained the height of his comedic skill as well as deep emotion. I think that’s why his initial meltdowns were done with humour, rather than with a sense of serious dramatic tension for the viewer. They really made me understand how this was feeling for him, though, as well as making it funny. Because he is a slightly ridiculous person, who will melt down in a slightly ridiculous way.

Megan: Yes I think you’re spot on here. Like before, I think the other nominees had bigger or more central roles to the action, so when it came to nominating people, Phil was just overlooked as not being important to the story. But this season he is such an integral character and has been the breakaway favourite of everyone who has finally caught up with us. So then when they do submit this episode as his episode, it won’t just be this they’re looking at – in the same way that Brett wasn’t nominated based on just his performance in “Rainbow.”

Natalie: Yeah. There has to be a level of overall awareness for the actor’s performance for the voters before they sit down and watch the episode the actor “officially” submits, and Jamie has been the most universally beloved Ted Lasso story this year, by a long shot.

Megan: Yeah everyone is obsessed with him.

Natalie: People have had issues with the trajectory of other stories, Roy, Nate, Keeley… But Jamie is the starboy, on and off the pitch. He is just landing and landing and landing. And as funny as these scenes were, they felt very relatable too, because that sense of doom and pressure that refuses to form any sort of clear ideas about what it is, is the worst kind of thing. Jamie is usually so articulate about how he is feeling, he’s good at describing where his brain is at. So this not being a formed thing is even scarier for him, I think. To be honest, throwing back to Roy in the boot room, the description of the Red Bull ad, hilarious as it was, is quite an elegant metaphor. It was very good at identifying his feelings, as best as he could. But he doesn’t have a clear idea about the cause. It’s just Everything.

Megan: Yes exactly, he’s just messed up and he doesn’t know why, and he doesn’t even really know what he’s feeling – just that it’s very wrong. And I can picture the ad perfectly in my head. Unfortunately, he says commercial, but we won’t start that back up again. I just… God. If he isn’t at least nominated after this, I don’t know what more he or the Ted Lasso writers could have done. Of course then if (when) Phil does get nominated I will have to watch the ceremony and be outraged if he doesn’t win. But he’s just so good.

Natalie: This is a perfect performance. Truly the best character I’ve seen on TV in many, many years.

Megan: Co-signed. Just give him the Emmy now please. Sorry Harrison.

Natalie: God, it’s a tough call. But if Ted Lasso really has no more future seasons, Shrinking can get it next time.

Megan: I think that’s fair. Let’s do that. Take note Emmy voters.

Natalie: Anyway, despite obviously not loving that we’ve seen Keeley fail so much this season, I actually did enjoy seeing her fail with Jamie here. Yes they dated, and yes they’ve been close but this is brand new territory for Jamie Issues. And in terms of the three of them, I don’t like the idea of Keeley having to solve the stupid boys’ problems. She can, and should, be messy too. Roy asking her to help because she’s good at “That emotional shit” only for her to flop? I kind of liked it. They both care so much, and they’re both going to keep trying. But they’re both hopeless and I liked that this wasn’t Emotional Labour Keeley fixing a problem Repressed Roy couldn’t, if that makes sense.

Megan: Yeah, it was so funny. She really tried, but she was just as bad as Roy. Regardless of where they end up relationship wise, the two of them being hapless partners in crime was SO GOOD this episode.

Natalie: When they all get together, I actually think Jamie will be the fixer. When he’s not the one having a crisis. He’s the best at expressing himself, as discussed.

Megan: I agree, and I also think we’ve seen he’s very good at diffusing other people’s moods and stuff,

Natalie: Yeah. God I hope we get as much time as possible with them next week.

Megan: I do worry that after this feast, we’re not going to get much at all next week. But I guess we’ll see.

Natalie: I think that Jamie’s personal arc is somewhat complete, but the Roy/Keeley stuff absolutely isn’t.

Megan: Yeah that’s very true, and he’s obviously a huge part of that.

Natalie: It feels more than ever like they do not work without him.

Megan: Yeah.

Natalie: So we shall have to see. But if Ted Lasso does try to brush that off, Jamie might be more relegated to general team stuff. But we’ve got one final away game movie night – no further pillow fights – and it’s You’ve Got Mail, a movie in which I would happily murder the male lead, but is quite good despite the horrific ethics. We did it on Rewatchable and it is truly amazing to me how horrific the plot is, in terms of what the dude is doing. The ONLY reason they get away with it is because it’s Tom Hanks and he’s mentally coded to the world as a good guy. And they BARELY get away with it. I know you haven’t seen it, don’t watch it. It will anger you. Sam and Rebecca’s Bantr plot riffs on the screen names from this film, but their romance is SO much better than the one in this movie.

Megan: Yeah it is a film that I have never felt the urge to watch, and while this did make me a little bit more curious, I think I will steer clear and just rewatch Sam and Rebecca scenes.

Natalie: I don’t think You’ve Got Mail being unethical is a commentary on Sambecca for the record – Ted Lasso clearly doesn’t think it is. But I did enjoy them looking at each other and remembering their romance. That’s two weeks in a row, and no signs of the Boat Guy, or a lightbulb for Ted. Hmmmmmmm.

Megan: No, my Sambecca candle has not fully gone out yet. There’s a little spark left on it.

Natalie: I truly wasn’t expecting it to still be alight, but I back it. Ted Lasso could have chosen any other movie to feature for the team, but they chose this one specifically, to get this moment of Sam and Rebecca.

Megan: And it’s funny because at the start of the season there were obviously some strong Sambecca references, then we had nothing for a long while, but now that’s two episodes in a row where we’ve had them interact in a way that’s nodding to their relationship. Maybe Boat Guy’s softening and getting over Rupert was actually there so she would feel able to open herself up to dating someone wonderful… like Sam.

Natalie: Of course we have Ted saying Sleepless in Seattle’ is better which could be some weird metaphor, like “No not that relationship, this one!” But I still don’t think Tedbecca is happening so…Not even going to get into that. Of course You’ve Got Mail also ends on “Somewhere Over The Rainbow,” another Wizard of Oz reference. They are priming us for Ted to go back to Kansas. But more on Ted later. Going back to the main trio, Keeley cheerfully affirming that she fucked things and made it worse cracked me up.

Megan: I LOVED that haha. Her delivery was so good, and Roy’s reaction was perfect too. She doesn’t even pretend she helped.

Natalie: And Dani’s.

Megan: YES! Oh Dani, you sweet boy.

Natalie: Number one shipper, and this is when it begins to become very clear that they’re not together. The early scene made it clear-ish to me, like he is very tentative and they don’t touch. It’s been over a month since the last episode. In that time they haven’t settled into being a reunited couple at all, and here Keeley is quick to assure Dani that they’re not. What did you think about this – the confirmation that after that hookup, it didn’t pan out? You thought they’d be settled, didn’t you? Or assumed.

Megan: I thought it could go that way, especially because of the preview for this episode saying Roy and Keeley were both worried about Jamie, and I thought that maybe part of his weirdness was a reaction to them dating. It does make me wonder what conversations they’ve had till now. Because it feels like they haven’t really discussed it? That they hooked up, and since then they have been hanging out a little bit but not hooked up again. But they do feel comfortable around each other again, even if just as friends? So I’m still not quite sure where they’ll land next week, but I enjoyed the way it played out this week.

Natalie: I found it very funny that Roy is a romcom crier and Keeley was bored into napping. Hard to tell where Jamie would fall, because he spent this one totally dead-eyed and disassociating. I think generally pro, but not today.

Megan: I feel like he would be a crier normally, or at least like, a tearer up-er. But today he is emotionally impotent. So he cannot cry at it.

Natalie: He was a bit glassy eyed, whether that was because of the movie or because of his general mood. He looked so seriously unwell – it was a great shot actually in terms of just his facial acting.

Megan: Roy crying like that did make me think of Brett and how he often has to sit in cinemas alone, once a film has ended, so he can stop crying and look normal again before going outside.

Natalie: Oh LOL. Apparently Roy has less shame than Brett about such things – and he’s had a few years of this to cope with now. All the horrible films Ted has put them through.

Megan: Yeah, he’s used to Ted emotionally terrorising them through films. Poor guys.

Natalie: I bet Jason Sudeikis has a whole list he could reel off, the films Ted has used over the past few years.

Megan: I have also not seen Sleepless in Seattle. Maybe the reason I don’t get the Ted/Rebecca relationship is I have not seen any of these films.

Natalie: Sleepless in Seattle isn’t really applicable to anything in the Ted Lasso storyline, to be honest, aside from the guy is a single dad, but he’s a widower, it’s about his kid trying to get him a new love. So don’t worry about it.

Megan: Okay, good haha. My theory is still that Ted is trying to get them to pick pillow fight just once, so he’s making the films sadder and sadder. I wonder if he knows about their betrayal in Amsterdam.

Natalie: Well this was his last shot! Last away game of the season!

Megan: If he does leave, he’ll never have pillow fights.

Natalie: Ah well. He’s a grown man, he can go without.

Megan: I love that the second Jamie stands up, Roy and Keeley zero in on him. They are so poised and ready to find out what’s up.

Natalie: I am honestly impressed that he sat through the film. If he had told the coaches he didn’t feel well and wanted to rest, they would have let him, especially as Roy knows he’s in a state. But he is very much just going through the motions, and either he’d always planned, or during the film, had made a plan, to go home after the team social commitment was done.

Megan: Maybe missing movie night is extremely taboo, and if he did get found out for actually leaving the hotel instead of being in his room, Ted would never forgive him.

Natalie: I mean, forgiveness is a word we throw around very loosely on Ted Lasso, apparently. So I think he would have been forgiven.

Megan: Hah. True.

Natalie: But anyway. What I like about this is that Jamie knows exactly what he needs. We don’t know where he’s going – I mean, I very much knew, but Roy and Keeley don’t, though they could have rubbed two brain cells together.

Megan: Yeah they were lacking a little in critical thinking here. Bless them.

Natalie: But even though he doesn’t know why his feelings are all over the place, he knows what he needs, which I loved. The sequence of him walking out of the hotel and through Manchester is one of my favourite moments of the whole show. It was an absolutely ridiculously brilliant song choice, “Why Can’t I Touch It” by Buzzcocks, it’s lyrically perfect for his headspace in how it talks about how everything he wants is right there and is so close to being real, but unable to properly reach it, and it’s proper Madchester music, to go with the fact they named the hotel the Hacienda. The main associations we’ve had so far with Jamie in terms of Mancunian culture are Oasis – they’re deeply linked to City – and modern artists like Aitch. He’s definitely not a Smiths boy.

Megan: No, I don’t think so.

Natalie: But Madchester stuff fits SO well for him. Like, this sounded right, it looked right, the music and lyrics were so good for his current situation, it suited the settings they were using, it was just all around a great montage moment

Megan: It is so good, everything about it is just perfect, and every new shot gave me a new favourite moment. It felt so much like Jamie coming home, you know? He walked through Manchester with purpose, being so familiar with it, and certain moments felt very much like his habits and routine. The bridge spitting, God. That is so on brand for the type of person Jamie is. You can imagine that every single time he crosses that bridge when walking in the city, he pauses to spit in that same spot.

Natalie: He has never felt more real to me than seeing him spit off the Hulme Arch, yeah. Partially because to get that shot you have a different depth to the camera lens than Ted Lasso usually uses, so it felt more like reality than a sitcom. And the fact he was dressed down – obviously he’s not feeling very bright and fancy right now, but the white trainers and the much more plain trackies and putting the hood up, it unlocked new Jamie levels for me even before we got to the estate. I loved this scene so much. And of course, those idiots following him.

Megan: I can’t with them. Roy just strolling along stoically in his usual way and then Keeley attempting to be stealthy, ducking around corners, hiding behind cars. I hate them. I love them. They drive me crazy. That shot of them all waling down that street with the blue moon overheard… Beautiful. Hang it in the Louvre.

Natalie: Yeah, Jamie walking down the middle of the road like that towards the moon… *clenches fist * symbolism. So many beautiful shots in this sequence, and again, unusual shots for Ted Lasso, like the part of them going up those stairs, just the angle. They really said “You know what? Little Jamie Tartt, our perfect prince and prodigal son, he deserves everything we can do to showcase him in the best way we can.” His story, for the record, is over half the episode’s runtime. 36 minutes of this episode is either scenes involving him or stuff about him, like Roy asking Keeley for help. That’s longer than most season 1 episodes.

Megan: Could be more, to be honest. 50 minutes next time maybe? If there are people out there, after this episode, that still don’t love him, I don’t know what to say to them anymore. This episode is just such a love letter to all things Jamie Tartt.

Natalie: I don’t know at what point he realised they were following him, but were you expecting him to catch them?

Megan: Yeah, haha. The second he “vanished,” I knew he was going to jump out at them. Keeley was not discreet, Roy wasn’t even trying. I loved Roy being the one getting a heart attack for once, instead of jumping out on others.

Natalie: That’s how you know they’re made for each other.

Megan: It’s true.

Natalie: No one else can match Roy.

Megan: “You can’t lose Jamie Tartt.” I love Roy being open about wanting to make sure he was okay and then Keeley jumping straight to “are you buying drugs?” Come on now Keeley, it’s not the off-season. He knows better than that!

Natalie: I liked that he doesn’t dignify that with an answer, but honestly, given that he’s in such a state, it isn’t a stupid question.

Megan: No it’s not really, he is acting extremely weirdly right now, so it’s not a bad bet.

Natalie: Honestly, the moment of him just sighing at how stupid they are and deciding to take them with him is really interesting to me. What do you think was going through his head at that moment in regards to making that choice? Because obviously it’s not like, a secret he’s ashamed of, like in some shows or films where you know, someone is caught out and then takes the other person to their secret animal shelter volunteering they do or whatever, like a stupid fake secret… Like the yoga mums LOL. And it’s not like he’s breaking rules – he’s an adult and it isn’t the curfew yet. He’s just been saddled with these two freaks apparently wanting to make sure he’s okay. He could have said, “I’m fine, I’m going to my mum’s, you can go back to the hotel.” But he decides to take them. Obviously we needed this for the plot to occur, but why did he do it ?

Megan: Yeah, I think… It’s not like he’s ashamed of his mum, far from it, he loves her. And he’s very comfortable around both Keeley and Roy now. I think there’s probably a moment of like, he doesn’t want to have to share her with them, or have them get in the way of his time with Georgie. But in the end I guess he probably thinks that Roy and Keeley aren’t going to give in, he HAS worried them, he might as well let them tag along. Plus he’s very proud of his mummy! Maybe he wants to show her off to them! Or them to her. Also I guess he’s just very tired, and it’s easier to just let them come with than argue.

Natalie: I think in other circumstances, he would be very excited about getting to bring them round, and he does get that energy when they get to the door. But the whole thing for me was very much connected to his choice to be open. He’s already been very open with them about his feelings, but the fact he’s willing to let them in here is something I’ll talk about more in a bit because it is astonishingly vulnerable and shameless, to an absolutely insane degree. And even though he’s feeling dead inside, he might have an ember of feeling pleased they care – though I actually don’t think he’s insecure about that at this point.

Megan: I think he would, not from insecurity, just that he likes to be loved! Having very clear evidence of it will feel so nice to him!

Natalie: I think he knows they care, and believes it of Roy maybe even more than Keeley. Or equally, at least, but he’s spending more time with Roy. Honestly, for all the boot room wailing was played for laughs, he truly has no boundaries with Roy.

Megan: Yeah a lot will have changed between them since Jamie forgot how skittish elderly people could be because of the war.

Natalie: He trusts him SO completely to catch him there. And Roy is not skittish at all.

Megan: Not in the slightest.

Natalie: I am glad it’s easy for him to be like that with Roy, because as I’ve said before, and as was proven even harder in this episode, the fact Jamie has loved the idea of Roy for so long would massively affect how he feels about him. His Roy-coding in his head would very much be “good safe hero love always there” and maybe even “home,” which must have made their shit times SO distressing for him. But more on this in a bit. When he decides he’s going to take them home, we get a first look at the estate he grew up on in maybe the best possible way to represent it.

Megan: I LOVED meeting those three kids, playing football right in front of the No Ball Games sign – a staple in council estates up and down the country. Because you just know that Jamie would have BEEN one of those kids, back in the day. I really loved imagining him there as a soft happy kid, kicking a ball around with his mates, and those kids were so perfect. Terrifyingly perfect.

Natalie: They’re not soft by any means. Those kids were maybe the most correctly English thing that Ted Lasso has ever done and I felt genuinely threatened by them. Jamie just seems amused though. But my God was this good representation, my shoulders went up around my ears.

Megan: Well Jamie would be amused, because he was them, but I had a very similar reaction. Because I grew up surrounded by kids like them, except I was awkward and nerdy with very shit clothes and got extremely picked on by them haha.

Natalie: Maidstone versions of these kids have definitely called me a slur in the McDonalds on Week Street.

Megan: Ah, memories.

Natalie: It actually amazes me how much young British teenagers have the power to make adults feel threatened. Not even fellow kids.

Megan: Right?! Even now, I am a 34 year old woman! I own a house! I am not a coward! But put me next to a group of youths and I panic.

Natalie: Ah, culture.

Megan: Yes, LOL.

Natalie: Anyway, this was funny because they were obviously City fans who gave us a first taste of what Jamie might be getting at the Etihad tomorrow.

Megan: Yes! I was about to say! A nice little bit of foreshadowing there. And I LOVED Roy calling them good lads, and them being so chuffed by it.

Natalie: Even before that, when Jamie’s like, “Sure, alright,” they’re like “Bye!!!!” All very cheerfully. They’ve had a great night.

Megan: Nobody at school is going to believe them, but they’ll know the truth.

Natalie: Roy didn’t want to make Jamie feel bad because he was in such a low place, but he had to show them his appreciation for such passionate baby hooliganism. And also maybe his general need to mock Jamie at less fraught moments.

Megan: I back it. Jamie can normally give as good as he gets, which is unsurprising if he grew up around kids like these.

Natalie: Even before we got inside the house, I felt happier than I had anticipated about the idea of his mum not moving away from the estate. There are SO many ways this could have gone, and if they lived in a shabby tower block where the lifts sometimes don’t work and the condition of the building isn’t within your control or whatever, that would have been a very different estate lifestyle to this one, which is one of the kinds made up of little car-free streets of terraces. The kind of place where, as we see with the kids, Jamie could run around and know all the neighbours. It immediately paints a particular vibe, compared to many other iterations of an estate. And I know people in tower blocks have strong communities too, but those terrace rows are just a different environment.

Megan: Yeah council estates can mean so many different things, here in the UK, but now that we’ve seen this place and met Georgie it made complete sense to me why she would still be living here. It would have been a place where you could imagine Jamie growing up safe and happy, even if he was poor. And where Georgie would have potentially had the kind of community and support system that she wouldn’t want to leave, no matter how fancy a house Jamie could buy her.

Natalie: The interior condition, and the fact that they have good quality furniture and apparently expensive kitchen supplies, implies to me that yeah, Jamie bought the house for her on the Right to Buy scheme, and they’re living very comfortably there. It’s a nice, solid, three story terrace – these kinds are very desirable houses for homebuyers who weren’t even ever in the council system, when estates get sold off privately. The old school construction was good, I’ve seen them renovated. That street would probably be a mix of owners and renters by now, a variety of incomes.

Megan: Yeah, even if she didn’t let him buy her a brand new house, she clearly let him splash a bit of cash on making it nice for her.

Natalie: It’s probably worth saying that the quality of social housing, especially older-built social housing, in the UK, is much better than social housing in America. Even though there are rough places, or places that they don’t maintain well, or bad communities, it’s not as wholly terrible as the environment seems to be in America. They seem to have the attitude of “get out as fast as you can,” whereas in the UK, not all estates are like that, and they have a large mix of people. And sometimes entire estates or buildings are sold by the council to private developers, to sell off as private, full price housing. Which sucks, but it speaks to the quality of the construction, that they’re worth investing in. You’re renting an ex-council flat in London yourself. Is that block all private now, or are any of the flats still council?

Megan: There are definitely a number of flats that are still council. It actually causes issues because when general maintenance is needed the council housing authority fights with the private landlords about whose responsibility it is, and everything that needs fixing drags on and on. But the building is very solid and it is an example of mixed tenancy that fits exactly with what you’re talking about.

Natalie: Also – side note – this kind of estate explains why Jamie can ride a bike. I know Roy was meant to be taught, but him living in a tower block like he pointed out, in the middle of London, is not the same kind of bike riding experience as an estate with little streets like that. Kids can have a lot of freedom in a place like that, in good or bad ways.

Megan: Yeah this would be a much safer place to learn to ride a bike! Cycling in London is terrifying.

Natalie: Anyway, we knew that Jamie’s mum would still be in his childhood home due to the trailer. We expected that they’d set it up this way specifically so we could see the poster, which…. yeah, I can’t even go there yet. But seeing the neighbourhood, this is just about the nicest version of Jamie’s childhood I can imagine. They would have been poor, yeah, but she would have been given one of these family homes as a young mum with a baby and surrounded by other families, and I can see it being good, for what it was, even if many things were out of reach for them.

Megan: If he hadn’t had football, he wouldn’t have had a lot of opportunities, just because of how entrenched the class and wealth divide is here in the UK, but as a place to live and grow up? I think it would have been good.

Natalie: Better than a lot of other options, and the fact she wasn’t in a rush to move away says that the community was good. But now that we’ve established how that would have worked – basically yes, they would own it, and this must have been a choice they made as opposed to moving away – let’s get into the big surprise. Simon. Nothing on earth prepared me for a tall cheerful man peering through the door.

Megan: Sweet, surprising Simon.

Natalie: I was SO confused and then SO delighted.

Megan: I did not for a second imagine he existed, but now I know he does, I can’t imagine life without him.

Natalie: Simon changes EVERYTHING. Jamie has a stepfather? Who is the most gentle man we’ve met in the show, maybe tied with Higgins? We always said “Oh, we want Jamie to bond with Higgins if he needs a dad.” He doesn’t need that. Simon is even better.

Megan: Yeah, sorry Higgins, you’re great. But Simon is wonderful. He is so happy to see Jamie, and the slightly different tones when he greets both Keeley and Roy speaks VOLUMES.

Natalie: He and Jamie, they’re so smiley and soft. It took me a minute to process. And like, good on this man who has been called away from cooking to discover a surprise stepson, the stepson’s ex, and Roy Kent, and just being thrilled to roll with it. I assume Jamie did not call ahead and I feel slightly odd that he didn’t plan to visit regardless of his mood, but I guess the surprise element is more fun to watch. I can absolutely imagine them both being this thrilled to see him even if it was planned, though. Like, if Simon had called out “he’s here,” as in, they’d been expecting him, I think Georgie would have reacted exactly the same. But Simon… God, what a secret to have been keeping from us, Ted Lasso writers! The implications when he greets Keeley and Roy, as you say. He is normal with Keeley and then with Roy, he has a very slight, very subtle, “Roy Kent Is In My House” moment, like a gulp and “Ooop!” vibe. Of course he knows that Jamie is close with Roy, but it’s still Roy Kent and most British men who follow the game even a little would need a moment. It’s played perfectly.

Megan: Yes! Like a little uncertain, a little shell-shocked. It’s one thing knowing your stepson hangs out with Roy fucking Kent, it’s another to be unexpectedly greeting him on your front door one Friday night.

Natalie: Steve Edge, who plays Simon, I feel like he must have been brought onto Ted Lasso by Matt Lipsey, one of the main Ted Lasso directors. He has worked with him a few times before, including on a series called The Cup, which is about a pushy ex-footballer dad trying to get his kid scouted and coaching him through an under 11s tournament. This is incredibly funny to me. Simon would never.

Megan: No LOL, Simon would be there with baked goods at the end of the match, being scowled at by the coach for ruining all the kids’ diets.

Natalie: Anyway, Simon has his little Roy moment, which is important due to his other Roy moment later, while Jamie is already off through the house looking for his mum. Everything about the whole mum plot was miles beyond what I ever dreamed, and I dreamed high, but one of the most hard-hitting moments for me was when Simon calls to her up the stairs – as soon as she calls back, before we see her, the way Jamie is just captured by her voice. It’s not just turning in his tracks because he’s realised he’s going the wrong way. It’s his face, it’s like a magnetic charge, the way his head WHIPS around and he is pulled back to the stairs. It feels SO much more emotional than just like “Oh, I’m looking in the wrong room.” It’s safe to say that this relationship is even closer and more intensely dedicated than I expected, and I expected them to be close.

Megan: Right. It felt so obvious to me that he and his mum would have a good relationship, so obvious, but meeting her? They are SO close! And like, part of that is that she clearly had him quite young, and so you can imagine that before Simon came around it really was just the two of them and that young mum who’s close friends with their child dynamic, but I was not prepared for the level of love and softness between the two of them.

Natalie: It’s funny, because I definitely thought I’d imagined them as close as they could possibly be. I had not.

Megan: No. I imagined he’d be a bit of a mummy’s boy. But this? THIS?!

Natalie: It’s amazing, just getting to realise how much open, open, open joy and love he was a part of, his whole life. How much of his strength and emotional intelligence and innate happiness comes from this, the fact he was so cherished.

Megan: And I LOVED Simon’s little “Oh, there they go!” as they were shrieking and cuddling each other. That is a man that has seen the extent to which those two are ridiculous about each other. He has seen things.

Natalie: Yeah. Look, everything about this – the fact that she’s happy to finally meet Roy and Keeley, and would hug them if she could bear to let go of Jamie?

Megan: What this scene tells me is Jamie needs at least 75% more physical affection from people at Richmond, at least, to make up for Georgie not being around. And also that Jamie has told her literally everything he possibly could about Roy and Keeley.

Natalie: I mean, it explains him climbing on Roy in the boot room. Roy saw this going on and was like “Oh God, this is my job now when he’s sad, isn’t it?”

Megan: Yes! Hahaha.

Natalie: I’m sure Georgie wouldn’t have been too happy about Keeley dumping him, or Roy saying he hoped Jamie died of the incurable disease of being a little bitch. On national TV. But it is clear he tells her every single thought that ever enters his beautiful head, so she must have got updates on the progress in their friendships. And isn’t holding any grudges when she is WELL aware how much Jamie loves them. Honestly, without wanting this to sound weird – because I don’t think it is, I think it’s amazing – I don’t remember ever seeing a parental love portrayed with such intense passion. Siblings, yes. But I can’t think of a parent and adult child that I’ve seen love each other so passionately.

Megan: I’m trying to think, but I can’t either really.

Natalie: It’s absolutely the strongest parental relationship we’ve seen on Ted Lasso, the Parental Relationship Show.

Megan: Absolutely. In some ways, it’s a shame Jamie is so visibly upset and needs cuddles and comfort from his mum, because I would have LOVED to have seen Georgie gently interrogating Roy and Keeley and making them squirm a bit, like Ola did with Rebecca. Actually, Sam and Ola are pretty cuddly and loving too – I like that Sam calls him daddy, like Jamie calls her mummy. But even Sam and Ola aren’t at this level.

Natalie: I don’t think Georgie feels any need to interrogate them, and we actually get a very classy version of a shovel talk/screw turning from Simon later. Which, to be continued. But yeah, the way he carries her off – it’s ridiculous and I’m obsessed. I’m obsessed with everything about them, the fucking shrine in the living room, all of it.

Megan: And the way Roy and Keeley just look at each other, as she’s being carried off. Like. “What the fuck>”

Natalie: But what I think is the most important, and this is what Roy is staring at, is the way that Jamie is absolutely unselfconscious about his behaviour. Even curling up in her lap and whining and being petted, he has no issue doing that in front of Roy and Keeley.

Megan: No, he doesn’t care what they think, and why should he.

Natalie: Roy is absolutely baffled, and I’ll talk about his whole deal later. But for Jamie, here’s the thing. This is so good, it’s so right, because this explains everything about Jamie perfectly. And for me and you, at least, as we discussed, this isn’t like “Oh, this makes sense now!” It’s more that we always expected his mother to be like this because of who Jamie is already, and how he acts. We kind of reverse engineered a headcanon for her based on his own behaviour and personality, and so seeing this is very validating of that. Because what have we always said about Jamie? He has an incredible sense of self that isn’t fake bravado – his healthy ego is very real, because he’s been truly validated. He has no repression, despite the abuse from his father. He is an open and honest communicator who is able to express every feeling he has properly, once he takes a second to think about it and he feels no shame in doing so.

Megan: Yes, exactly. Like we said, we were maybe surprised by just HOW close the two of them are, only because we already thought we’d imagined them having the best relationship possible.

Natalie: Obviously he’s mentioned her a couple of times in very sweet ways, but for me the picture of her wasn’t about how much he mentioned her, it was about how obviously soft to his core he was, beyond the things he did to get away from James. The way he is so authentically self-possessed is so obviously the product of deep nurturing and open communication.

Megan: And also just the fact that it really does not take him long at ll to revert back to being a good, sweet boy once he shakes himself free of the worst of his season 1 prickishness – it tells us that this is a more natural way for him to be, his instinctual way of being and feeling, just all mixed up due to acting out in response to his dad.

Natalie: This was the only explanation for how Jamie is – remember in episode 2? “I’m me, coach? Why would I wanna be anything else?” And Ted being like, “I’m not sure you understand how psychologically healthy that is.” For someone who has very much weathered a certain amount of trauma from his dad, Jamie is nowhere near as traumatised as he could be because that guy isn’t in his core fucking wiring. Jamie was already Georgie’s Jamie when he met his dad. He doesn’t have early childhood trauma, thank God. And like you said, his story isn’t really one of like… “Oh he was a certain way and then he grew and changed.” It was – and he says this at the curse fire, in a certain way – more a story about reversion. Like, he was doing things as a defence mechanism when we met him, that had reached a low point for reasons we’ve discussed. His dad, George Catrtick, even Roy. But the fact he shook it off SO fast shows that it was never truly inside him. Not really. And that’s because of this – because he was very much formed as this soft, open person who was getting weighed down by a certain sort of ugly armour. And I’m so glad Ted Lasso never framed it like “Oh he met his dad and wanted his dad to like him and wanted to make his dad proud.” It seemed more like soon after they met, Jamie immediately hated how he treated him and has been trying to shake him off ever since. He also obviously wants things to not have been like that – he wants his dad to have been different. But it was never about pleasing his dad. It was about getting him to fuck off. And this is kind of a big theme of the episode, but I’m just more talking about the past, like what he said at the curse fire. You can also imagine James meeting a 14 year old boy who cuddled up to his mummy like this and absolutely trying to harden him up. The whole “fucking woman made my boy weak” is a very classic absent dad trope.

Megan: God, yeah James would have HATED witnessing this. Hated it. I could really see him seeing them being soft together, and that being what led to the Amsterdam stuff for instance. God.

Natalie: This is where the whole James was on at him about being soft came from. I am 100% sure. Because Jamie would have been kind and nice to people, and warm and affectionate and babyish to his mother, without shame. James would have tried to make him feel it was inappropriate, like he should be ashamed. Thank God it never worked. Jamie must have identified pretty quickly that he didn’t WANT to be the kind of guy his dad wanted him to be, and the tragedy of his story is that in trying to make James back off – as in, give him nothing to complain about – he turned himself into someone who was acting hard in the way James probably wanted. By trying to get rid of his dad he became something his dad wanted. Though I can’t imagine he was like how he was at Richmond, at home or even at City, really. We’ve discussed that Pep wouldn’t allow it. We really met Jamie at his true low point at Richmond and I think it was probably not a years-long issue, his prickishness, I think the Richmond loan created a sort of climax of all these issues

Megan: I think so. Like maybe being sent to Richmond made him feel like his dad was right, that maybe he wasn’t good or enough or something, and he lashed out.

Natalie: I am going to assume that since all that has happened, Jamie, in his own time, has been honest with his mum about everything, because they really have the most open relationship. You know how we discussed whether or not she would know about Amsterdam? I think she does know. I just got the vibe from how he spoke openly about using that erection metaphor – I think he would talk to her about sex stuff and I think she knows about what happened.

Megan: Yeah I definitely think so now.

Natalie: I also think that if he is bi (he is) that she and Simon know and that he was never repressed about that in the slightest at home.

Megan: She clearly had him young, I bet she gave him the contraception talk at an early age. I can’t imagine the two of them having any secrets really. So if (as) he is bi, she knows about it.

Natalie: He would have been aware that it was a difficulty in football, but they probably discussed that too. It just fills me with feeling to see the show dedicating all this time to proving that he was just absolutely coddled and drenched in love. And a really healthy kind of love – we talked about Nate’s mum babying him too, but it was an overcompensation against his father, things weren’t spoken about openly. This is just complete safety, the parent making sure they are the best possible support for any problem the child has, the child with no fear or anxiety about sharing their feelings. It is very, very, very good that he had this. And like we said, we always assumed he did, because of how emotionally intelligent he is. But I wasn’t expecting the level of little boy cuddling, especially the shame-free babying in front of Roy and Keeley. He is, as Roy said, a fragile little Precious Moment bitch, and it is beautiful that he’s always had the space to be that.

Megan: Yeah I love the fact that he’s so shameless about it, because as you say, James would 100% have tried to shame him. Probably making subtle digs right there in front of Georgie, and probably being way more blatant and aggressive about it when just with Jamie. So the fact that despite that he is so comfortable lying in his mum’s lap, while Keeley and Roy look on, is just wonderful to me. I love that fragile little Precious Moment bitch. So much.

Natalie: It’s actually Georgie that has to subtly send the others away in order to get Jamie to dig a bit deeper into why he’s upset. He would probably spend all night with them just sitting there while he listed all the different mean tweets and she would listen to each one.

Megan: And tell him how wrong they all were. And how gorgeous he is.

Natalie: Everything about the physicality of it – him sucking on his hoodie strings, drawing circles on her knee – it is really fucking extraordinary in terms of how young and vulnerable and casually intimate it is. Like he never lost the level of comfort a little boy had. No one ever told him “You’re too big for that” or anything. Simon sure didn’t. He just made pastry and smiled lovingly. So unphased.

Megan: Oh Simon, lovely Simon. You just know that whenever Jamie visits, this is how they spend their time, him and Georgie cuddling while Simon keeps them supplied with a constant stream of tea and baked goods.

Natalie: When they’re alone, she pushes him to talk about what’s actually going on, because she can tell he’s being shallow-upset instead of deep-upset, and of course he talks about his dad. This actress, Leanne Best, is so fucking phenomenal throughout the whole thing, but there is something in how she says “No” when Jamie asks if she’s heard from James that just slays me. It has this level of patience to it, and the very slightest bit of chiding, maybe? Not a full scold, but it’s sort of an element of like… a gentle reminder that this isn’t something Jamie should be expecting. Like she knows he can’t help hoping for something different, but she also knows better. And she isn’t going to be mean about it, but she wishes he’d stop hurting himself about it. And that’s all just from the “No,” – not even what they discuss.

Megan: Yeah I think there’s something about like… she knows James is awful, she knows Jamie shouldn’t spend time around him, but she isn’t going to stop it, she isn’t going to try and judge or or criticise. She’s just going to make sure she is the most loving and supportive to Jamie SHE can be, because she can’t control what James does, or how it impacts Jamie, even if she might wish he’d choose differently when it came to his dad.

Natalie: We learn he hasn’t been in contact since Wembley – that would be the events of 2.08, not the recent England match – which tracks for how Jamie has been acting this season. And obviously he’s been playing so well, it doesn’t seem like he’s been focusing on this as a motivation consciously or anything, but I can see how it must have started to brew subconsciously as the calendar edged closer to actually going back to City, where he assumed there would be a confrontation. He was probably just focusing on every game as it came, but as soon as they finished whatever the last one was before this, the whole week has just been amplifying this feeling. He had been keeping it at bay and is now letting it in. There’s also this very sad element of like, “I thought I was finally rid of him” – which, yes, good – but maybe a part of him is kind of feeling rejected. I’d prefer it wasn’t that – I’d prefer that he was genuinely glad to be rid of him but it meant he wasn’t driven by spite any more – but I know it isn’t that simple. Jamie can’t help wanting it to be different, but I do think he’s also telling the truth. The stuff at Wembley definitely broke something in terms of the small part of Jamie that wanted things to be different. But I think trying not to care when also managing the anxiety of not knowing is what’s at play here.

Megan: Yeah here’s the thing, you can think you’re finally rid of him, but someone like that burrows their way into your brain and it’s hard to get them out. And I think doubt can creep in, like Jamie thinking he needs that spite and anger to be good. And the past few months of him being incredible should have made it clear to him that he is just good – in spite of James, not because of him. But it’s a long time to get out of the habit of thinking about someone, worrying about someone.

Natalie: It would be easier if James texted Jamie some bullshit he could ignore, you know? Like James asks for some VIP shit or sends some insults and Jamie, after Wembley, was ready to be like, “Fuck you, no.” Not just give in again. But not hearing anything, not knowing what might happen, that seems to be freaking him out.

Megan: Yeah, it’s better to know what he’s up to, to know he’s still about than not know what to expect.

Natalie: Can I just say that – especially after the comedy crying – I loved that they played the whole impotence thing so straight. Willies is a very silly word usually, and they really just made this so earnest and not even a weird comparison. And the way he says that, about his soul, is so broken, and so real. Like he is looking for something inside himself, some fire or whatever that he knows he will need in order to survive this game in particular, and he just can’t find it.

Megan: Yes! Agreed. I really think they got the balance of humour and seriousness so right in this episode.

Natalie: Phil sold the fuck out of this, willies and all. And again, just that stunning level of openness from him, and patience from her, and his unique way of always finding the words to express exactly what he means. Even if it’s in an unconventional way.

Megan: And she gets it, she understands him perfectly.

Natalie: You can tell that she’s sat through a thousand moments of him finding the ways to talk about how he feels. And she looks deeply concerned, which is fair enough. Impotence of the soul is just a fancy name for depression. He’s in the midst of an extreme depressive episode.

Megan: What she says about his dad actually reminded me a little bit of what Higgins said in “Man City”. “I try to love my dad for who he is and forgive him for who he isn’t.” It’s a really different sentiment from Georgie, she doesn’t think Jamie needs to love or forgive him, but it’s not dissimilar in the sense that she’s saying that James is who he is, and Jamie cannot change that. What he can change is how he reacts to James, how he lets James affect him – but James cannot change what Jamie is, and that is someone who is amazing. God when she talks about weeping when Jamie went on for England, I wanted to weep too! She’s so proud of him!

Natalie: I think the way Georgie insists that he is never going to change tells us there are periods of time where Jamie naively had hope that next time it would be different. And that’s probably not been a linear journey. It would be like, something very bad happening, then enough time passes for Jamie to maybe think it won’t happen again, and then it does. And it would have got worse with Jamie as an adult, making his own ill-advised choices to keep meeting up or whatever.

Megan: The thing about their situation is from the outside – for us and probably for Georgie too – is that it’s so easy for us to look at this and know what Jamie SHOULD do, Delete his number, block him and never look back. And it must be so frustrating for Georgie when that doesn’t happen. But humans are extremely messy – even perfect ones like Jamie – and we’re really bad at making the right choices. So yeah, Georgie has seen Jamie go down paths like this before, and she probably thinks he will again in the future.

Natalie: The thing that slightly frustrates me about this episode is the fact that she’s framed here as right – because she is right – and is later “proven wrong.” And I don’t like that they did that. But given the experience she has and the information available, she is absolutely right and I would have loved to continue that trajectory of her correctness and not have the James story play out the way it later does. But we will get to that. This is, right now, the kind of assurance Jamie needs in order to handle the situation he expects to face tomorrow.

Megan: Yeah, more on that later as it’s not my favourite choice they’ve made. But right now she’s the perfect thing and says what he needs to hear. The way his face lights up when she mentions his England appearance. He just looks so happy and excited.

Natalie: I choose to think that she was there in person at Wembley and she had cleaned up her face before meeting him after the game, because if she just saw it on TV, they would have already discussed her reaction when she called him after? But if she was there in person and was sobbing in the stands, she might have just been very excited and happy afterwards and they didn’t discuss that part.

Megan: Yeah I can see why he wouldn’t have wanted her to go to the City v Richmond match, but I think he would have had her come down for England.

Natalie: When she says to him “You’re not lost, you’re just not sure which direction you’re going.. yet” – how did that feel to you? Is that something we maybe need to touch back on after the City match? Or like, how did you take it in the moment? Because until she said that, I’m not sure I thought direction was his issue. But it could mean a lot of things – why he’s doing this stuff in the first place, or what he wants to get out of it, or just how he feels.

Megan: At that moment I wasn’t entirely sure, but by the end I do have a few thoughts. But here I wasn’t sure if she meant with his dad, or with Roy or Keeley.

Natalie: I think the whole “which direction” felt VERY Roy and Keeley, but I also think there’s stuff to be discussed about City’s role in his life, given the match and the shot of him walking home towards the blue moon. Georgie is also done up in a shade of City blue, in her outfit.

Megan: Yeah, the City of it all is what I was left thinking about at the end of the episode. Where his future lies, rather than who is in his future.

Natalie: Well, we can discuss that now or discuss it after he cries at the Etihad, so probably save it.

Megan: Let’s save it.

Natalie: All in all, an incredible scene, incredible performance, incredible experience. Just beyond anything I had hoped for in terms of Jamie and his mum having a strong relationship, especially with the amount of actual screen time given to it. Daddy Ola is obviously also pretty fucking great, and Jamie’s obvious jealousy of Sam having this amazing dad means probably that Simon didn’t quite fill that void for him, which is fair and understandable. It feels like what Jamie has with Georgie, he wanted to have with two parents, both Mummy and Daddy cuddle-babying him. And I don’t think he and Simon are quite like that. But of course he’s also comparing Sam being affectionate with his dad to the way he’s been dealing with his own father. Anyway, the point is, Daddy Ola was very good. But he did also go with the forgive racists idea.

Megan: True, whereas I don’t Georgie is on board the forgive James train. She’s on the “fuck him, don’t give him any more energy train.”

Natalie: I loved the use of ballsack as her first insult. It’s the perfect choice. It minimises him to the only thing that could now matter to her – the fact he gave her Jamie. Like all he is to her is the ballsack that gave sperm to make her son. I know that sounds disgusting, but I think it was really intentional. Anyway, I like Sam, but Jamie is my everything, so I am just beyond thrilled by the levels we got from him and his mother here. We never expected this MUCH, on any level. Focus, screen time, intensity, depth.

Megan: Hah! I hadn’t thought about that re: ballsack, gross but I agree, it works perfectly. I am also really happy the visit home wasn’t the result of personal family trauma. I was concerned it would be that her or James had died or something, but instead it was just Jamie being sad and needing cuddles, while Roy and Keeley are ridiculous. Perfect.

Natalie: Simon taking the others off on a house tour in order to give Georgie and Jamie time alone is fun. First of all, I bet they have more shrines, like a hallway covered in framed pictures for Roy and Keeley to look at. More stuff on the fridge. And probably some very special pictures in their bedroom, like on the dresser.

Megan: I doubt there is a single room in that house that does not feature a picture of Jamie somewhere, including the bathroom.

Natalie: He probably showed them all his different baking pans, he also would point out all the various improvements and renovations, like the bathroom and maybe an extension? A conservatory or something.

Megan: That seems likely. Maybe a nice deck in the garden with a hot tub.

Natalie: That’s just your wish fulfilment.

Megan: Possibly a little bit, yes. But if any rich footballer wants to pay for my garden renovation, I am open to offers.

Natalie: I’m sure one of them would be up for it.

Megan: Even just paying for the asbestos removal would be a start!

Natalie: But of course the main attraction, at the top of the house, is Jamie’s room. This is the thing that was promised to us in the trailer and that you know, we’ve been going mad over ever since, and I want to talk about all the details of it, because there are truly some gorgeous little touches. But first and foremost: the posters, and Simon’s handling of the posters. We knew this was coming, really. We knew this HAD to be the reason they gave us his childhood room rather than saying that Jamie DID buy her a big new house. But honestly… God. There are so many ways this could have gone. And again, they exceeded any of my expectations. In season 1, this is the first thing that Jamie says to Roy with any sense of vulnerability or friendship or love. When they’ve been fighting, Ted tells them to work it out. I just want to go back to this because it actually makes me cry. The very first thing Jamie says, towards making any kind of peace with Roy, is this. “I had a poster of you on my wall when I was a kid.” He admits this level of deep admiration for Roy as a footballing hero of his, and he goes on to be frank, quite fairly actually, that Roy isn’t as good as he once was and yet he still acts with a level of arrogance that makes people feel like shit. It’s a fantastic moment of connection and it tells such a huge story. Even if the Ted Lasso writers didn’t quite have it all planned out – they claim they didn’t always plan the level of the Roy and Jamie story – what that did, in 1.04, was set a benchmark that I, at least, needed the show to meet. Which was paying off this understanding that Jamie LOVES Roy. He loved him back then too, and he was being awful, yes, but that was very likely because Roy, who he loved, was being so awful to him as well, and the image of him in Jamie’s head was now painful. It added this immediate sense of weight to the Roy and Jamie relationship that made you feel, even then, that these two had to become a huge relationship.

Megan: Yeah it’s the moment where – even though it isn’t smooth sailing and they still clash – we can see that these two are linked as characters, that there is a connection there.

Natalie: It is effectively promised to us, when Jamie asks Roy if he and Doug Stashwick, the older guy Roy hated, ever became friends. There is such a sense of yearning when he asks that. Like, you don’t just write that as a casual curiosity. It could be that this scene is when the Ted Lasso writers realised where it wanted to take these two, or it could be retroactively what they went back to – that they’d meant the whole “did you and that Doug bloke ever become friends,” flippantly, then realised how well it would play to grow on that. Because Jamie says that with such an obvious false flippancy to me. He is so, so, so upset to not be friends with Roy and that Roy isn’t living up to the version in his head. You COULD take it as if Jamie is checking that they get to keep hating each other, like, “Thank God we aren’t expected to be friends.” But it is so very obviously not that, like, look at Phil Dunster’s face.

Megan: You could, but that would be the wrong take.

Natalie: I mean, that’s how he plays it to Roy. His whole “to you dying” toast is so quick and clever that Roy cannot help genuinely laughing and smiling, and Jamie is so fucking thrilled to make him laugh. It is a scene that promises an arc, in my opinion. It sets up what they’re meant to mean to each other.

Megan: Yeah. It’s the first moment we see Roy laugh like that I think.

Natalie: But you know, people who care slightly less about them could have taken the poster thing more lightly. Casual viewers may not have even remembered that line. But for me, it colours every single interaction they’ve had.

Megan: Imagine not obsessing over it, and waiting for this moment. Couldn’t be me.

Natalie: The idea that Jamie loved him as a kid and wanted positive attention from him. Everything in their dynamic for me goes back to this level of hero worship and that disappointment Jamie would have felt when he and Roy didn’t get on. He is EVERYTHING to Jamie.

Megan: Yeah, liking him for so long and then finally meeting him, getting to work with him and not getting that attention. The impact that would have had on Jamie, and how he would have acted around Roy, and frankly at Richmond too, is huge.

Natalie: But of course, there was always a possibility that Roy was just one of many players, one among dozens of posters collaged on Jamie’s walls. He could have been one favourite out of many, or a temporary favourite. The hero worship could have been way overblown in my head, you know? Like, that one line created a backstory for me that was somewhat unfounded, but it just felt right. It felt like what the dynamic was laced with. But I had to consider that it honestly might not have been as big a deal as I’d thought. Surprise, it was. I love winning.

Megan: Yes! Finding out from Simon that it wasn’t just A poster, it was THE poster, the one that was always there no matter what other players were doing well at the time was just such a gift! It confirms everything.

Natalie: The way he says it – “Roy Kent always remains” is very loaded for me. It is obviously said in a very poetic way, but it felt like so many things were being said by Simon there. That Chelsea kit is one they used between 2003-2005, meaning Roy was in his early 20s. It’s also signed, which… I cannot even begin to imagine the image of small Jamie managing to catch him after a match in Manchester.

Megan: Look, the idea of baby Jamie meeting Roy and getting it signed might be too much.

Natalie: It is too much and I can’t deal with it

Megan: Agreed.

Natalie: But obviously Roy sees it and reacts with a level of shock, even though he did know this conceptually about Jamie, conceptually. He probably didn’t think it would still be there for starters, but it does make me wonder, since they started getting on, how often Roy has thought about Jamie’s feelings for him and if that ever makes him feel any sense of like, guilt or responsibility or anything.

Megan: The way Roy says “huh” after Simon says he’s always been there is quite thoughtful. And Jamie has been so open with how much he likes Roy, that Roy has to know. I would love to know what he’s thought about all of this.

Natalie: But Simon… God. That’s a shovel talk.

Megan: A very polite one, but a shovel talk nonetheless.

Natalie: That’s Simon being like “Just so you know, my kid LOVES you loves you. You have had so much of an impact on him and you have to understand how much you mean to him, if you don’t already.” It is this very kind, very peaceful, “Just so you know, you’re the one, and you should probably think about that properly, if you haven’t already, because I know how tough your relationship has been and how painful that has been for him, and despite your worst moments, he never took that thing down.” It was phenomenally done.

Megan: Yeah it’s kind of making Roy aware of how much he could hurt Jamie, if he chose to. How much power he has over him emotionally. And while I doubt Simon would ever actually do anything, he wants Roy to know, and make good choices.

Natalie: Yeah, it extremely felt like “Be careful with him,” especially given the state Jamie is in now.

Megan: God. Simon. I love you.

Natalie: Keeley looks fucking delighted by it. She is having a feeling over it.

Megan: The way she looks at Roy is very thrilled and smug and touched. I think she very much appreciates Roy caring about Jamie so much in this episode, and she likes this visual evidence that Roy is important to Jamie too.

Natalie: It is really an incredible way for Roy to take stock of his situation and make him truly understand Jamie on a new level, so yeah.

Megan: And I think it’s important that Roy is the driver of their current situation, in this episode. Keeley wouldn’t know about it if not for Roy. But Roy noticed Jamie was being weird, Roy sought him out to ask him about it, and Roy pulled Keeley in when he needed reinforcements. I’m very proud of him.

Natalie: The journey of the poster really went above my expectations too, in terms of, after its first mention, it could have been like I said, one of many, and then it also could have just been something that never came up again. Then when we saw the childhood bedroom in the trailer, I knew this was why, but I did think it would probably a) be played purely like a joke and b) be shown as one of many. I didn’t think we would get this dead serious thesis statement, “Roy Kent always remains.” Simon, man. You’re killing me.

Megan: God. I can’t. It’s so powerful.

Natalie: It’s really bad for Ted Lasso to keep giving me the things I want in even more intense and deep ways than I ever expected them to. It is going to make me delusional about the finale. Because as it turns out, Roy is not actually the only poster there. He is the only footballer though. And like… this one I was not expecting. But it makes the whole thing crazier. What was your reaction to this, the whole joke of Simon closing the door on them to show Keeley?

Megan: I definitely was not expecting to see Keeley Fucking Jones up on the wall. My reaction was basically the same as Keeley’s.

Natalie: She clearly did not know about this when they dated.

Megan: Two highlights for me: Roy’s face when he sees, pure glee. And Keeley’s “fucking hell” delivered in Roy’s voice. And I actually think Roy’s reaction is important! Like, it’s played for humour, but given everything else with them, this is something you might have expected him to get weird jealousy over. And he didn’t, he was just very amused.

Natalie: Roy’s glee is so fucking funny. But Megan, why are they both so happy that Jamie has been obsessed with the other?

Megan: I DON’T KNOW NATALIE.

Natalie: I mean I know.

Megan: I know what I want the answer to be.

Natalie: I don’t want to jinx it, but I also refuse to do double think. First of all, can we talk about Jamie Tartt, King of Manifestation. He wanted those poster people SO MUCH that they eventually ended up in his childhood bedroom in the flesh.

Megan: He has really managed to make all his dreams come true. What a guy.

Natalie: And his parents are just like “Yeah, this makes sense.” Like, Simon knew what they were going to fucking see! So did Georgie, and so did Jamie!

Megan: Georgie and Simon must have had a right giggle over all of this when they left. Simon telling Georgie what he said! And she’s in fits.

Natalie: They’re just like “Oh, Jamie, well done.” Georgie of course would be like “Of course my amazing baby boy would get everything he ever dreamed of! Why wouldn’t he!” But I also want to speak frankly about Jamie’s queerness and how this is feeling more and more likely to actually be what it looks like. This feels like Schroedinger’s Polyamory. We don’t know if it’s real or not until next week, but to me, the way this is played, and everything that follows… Like, Jamie’s room has four walls. He could have decorated it in any way, and I’ll talk about some of the sweet little details in a second, but putting Roy’s poster next to Keeley’s like that – and there are other girlie pics too, butts and stuff – it inherently frames it as sexual. It is at the foot of his bed, even more directly “watching” him than Keeley’s picture. Putting it plainly, he would not have been able to masturbate to those girls without also having Roy involved in his gaze and I am fairly sure this was intentional. Like, they could have had Roy on one side of the room, and Keeley on the other. But they gave us this shot of like… this fucking vision board of desire for Jamie. I don’t understand what else we’re meant to think. They could have done literally anything else. They could have had more posters, more variety, they could have made it so it isn’t just Roy Kent and soft porn. Anything other than this! This feels so stark. There’s so many other implications too, like the fact that Jamie never took that down after meeting Roy and not getting on with him, or breaking up with Keeley. When he came home, he still wanted them there.

Megan: Yeah, just the choice to have it be at the foot of his bed – the first thing he’d see when he wakes up or goes to bed – and having them both be right next to each other. That is so telling.

Natalie: The whole thing is just like… if this is what Jamie wants and dreams of, this is what Jamie needs to have. Otherwise it feels like a story about a couple who are best friends with a sad little creep who will never be truly happy. And it isn’t that story.

Megan: It very much is not.

Natalie: Right now, given the things they’ve already delivered, I’m living in a world where I am assuming they’ll pay this off too. Because it felt more loaded than a visual gag.

Megan: The cynic in me doesn’t feel like this is going to be the show that makes two of its (until now presented as) straight male leads queer and part of a throuple. I want it, I want it so badly. I just don’t know if I can see Ted Lasso actually going there, despite the payoffs we’ve had this episode. But I can see it going in a place where like, the three of them end the series ostensibly all single but very much spending all their free time together. And it would be a bit of a cop-out and probably leave nobody completely happy, regardless of who or what you ship, but I could live with that, and the implication behind it.

Natalie: I want to talk about that more at the end, I think. But I will say I feel it would be VERY jarring to have the next episode be about a big Roy and Keeley one-on-one reunion after this. Especially with the scene that occurs in Jamie’s room between them. Obviously Simon leaves them alone in there to nose through Jamie’s stuff and process their feelings, and obviously they find it all a bit weird. As Keeley says – there’s a lot of weird to choose from, this evening. They clearly both find the Jamie and Georgie stuff a bit odd – I don’t think they’re judging, but I think they’re taken aback by it and they didn’t expect it of him, especially so shamelessly, in front of them. They’ve clearly never seen him so comfortable with being vulnerable like that, even Keeley when dating him. I can see him being grumpy and whiny but not quite like that, and not in front of other people. They definitely think the posters are weird. Roy probably thinks the Surprise Simon, after knowing about James, is quite weird. I can see Keeley having known Simon exists, from when they dated, and I mean maybe Roy did know he had a stepdad too, he and Jamie have had plenty of time to chat. Maybe that was just a surprise for us and they did conceptually know about him. But none of us – Roy and Keeley included – were prepared to see the energy going on in that house. Like “I love my mum and my step dad is really nice” is one thing. Witnessing the family dynamic is another.

Megan: Sidenote: I do enjoy Simon just leaving them there to snoop, LOL. He must have known they wanted to, and apparently decides Jamie would be okay with it. But no, I don’t think they’re judging, I think they’re just a bit stunned by quite how soft and cuddly it all is. Because yeah, even if Roy and Keeley knew he liked his mum and was close to her, you and I knew that too! And we were still surprised by quite how it went!

Natalie: They’re both obviously finding the build up of behaviour that got him here weird too – the helpless sobbing, the anxiety making him fall onto the bed. Everything. Is. Weird. But what Roy means is that it’s weird that after a year of him and Keeley being broken up, they’ve found themselves here, on Jamie’s childhood bed (where he wanked about them) being all concerned about his well-being.

Megan: He is not wrong. Their awkward little “Thanks Bud,” “You’re welcome, pal,” was both funny and painful.

Natalie: I think Keeley’s “good on us,” was the most interesting part. As if being here together loving Jamie is an aspirational point to have reached. It is certainly progress, given how they all started. Like, “look at us all caring about each other so much.”

Megan: Yeah it genuinely is a huge moment for the three of them. They have come so far.

Natalie: They feel inextricable from each other at the moment, which is why Roy telling Keeley he doesn’t want to be friends is so loaded, in this moment where Jamie once again is so fundamentally just wrapped around them. Keeley looks so upset when he says he doesn’t want to be friends, like she takes it as wanting to cut her off, and it makes me wonder what happened after their hook up. When they were in her office and Roy said “I need to talk”, the way she was like “Roy….” was very much like a warning tone. Not just because of Barbara, I think. It felt like they hooked up,. Keeley said it was a big mistake and really wanted to be friends while she figures things out, and please don’t ask about more. So the first chat, her “Roy….” felt like “Please don’t do this.” And here, when he says “I don’t want to be just friends…” She takes his hand, yes. But it didn’t seem like a happy moment where she was excited for him to want this. It felt to me like she was going to turn him down.

Megan: Yeah. I think where I am with Roy and Keeley specifically, is that Roy hurt Keeley, badly. He didn’t mean to, he thought he was protecting her from his shit, but because he didn’t say any of that, he hurt her and left her feeling really insecure and confused. And honestly, that insecurity and confusion could have had an impact on how she did at KJPR, from feeling confident enough when faced with clients like Coffka, to making rash decisions like hiring Shandy and kissing Jack. I do think she still loves him and I think there probably is a part of her that would want to date him again, but at this moment I think she needs more time to figure out where her head is, and to make sure she doesn’t leap back in too fast. Because the first time she and Roy started dating, as we discussed in an earlier article, they did really jump in fast. And she did it again with Jack too. So I think she is not, right now, ready to say yes to dating him again. That being said, given how big an issue Jamie was in their relationship before, seeing Roy care so much about him – and seeing Roy that has changed and grown enough to be able to care openly like this – could possibly go some way to her thinking maybe he is in a place where they could date without him hurting her badly again. But…I don’t know if Ted Lasso has left enough time to show that well in the next episode.

Natalie: I’m more curious about how they went from last week to here – people did think they’d just be dating again, and they’re obviously not. So why even show that hook up? I do somewhat assume that they’ll get back together in a big way in the finale and that’s why we didn’t get a reunion kiss in the hook up. Because that wasn’t The Moment. But I mean, if I’m going to be as non doublethink as possible, my take on this was – given the entire everything of the episode – Keeley was going to knock him back here in a way that somehow explains that they can’t be like before. And I think that involves Jamie. If I’m saying what I think without countering for any “Well it can’t be that because TV wouldn’t go there” dismissals, I think that she knows how deeply Jamie is tied into both of them. I think that’s why this is happening here and now, in this room – that the message is that they do not work without Jamie, and Keeley needs Roy to figure it out too. Because she still has feelings for Jamie herself, otherwise what the fuck was the whole Bantr video shoot about? But if Keeley does need time alone it could even be as far as Keeley being like “You don’t want to be with me, you want to be with him,” if only because this episode focuses a lot on how happy she is about how they act together. Like, a LOT. And in all of those moments, she looks a lot happier than when Roy says this. This was not going to be an easy answer, whatever it was. Which we don’t find out, because of course, Jamie comes in, in the middle of it. Because that is what he does. He is always in the middle of them. It feels very loud, here.

Megan: Yeah, honestly I agree with all of this. It can be really hard, especially as a queer person who is used to being let down, to watch the actual source material and believe in what it is actually showing us, without adding that layer of “Oh but the TV producers and network wouldn’t let this happen”. But when you lay it out like you have above, everything about this episode shows how linked the THREE of them are together, and how important it is that the three of them care about each other. That is what the characters and scenes here are saying. Jamie is always there in the middle of them, and the three of them together just fit better than any combination of just two of them.

Natalie: It is at the point where it would feel very weird for any pair of them without the third.

Megan: When it’s all three of them, there are gaps that get filled, and rough edges that get smoothed out.

Natalie: But honestly, the one I could see it the most with is Roy/Jamie and no Keeley. Like, them together with her as a friend fits better for their character energies than either of the boys with Keeley as a couple, and the other on the side. Because they’re both a lot more intense about relationships and she very possibly could need to thrive alone. It definitely should be the three of them, but if it wasn’t, the one most likely to work is the one least likely for Ted Lasso to do. So… it’s throuple or bust.

Megan: I do think any combination of a pair – Roy and Keeley, Jamie and Keeley, Jamie and Roy – would work fine as a couple, though I agree Roy and Jamie do have the same intensity. Like, you could see that and be like “oh yeah, they’re a nice couple.” But seeing them together all three of them, that just hits very differently. That is how they work best, and this episode really hammers that home.

Natalie: Well I think they all work as couples if you don’t factor in the other person’s relationships. Like I think Jamie and Keeley could absolutely be an endgame pairing for the ages, but I don’t think it would work with Roy still being close to them with his messy feelings, and Jamie would want to stay close to Roy.

Megan: Yeah that’s the issue. I do think Keeley is the one who would be the most chill about Jamie and Roy dating without her.

Natalie: They all work as couples, but the only combo that works as a “couple plus best friend” is Roy/Jamie plus friend Keeley.

Megan: Yes.

Natalie: I think it’s possible we will get Roy/Keeley with friend Jamie, but at this point I would rather we didn’t – I’ll talk more about this later. Here, everyone has some extreme face stuff going on when Jamie comes in, and Keeley pulls back fast like she doesn’t want Jamie to get the wrong idea. Jamie’s like… “Okay…” Roy is awkward, and as he passes Jamie to leave, Jamie is kind of slightly sheepish. The smile when he looks back into his room, this small little smile, is very sweet. I assume he’s kind of processing the fact he’s aware they’ve seen the posters – not ashamed, just a little bit like “life is weird.”

Megan: He, too, is aware of how weird everything is right now.

Natalie: Because it pans back to the posters after he closes the door, and leaves us on this little bit of orchestration that ends with his theme – the score begins with Roy’s, when Keeley holds his hand, then the music carries through to end with Jamie’s, as part of the same piece. The music helps that final shot, lingering on the posters to feel like not a joke. It is more wistful. It will honestly feel so weird to have done all this then just be like “hahaha Roy and Keeley are getting married and Jamie is a weird third wheel with nothing of his own!” It absolutely establishes them as his most important people, outside of family. And it feels like that really has to get paid off – or at least not be backpedalled or reduced.

Megan: Yeah. This episode goes to such lengths to show how important Jamie is to them both. From the way Roy reacts when Jamie starts crying and the lengths he goes to to help him, to Keeley looking so happy and proud every time Roy and Jamie interact. So with all that in mind, however their story ends next week, I really can’t see that importance being reduced. But…argh, I don’t know what it’s going to look like.

Natalie: Well, before we move on, do you want to discuss some of the cute things in Jamie’s room besides his dream people?

Megan: Absolutely, although they are the cutest things.

Natalie: Because it is a rich environment. Keeley has an adorable squeak when she comes in, she is so charmed. One of the elements I like is the sort of age range of the toys there. Obviously he was in there until he was a teenager, given the wank material, but it’s full of toys from younger ages. A lot of them are things to do with the hands, or aim. Velcro darts, and a cone tossing set – you can see him lying on his bed and trying to get the thing on the cone. Those sticky balls to bounce off the wall or fiddle with. Other stuff to fiddle with, like slinkies and rubix cubes. Given his fidgety hands, that’s pretty perfect to imagine. Then tucked on the shelf, a pair of boxing gloves.

Megan: They make me think of his shadow boxing at Roy in the Amsterdam scene, and of course James does that too. Boxing is a fairly standard part of a lot of fitness routines, but if he had his own gloves, I wonder if it was ever a more serious hobby.

Natalie: Well, they made me think of him taking it at a point with serious self defence in the back of his mind. I feel like this is related to his father either in the sense that he was given them by his dad and yeah, maybe taken to some boxing gyms and stuff, or he did it because he wanted to learn to throw a punch.

Megan: Yeah, I could see his dad trying to get him into it to like, “toughen him up”.

Natalie: It was either an activity encouraged by, or done as a defence against, James – very possibly both.

Megan: If James gave him the gloves, maybe he keeps them as one of the few things he ever got from his dad, even if he didn’t ever actually enjoy it.

Natalie: There are such tiny, sweet details, like a line of plastic trucks and dinosaurs in front of his TV and even an Etch a Sketch – another fiddle toy. And the fact that it’s all a bit messy feels like he still plays with these things when he stays over. His things aren’t neatly put away, it’s like he still lives in the room. It is also deeply uncool room for like, a 17 year old boy about to complete Man City’s academy program to have. It’s so young-feeling aside from the pinup girls.

Megan: Right?! It really is so sweet and childlike.

Natalie: And it’s really cute that he was apparently okay with that. There are obviously lots of footballs of various sizes, little toy ones on the desk and full size game balls on the floor, both kid and adult sized. As well as football related toys, like a board thing.

Megan: And of course the football bedding.

Natalie: Again, like, not very cool for a teenager. And I love him for it. He appears to have a football beanbag, and a plush football. Just… yeah. He also has many other board games, in the storage under his bed and stacked on the shelves, ping pong paddles, CDs and a little round boombox, and more than one stack of paperback books. Bet the books made you very happy.

Megan: They did! I would really love to know what he likes to read! And actually what music he listened to as well. My attempts to zoom in have not given me answers as to the titles.

Natalie: The novels look quite old – they have that dark yellow paper quality from that older soft paper, probably picked up here and there. It’s obviously nowhere near as many books as I had as a kid, but it is more than many kids have. Some children do not read, especially sporty kids.

Megan: Growing up all my books were 10p paperbacks from car boot sales, so I can relate to them just being picked up here and there.

Natalie: And there are adorable little touches like a silver treasure box, a sparkly plush hedgehog, and two ceramic ducks. Not even matching. Unrelated ducks. I grew up with ceramic ducks on my bedside too, so if I could buy any prop from all of Ted Lasso, it might be the grey ceramic duck on Jamie’s bedside. Jamie being a duck guy is amazing to me.

Megan: I don’t think I had ducks, but I DID have a ceramic hedgehog. The plushy is very cute.

Natalie: Little friends. And of course, so many youth football trophies and certificates. The trophies I get – there were some downstairs too – but the fact that he has papered his walls with CERTIFICATES? Usually parents care about those more. Some are definitely football related, some might be school. Some are Certificates of Appreciation for Jamie Tartt… Not achievement ones, more “I was a good boy” ones. That kid really, really loves positive reinforcement.

Megan: Yes! Like some of those had big “Everyone in class gets a meaningless certificate about something” award. Take note Roy, he needs praise. And lots of it.

Natalie: So much. The walls are painted City blue and he has a MASSIVE England flag over his bed and an England scarf too. I have no idea why he would hang whistles on the wall – do you get given a whistle by the coach if you’re like the favourite? Is this a thing? The only thing I can’t really identify are the gold disc things on the wall. If they were medals they’d be hanging on ribbons from the desk. I don’t understand the disks, I’m curious. Or would the whistles be like the vuvuzela, things you take to a match to make noise as a crowd member?

Megan: I did notice that the whistle next to Keeley appears to be plastic, and the one by Roy is metal. He should really swap those around.

Natalie: I appreciated the rainbow string on the vuvuzela because of who I am as a person.

Megan: I had assumed the discs were medals, but you’re right, they should be hanging up I think!

Natalie: Overall, they went hard on creating this room for Jamie. And the idea that when he comes home he still sleeps there and plays with his toys is just wonderful. In general, I feel very much like the whole “the kid’s room is just how they left it” is a really American trope that I thought was unrealistic as hell. I’ve had American friends tell me it happens though. I don’t feel like this is in any way normal behaviour in the UK, but it kind of works for Jamie and Georgie. It’s part of the shrine, and he has a safe place for childlike regression.

Megan: Yeah, I’m trying to think if I know people with houses left like that in the UK. Mine wasn’t, because my dad downsized after siblings moved out for university. I don’t really think it’s very common here, but you’re right, it fits Georgie and Jamie’s relationship really well.

Natalie: God, I love them so much. I just can’t believe how fulfilling this was. Sorry to anyone reading these recaps who is not as Jamie-centric as us and did not need a rundown of every item in the room, but like… *taps site bio * This is not an equal opportunities article. This is the Jamie show for us, and this truly was the best episode of the Jamie show.

Megan: LOL. Yes. Every single thing about these scenes was utterly perfect. Good job show, you nailed it.

Natalie: Of course their goodbye was very sweet, just more kisses and cuddles and the affirmation that we heard way back at the curse fire, that she doesn’t care if Jamie is any good, she just wants him to be happy. She doesn’t care if they lose by ten goals tomorrow. To be honest I don’t think Jamie would be very happy if they happened.

Megan: No, I think Jamie would quite like to win.

Natalie: But I think what that’s about is an awareness and radical combating of James’s conditional affection. It’s like, “I’m not ever going to be disappointed if you lose or draw or anything. I just want to know you’re doing what you love and will support that, whatever direction.”

Megan: Yeah, she is never going to link Jamie’s worth, in her eyes, to anything that happens on a pitch.

Natalie: “Your achievements don’t affect how I feel about you, you’re amazing because of who you are,” you know, base level stuff that kids obviously should hear but don’t As we’ve seen with James – and also Nate.

Megan: Yeah, I think from too young an age kids start getting judged on what they can do, and I imagine entering the academy system, Jamie would have had a lot of that from coaches, even before James was around, so he really needed Georgie’s unconditional love to balance that out.

Natalie: How incredible she is. Truly unmatched levels of love. Roy thinks so too, which is so weird, but kind of hilarious and interesting to me. The whole Roy and Georgie thing is just… Well, it was unexpected. But I don’t think it’s as simple as people might think. Obviously the base read is “She’s hot and he’s checking her out,” like Jamie and Roy’s sister. But it really didn’t seem like that to me. It seemed so much weirder.

Megan: Yes! Like…the first greeting of “Hey…you.” He seemed stunned, but it didn’t read to me like “stunned by how hot you are, I want to kiss you.” And just throughout, he seems fixated on her, yes, but on her AND Jamie, not just her by herself! My instant reaction was like “Are they trying to imply attraction here?” But it really didn’t feel like that.

Natalie: That “Hey, you” was the only moment that felt like out of pocket, in terms of overfamiliar potential attraction. The rest of it felt a lot weirder and more complicated. I do think part was attraction, but it wasn’t lecherous. It was like nothing we have ever seen from Roy before, ever. He was not in control of himself at all. And obviously he loves Keeley and he tries to get back with her in the middle of his Georgie fixation, so it doesn’t even feel like sexy gawping is the mood they’re going for. It DEFINITELY doesn’t feel like the comparable taunting Jamie did, “Your sister is fit.” Jamie doesn’t even notice, really. So here’s what I think. I think Roy, the world’s most repressed sad man, who struggles with all kinds of intimacy, sees how Georgie and Jamie are – the total lack of shame, the support, the safety, the lack of issues that Jamie has in slipping back into this child role. And he’s like “I don’t understand this at all. I just don’t. But I think… I want it.” Roy left home at age NINE and he didn’t come back to live near his family in London until he was in his TWENTIES. He was there for like 12 years in Sunderland. And I’m sure he stayed with nice billet families or whatever, but Roy left his family at 9 year of age and then his favourite family member died. I think we can safely assume he doesn’t have this kind of relationship with his mother. So when he is staring at them, I think part of it is “what the fuck”-ing at Jamie. Disbelief that Jamie is this much of a baby, that he has no shame in doing this. He’s learning this is what Jamie needs to feel better, but he’s also so entranced at Georgie giving it to him. The whole thing is foreign to him, but I think his weird behaviour is because he feels some sense of yearning for the whole vibe. Roy is so damaged. He needs to be babied too.

Megan: I knew that I didn’t interpret what he was feeling as pure attraction, but I hadn’t thought of this as the reason, and I think it actually makes perfect sense. I think Roy would honestly have had such a touch-starved childhood, and grown up in such a toxically masculine environment. We know he’s needy, we saw that when he and Keeley were dating, but it’ll have been so long since he was babied in any way, and I do think seeing this just stunned him. Made him…not jealous, yeah, yearning is right. And also aside from him wanting that, he also just can’t quite believe that Jamie is okay to be seen like that. Both because Roy grew up in this environment that means he can’t really show he’s vulnerable, but also having seen what James is like with Jamie, knowing what James did in Amsterdam, he must be amazed at how vulnerable and soft Jamie is comfortable with being. Not in a judging way, just stunned.

Natalie: It’s a moment where he’s forced to look directly at the truth of who Jamie is, instead of having that false idea layered over it. I mean he’s been forced so many times by now, but things change this episode in a big way. With the crying in the boot room, and this, and the ending. Roy cannot look away from the reality of Jamie now. But I think there’s something going on about Georgie. Obviously it’s played slightly like “No, Roy, that’s inappropriate,” when Keeley drags him off, but the way he goes to hug her and then is blowing kisses and saying “love you!” The “love you” is what makes it NOT sleazy to me. It is absolutely unhinged, to be clear. It is so weird. But to me, this felt like Roy getting caught up in the moment – like, Jamie has been getting cuddles and kisses and just said “I love you” a bunch of times. And it feels like Roy is kind of being pulled in that direction, “I want kisses and cuddles and love too.” It feels like he’s copying or mirroring Jamie as opposed to a weird hitting on her thing. We’ve SEEN Roy be attracted to people. This isn’t it. How he acts here is just like some strange shit he barely seems in control of. It doesn’t match how he is when it’s just that he thinks someone is fit. It is so much weirder, LOL.

Megan: Yes!! The love you and kisses blowing was honestly just cute, LOL. And weird, very very weird, but Roy wanted a hug too! Wanted to be a part of it!

Natalie: It is definitely psychosexual, but I think it’s about a regressive energy of wanting her as a mum, despite the fact she’s only like… five years older than him, give or take.

Megan: Yeah.

Natalie: The actress is 43, which, if she’s playing her real age, means she had Jamie at 18 – but she could be playing up a few years. But we know Roy is 40, I’d say she is mid 40s.

Megan: Roy, I’m sure she’d love to have you as a son in law if that was something you wanted to consider.

Natalie: He seems to see what’s happening and has a craving for that love. He is transfixed, it feels like he’s catching Jamie’s regressive vibe. And he wishes he could be that open, maybe. Let himself be loved like that. It was definitely an unusual choice for the show to make and it REALLY didn’t feel as simple as “Tartt, your mum’s fit.”

Megan: This episode has set up so many things that I would love to be discussed more, but I’m just not sure they will be. However I agree, I don’t think it was about her being hot.

Natalie: Jamie also didn’t care at all, which is hilarious to me.

Megan: I don’t think he even notices! He’s way too focused on Georgie!

Natalie: Sorry Roy. You’re not the centre of attention right now. Jamie does look at him a bit like, “what the fuck, man,” after the whole… love you blowing kisses, but he really just waits patiently and doesn’t threaten to cut Roy’s eyes out. The three of them walking off with all linked arms – just three friends being so normal together. I hope they walk like that everywhere together for the rest of the series. Especially in public.

Megan: I hope so, I hope there are pictures all over Twitter and nobody quite knows what’s happening.

Natalie: It feels like… Look. It feels like they didn’t have to do this, with the linking arms. They really didn’t need to do this. They absolutely could have all just walked normally. We just had Keeley almost turn Roy down, and here she is being like. “I want the same thing with you Roy, as I do with Jamie. It’s all of us together.” And like.. of course platonic friends can walk around linking arms. But honestly, seeing a man and a woman do it, even as friends, the assumption is made that that’s a couple. Seeing someone do it with two EXES? That’s insane.

Megan: Yeah, on the back of everything else this episode has given us, the choice to have the three of them walk off like that… It didn’t need to be this way. I’m glad it was! But what a choice.

Natalie: And for those who watch with the subtitles on, we know that apparently among the indistinguishable chat as they walk away in their little triad, it has Roy suggesting they all go get cocktails. I can’t even imagine what cocktail Roy would drink – maybe an Old Fashioned. He must know that Jamie and Keeley like them though. Actually, if Roy drinks rosé he could have broader cocktail taste. Anyway, this may be the product of his warm fuzzy Georgie-addled brain, but wow. Roy! It’s a school night!

Megan: We don’t get confirmation on whether or not cocktails actually happened, but I am choosing to believe they definitely did.

Natalie: No time like the present if you finally know what you want, I guess. After walking back to the hotel, possibly via cocktails, we don’t get to see what happened next that evening, but you can probably imagine they had a pretty nice night in one way or another given how truly happy about each other they all are the next day. But we have a match to play first, and wow, what an exciting time. Do you remember how you felt when we learned they were up in Manchester filming at the Etihad, and on location in other places?

Megan: It feels like it’s been three years since then, but I think mostly just extremely excited and extremely nervous. But this was definitely the football match I was most anticipating this season. And as soon as we heard the crowds start to sing “Blue Moon” in this episode I got very overwhelmed.

Natalie: Overwhelmed in what way?

Megan: So, it’s now been an hour since you asked that question… You asked me to share how this made me feel, and I almost had a Jamie style-fit, crying and wanting to jump around the room, because unlike Jamie, I am not very good at being open about my emotions and what things mean to me. In fact, football and TV shows are probably two of the things that most let me kind of release emotions in a way I can’t always do day to day, so this meeting of two worlds – this TV show that I’ve spent so much time thinking about and finally going to the Etihad and seeing the home of my real life football team in the context of Ted Lasso was really special. Getting to see Jamie go back to City with Richmond honestly felt like the big climax of the show to me. I love so many characters and elements of this show, but Jamie’s story is what fully grabbed hold of me and got into my brain in such a way that means I’ve spent at least part of my day, every day for the last 18 months or longer talking or thinking about him. And coming into this scene, I had so much anticipation over what his home-coming would mean to Jamie, because Manchester, and Man City, was his home, and the club will always be a big part of him no matter what direction in life he chooses. This felt like the beginning of the final big moment for Jamie, and I’m not ready to say goodbye to him yet.

Natalie: I think I experienced these feelings a bit earlier in the episode – the shot of him being drawn home, walking down the middle of the road towards the blue moon in the night sky was extremely powerful and emotional for me. But yes. Obviously Ted Lasso is about to end (or is it?) The story we originally signed up for is about to end, and not every character will have a big important part to play in the final episode. I think there will be landing points for the others, but it’ll mainly be about Ted, Nate and Rebecca.

Megan: Yeah, I don’t think Jamie will be absent, and I think he’ll play an important role in Keeley and Roy’s story next episode, but this feels like the final big moment for his personal story.

Natalie: This moment is the real landing point for Jamie’s whole arc – the sense of closure, full circles, and possibly new beginnings. Given the ongoing Wizard of Oz themes too, which in turn is a strong example of the Joseph Campbell Hero’s Journey – the idea of home as the place you go back after the journey that changes you… It made me very emotional that Ted Lasso dedicated such a huge portion of the penultimate episode to being all about what this experience means for Jamie specifically. It is also obviously a massive mirror to Roy in 3.02, the Chelsea episode, that element of going back to your old club – your heart club, really. For Roy, the place he became The Great Roy Kent, for Jamie, the boyhood club who discovered him, equipped him with the opportunities to become the best, the hometown pride. Richmond is amazing, but when we discussed the element of emotion for the footballers back in 3.02, I think we discussed how the way that Roy feels about Chelsea and how Jamie feels about City are probably stronger and more important feelings for them, and to talk about when analysing them, than how either of them feel about Richmond. Richmond is a good place for them to have ended up, but it isn’t the same as this. And seeing those feelings at play in real football, with real players, is one of the things that makes it so interesting and feel so story-centric as a sport. I’m really glad that what we theorised before – about Jamie’s dad painting Jamie as like, a full-on betrayer, to turn City fans against him – isn’t what happened. I wasn’t really expecting the ending here, of Jamie being able to capture their hearts again within the course of the one match, but I am beyond grateful for this story choice.

Megan: Same. I’m glad it didn’t just end with Jamie feeling hated. In real life, players will often get applause when they come back to their club for the first time since leaving, playing for a different team. But when the player left under more contentious circumstances, that isn’t always the case. Like when João Cancelo came back to the Etihad with Bayern Munich. I felt bad for him because I think he just got the boos because of the way he left.

Natalie: Yeah, if this was just like, Jamie had been sold and this was his first match home since then, there would have been a good welcome. Roy would have got that at Chelsea when he first played against them at Stamford Bridge. As in, after joining Richmond as a player, he would have got some version of a welcome back. But for Jamie, having walked out on the club to go on reality TV… We’ve said before that it’s truly and utterly insane and unprecedented. The football world must think he’s SO weird.

Megan: Right?! Like, can you imagine the various footballer Whatsapp group chats after he quit to do Lust Conquers All?

Natalie: Obviously Richmond gave him a second chance, and he’s got loyalty to them for that. But it was also probably right for City to not have let him back, at that point. Without a really good explanation or a sense of understanding that he had a breakdown, which I doubt he would have shared, taking him back would have just made him look like they were willing to tolerate an egomaniac brat who can do what he wants.

Megan: Yeah, if he’d opened up properly, I do think maybe they’d have given him a second chance back then, but honestly it’s pretty cutthroat and even if Pep wanted to, he’d have the owners and the directors to contend with and Pep can only do so much.

Natalie: We see star players getting fines and consequences for even going on a two day holiday when not allowed, like just taking the day off. Ahem, Messi.

Megan: LOL.

Natalie: Jamie just walking out for however many weeks…There is absolutely no excuse for it. He is SO lucky Ted took him back and gave him the chance to work his way up again. As we know, no one else wanted him because he was seen – rightly – as a liability.

Megan: I may not love everything Ted does, but thank you for this at least.

Natalie: Yeah the thing is, I don’t think Ted has been particularly hands-on with Jamie’s story, but he did at least give him the space to even have one.

Megan: And he pointed him in the direction of the person Jamie most needed to be hands-on with him. Innuendo intended.

Natalie: The commentators say, you know, “perhaps not the homecoming Jamie might have dreamed of,” but I am sure he knew exactly what was going to happen, which is part of why he was so anxious. He knew that he would have to shoulder this. Probably thinks he deserves it, too – once again, what he did with Lust is just so deranged to consider, and absolutely inexcusable, from a football contract perspective.

Megan: Yeah look, even knowing why he did it and sympathising with him, I do not judge City one bit for not taking him back!

Natalie: It was obviously a wrong move, he broke his contract, it is extremely fair for everyone to have written him off. Even though he’s perfect. I loved Roy turning in his seat to send death glares to the boo-ers. And of course very happy that we got to keep cutting back to Georgie and Simon during the game.

Megan: Yes! I loved seeing the two of them watching together. I love how into it Georgie gets, she’s so good. But look, that one fan yelling “welcome home dickhead” felt very on brand. Sorry Jamie, but I did laugh.

Natalie: Look. It’s fair and I think he knows it’s fair. It sucks, but the fans don’t know the full story. And City wasn’t like, one of many clubs he had been a part of, this is his big hometown club that he had effectively grown up within since he was a child. It was SUCH a betrayal, and he knows it. We obviously didn’t see this kind of reception from the City fans at Wembley, or this kind of anxiety from Jamie before City came to Nelson Road, but I think it’s the element of being there at the Etihad, walking into that place on the other team. He is loyal to Richmond, but it’ll still feel a bit wrong to him. He’s expecting to get a bad reception in the same arena he grew up wanting to become a legend in.

Megan: Yeah, I think he probably thinks he deserves it. Like… he knows how he would have treated a player who did this when he was a kid, or if he was just a fan! So he definitely expected it and is ready for it, even if it still sucks. And honestly the City fans will know that if they want to win today, they need Jamie to not perform well, so there are probably some mind games involved too from them.

Natalie: Yes, which is of course why the harassment isn’t just when he comes on, it’s every time he touches the ball. And he’s being marked out by the City players pretty severely. It is about getting into his head as much as anything.

Megan: Yeah. They’re really going for him! I do wonder if he’s reached out to many of them since leaving, if any of them know the full story.

Natalie: I doubt many people at all know the full story, but it would depend on how close he might have been with anyone, or how long he might have known certain people. I feel like telling the truth to the people who mattered to him at City might more be an incident that happens for him after the events of this episode. For reasons.

Megan: Yes.

Natalie: Because he manages to orchestrate an early Richmond goal, which they all credit to his playmaking even though Colin is who actually scores, and this is where we learn that Real Pep Guardiola is actually Really Here. We’ve talked so much, especially in episode 7, about what it means in regards to Jamie’s past that Real Pep was his manager at City. What that would have meant for his personal development, as well as how he would have been positioned as a player both on the pitch and in the hierarchy. But in case you don’t want to go back and read all that: Pep is an incredibly intense person, he’s very loving and affectionate, sometimes quick to get frustrated but he’s actually said that at City, compared to where he was before, he has had to learn to be a lot more patient. He is a tactical genius but he is also known for being a very good man-manager, which means he is amazing at motivation, mood control, all that stuff. Keeping every player feeling happy and loved and valued even if they’re not getting a lot of minutes. He is actually renowned for that- for making players all feel wanted even when they’re being passed over for games. He also doesn’t have star players, he’s known for a high rotation of starting line-ups, as well as his total football tactics.

Megan: Yeah, the depth of City’s bench gets talked about a lot – they beat Chelsea recently with what was essentially their B-team – and it means he will often have to bench players who would be starters anywhere else, just because of his range of options. But he’s so good at managing them, at making them feel valued, that most of them will stay rather than go somewhere else where they’ll have more of a starring role.

Natalie: Jamie, when he was at City, would have just been a young player in the group and he really actually would have been a team player by merit of City’s system. It’s just at Richmond that he wasn’t, because George Cartrick started shaping the team tactics around him specifically. And Jamie might have been upset to go to Richmond rather than sticking around at City and not getting many games, but Pep is patient with players – like, if he retains them, their time will come. Jamie being loaned may have been something that was kind of forced upon him, or possibly he requested it, but either way, he was sent on loan to get him more game time, more experience playing the full 90 every week rather than sitting on City’s bench, and then he’d have returned to City more experienced. There are players Pep won’t do this with – he would rather keep them close and train them personally, even if they aren’t playing many games. It could be Pep didn’t want to loan Jamie and that Jamie begged for it, or it could be that he WAS someone Pep was okay with loaning because he wanted Jamie getting the minutes in. But I do know that having the loan forced on him, even if it was for his own good, would have made Jamie feel rejected and not good enough. But you can bet his dad wasn’t okay with him sitting on the bench every week at City either. He probably had uninformed ideas of how Jamie should just get good enough to be made a City starter, as if he had any control over Pep. Anyway, the point is, Pep would have been a good person in Jamie’s life until the whole City implosion, so it paints more of a picture for what that backstory looked like for Jamie, as opposed to City being some soulless place from his past where nobody loved him.

Megan: Yeah and I think… Obviously past City matches in Ted Lasso have had emotional moments, they’ve been hard for Jamie, and I think that’s mostly been down to interactions with his dad. But it’s more than that. I think he has a lot of What Ifs about City. What if his dad hadn’t been a prick. What if he hadn’t gone on that loan – whether it was his choice, or Pep’s. City IS important to him, and that doesn’t detract from how important Richmond is too, but City and the people there mean something to him.

Natalie: This episode really proves that. I think some fans may have equated Man City with his dad in their heads, like, for no real reason, actually, but there may have been an assumption – especially after season 1, season 2 makes it clearer that James is a clueless clout- chasing hooligan who doesn’t know shit about how football actually works – but early on, there may have been the assumption that what James wanted for Jamie was also the agenda City had for Jamie. Do you know what I mean? That James and City were a united idea, to some people, of that negative environment. Like, that Ted wanted Jamie to be a team player, but that CITY didn’t. And this is just… not true.

Megan: Yeah, that is SO the opposite of Pep’s ethos.

Natalie: It wasn’t Pep yelling at Jamie for making the extra pass!

Megan: No, I mean the other week Pep was yelling at Kevin De Bruyne TO make a pass, LOL. And blowing kisses at Jack Grealish, because he did pass.

Natalie: “Shut up! Shut up!”

Megan: God. Kevin please.

Natalie: Kevvy baby. But what needs to be made clear is that James’ opinion on how Jamie played the game was totally unfounded and wrong. It was as wrong for City as it was for Richmond.

Megan: Yeah.

Natalie: James might have been Jamie’s adversary in terms of his emotional state, and City might have been Richmond’s adversary in terms of opposition. But City were not adversaries of Jamie’s emotional state. It just happened that Jamie’s dad, as a fan, was hounding him about everything. It doesn’t mean City actually wronged Jamie. I think some people had mixed up ideas about that, but I think this episode really draws a line between those things.

Megan: Yeah, mixed ideas about what things at City were like, and mixed ideas about what Jamie feels about City. Because there have been a bunch of moments this season that shows he still respects them – calling them a great team when they came to play at Richmond, not joining in with everyone booing City during the Total Football presentation. City itself isn’t traumatic or sad for Jamie, it’s just James.

Natalie: In fact, it’s more that one of the saddest and most traumatic things about James is that he spoiled this relationship for Jamie – the relationship he had with that club and those fans.

Megan: Yeah, it’s really shit that James kind of took that away from him. (For now).

Natalie: Richmond holding a 1-0 lead all match would have been KILLING Pep.

Megan: That was the most unrealistic part of this episode for me. No shots of Pep kneeling at the sideline with his head in his hands.

Natalie: I was a bit surprised they didn’t make the score 1-1 and have Jamie literally score the winner. Do you think there’s meaning in that? That his goal – we will discuss the circumstances around it – meant something different when it was just an additional one, rather than the one that made them win? Or was this more about showing off Van Damme’s clean sheet? For me, it felt like the clean sheet was more a way of facilitating the prior point – that Jamie’s goal wasn’t the winner. But I’m not sure.

Megan: Yeah I mean, goals like that, at that point in the game, are important. Because if you’re City, and you’re losing 1-0, and you get a goal, that can be enough for a team like they are to suddenly fire off two in the space of two minutes and get back in the game. Whereas this would have thrown them off, so just in football mentality terms it was pretty important to widen the gap. But yeah, I’m not sure exactly what their intention was in Jamie not scoring the winning goal. I did like Van Damme getting a clean sheet, he’s had a tough few weeks, he’s earned it.

Natalie: I was really, really not expecting Jamie to get hurt, though.

Megan: No! And the save that he made had me CHEERING.

Natalie: The situation was so chaotic, Van Damme being off the line due to the earlier save. It all happened so fast.

Megan: Obviously it’s very exciting when players score good goals, but I LOVE a really good goal prevention, especially when it comes from a player who doesn’t normally defend. When Jack Grealish sprints back to get the ball off of dangerous players like Mo Salah, Son Heung-min or Bukayo Saka it is always really exhilarating for me, because I love seeing that flexibility. So I loved seeing Jamie come flying in out of nowhere for that goal line clearance. And then he went down and I was groaning along with the crowd. The football scenes in this episode were phenomenal.

Natalie: The way the tension of the crowd changes as they realise he’s actually hurt terrified me. From the guy who had previously told him to piss off back down South – such a heinous insult, to imply he belongs in the South! – to obviously then thinking he’s playing it up, to realising he’s not. The reactions of Keeley, Roy, Ted, the whole crowd. Van Damme calling for the physio. Given what we saw with Roy’s injury, I just became very worried about how bad this was, even if obviously he’s so young and fit and Roy wasn’t. Even if it wasn’t a career ender – if he was out for the rest of the match and the next one…I can safely say that before this second, I had never really thought about Jamie getting injured in a match. Not in terms of an episode. I’m sure it has happened and will happen during his career in general.

Megan: And then you see Georgie watching, and Simon watching her and trying to reassure her. I’m the same as you I think, we obviously had a lot of focus on Roy’s injury, so I didn’t really consider a similar situation with Jamie. And yes, they’re 1-0 up, but with ten minutes left on the clock against a team like City, that’s really not enough of a cushion for them to feel safe if they lose their best player.

Natalie: The whole thing was made more agonising by the fact he gives it a go – Roy is trying to heal him with his mind there, all determined eyebrows and encouraging clapping – then half way down the pitch, he falls again and realises he just can’t. It was so upsetting.

Megan: I did not need this, everything was already tense enough. Like, I knew without a shadow of a doubt Richmond were going to win this match, they had to, but it didn’t make it any less stressful to watch for me! And I was not expecting Jamie to get hurt.

Natalie: It is a choice that provides him with the highest moment of victory possible, overcoming this adversity. It allowed the City fans to love him again for his bravery, for the way he’s such a battler and a trier, as opposed to if he’d just pulled off an amazing move and played really well.

Megan: Yes! It’s not just that he played really well – he showed a lot of courage and determination and they can love him for that.

Natalie: One side thing. We get a lot of nice pub lad moments during this match. Very fun times, with them having to order four beers each because Mae couldn’t serve them again before half time.

Megan: It’s important to stay hydrated.

Natalie: But when they’re watching Jamie limp off the pitch, Jeremy says “Come on, James.” And I fucking LOVED this. Because it shows that people don’t know his story.

Megan: Yes! I had a similar reaction.

Natalie: Everyone who knows him knows why he would never want to be called that. But fans being parasocial use nicknames or full names all the time. It’s honestly SO hard for me to not call Jamie James sometimes when I’m trying to be extra about him! If his dad wasn’t also called James, I would call him James constantly. But the in-world Richmond fans don’t know this, so calling him James as a parasocial sign of familiarity.. God, it worked for me.

Megan: Yeah, that’s why I loved it. Because yeah, there are celebrities that I talk about a lot, and I’ll call them by their full names sometimes when speaking about them fondly, for the same reason. And so while I had an instant knee jerk reaction of “Oh no, he’s not a James,” I just loved it because it felt so right. Because you know the pub lads sit around talking about these players all the time, like they’re their friends. Especially now they keep going to watch them at training. So it felt so natural.

Natalie: Sometimes you make up full names for people who don’t actually have extended full names.

Megan: I do like to do that, it’s true.

Natalie: Harold.

Megan: Or call them a wrong version of their full name. Phil Dunster is sometimes Philbert. I don’t know why, it just fits.

Natalie: To be fair, he does this too, to others. Bretthanial.

Megan: Perfect.

Natalie: Anyway, Jamie having to come off and be treated creates a situation where they have to decide whether to sub someone in or not. Because, in case it isn’t obvious to non football people, once he’s benched he can’t go back on. They can’t send someone on, fix him, and then sub them out and him on again. If he’s out, he’s out. They have to decide whether to get someone else on or play a man down while time restarts and hope that Jamie can come back on in a few minutes. This does happen sometimes – you see the physio jogging a guy up and down to test if he’s totally fucked or not.

Megan: Against City, the idea of playing with only ten men for any length of time is quite a dangerous one, so waiting it out is a fairly risky strategy. Even if the player you’re waiting for is Jamie Tartt.

Natalie: Jamie really doesn’t want to have to come off. Like Ted asks, “Are you sure you’re done?” and he says yeah, but then changes his mind. So they’re going to wait and see for a couple of minutes, and thank God Van Damme is having a good game.

Megan: Honestly it did surprise me that Ted didn’t insist he came off. Hell of a time to choose you care this much about winning, when it’s Jamie’s body on the line.

Natalie: Look. This is… yeah. I mean it’s realistic, this is Ted at his most ruthless.

Megan: Yeah here’s the thing. This close to the end of the season, players WILL push through injury, especially if there is a title race, and then just hope they can rehab it enough during the off season. It was just a bit surprising to me that Ted was willing to do that.

Natalie: Ted probably knows how it would affect Jamie to have come off like that, if not disgrace, then with a sense of failure. I’m honestly not sure how it would have felt to me if he had insisted Jamie come off and not “achieve” anything in this match. That would have felt slightly like wronging Jamie too. But I have some thoughts about this.

Megan: I guess there’s no easy answer here, and Jamie clearly really did want to stay on if he could.

Natalie: Well, the show chose to go pretty hard in terms of Ted manipulating Jamie, which I found interesting. We know Ted is manipulative, but seeing him do it to encourage a player to play hurt was… Well, I mean, it was quite telling to me. The thing is, people have been waiting a long time for Jamie and Ted to have some sort of special talk or whatever about Jamie’s dad. And if they wanted this to land well for me, like, land as if it’s from a place of genuine care, they should have done it at half time or something – have Ted noticing Jamie looking around and making him distracted. Or even give them a conversation at another point, one that it was JUST about the personal element. The fact that the big Ted -Jamie moment comes now – when Ted is doing it to try and get Jamie into the headspace to play injured – it isn’t exactly the warm, pure and loving chat some people may have expected. I don’t think Ted and Jamie’s relationship is particularly important, so for me it just validated the fact that I don’t think Ted cares as much about Jamie as some other people want him to. But I almost laughed at the fact that THIS is the moment they were going for. Like… okay.

Megan: Yeah, there were a few things I did like about this. One of them is that when Ted goes over, Jamie’s already doing his laces back up, so I think he’d already made the decision to go back on – he did it himself, like he so often does. And I actually really enjoyed that the chat itself was quite casual, just a snappy back and forth. It didn’t try and pretend their relationship was deeper than it is. Like you, I don’t really think they’re very close. I think Jamie respects Ted as a coach, and he likes him, but he’s also not good at hiding his disdain when Ted goes on for too long, or doesn’t get something. And I don’t think Ted is ever going to be completely comfortable with Jamie’s spikier tendencies. So it worked for me in the sense that it matched up with my interpretation of their relationship, but it probably wasn’t very satisfying for people who see it as deeper.

Natalie: I did feel like Ted was making excuses for Freddy Krueger’s rough childhood in the same way he weirdly implied that having a bad dad was a good resource to be a great achiever in early season 2.

Megan: Yes.

Natalie: To be clear. “Hurt people hurt people. Sometimes they just do it with their knife hands,” is very fucking funny

Megan: Hah, yes! I honestly still think that there is a part of Ted that is so desperate to still have any dad, that he can’t quite completely write off James, because at least he’s alive, you know? But maybe I’m being too harsh on him.

Natalie: Yeah I do think that is a big part of it, that projection from Ted about how he views having a dad. But that chat in 2.02 still sits badly with me, and this is a continuation of that in the sense of Ted acting like it’s a valid motivator.

Megan: Same. I hate it. When Leslie talks about forgiving his dad, he does so not knowing what James is like. But Ted in 2.02 knows, so I’m never really going to be okay with it.

Natalie: I also think there’s a big difference between Roy being like “I’m fine with him playing hurt” – framed as a stupid decision by Beard, but a risk he would take as a player – and Ted’s act of manipulation.

Megan: Yeah, with Roy it’s very much coming from a “what’s a reasonable expectation of a player, as a former player” and again especially taking into consideration the importance of this game and how close to the end they are. That’s not what it felt like with Ted.

Natalie: And I mean Roy is also kind of wrong, and if Jamie got really hurt, he would throw himself in the sea. But look. I think the real issue is here hinges on how people interpret the word “forgiveness.” If you strip down the word forgive, it means, to stop being angry at someone for an error, flaw, mistake, or some other wrongdoing. It means letting that feeling of holding stuff against them go. However, in modern language use, the use of, and expectations around the word forgiveness is more usually in line with “Christian” forgiveness – even for people who are not Christian or anything. The word has culturally taken on a connotation of meaning more than just “stop being angry.” People tend to mean stop being angry and ABSOLVE, or welcome back in. You see things all the time where forgiveness means that a relationship becomes close again or whatever. You don’t see “I forgive you but I never want to see you again.” It usually means “I forgive you and I let the good feelings take over the bad ones.” Does this make sense, when I talk about Christian forgiveness? A broadly Christian cultural influence the West has meant the word usage is more often expected to be a welcoming back. Do you know what I mean when I say that is how people take the word now, in a broader sense?

Megan: Yeah I get that, like.. .they think it’s almost a means to an end? Like you forgive someone and that’s the first step in a chain of events leading to something like reconciliation. But sometimes the forgiveness itself is the end of a relationship.

Natalie: I genuinely think it’s a word that has changed over time. And still I don’t think it is the right word for say, how it was used with Sam and Ola. Forgiveness no longer means, in most people’s minds, letting go and JUST letting go. And in a show that does dig into mental health and life lessons, I think they should have been quite careful in their word choices for what they want things to mean. And this episode in particular, I think they really bungled that with James. It is very good for Jamie to no longer be obsessed with proving James wrong, and I don’t think that HAS been his motivator in a long time, it just ramped up again with this City game. But also, we heard earlier that he says he is feeling impotent because he already doesn’t care about doing things because “fuck his dad” any more. He has already stopped giving a shit, or has tried to. I’m not 100% sure how letting go of what James did to him helps Jamie in this circumstance, but I have less of an issue with Ted’s advice here than I do with the follow up stuff. I still think it’s stupid advice though.

Megan: Yeah, I found it fairly in line with most of Ted’s advice honestly, fairly average, but delivered in a heartfelt way.

Natalie: Jamie being affected by the idea of his dad, like he is here – freaked out that he doesn’t know where he is – is definitely something they could all do without. Like absolutely it is better for Jamie to not have that worry and to not care if his dad is there or not. But honestly, when he’s looking around and tells Ted what he’s looking for, for a second I thought he was going to say “Your dad’s not here. We organised with the staff to make sure he couldn’t enter the grounds,” and Jamie would realise how supported he is by the people who witnessed that abuse. So honestly, the fact it was some weird advice was a let down, because it feels like someone should have spoken to Jamie about the events of Wembley, over a year ago, and asked how he wanted to handle his father’s access to matches, way before now!

Megan: Yeah, honestly it really does. And like… we know that didn’t happen for plot reasons, because they wanted a scene like this, but it just feels really quite out of character that nobody at Richmond thought to do that. So their plot machinations have hurt their characterisation here.

Natalie: If the Ted Lasso writers had been willing to condemn James and make him an irredeemable bastard, the story here could have been Jamie realising that he’s safe, that he was being looked after in ways he hasn’t realised, by Ted, Higgins and Pep even, and then having the confidence that this place is his to enjoy. That the person who ruined it for him is gone. I probably would have preferred that story, Jamie realising he’s safer and more protected than he knew. But if I take Ted’s advice in the best faith possible, what’s being said is like… Jamie’s past motivation of being the best to prove his dad wrong – prove him wrong because his dad clearly never actually thought he was the best, thought Jamie was weak and soft and never a real contender for City or whatever – means Jamie was constantly working to succeed with that kind of noise spurring him on, like working against something. If he forgives, as in, lets that stuff go, if he no longer uses that as a driver, then he’s freeing himself of the weight of constantly thinking about the hurt done to him. I still don’t really agree, it still feels like letting James off the hook and also it isn’t that simple to just flip a switch. But that’s the best case scenario – the idea of forgiveness meaning Jamie no longer has to think about it any more. That is not what “forgiveness” means to me, it’s just not the word I’d use. But that does seem to be… I guess… the aim.

Megan: Yeah, I think that’s what they were going for in this conversation, and I do get that kind of sentiment, just the word forgiveness itself is so loaded, which is why I think some people struggled with it. And like, I am pro a future for Jamie where he is no longer deeply affected by James and his actions, I want that for him.

Natalie: Yeah, but…This was still iffy to me. Especially from Ted, especially in contrast with Georgie. I kind of liked that Jamie rebuffed him a bit, Ted being like “Talked helped, right?” and Jamie’s like eh, mostly the painkillers and the adrenaline.

Megan: I loved that from Jamie, LOL. Yeah, honestly I think Georgie’s message was much more in line with my feeling, she didn’t put anything on Jamie himself in regards to forgiveness.

Natalie: I can’t imagine many people who really love Jamie and want Ted to support Jamie, being like, “Oh yeah this is the moment between them that I dreamed of.” But there you go.

Megan: Sorry to those people.

Natalie: Jamie getting himself back in the game is really what turns things around for him though, because rather than walking on with his shoulders hunched like at the start of the match, kind of letting the boos hit him and hurt him, this time he faces it and plays with it. Like “Okay, let me have it,” cupping the fingers behind his ears as in, “I can’t hear you, louder!” Tapping the badge in mockery. He plays it up. And this matters. This is why they forgive HIM, in the faux Christian sense of the word. This is why they let him back in, I think. His spirit. Not just what he achieves on the pitch. The way he acknowledges them, and still acts out, with the attitude of one of them, a sassy Manchester lad. He’s the grown up version of the little kids outside his house. The insults with the kids was almost a game, the way they cheerfully all say “byeee!” at the end. Sometimes football heckling is like that too. Banter. And when he engages with the banter, he wins them back, even though I’m sure many were really really angry about his departure. This is what sells them on him again as one of their own. I too would change my opinion on things for the sake of Jamie Tartt’s tongue.

Megan: Yeah, the fans like seeing a player take it well. It is a mentality I struggle with, because I would not take that type of “banter” well and I wish fans wouldn’t do it, but players generally can handle it as long as it doesn’t get like, racist and shit. So yeah, they appreciate Jamie being able to give it back to them.

Natalie: Yeah when it’s not actually abusive, it’s more like theatre, performative. Him raising his arms like, “Come on, bring it on then.” Keeley being like “here we fucking go,” knowing what he’s capable of when at his cockiest. I think the one thing about the Ted talk is that by letting James go, Jamie can stop seeing the City crowd as an extension of James and more like an extension of those kids, if that makes sense. Because yeah, I already discussed how I don’t think City, the club, traumatised Jamie – but I did mean the internal environment, being on that team with those coaches and stuff. But playing at this match, the hostile crowd element has him anxious about his dad, so that IS a potential conflation in his head. He’s looking for the one person rooting against him in a genuine way. When he’s not doing that, it becomes more fun and less weighed down with that anxiety.

Megan: Yeah, he’s too focused on the crowd, looking for his dad, and that means they will get to him a bit. So he is now free from that, he can enjoy himself more.

Natalie: The way it plays out is interesting, because it’s a mirror moment of events in 1.05, “Tan Lines.” He collects a long ball and then travels up the pitch to score an intense solo goal – not a play created from lots of passing, just him dribbling alone and beasting through everyone. He scores what the commentators call a “spectacular solo goal,” and we even cut to Baz in the pub both times, screaming “JAMIE TARTT YOU FUCKING KING.” Then after it occurs, Ted benches him. These are the same things that happen in 1.05, when Ted benches him for being too full of himself and taking the ball when they were meant to be passing, and when he was doing the ridiculous “me” pointing. He was benched for being selfish and unsportsmanlike during that match. But here, it’s all very different.

Megan: Oh interesting, I hadn’t considered that, but you’re right. Of course one big difference here is the way he celebrates – or rather does not celebrate, but in terms of the goal itself it’s technically very similar.

Natalie: I have no idea if people understand the significance of the celebration or lack thereof, especially as Jamie doesn’t have a specific pose or action he’s known for. But to me this was my favourite part. This hurt good. For those who don’t know, the way he doesn’t really react, aside from smiling, how he just sort of tries to walk it off and holds his arms up in a mea culpa gesture, that’s a very meaningful moment in terms of football. Players who have deep feelings about their former club – especially if it’s one where the player has a really strong historical connection, not just somewhere they were for a short time – they generally won’t do any kind of like, cheering, or fist pumping, or knee slides, or hugging. Or celebration poses, if they have one. The vibe is very much, “I’m here doing my job, but I’m really sorry to have had to do that to you guys,” putting it simply. And it takes a lot of control because these guys do love to act like every goal is like, worthy of a New Years Eve rave party. So yeah, no running over to the fans, no hugging his friends.

Megan: I really, really loved that. Like honestly, weird Ted convo aside, this match included so many little elements and nods towards football realism and it just made me so happy. But this in particular was a big favourite moment. Not every player has this attitude about every club – if they didn’t play there long, or if they didn’t have a great experience – but I really love it as a football tradition, and I loved seeing it here.

Natalie: It is a moment of showing respect, love and gratitude to City – if he really felt like, “fuck you” about them, he would be gleefully celebratory and disrespectful, playing it up. But he could never do that.

Megan: No, never.

Natalie: Some people argue that the no-celebrating tradition is stupid, that you should show loyalty first and foremost to your current club and not act remorseful over having to score against your past club. Some guys do it even sadder than this. Jamie does at least look satisfied and smile. Some will hang their heads and look truly guilty and mournful. Honestly I love it. I think it’s a really lovely element based on big feelings and the bond with the fans.

Megan: Yeah he smiles and kind of holds his hands up sheepishly as they all jump on him, it’s very cute.

Natalie: Roy, for instance, would never have celebrated a goal against Chelsea if he scored against them with Richmond. And it may not shock anyone to know that Zlatan Ibramovic, of Zava fame, does not follow this unspoken rule of behaviour. He did switch around a lot though, and this rule is more about your “heart” club. Not about just somewhere you were for a year.

Megan: Yeah, hard to have a heart club when you don’t last long anywhere.

Natalie: Then the next bit of Football Feelings is the fact Jamie is subbed off right after the goal, at around 88 minutes. Of course he’s hurt and he shouldn’t be playing a second longer than necessary, but he probably could have played the match out. But taking him off before full time has a deeper meaning. I don’t necessarily think was intentional of Ted – he may not have known it would happen – but it allows the crowd to give him an individual ovation, just for his performance, as opposed to being cheered as part of the whole team at the very end. If they were at Nelson Road, in front of home fans, this is what the coaches would do if someone had a really special game for whatever reason – pulling someone off a few minutes early is sometimes done intentionally, to get them a solo cheer. And while I don’t think that was Ted’s reason, it was more about Jamie’s ankle, it still creates the space for it. Or maybe Roy told him to do it for this reason, actually. Maybe he had read the vibe.

Megan: If anyone could tell that was going to happen, it would be Roy. I like that as a theory, let’s go with that.

Natalie: Either way, what this gives to Jamie is something he clearly never expected, and it is incredibly moving. Thank God for the commentators explaining the significance to the audience, really spelling it out for the non football peeps.

Megan: Yes haha, I wouldn’t want people to miss how powerful a moment this was. I was Georgie in that moment, jumping up and down and really fucking proud of him.

Natalie: He also applauds them before they start to applaud him, which kills me. The man we focused on earlier, who was doing the heckling, is like, crying.

Megan: Yes! So proud of their local lad doing well, even if he is on the wrong team, in the wrong part of the country.

Natalie: We are encouraged to think of what it means for him and for his family, and honestly, what I think it means for Jamie is the possibility of going home again. I really do. I don’t think this will be something that happens soon, I’d like him to play one season of Champions League football with Richmond. But I feel like we might, in the finale, hear that there’s interest in buying him back, and I think that in a few years he would want to go. I feel like the finale may very well show people further along in their lives (which I don’t really want). But I’m stuck on the symbolism of him following the blue moon home. Jamie was never meant to stay at Richmond, and I think there is value in a larger full circle story for him ending with the possibility of him going home. Probably not on screen – if they’re leaving the door open for more, they’ll want Jamie in a spin off with Roy. But I feel like he has to end up at Man City again one day. And that’s what I keep thinking about, when thinking about Georgie’s comment about not knowing which direction he’s going, yet. For me, that feels like the directions are City and Richmond. That isn’t what SHE meant, it was just more thematically for me. And honestly I think the answer should be City.

Megan: I really don’t want the series to end with a time jump, but if it did, I would be really happy with Jamie’s part showing him back at City. I think people have a lot of feelings about Richmond being home for all of these people, that they’re a found family so Ted should stay, the players should all stay, Keeley should have stayed (I might not necessarily disagree with that one at this point.) But it’s like…Richmond is A Home, but it’s not the only home. And for football players and managers, clubs are very rarely permanent. There are exceptions, you get some players that basically always stay at one club, and some managers too, but they do move around, They go where there are opportunities for them to achieve more. And for Jamie, I think City is somewhere he can continuously achieve more than at Richmond, but also, it’s somewhere that I feel he has unfinished business, and it is another home. I’d be so happy to discover he ended back there in the future. But again, please no time jump, show. Not anything longer than a few months anyway.

Natalie: No. I think they could give us an implied version of this, if we hear that there is interest and Jamie is like “Well, my contract isn’t up till next year. After that… we’ll see.” Because there would be extreme interest in him now. Richmond is not one of the larger clubs and he is the kind of player that would now be being courted by larger clubs who are constantly trophy contenders. He’s in the position of people like Kalvin Philips and Jack Grealish, how clubs like City go after top players from mid-table clubs. Declan Rice, this summer. Selling Jamie could make Richmond a lot of money and offer Jamie more opportunities. This is not, of course, the ending a TV show would have for a lead. It would feel, on screen, like a weird miserable thing, because Ted Lasso hasn’t put in any effort into showing how transfers are good opportunities and things to sometimes be celebrated. I do think the ending of season 3 will be bitter-sweet, but I also feel sure that if the show isn’t sure about more seasons, they don’t want to punt Jamie off for the sake of a realistic football narrative. Richmond are currently a top table team. If they win the league he isn’t going to be like “See ya.” But something about how this episode ended, especially the way he was sitting alone in the dressing room as the other guys left… I’ve got a vibe. What I do think this episode achieves is letting the audience know that if this happened, it would be a nice thing. Like, it would mean a lot to him. It wouldn’t be Jamie going back to some horrible, less good thing.

Megan: Yeah, that City isn’t the enemy, not for Jamie at least, and he would do well there if that ever happened.

Natalie: I must know what Roy whispered to him when he came off.

Megan: Honestly, the way he just said Jamie’s name was already so good. A kind of husky whisper.

Natalie: I must know why they chose to show it as a secret. As opposed to him not leaning in, and just showing us a muffled well done or whatever.

Megan: While Keeley looks on, clasping her face in glee.

Natalie: What in the name of secret intimacy is going on there.

Megan: Next time Brett does one of those Q&A standup shows, I’d like someone to ask him what Roy said. Or at least what Brett thinks Roy said. Because not knowing is killing me.

Natalie: They need to ask if it was some “Lost in Translation” homage bullshit. Because goddamn. Boys. Please.

Megan: They must stop. Or they must never stop. One of the two.

Natalie: Maybe he’s telling Jamie he told Ted to pull him off so he could get that applause. But that doesn’t really fit how Jamie responds. Honestly, the fact that we can audibly hear Roy say Jamie, just fine, but they hide the comment into his ear… If they wanted us to know what was said they could have just spoken normally. Who is Roy hiding his comments from? Ted?

Megan: Yeah, spoken normally, or showed us subtitles like they did with the cocktails.

Natalie: Absolutely insane that they’ve done this.

Megan: It does feel like some of the choices they made this episode were done specifically to drive the two of us mad.

Natalie: Another person who is apparently watching Jamie with pride is his father, in a rehab centre. This drives me mad in a different way, but I want to save it for the end. But this is why Jamie couldn’t find him in the crowd – he isn’t there.

Megan: Bug and Denbo’s words were another choice – I had a split second of thinking James was dead, and then was immediately shown otherwise. But yeah, more on him later.

Natalie: Thanks to Jamie and Van Damme, Richmond manage to win 2-0 at the Etihad. A rare event but not impossible, Brentford beat City there 2-1 this season. But Pep was so mad, which is why his words to Ted felt very out of character, LOL. I know Sudeikis really admires him and his man management – Klopp’s too, but Ted Lasso doesn’t seem to think Liverpool exists. So apparently they decided to play it like Lassoverse Pep has an ethos similar to Ted. That honestly makes Lassoverse Man City, as the mighty dominating champions, proof that the Lasso Way works. Like, they play total football and Pep has this same personal ethos as Ted. It’s a message that if you’re doing all these things, the wins take care of themselves. I found that a little funny. It does also mean that Lassoverse City is an even BETTER place for Jamie to be than real City.

Megan: Yes! I mean look, Pep absolutely cares about winning and losing, of course he does. He is also always very complimentary about other coaches and very kind about other team’s performances – whether they beat them or not – and he does care about the players. But. He ABSOLUTELY cares about winning, and when players do stupid stuff outside of the work, he is very much like “not my clowns, not my circus, I’m not their dad.” So look, I love you Pep, but LOL. However, as you say, it means the Lassoverse City would be so good for Jamie, and I love that for him. And I loved this whole scene, so I will let that hilarity slide. I can’t believe the episode that was already the best episode in existence gave me this much Pep. Truly blessed.

Natalie: Ted and Beard fanning out over Pep is very funny too. Like, there’s something about the fact that City have been framed as the Big Bad team, but because it’s just a game of healthy competition, they’re excited to be praised by the best.

Megan: Yeah, I love that. Not just because I obviously love City, LOL.

Natalie: Again, it helps that City, by being included at all, are being massively complimented.

Megan: Yeah.

Natalie: Ted Lasso is never shit talking City, they’re Jason’s favourite. But screw Ted. Pep and Jamie is what matters, and this was SO realistically Pep that I lost my fucking mind.

Megan: This was the moment I was waiting for.

Natalie: It seems there are no longer hard feelings about Jamie walking out. Maybe Jamie sent him a letter or a text about why, because he truly would have been furious. But time has passed and Jamie is a good boy that Pep’s proud of.

Megan: Definitely. And of course we must remember that they will have seen each other at least twice at matches before now – at Wembley, and at Nelson Road earlier this season. Maybe Jamie sent him a text after Wembley or something. Either way this was so in character. The chest slapping! Pep’s tongue! The face cupping! I…look, it was just the perfect moment for me.

Natalie: The tongue thing was SO Pep. Jamie has had so many cuddles this episode! Roy, a million from his mum, Roy again coming off the pitch, now Pep. Later, Keeley. No boy has ever had more hugs per episode.

Megan: No boy has ever deserved this many hugs before.

Natalie: Still none from Ted, but I can’t see that happening unless Ted leaves Richmond, a final goodbye. Even then, I’m not sure. Ted really doesn’t hug the players. It stands out so much to me because it feels so wrong. Obviously we see Pep hugging Jamie here in a way Ted never has, and I liked that, because it makes the difference starker.

Megan: I feel like that was not directed, Pep was just told “Pretend that is Phil Foden and he just played a really great match.” And Pep knew exactly what was being asked of him.

Natalie: Roy clearly hugs them all after games, like outside of sobbing boot room situations, he would have lots of normal hugs like this one when Jamie comes off. Roy and Beard also hug when they win today, a big one. Ted… is so removed. And seeing another manager hug Jamie when Ted never has…To be clear I don’t care if Ted does. I just think it’s interesting that this is such a solid part of Ted’s deal, that he is not affectionate.

Megan: Yeah, it’s not that I’m desperate to see Ted do it, it’s just an interesting choice they made, and I wonder how much of it is intentional.

Natalie: I think it has to be. Very intentional. It is like a boundary he has that the natives of the sport do not. American football sounds boring as hell, if so. Anyway, like Roy and Jamie, Pep and Jamie have a few words that are just for them. Not for us.

Megan: I wish the show hadn’t decided to not let me hear all the conversations I was most desperate to hear. It’s really very rude.

Natalie: It is pretty criminal. Jamie smiles really big though. I’m sure we both found it weird that the team drove back to Richmond the same evening, but it is mid May and properly dark by the time they get in, so I’m assuming they played the 12:30 match slot – especially given it was showing on TV – then spent apparently the 4 hour bus ride home getting wasted, to get in at like, 9pm or whatever.

Megan: On this one occasion I will forgive the continued unrealistic commitment to coach journeys, just because of how much I loved the episode overall.

Natalie: Well, Nora is very committed to the elimination of the private jet – not that the team was flying on it anyway. I do feel slightly concerned that Jamie didn’t have his ankle properly treated immediately in Manchester, but I guess he must have had something done there too but he was obviously not up for partying on it. Will already being passed out is the best, though. And the usage of “Fat Bottomed Girls.” Apparently as an homage to Freddie Mercury, former Richmond owner. Known for flipping straights. Just like this show.

Megan: HAH! Well, some of us always knew which characters weren’t straight, but yes. I loved this scene of Jamie shaking hands and saying bye to everyone as they left. It made me think of the scene in 1.09, where Roy puts on the reserve vest and gives everyone an individual handshake. I love that it frames Jamie in this Captain-like role, showing him to be such an important leader for the team, on and off the pitch.

Natalie: It felt very wistful as well to me. It definitely did feel like he’s the heart of the team, but it also felt like he’s resigned to being set apart in some ways. He definitely isn’t relaxed here. The way we linger on him at the end, puffing resignedly. It has… a feeling in it. It could be that he’s thinking about his dad again. It could be that he’s thinking about City, and how this isn’t as pure a victory as it is for the others for him. It could be homesickness. It could just be general loneliness, that he will be here by himself with no one to go home to or cuddle him, on what was a very weird night. It could be him thinking quietly about the possibility that he might leave Richmond in the near future. There are a lot of possibilities. What did you think, watching him alone as they all left?

Megan: This scene did actually solidify my thinking that he will one day leave Richmond and go back to City. Like, I really enjoyed the interactions with the team, but the way it ends isn’t exactly upbeat. I definitely don’t think it is Jamie’s last game for Richmond, but I could see it ending with him having a choice to make there – and maybe not showing us what choice he makes, to set things up for a potential season 4. But yeah, in that moment he definitely seems conflicted about something. Whether his dad, or City or whatever, I don’t know.

Natalie: Maybe it’s as simple as worrying about not being able to play next week if his ankle doesn’t recover in time. So that City match could be the last game we as the viewers see him play.

Megan: I really hope not, but it would be interesting to see Richmond win without Jamie, without the need for their star player. But I, personally, would very much like to see him play!

Natalie: I feel like he has to. I’ll be so sad if he can’t. But that ending beat… he’s being so good to all the other guys, and then as soon as he’s alone, yeah, it’s not happy? It could be still thinking about his dad, because the next time we see him, he’s icing his foot and deciding to text him to see how he’s doing. And I… hate this. Even in a show about second chances and forgiveness, I don’t think this is the way they should have chosen to validate that messaging. I have a bit of a rant here. What we effectively hear about James in the episode is Georgie saying he will never, ever change and Jamie should stop trying to prove things to him. Ted saying “forgive him” is actually a terrible version of a similar idea – that Jamie should let go of allowing his behaviour to be driven by James. Whatever issues I have with the phrasing, I can get behind this idea of not having James be a driver of Jamie’s motivation. That’s probably a good direction. I think Georgie is more right than Ted, but like… whatever. Then in the match, in the moment with Denbo and Bug, them saying his dad would be proud, the split second we thought “oh, he’s gone off and died, but no one’s told Georgie or Jamie” – I found that idea interesting. Really interesting actually, because I think if someone you have a complicated and abusive relationship dies, and the issues are unresolved, there’s a lot of unanswered questions for sure. But it is over. The onus isn’t on you. You can obsess about what might have been different, or you can let it go, but the fact is, it’s over. And Jamie having made that decision to let things go, but just never hear from him again because he doesn’t know he’s died… It makes for a complex and interesting potential for Jamie’s trauma recovery. But that isn’t actually what happened. Did you have any thoughts about what it meant if James was dead, before we move on to the reality?

Megan: Yeah I think it leaves you with a lot of “what ifs,” if that happens. And for someone like Jamie who clearly has periodically wanted more from his dad, I think he’d really struggle with having that final an ending to their relationship, even if he had made the decision to let him go and forgive him. There’s nothing Jamie can do in that situation to change things, because it’s so final.

Natalie: Here’s the thing about “what ifs” like that. They’re pointless, and you learn that relatively fast. What if it might have changed for the better? Okay, what if it might have changed for the worse? Having something taken out of your hands is liberating. It’s upsetting in a certain way, but it is freeing. And that’s been a story shown in other ways in other media before, too. Sometimes, a situation is too complicated and too hurtful for the onus to be on the victim to solve. Taking it out of their hands is sometimes a kinder story beat than making them deal with it over and over again. And I don’t think anyone watching Ted Lasso was ever thinking, like, “Wow, Jamie and his dad should reconcile.” Sometimes people are really, really, really fucking unforgivable, in any sense. “Everyone can change.” No. We know Ted has forgiven a lot – we see it in this episode – but there are also things about James that Ted doesn’t know. Ted forgives Beard for stealing his car, fine. Would Ted be okay with forgiving Beard for nearly beating someone to death with a lead pipe? Or forcing Henry, age 14, to fuck a prostitute? I feel like Ted would not in fact forgive those things. I think even he would go for no contact in that situation, and probably police involvement. He wouldn’t phrase things in a way that could even accidentally lead Jamie to think that he should stop holding things against James, and CERTAINLY not say anything that makes Jamie think he should resume contact.

Megan: No, I really don’t think so. That’s a very different level to what Ted witnessed, which, frankly, should have been enough to stop him talking about forgiveness to Jamie. I think Ted Lasso did a pretty decent job last week of humanising Rupert just enough to make that plot resonate, but not so much to suggest he was forgivable or had changed. But something about the way they’ve handled James this week has felt so much more clunky and weird.

Natalie: Jamie letting go of the hurt is one thing, but what the episode does is it shows us that Jamie took Ted’s advice, thought about it and decided to REACH OUT. Even if that isn’t what Ted meant. And the episode narratively frames this as a good, heartwarming choice, because – even though Jamie doesn’t know – James is in rehab, and apparently proud of Jamie, even when he’s playing for Richmond. So even though Jamie doesn’t know this fact, we do, so it leads the audience to think they will repair things and it’ll turn out good. I HATE the rehab thing. I hate it because it makes Georgie look wrong, or petty, or spiteful. She said he wouldn’t change and they show us he has. Fuck that. Why would anyone want this or feel warmed by it?

Megan: Honestly, without any context as to why James is even in rehab, this is really such a weird fucking choice. Like, it really feels like they’re setting up a story for an as yet unconfirmed season 4. It’s just such a weird thing to throw out into the universe without any kind of explanation or follow up. Unless of course next week’s episode actually does have a load of Jamie and James in, but I don’t think it will.

Natalie: And you know what, the rehab isn’t even the issue to me. I can sympathise with the issues of addiction. I feel like a better way to do that would have been to show him in rehab, if they wanted to, but not looking proud. Looking sullen and bitchy.

Megan: The only way I can see it working is that it’s like, court ordered rehab, not something he actually chose for himself, and once he’s out he’ll fall right back off the wagon again. Because I’m with Georgie. I just can’t buy this change within the context of what we’ve seen on the show so far.

Natalie: Because I DO NOT BUY that alcohol was the only reason he acted this way with Jamie. James Tartt is still a football hooligan who never cared about Jamie aside from in terms of his relationship to City. He did not give a fuck about Jamie for his own sake. He wanted Jamie to give him clout in relation to his team. When Jamie fucked up, James abused him for not being good enough for the true love of his life, Manchester City. He is also a fucking paragon of toxic masculinity, booze or no booze. He isn’t suddenly going to love his soft, beautiful, mummy’s boy son. He hasn’t changed his whole world view. The fact that he was so tearful and proud – is that because the City fans accepted Jamie again? It was framed more like “Oh, James is proud of him and loved him all along really!” Which I simply don’t buy! We already know he acted proud when Jamie did good, bragging to his mates. Him clapping and looking teary at Jamie getting an ovation from City… I don’t buy it. And for all I don’t buy it, Jamie is not even texting the allegedly proud sober dad. He is texting the abusive hooligan he last saw at the FA semi final at Wembley, hoping for a different outcome than before. Why the FUCK did the Ted Lasso writers have him reach out and frame it like it’s a good growth decision? Of course, he looks troubled by it, but it’s definitely meant to be like, the audience knows James is “better,” Jamie reaches out, two plus two equals a new and better relationship in their future. And I haaaaate it. I hate that it implies Ted was more right than Georgie. I hate all of it.

Megan: Yeah because this is the thing. It is one thing to have Jamie forgive in the sense that we discussed earlier, as in close that chapter in his life and let go of the hold James has on him. It was a weird time for Ted to say it but fine, whatever. But to have Jamie choose to reach out… That’s not letting go! That’s clinging on tighter! And maybe this is just Jamie taking Ted really literally, maybe he thinks he needs to like, explicitly tell James, via text or otherwise, that he forgives him, and maybe we will see that in the next episode before Jamie then walks away from him for forever, but that’s not what we’re currently being shown, and I do not like it.

Natalie: Yeah, this kind of turns the “letting go” forgiveness into “absolution” forgiveness. It becomes ” Jamie is forgiving James and letting him back in.” Stupid. Fucking stupid. And I just truly, truly don’t buy that James cares about Jamie. Like even leaving aside Amsterdam, or nearly killing Beard. I do not believe that James cares about Jamie for himself.

Megan: I just don’t think the show needs this. And if there was a confirmed season 4, and this was how the season started – setting it up for a lot of focus on Jamie and James that actually gets explored and ends with Jamie cutting him off? That’s one thing, but as we don’t know that’s something we’re going to get, I hate the choice to include this.

Natalie: The rehab scene truly felt out of character.

Megan: Yeah.

Natalie: Not even him getting sober. Like I said, it’d be very interesting if he was shown in rehab but NOT happy. But I truly don’t believe his football man brain disease cares about Jamie at all and I don’t think being sober would change it. And I just don’t think it’s good messaging to show a kid being unwilling to cut off an abuser. It could be that this is meant as a bad choice for Jamie, but I don’t think that’s the intention.

Megan: Yeah it could be like, showing that he takes Ted’s lesson too far. That because he’s always trying so hard to be good these days, he thinks it’s the right thing to do. But I don’t think so. And if that was what they meant, it was done badly.

Natalie: It is absolutely the wrong call for the arc closure with his dad. There’s still one episode left, but this is not like Rebecca finding some peace with Rupert – AND this episode also hints that Rupert will be going down next time! Does Ted Lasso not consider the Beard bashing or the Amsterdam prostitute like, inexcusable levels of bad-guy-ness? I am not saying what we saw was a James Tartt redemption, but it was too close to one for my liking, with the subtextual implication of him and Jamie having some kind of future together.

Megan: Yeah, it was just really not needed. Like, the rehab shot alone wasn’t needed, but when you combine it with this? Like, I know a big message of Ted Lasso is forgiveness and compassion and kindness, but it’s okay for that not to be applied to every character and every situation!

Natalie: Yeah, and this was just not a character that needed any of that. The strongest, bravest thing Jamie could do is stop caring and walk away. Showing James in rehab honestly felt like it was really minimising his behaviour and implying that his abuse had a “reason,” whereas I never got the impression he was an addict any more than any other horrible football hooligan, who definitely all drink too much, but so do the pub lads. Did you? Like, him being messy from beers at the matches didn’t read to me like “alcoholic in need of rehab.” Certainly not in the British sense. They drink a LOT without it being seen as a “problem.” He definitely could have been into other stuff too, but like.. we never heard that.

Megan: No, not really. Like, sneaking a flask into the match isn’t great, but to me it just felt like he does it because he thinks that’s how you enjoy it. Like people over here that go to the Reading Festival and spend the whole weekend too hammered to actually remember anything. It’s not my cup of tea, but it’s very much part of British culture. I think alcoholism is a cop out for what I think is actually just being a shitty person

Natalie: So do I, honestly. Nothing we saw of him ever said to me this is because he’s super drunk. It was “this is who he is because of his actual personality.” Anyway, I just don’t buy this shit. But Jamie is texting him in the treatment room we first met James in, when he was throwing boots at Jamie’s head. A moment I’ll never forgive Ted for, let alone James. And it makes me wonder like… Jamie has never called Ted out about that. Given the conversation they have this episode, Ted hasn’t even followed up about Wembley. It’s just like… I feel like this should not have been how this concluded.

Megan: No, it felt very much like the wrong choice to me.

Natalie: Roy and Keeley coming to keep him company when he thinks he’s spending the evening sitting in the ice bucket alone? Right choice.

Megan: Yes. Thank God this episode gave us this moment, and didn’t end on that text. Honestly I didn’t think it could get any better for those three than what we’d already seen, but this was so perfect.

Natalie: It’s so DIFFERENT. I have a slight timeline quibble in that like… they’ve all just been on a bus together for four hours, have they not congratulated him since it happened? I absolutely get them coming to keep him company, but some of the dialogue felt like “first time seeing him since it all occurred” and it wouldn’t be. But the fact this is their first time ALONE together since makes it feel a little different. We obviously have never seen them all hang out – the night before was a rescue mission, not a social occasion. I guess the cocktail date went well though.

Megan: Yes, I think that’s a safe assumption.

Natalie: Because these are insane vibes. The odd discomfort between Roy and Keeley is gone.

Megan: They all just seem so relaxed around each other.

Natalie: Roy is smiling at Jamie in a way we’ve never seen him smile at ANYONE. Megan, part of me thinks they might have all had sex after the cocktails.

Megan: Nat I think so too.

Natalie: Like… something has SHIFTED. And Jamie isn’t quite 100% sure what the situation is – he’s the least certain of all of them. I am still trying to parse the meaning of “what the fuck happened, man?” I know he means on the pitch, like, how did that all occur. But he’s stilted. He’s not sure how to be normal. With these two people he maybe kissed last night and isn’t sure he will get to kiss again. Like “Uhhhh so is this a thing…”

Megan: No, like. He’s very happy to see them, he’s not worried, but he’s not entirely certain.

Natalie: Yes Jamie. It is a thing. And yes. You looked sexy. Especially when you cried. But yeah the tone isn’t like, confident. It’s nervy. I really feel like there’s a chance that episode 12 may not have some big final Roy and Keeley reunion, that these three are just shown as a unit and we are meant to assume that this is it. Especially because of Roy. We have never, ever, ever seen Roy like this. Not with Keeley, not with Phoebe. Nothing like this, ever. And Keeley is just absolutely over the moon looking at Roy looking at Jamie. Like she finds it delicious. I feel crazy.

Megan: If you had told me that way back in Ted Lasso season 1 that this show could conceivably end with the three of them together in some capacity I would have laughed, because shows just don’t do that. But now I genuinely feel there is a chance it could go there. I feel unhinged about it all. Sidenote: The way that Roy does that backwards heel kick to shut the door, while brandishing champagne? That is extremely sexy. As is, somehow, him putting one of the bottles into the ice bucket next to Jamie’s leg.

Natalie: The door thing is the hottest thing he’s ever done, I don’t know how Jamie survived it. It is so ferally sexual. Usually you only see that kind of thing when a guy is about to like, ravish someone. Kicking the door shut is kind of code for that.

Megan: Well that fits frankly, with the rest of the scene. Jamie asking Roy “what the fuck happened, man?” Obviously there was the match… but sex happened too, right?

Natalie: Listen. The nervy way he asked that, I feel like it could be like “So… did last night really happen?” But I just can’t. Asking them if he looked sexy – yeah, he is loose with that word, but this is his ex and the man he probably thinks she’s dating again. This is not a normal thing to ask those people, even if he WOULD ask his friends. Choices! They were made!

Megan: I honestly have no idea what to expect next week. But at this rate, if the episode opened up to us seeing the inside of Roy’s house for the first time with the three of them all in the same bed, I would not be remotely surprised by it. Absolutely thrilled, but not surprised.

Natalie: Not at all. It truly feels like the only genuinely fulfilling outcome. Not like even a fun idea.

Megan: The obvious destination.

Natalie: It feels like the only satisfying resolution to their so-called love triangle. Otherwise Roy and Keeley would already be back together. They didn’t explain why they didn’t start dating again after the hookup. This episode’s story easily could have been done with them as a loving couple who care about their friend. It wasn’t.

Megan: No, that really wasn’t the vibe they’ve gone with.

Natalie: It was done as “awkward exes only able to reconnect properly when the person who has always linked them was involved once again.” Jamie is the lynchpin. They need him to function. It will not be satisfying for me if there is a whole separate Roy and Keeley reunion for some other reason, not at all. It feels like this is meant to be their final form. Season 1 teased it, with their scene at Keeley’s house, the two coffees in one cup feels like a fucking obvious metaphor, then I kind of knew it felt conceptually like the actual best option after season 2. Now, it is necessary.

Megan: I like Roy and Keeley enough that I can’t rule out enjoying a reunion between them next week, but I can rule it out if Jamie doesn’t play any kind of part in it. He is essential. What that would look like, if not a throuple, I haven’t got a clue. But the fact is that this scene right now is just too full of insane chemistry for it not to go somewhere.

Natalie: And the idea has grown increasingly pervasive online. With the general audience who are not in fanfiction world. Everyone is like… “So that’s a thing, right?” That’s a good sign. That makes me feel like Ted Lasso knows how to make things feel inevitable. Even things we don’t usually see on TV, like queer polyamory.

Megan: Yeah, the general awareness of this being a valid ending for the three of them is so much more mainstream than anything I’ve seen before. So many people see it as the ending that makes the most sense!

Natalie: It truly feels not only possible, but the only genuinely fulfilling outcome. And I cannot BELIEVE they’ve led us right to the edge of it. Ted seeing them and approving is obviously a nod to the way he saw Jamie in that room before, in a very different circumstance. But he’s outside the room this time, we don’t go to his point of view looking in.

Megan: Good, he can stay out. This isn’t for him. It’s a private moment between the three of them, and me.

Natalie: He can leave Richmond pretty proud of himself, if the Kent-Tartt partnership (professionally) is something that can be attributed to the Lasso Way. Because it is going to be one for the ages. So thanks Ted, for that.

Megan: Boy is it ever. Fine, he can have that one, I guess. They really have come so far, I’m very proud of them. But also they drive me crazy.

Natalie: I really, really, really, really hope they pull it off. Or that they at least don’t do something that like… slaps the idea in the face, like “No! Stupid!”

Megan: Yeah, if they do that, I’ll be extremely pissed off. Even if they don’t have like, confirmed throuple, I need them to not pretend this closeness isn’t there.

Natalie: I think I need more than that – because I don’t think that second thing will happen regardless. I think we could get RoyKeeley one on one reunion and Jamie being like “I’m so happy for you both!” but separate and that is not good enough for me. I need them to show me that the three of them do not work without one of them, triangles are the strongest shape, etc. I’m not someone who is like “things are ruined for me if my ship doesn’t come true” – on the shipping side I feel very, very, very fed and will forever! But given the bizarre potential queerbaiting with Jamie we talked about in episode 9, in terms of the possibility of this being a thing, I want it to be handled better than like, Roy and Keeley get engaged and Jamie is not an equally balanced side of the triangle, even if they don’t get explicit with kissing or sexual implications. There’s been too much now. The manifestation posters were the final straw. They have told an inherently queer story with Jamie and I think walking that backwards would feel shitty to me at this point. Like if they go out of their way to avoid it, I mean. Leaving them as they are now I’m okay with. But doing something to further hetero it up, and be like “No it isn’t like that… I’m not!” They are SO close, on a weird knife edge, of telling this love story for real.

Megan: It would be so easy to do it and have it feel natural and inevitable, because it already does.

Natalie: And I think it would be a very good call for them to just do it, and show there’s more than one type of queer footballer. Some queer stories are about the coming out element. Some are just love stories. But it really now is at a point with Jamie where it doesn’t make sense if it isn’t this. And because the most likely endgame would have been Roy/Keeley, that happening now would totally defang all of this for Jamie, Lol. Like “and none for Jamie, bye.” Extremely “Poster people off together without you.”

Megan: Being their friend, following behind them. Yeah, I don’t love that!

Natalie: It’s clearly meant to be the three of them, on whatever level. All friends, or all more. That’s the story they’ve shown, and even talked about in the press around the show. It’s the three of them. Not a one and a two. And funnily enough, if it was one and two, I think the most functional version of that is Roy/Jamie with Keeley as the friend. For a whole bunch of reasons, mainly about where Keeley is at emotionally, and maybe should be single for her own mental health, and the way Roy and Jamie are both needy and want a lot of attention from each other. But it definitely won’t be that particular one plus two configuration. So it has to be the three.

Megan: I really, really hope so.

Natalie: The Jamie story and the Man City match took up over half the episode, and the rest of it was split into two tracks, Ted’s and Nate’s. I want to talk about Nate’s first because it is simple and effective and I’m slightly mad about that fact. At this stage, there is no point whatsoever rehashing the same things we have said every week all season, which is that none of the things Nate did have in any way been “worked on.” We know he will have his moment with Ted eventually, but we do not feel like the problems he had when given power were things he’s learned to handle within himself. The Ted Lasso writers deftly circumnavigated this concern by framing his return to Richmond as something all the players voted on and approved of – including Colin, including Will. It matters that they sent Isaac, Colin and Will as opposed to anyone else. It is for this specific reason – it’s showing us that the same people WE are worried about him hurting are not worried themselves. It’s very airtight, in a way – like, it’s “proof” that those concerned are covered. And I don’t like it, because I feel it’s fucking bizarre that we never saw any development for Nate as the West Ham coach, in terms of how he treats people. But they are forcing us to accept that these guys want him back.

Megan: Yeah, look. At this point… I do not like Nate as a character, because of the things we saw him do in season 2 that we have not shown him rectify in season 3. So like, fine, the actual other characters all forgive him and think it’ll be okay, for reasons we don’t know because none of it happened onscreen for us to see. I will assume that they all feel safe and good around him because that’s what they’re saying. But if they want me, the viewer, to actually end my Ted Lasso experience liking Nate and caring about him, they have not met their objective. Because I do not. Sorry.

Natalie: This story is another one where, in my opinion, they have forced everyone else to act out of character in order to further a really important moment for one character – in this case, Coach Beard. And Beard’s moment with Nate is truly astonishing and it feels right. But to pull that off, you have to set up a bizarre situation where apparently, in the final week of the season – not over the summer, to prepare for the new season, no, in the final week – the team and Higgins are conspiring to get Nate back. Why? We don’t know. They don’t need him, and there has been absolutely nothing to show that their feelings have changed since 3.04. Neither the team’s, nor ROY’S, which I just don’t believe. Everyone is just like “Sure! Let’s get him back, he’s one of us!” I have no idea why, aside from the fact that the show wants him back at Richmond despite really mishandling the path to get him there. He needs to come back for narrative closure, but it doesn’t make sense in-world

Megan: The ONLY person who has had a positive interaction with him since the West Ham game is Will, and like, kit men have a lot of soft power in a club, but I wouldn’t have thought they’d have enough to convince an entire team to re-hire someone who’d done what Nate did.

Natalie: I have no idea what they think getting him back for the final two games is going to do logistically, either. It just feels like the story “needed” it for Nate’s redemption, so they forced it in. It literally makes no sense.

Megan: And if he’s back on the staff in time for the last match and they win the league? I do not want him playing any part in them celebrating! He has no part of their victory! I don’t want him claiming it.

Natalie: I’m just slightly angry how deft it was, to have those three go offer him the job, rather than Ted forcing others to accept Nate. Like, it definitely cuts the legs out from under the argument about it being wrong for people to be made to work with him. But it does so kind of unfairly, because we have seen nothing to indicate that they’ve changed their feelings or that Nate is better at coaching people in a personal way. They’re forcing us to accept it at gunpoint, saying “This is how it is, you can’t complain about that issue now!” without any sense behind it turning out like this. It’s all done to get us that Beard moment, as opposed to an endgame where we see Ted making peace with Nate outside the club and Beard being allowed to hold the grudge. And I understand the Beard moment, I truly, truly do. But to pull it off, they had to a) make the story about Nate coming back to Richmond, not moving on, and b) make Beard the ONLY hold out.

Megan: Like you say, it’s done deftly, it knocks the wind out of any arguments, but in failing to show any of the actual details of Nate’s story outside of Jade, it does not leave me primed to care about what I’m sure will be supposed to be one of the big emotional beats of the finale. Like, I need to know what Nate was like as a manager, I need to know why he quit, I need to know the conversations the team had about him coming back. Without all that, you can tell me it’s fine now, but you’ve not really shown me why!

Natalie: I didn’t really expect to find him working at Taste of Athens, but it honestly was a pretty funny way to do the meeting, despite its utter lack of any kind of earned feeling.

Megan: Yeah look, the scenes were all very good! Because Nick is an incredible actor, they all are.

Natalie: I do think with that Colin as the main spokesperson for the group, and Nate looking to Will for confirmation, there’s a lot of implications there. It’s a moment of like, “Yes, we all know what I did, am I really forgiven?” And they confirm he is. Makes no sense to me personally, but it is pretty ironclad confirmation that we have to believe. But do they think he’s invented a fake girlfriend?

Megan: The Jade constantly vanishing joke was very good this episode. God. I really love her! I hope she refuses to go to a single Richmond match or event so they will be forever left wondering if she’s real.

Natalie: “No such man exists.” She is truly top tier. I can’t believe people think she has no personality. She has a very distinct, insane personality.

Megan: She is so weird and I love it! When Nate says “I just don’t think it’s a good idea for me to come back to Richmond” I was like, “Yeah, you’re right. It’s not, so let’s just leave it there shall we!” Unfortunately, they did not, but it’s a nice thought.

Natalie: Honestly, Isaac and the kebabs made for a great ongoing gag, so that was one other part that was worth it.

Megan: And I did like that it showed how intense Nate gets about ANY job. Like, it kind of fits with what we said last week, that it’s not football he’s necessarily passionate about. He could probably do anything, and do it really well.

Natalie: Yeah, I think that really is symbolic, and telling of his brain chemistry or whatever.

Megan: I can’t tell if Nate seems uncomfortable or not when Isaac calls him Nate the Great, but the fact that I can’t tell if he is at ease around these guys just again reinforces my question of should he really go back? Even if they are all okay now, friendship wise, is that really a healthy work dynamic?

Natalie: I truly have no fucking idea. I’m sure it’ll be shown to be positive in the finale but it feels extremely like “it’s this way because we said so,” not a natural development. I don’t think anyone, no matter how much they love or hate Nate, could make the argument that his development this season has had anything to do with the issues we saw him have in season 2. You can certainly argue that you think he’s changed, and I do actually think he has. I think we are looking at a man who has changed and grown. But you cannot claim that we have seen moments where that counted on the screen. He seems to have changed and grown off-screen, and in between episodes, and we just visit him occasionally with Jade. His attitude obviously seems different. He has changed. But it is very weird to just expect people to understand how or why.

Megan: And also like…expect people to then root for him again, if they don’t understand how or why. He does seem a lot more confident and comfortable with himself, and that’s good, I’m happy for him. But I don’t really have a clue how he got there.

Natalie: Yeah, no matter if you’re pro or anti Nate, you can’t objectively claim that he’s been shown to have scenes that address past issues. Maybe they thought all of that had to be with Ted. But it wasn’t that for me. It was that we saw no progress for him as a leader of young athletes beyond the dumb-dumb line. I don’t trust his duty of care as a coach. But apparently Colin does. This is meant to be our proof I guess.

Megan: I guess. One person I did surprisingly like a little bit more this episode was Derek. He’s still an absolute nightmare, but I was half expecting him to be a bit judgemental towards Nate. Instead he seems extremely proud to have the former Hammers manager working there.

Natalie: Megan, he sucks so bad and he’s still clout chasing. “Do you know who he was?” is such a painful sentence.

Megan: Yes I know, he’s awful, but I found him more funny than I did annoying, this episode.

Natalie: That whole bit, though, is to keep pushing the idea that it’s weird Nate is working there, as a waiter – the apparent absurdity of it. Will being like “Did you spend all your money already?” What, millions and millions of pounds?

Megan: And the couple at the table convinced he got addicted to drugs. That would have to be a REALLY bad habit to blow through all his wages that fast.

Natalie: No one can believe he just wants to hang out with his ghost girlfriend. I really enjoyed Jade and Nate at home, with her being scathing to him about the idea of a happy hour – she’s literally never thought about work after leaving work. And he’s so proud of the free nuts idea and how it’ll increase profits, it just shows me that he can’t help excelling at whatever he does in that specific way we discussed before. It definitely isn’t the episode’s intended takeaway, but he seemed happy and excited by it. He may have got bored fast, we don’t know, but her being like, “You’re not a waiter, you’re a coach,” was weird to me because I feel like … he’s neither? He is a guy who can’t help applying himself. I’m still not feeling that he and football are OTP.

Megan: Yeah he’s very smart and very focused, and if he’s doing something he wants to do it well.

Natalie: It was just another thing, it feels like!

Megan: Yeah.

Natalie: He does say that he will look into other coaching jobs next season but not at Richmond, which! Yes! That’s smart! Fresh start!

Megan: Right! It just shouldn’t be Richmond!

Natalie: This is massively jumping ahead, but I actually am hoping that his return to Richmond is just for the last game, and Bex ends up getting West Ham, and he actually goes back there and helps make it a good environment

Megan: Maybe that is what will happen in the next episode. Maybe he’ll go to Ted, apologise, they’ll have their big moment, and then say he can’t go back to Richmond because it wouldn’t be healthy for him, but he appreciates everything. And then yeah, go to a Bex-owned West Ham.

Natalie: Given the end of the episode, I think he will be on staff with Richmond for the final game. Anyway, he tells her that things ended badly and it was all his fault. Which, yes. Putting it simply – yeah, you fucked up at Richmond. Once again I am marvelling at the total lack of focus on him coming to terms with the consequences of his behaviour and changing accordingly, or anything directly impacting the same issues. I truly wonder if they had some other ideas written for him that they changed direction on. Because it still seems so strange to me.

Megan: Part of me still thinks that they realised that actually tackling Nate coming to terms with what he did and trying to make up for it would honestly take way more screen time than they could assign to it, with all the other beats they needed to hit – because they did too good a job with his downfall in season 2 – so they just… Decided not to try and fit it in. And instead they are just telling us that it happened.

Natalie: I don’t even know. It’s fucking weird. I said after the violin thing that it felt so strongly like that he is so messed up in such an unforeseen way that he needs to truly take a long time to work out who he even is. A whole other show. This being like “No, go back to coaching football in the spotlight” doesn’t feel good for him still! But it could be that during the next episode things are settled in a more complex way. And whatever Nate’s future is will make more sense then.

Megan: Yeah, his story isn’t over yet, we’ll see how it goes with Ted. At least Nate tells Jade that the way things ended at Richmond was all his fault. I’m glad he’s not pretending it wasn’t! I do wonder if offscreen he tells her anything about what went down. Although again, that might have been something better shown to us.

Natalie: As well as any moments of the players or Roy having reasons to change their opinion on Nate since the last West Ham match. Given that as far as we know they truly have no reason to. But we can’t have any pesky hold outs.

Megan: Only Beard. Everyone else is just suddenly fine.

Natalie: To be clear, I absolutely buy that Beard isn’t fine. And him saying he would burn the club to the fucking ground makes sense to me. It is just very convenient that Roy Kent wouldn’t be ready to gather the kindling. Even though Beard has much deeper reasons for hating Nate’s betrayal, Roy held a grudge against Trent for twenty years, during which time I’m sure Trent wrote nicer articles about him

Megan: I suppose this might be Roy trying to be less stuck, and not hold grudges. But he’s mastered that really quickly if so. It’s a big habit for him to overcome in the space of like, a few weeks.

Natalie: I also didn’t love his excuse being “Nate’s great at the things I suck at,” allegedly meaning tactics. Because I do not think Roy sucks at all, and if Nate is actually made manager over Roy, I will be the one burning the place to the fucking ground. That being said, Ted was never the main tactics guy. Manager Roy can and will have assistants. But would it be seen as a big demotion to have Nate, who was once a confident manager, go to become an assistant again under a new manager? Would that feel weird to him or to the audience? Like he’s already reached this tier and proven he can do it. Is demoting him on the career ladder a punishment the writers maybe don’t want to dole out? Obviously, in accepting a job with Ted again, that’s an assumed assistant role. But we know Ted is leaving, so we know the top spot will be open. Would it feel right to have Roy, who’s never been a manager, take it, and have Nate, who has, working under him? Personally I’m fine with it. But to the wider view?

Megan: I think it would feel weirdest to the rest of the in-universe characters. I think Nate might accept it, if he really has changed, and I think a lot of the audience will think it’s fine, but I think pundits and fans in the world of Ted Lasso would question it.

Natalie: This is why I’m thinking maybe he goes back to a Bex-led West Ham.

Megan: This would honestly be a preferred outcome. And Nate at West Ham and Roy at Richmond can have a friendly rivalry like Pep and Klopp do.

Natalie: But here, he IS being offered the job as an assistant again, so maybe that’s fine too. It might just send the idea that he wasn’t ready to do the top job, which I don’t think is the message Ted Lasso wants. But I cannot have it be Roy under Nate. Or co-managers, that is not a thing. But if the whole Beard supporting Nate thing is meant to be like, Beard moving on from Ted or paying it forward, he may stay as Nate’s right hand man in the way he was Ted’s, and Roy would be the odd one out. I don’t know. I don’t like this option either. Nate going back to West Ham might look like he’s isolated there, we don’t know if he has nice friendships with his staff or players now, and I think the show will want him to feel “home.” But I just cannot fathom the idea of him filling Ted’s job, rather than Roy

Megan: I think Nate coming back to Richmond feels too neat, and I don’t know that I love that. But if he does, I will only personally accept him as Roy’s assistant, not as the head coach. And actually, at West Ham, if he did leave because of some fight over Miss Kakes, it’s possible that a lot of the staff there might support him, and see him as someone who looks out for all the employees. That’s pure speculation, because the show hasn’t told us anything about what happened there, but I could see him being welcomed back if something like that went down.

Natalie: Oh, I can absolutely believe that conceptually he’s made a good name at West Ham and he could have friends there, he may even have a nicer time with the players. We just haven’t SEEN it. It won’t feel, to the audience, like anything important. If we are told “Oh they love him at West Ham,” – we don’t know any of those people or relationships so even though it might feel possible that he actually would have had ties or bonds there, we don’t care about them. Ergo, we – well not we, you and I, but the Ted Lasso audience – feel like he has to come back to Richmond, where we know about his relationships. It’s actually a similar reason to why some people don’t want Ted to go back to Kansas. Because they don’t know about his life there, they only know about his kid and ex-wife. They can’t envision friendships for him in Kansas that are better than Rebecca and the Diamond Dogs.

Megan: Yeah, they think the characters can only be happy in this one environment we’ve seen them in, and that any connections or relationships outside of Richmond aren’t as valid.

Natalie: But the fact is, Ted’s actual son is there, and he does talk about his old friends a lot. It’s been his home for over 40 years. Ted would have a lot of history and life back in Kansas, even though we haven’t met his American friends. Nate, we have nothing. There’s no grounds for imagining a special environment for Nate over at West Ham, even though he may well have had good relationships forming in the ten months he worked there.

Megan: The Love Hounds definitely aren’t a good replacement for the Diamond Dogs I guess.

Natalie: It’s Jade that does eventually push Nate back towards Richmond by forcing Derek to fire him, which I did admittedly find very funny. Looking back over it now, I wonder if Jade just didn’t want such a productive energy in her restaurant. Nate is too much of a go-getter! She doesn’t want to have to facilitate a happy hour, and he’s clearly going to keep coming up with new ideas to make things better at the restaurant. Jade wants a return to apathy.

Megan: Yeah, who knows what other ideas he’ll inspire that will make her have to work harder. She does not want that. She just wants to stand there and spray the air.

Natalie: In seriousness, I do think it’s “for his own good,” and that she has his best interests at heart. But also. The apathy.

Megan: Also, she clearly does like Nate, but maybe doesn’t want to be around him literally all the time.

Natalie: I don’t think we have a direct implication of that, and it would be unfair to assume. She would have stopped him getting the job in the first place if that was an issue for her.

Megan: Yeah alright, that’s fair. I guess she didn’t know at that point how keen he would be at work.

Natalie: We obviously see Nate engaging with the Richmond match on TV, and the fact they sync up his perception of Richmond’s play with Jamie’s, the whole seeing two passes ahead thing… Nate coaching Jamie, with Jamie as a playmaker, isn’t something I can wrap my head around. In part because what they’re doing is so instinctive, it isn’t something they can always train like a pattern of passes for. It’s more in the moment. But Nate and Jamie, footballing geniuses united?

Megan: No, God, again the issue is we haven’t seen Nate do any of the work, and it means I just do not see how well the two of them will be able to work together. In theory, the fact that they are both so good at football should mean they do great things together. In practice, I’m not sure if Nate is in a place to have the confidence to challenge Jamie, given everything.

Natalie: I just literally can’t imagine their dynamic in a positive or negative way. I can see him, for example, really overcompensating with Colin. I think he and Colin will have a good relationship. Like, possible favouritism level good. But I genuinely cannot see Jamie and Nate in my head. I can’t picture a conversation.

Megan: No, it really doesn’t work for me. I can’t see them getting each other. Jamie has such a strong sense of self, and is so confident. Nate does not, and is not.

Natalie: It isn’t even so much that I don’t see it working, it’s more that it’s a gap in my mind. I cannot picture it. Not that I can’t picture it working. Just can’t picture it at all, any version. Like, if you asked me to write a little piece of dialogue between any two Ted Lasso characters, I could do it. It wouldn’t be TV quality, but I’d know how the conversation should feel. Nate and Jamie? I have nothing.

Megan: God, yeah same, thinking about it. I guess they could nod at each other? Say hi? But beyond that, what would they talk about?

Natalie: I dunno, man. Even just in terms of if Jamie stayed on as their star player and Nate was the manager coaching him or doing press with him, I cannot imagine the vibes. Anyway, Nate is very happy that Richmond are winning, obviously he’s drawn back to the idea of them, then Derek fires him because Jade threatened him – he’s so sad about it too! – and Nate decides to actually go back to Richmond to “make things right” with Ted. His apology letter being 60 pages feels… well… extreme, but also sounds like content that should have been part of the story told over a season of television, not contained within a conceptual 60 page letter. You’d imagine within 60 pages, he’s written a lot of things about how he’s felt and what things have been like. Why he did what he did, what was in his mind, how he’s come to terms with it.

Megan: Yeah, given that I doubt Ted is going to read the whole thing aloud, it might have been nice for us to know some of those things ourselves! I really did enjoy Nate telling Jade he’d been fired, and her fake outraged “That bastard!” Jade, you’re great, I love you.

Natalie: Nate having decided to go back to Richmond on his own also slightly negates the whole Beard absolution thing, but honestly, for all I think that the way they’ve arranged things implausibly in order to get to this moment, the scene itself is not one I would have wanted to miss. What did you think with how this unfolded, in terms of Ted doing his Ted Manipulation Thing on Beard? Showing him the video and laughing at it, leaving space for Beard to find some empathy for Nate? It’s interesting that he leaves this in Beard’s hands. He isn’t going to insist unless Beard comes around, even though he’s pro-Nate.

Megan: What’s funny here is that whenever Ted manipulates other people, I think they mostly don’t really know he’s doing it. He’s less overt, obviously, and they don’t know him well enough. But with this, Beard knows EXACTLY what is happening, and Ted knows that Beard knows. And you can see Beard watching it, and internally being so mad, like, “Fucking Ted.” He’s got him. Beard knows he’s right, and Ted doesn’t have to insist, because he knows Beard is going to reach the conclusion that he does.

Natalie: I personally don’t know why Nate hiding under the desk for hours is meant to be this big moment of like, empathy. But it is vulnerable I guess.

Megan: It shows how low he is. And Beard can maybe empathise with that, even if his lowest moment was a bit more extreme.

Natalie: Yeah, the comment Ted makes about all of us or none of us being judged by the actions of our weakest moments is a very nice way of calling Beard a hypocrite

Megan: He’s being so subtle here. So, so subtle.

Natalie: I understood what Beard had to realise here – the fact he had to give Nate a second chance – but I didn’t expect that this is when they’d dig into the heart of things in terms of Beard’s entire character. Yet it felt inevitable in some ways too – it had to be this, it had to be him and Nate, in terms of Ted’s influence. I think everyone knew Beard and Ted HAD to have had a very messy backstory. They’re so different, and yet so devoted. Beard is always two steps ahead, in terms of assisting Ted, sometimes to the point of – not full servitude, but he’s kind of like his squire, or something. Like he is very much always, always, making sure to look after Ted’s needs or do the things Ted can’t. And we know their lifestyles are wildly different, with Ted being so straight-laced and Beard being into drugs and kink and all sorts of other adventures. I personally always felt that Beard’s wildness was more than just a bit – that Beard was definitely a destructive person, capable of going off the rails, and that he owed Ted something big. The way Beard tells their story, this all felt inevitable to me. Brilliantly performed and inevitable, and I think the slight twist I wasn’t expecting – I don’t know, it may have crossed my mind before, but not sure – is that I definitely expected Ted to have saved Beard in some way, gotten him out of a bad crowd or saved him from an overdose or whatever. Brendan Hunt once gave a headcanon that Ted pulled him out of a meth den, so I always had that in mind. The basics here – same college, lost touch, then Ted swooped in and helped him get out of a bad place? That’s something I knew, or assumed, and that is why you’d think Beard would be so fiercely aggressive about anyone betraying Ted. Like, how dare they. Of course, his bitterness hits even deeper than that.

Megan: Yeah, it made sense even without the backstory that Beard would care more about the betrayal than Ted did, because you could tell how close they are and how Beard gets upset about things on Ted’s behalf. But now… Beard probably still hates himself a bit for it. It must be hard to forgive Nate if he can barely forgive himself.

Natalie: Yeah, it’s the full pivot here, from the grudge against Nate for daring to betray Ted like he did, to the empathy for it. Before, we thought maybe it was coming from a place of righteousness – we knew Ted had saved him in some way, how dare someone else do this to the person he’s so loyal to. But Beard’s is not indignant righteousness – or rather, it was, but in a slightly unjust way, in thinking Ted shouldn’t forgive Nate when he knows what Ted has forgiven him. I do think an addict stealing a car is less of an emotional attack than what Nate did in terms of leaking Ted’s mental health. But I get it. The ol’ Bishop of Digne trick.

Megan: Yeah it was very much not personal with Beard. He was just really far down in a hole and couldn’t find his way out. Nate’s was extremely personal. Nat, this was a very emotional, powerful scene, but the fucking guffaw I let out a “I stole a loaf of meth.”

Natalie: Yeah, because it’s funny.

Megan: So good.

Natalie: It is intentionally there for that air-letting. To stop the stress.

Megan: It worked very well. And then the line “So to honour that, I forgive you” is delivered so powerfully that it drops me right back into the tension.

Natalie: It is truly one of the best scenes in the show, to get all of this out of Beard at the crucial moment. This felt earned, if nothing else about the Nate story does.

Megan: I am glad we got this scene, because the Beard moments are so special. But yeah, it doesn’t make me feel any more positively about Nate.

Natalie: I think at this point you do have to accept how the characters feel. I feel fine about Nate, because I believe that the alleged growth did happen off screen. I just think it’s stupid to have not shown those moments and instead keep it private.

Megan:Yeah, that’s the thing, I fully believe that all the characters are fine about Nate, that it will be fine if he goes back to Richmond. I don’t think he’ll act shittily again. I just don’t personally care about him as a character because they haven’t shown me enough about him to care.

Natalie: What I mean is like, if you pretend the Nate arc was well handled and that we did all agree that he was in the place he needed to be to come back, if we were all on his side via a story we had all believed in, Beard still would have held out. And this is the scene that THAT story should have gotten. But maybe that’s the point of it – maybe we are meant to accept things blindly. It isn’t like Beard knows anything about Nate’s growth when he comes over. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that works for an audience, to not be shown why and how someone’s improved. But at this point, I’m wondering if the show really didn’t think we needed that with Nate because they assumed we were still rooting for him and wanting him to be better, after thinking he was a good guy in season 1. The trouble is, for me, Nate’s headspace revealed in season 2 painted all his season 1 behaviour as bad. So I just don’t think they knew how to handle what they accidentally created.

Megan: Honestly yeah, I think this might be it. This was always the plan for Nate, because they hadn’t planned for the audience reaction. With Beard… I don’t love Jane, but I do think it would be good for Beard to stay in London when Ted goes back to Kansas. He has been Ted’s shadow for so long – because of his guilt, not because Ted expects it – and I think it would be good if he could finally forgive himself and have a life that’s his own. Still best friends with Ted, still close. But not staying with Ted because he thinks he owes him.

Natalie: Yeah I definitely see Beard staying and Ted encouraging it, to look after Nate and Roy.

Megan: Beard can report back, let Ted know everything is in hand. Nate really is desperate to get a headbutt from someone.

Natalie: Don’t pretend you didn’t find this moving.

Megan: No I did, it was a really powerful scene, especially when he went in for the hug afterwards. It was a really beautiful moment.

Natalie: The fact that Beard is crying when speaking about his past – he obviously doesn’t often think back to it, aside from the way that he ALWAYS is in some way. I did think we had to get the lore at some point, the Ted and Beard lore. And it was a phenomenal performance from Brendan Hunt.

Megan: It was so good. The problem with this cast is everyone is so fantastic in it. Like, I need Phil Dunster to at least get an Emmy nomination this year, and ideally win it, but there are so many outstanding performances – including Brendan here – that it’s really hard to pick between them.

Natalie: Hear me out. They could break away from the main Emmys… And have a Super Emmys…

Megan: HAH. Sure, why not pitch that. Maybe Musk would fund it. I wonder if Ted ever wants to step in and advise Beard about things like his relationship with Jane, or if he knows how much weight his words would carry, so he has to be careful. Or if he’s genuinely just like, “Eh, his choice, I’ll leave him to it.”

Natalie: He very much never offers any judgement, even in the form of advice. He sometimes mildly asks a question. There have been moments that were very telling, like after 2.08 when Beard goes off alone into the night, how Ted spoke to him there. But the whole thing is fascinating. It’s something to really examine when watching again from the beginning.

Megan: Yeah. If Ted does leave and Beard stays, maybe Ted will speak more firmly, since he won’t be there to keep an eye out.

Natalie: And I think this episode, thanks to Ted’s mother, is absolutely cinching that he’ll leave – unless there’s a big last minute change of heart. But again, it feels like the inevitable conclusion. As honestly, it really always has.

Megan: Agreed. From day one, Ted in London never felt permanent to me. Although I did like his intro this episode, walking down his street, greeting everyone by name. It could be a sign that this is home to him now, but honestly to me it just reminded me of how easily he does make friends and get on with people.

Natalie: I mean, I don’t think he’s having meaningful friendships with Cheryl Barnaby – that’s the woman Jamie was afraid of having to finger in 1.04 – or the coffee shop owner. I think Ted knowing the people in his environment will just always be a part of how Ted lives, wherever that may be. And it was more demonstrated here as a way to show him saying “hi” to everyone in order to do it to his mother unthinkingly. But yeah, Ted is neighbourly as fuck.

Megan: Yeah, LOL. I don’t’ think any of them are close, but I think it shows that he can be friendly wherever he goes, and of course in Kansas he has genuine roots. Lol, poor Ted. What a jumpscare, walking past your mother unexpectedly on Richmond Green.

Natalie: It’s certainly an odd thing for her to have done, which of course is largely the point. They did a great job overall with showing Ted’s mom, Dottie, as a mirror for his own behaviour – especially his prior, less healed and therapised behaviour – and making him have to tolerate it, in both humorous and really upsetting ways. But they did it all without painting her as wrong, or a bad mom, in the way we kind of know Rebecca’s mother is not the best. They showed us the flaws and the damage caused by repression, especially the way that behaviour manifested in Ted. But it didn’t feel like it was condemning her. Not as much as Ted himself did, even though he was right. It was quite a delicate thing.

Megan: Yeah she clearly really tried, in a deeply awful situation that she was completely out of her depth in. And it showed us why Ted was angry – and why he personally deserved to be – without making her into a villain. But what a bonkers woman! Hanging out in London for a week in a hostel full of Australians instead of telling your son that you’re there!

Natalie: Yeah, I think that’s a symptom of that Lasso repression, avoiding the issue. She probably tried to go to him every day, and was dancing around it.

Megan: I wonder if that’s the first morning she’s sat on that bench.

Natalie: I would assume this is the first morning she’s made it all the way to Richmond. But the way Ted is just immediately frustrated with her – honestly, it’s a great episode for him, trying to manage all that. He’s clearly very, very annoyed that she has done this with no warning while trying to act accommodating to her. It is an extremely big WTF moment, and it’s the least patient we’ve seen him, aside from when he’s reached real moments of anger in the past. He struggles to speak calmly to her from the jump, and you wonder how much of that is the frustration of the surprise, and how much is just always like this.

Megan: He is so annoyed by her exhibiting the same behaviours and mannerisms that he himself has. I feel like the surprise didn’t help, he didn’t have time to prepare, but I get the impression that this is fairly standard for him around her. He is trying to figure out what’s going on, asking her if everything is okay. I wonder how he would have acted a year ago to her sudden arrival. Pre-Sharon, I feel like he wouldn’t have handled it anywhere near as well.

Natalie: The way that he is immediately asking if everything is okay – like why she would come with no notice? – and the way that he is annoyed that she clearly is playing it like this is normal and reasonable. But do you mean he would have played along before? Acted super cheerful, like “Well okay then! How great!”

Megan: Yeah I think maybe! Like, pretended it was normal behaviour, or not really asked. Just gone along with it until she left, and then breathed a sigh of relief.

Natalie: Yeah, kept up that kind of toxic level of positivity he used to have more of, not dealing or being avoidant. His inability to say anything to her without sounding snarky felt quite relatable, not that I feel like that all the time but just… it’s a general symptom of the world, parents and kids. This really is the whole instruction manual as to why he’s nuts.

Megan: I wasn’t really sure what I was expecting from Dottie. Now that I’ve met her, Ted makes even more sense, but I don’t think I was expecting someone quite so similar to him. I did feel like telling him she’d booked the trip as a little mother’s day gift to herself was very pointed, LOL.

Natalie: This is actually exactly what I expected. Someone who does the same kind of things as him – and was liked for it! – and who he found frustrating for that reason, in funny ways. But also in very serious ways – the damage they discuss at the end is almost word for word what I expected ain regards to his issues with her, due to the whole 30 years of coping mechanisms about his dad. Just like we reverse engineered Jamie’s mother, I knew exactly how Ted’s mother had to have acted, to get Ted in the way he was when we met him. The specific kind of avoidance, and the damage that caused.

Megan: I think I was expecting her to have similar levels of avoidance and coping mechanisms, but I wasn’t necessarily expecting her to seem as warm and kind and likeable. But she charms everyone in the club just like Ted does.

Natalie: Yeah – that’s fair. Because she’s open in other ways. Like he is. She is very likeable.

Megan: Yeah, it made perfect sense once I met her, but I thought maybe she closed herself off after the death, and so Ted went the other way to overcompensate.

Natalie: It seems more like they mirrored each other. Her introduction to Rebecca is like a “Ted meeting Rebecca” redux, because she makes even some of the same jokes or misunderstandings, but you can see how happy Rebecca is. She now loves this kind of person! As opposed to the fake polite tour offer from the pilot, Rebecca really wants to share this all with Dottie.

Megan: Yes! She is so excited to meet Dottie! She is genuinely entertained by her jokes – and again, Ted is so pained by them, haha. The way he says “That doesn’t make any sense. Babies can’t talk and nor do they understand empathy.” Ted, buddy. Your first meeting with Rebecca you told her you thought it was important that ghosts believed in themselves. Come on.

Natalie: Yeah, the contrast here in terms of his refusal let the silliness slide versus his whole personality… Dottie is stealing his best moves. The fact he doesn’t have patience for it really says that he can’t handle himself sometimes either. Like he knows what HE does as a front. Watching someone else do it…Kind of humiliating to think “Oh, is that what I’m like?”

Megan: Yeah, it holds up a mirror to how he could be seen. And I think he probably is so much more self aware now, since going to therapy, so it means he can probably recognise just how much of a front it is with his mother now, and recognises his own coping mechanisms all the more clearly.

Natalie: Yeah, exactly. I respect Dottie for wanting to meet Dani Rojas though.

Megan: Definitely. She has her priorities straight. Moe with his anarchist leanings is very engrossed with the story of a 12 year old Ted going for a joyride.

Natalie: Ted getting more and more frustrated about the fact everyone loves his mother isn’t quite a part of what I expected, but it fits. But the way Dottie embellishes stories, I assume that’s meant to tell us that Ted does too, right? What did you take from the repeated examples of Ted being like “No, that’s not what happened.”

Megan: I actually hadn’t considered that! I’d always assumed Ted’s were completely true too, but it does stand to reason that he’s also guilty of embellishing.

Natalie: The difference between a little boy aged 12 joyriding on the wrong side of the road, and a 15 year old throwing gang signs at a cop car is stark. And obviously Dottie’s version is more innocent, sanitised. So I can see Ted presenting a more wholesome version of his stories than his real truth is. The whole caricature he presents is a tool in his arsenal, remember.

Megan: Yeah, switching a few details here and there to be more wholesome or fit the situation better. He’s very good at reading a situation and knowing what’s called for, so that really does fit.

Natalie: Nate’s shish kebabs do really add to the whole experience as well. Why is this so much funnier with kebabs than without? Rebecca having a whole relationship with hers. But Dani gently offering one to Mama Lasso, too.

Megan: I think kebabs, as a food, are very difficult to eat delicately. So them all ripping bites off is just very entertaining to watch. I appreciated that Rebecca could recognise his frustrations, but also is probably enjoying his suffering after having to sit through Ted meeting her mum.

Natalie: I also think she genuinely finds her likeable and charming, as opposed to her own mum. Like, she’s thinking “Why wouldn’t Ted like her?”

Megan: Yeah! Sure, Dottie’s not letting the truth ruin a perfectly good story at Ted’s expense, but Rebecca is enjoying herself! She likes Ted, why wouldn’t she like Female Ted.

Natalie: My favourite part is Trent pouncing, though.

Megan: YES. He is there in a shot, the second the players disperse.

Natalie: It’s interesting to me as well that she and Beard have so much closeness. Wonderful, given we know how tough things have been for Beard, but Beard is very much Team Dottie and not Team Ted here. He’s not a part of understanding why Ted is annoyed – or like, I’m sure he knows, but he doesn’t really care.

Megan: I think he definitely knows, and occasionally enjoys Ted’s frustrations – guilt or no guilt, he likes to troll him over things like wordle – but I think he can also recognise that Dottie’s coping mechanisms are the same as Ted’s, and in the same way he doesn’t judge Ted for having them, I doubt he’d judge Dottie too.

Natalie: Yeah, and they obviously, as we see later, share similar concerns about Ted. I felt the way that Beard asked her about how she was doing was more direct than Ted asking if something was wrong. It had that sense of recognition, human to human as opposed to parent to child. Beard and Dottie have clearly known each other a long while, and they’re sharing these observations about Ted while Ted is avoiding speaking to them.

Megan: Yeah, I feel like she might feel more comfortable opening up to Beard. He’s not her son, he’s on a different level to Ted. They’re on more equal footing. I wonder how Roy would have felt about her. He’s in the dressing room while she’s talking to everyone, but we don’t see them actually speak. Everyone else at the club likes her instantly though, so maybe not even Roy would be immune to her charms.

Natalie: He absolutely doesn’t seem to give a shit. He is unaffected. Too focused on Jamie.

Megan: Understandably so.

Natalie: Actually, the fact that he literally doesn’t give a second’s thought to Ted’s mother but is so overwhelmed by Jamie’s mother is… Anyway.

Megan: We’ve maybe spoken enough about that. Maybe.

Natalie: Of all the things I ever expected or predicted about Ted Lasso, Mae busting out the Philip Larkin was not one of them.

Megan: No! It’s a perfect poem for this show, but I wasn’t expecting it. The fact that she quotes the whole thing, so brilliantly. And then just walks away, leaving Ted stunned. I love that Mae sees everything so clearly.

Natalie: She definitely delivers it like she’s at the fucking National Theatre or something. Just like… first Nietzsche, now this.

Megan: She’s got a lot of layers to her, has Maybe.

Natalie: “Man hands on misery to man, it deepens like a coastal shelf” is one of my favourite lines of writing about human nature that there ever was. I have no idea how well known this poem is in America or if Ted knew what was going on. But yeah. It’s very hopeless, but it’s about cycle breaking.

Megan: “Hurt people hurt people.” Ted may not be familiar with the poem, but he’s aware of the concept.

Natalie: Yeah – unfortunately, it’s too late for Ted to not have children, which is significant in terms of what other things he can do to break the cycle. All of this, followed by the focus on the somewhat disconcerting tornado house in the pinball machine… The Wizard of Oz pinball machine really does a lot of heavy lifting in Ted Lasso, in terms of thematic clues. It’s like a main character at this point.

Megan: It should get a credit on the IMDB page. Dottie and Ted trying to out-nice each other over who’s going to sleep on the couch feels very in character, but her bringing the clippings along with her surprised me. On the surface of it it’s a nice gesture, showing that she’s paying attention to him, but it does feel like there are easier ways to tell him she’s proud, or to ask him about his panic attacks. But those would likely be too direct or confrontational.

Natalie: I do think it’s all very much related to that lack of confrontation about something she doesn’t know how to talk about. Her husband killed himself and now her son is mentally ill. She never did any of the things you’d want a person to do – especially now that we know more about it – like being on high alert for the impact of trauma and grief causing issues in her son, when he may well have a hereditary mental illness. These are the kind of things that someone like Dottie would be aware of but in an unformed way. The WORRY would have been there, but no resources to talk about the worry. The absolute lack of coping mechanisms due to not immediately seeking help to manage the aftermath of a trauma… It was a different time. It would have been fairly taboo too.

Megan: Yeah. I can’t imagine that the support you’d get around mental health issues in Kansas, back when Ted would have been a teenager, would have been particularly good. Everyone around her would probably have been telling her to just keep it together for Ted, and not contemplating the idea that actually allowing herself to break down a bit would have been good for Ted too.

Natalie: But all of this is at play with her – the uneducated but heartfelt general awareness of something being so wrong, and the fear of Ted not being well like his dad. So yeah, I think she’s trying to find ways to bring it up even though she’s very uncomfortable and doesn’t want to think about the reality of it being true.

Megan: Even the way she calls Ted’s panic attacks “episodes” feels very accurate for someone who really isn’t educated about mental health. It feels like she definitely made the choice to have the front article be about his panic attacks, to give her that in, to bring it up. The fact that she did was probably really difficult for her. But I was also proud of Ted for being able to speak openly about going to therapy and trying to suggest she might want to talk to someone.

Natalie: Yeah, I mean he really has changed in the past two years in regards to that. The way she says “Oooh, let me guess, it’s all my fault,” that dismissive defensiveness, is honestly a reaction that I don’t really want to dig into because I don’t like where it leads, but it’s both her being playful about that sort of idea of therapy in media, like “oh, your parents” – like the poem – and an awareness of her own avoidance. But he does say he’s not really having the panic attacks any more, which he hasn’t seemed to since Zava left, so around six months ago now. He does start to have them again though this week, when he’s in the hotel. So. Not great. But with his mother, it’s quite a difficult situation for him to be matter of fact about the mental health treatment and her to be so avoidant, even though she wants to hear that he’s well.

Megan: Especially since he was himself so therapy avoidant. I always assumed that was solely down to Dr Jake, but maybe it’s a little bit due to his mum too. It’s hard because it’s so clear that she played such a big a role in fucking him up, and she still has the ability to do that – hence the panic attack – but her situation is also just really sympathetic. You can really see why she ended up this way while still recognising she failed Ted a bit.

Natalie: Given the way he responds when she texts saying actually she wishes she did go to the game, it just seems like an ongoing struggle, and given the things that come out later, I think that Ted’s panic attacks at this point are basically triggered by thinking about the reality of things back home. Like, whenever things feel too real and he isn’t able to compartmentalise. Because the way he talks about Henry at the end is almost like he copes by closing the door there in his mind. He’s fine when he avoids thinking or feeling about his other life, when he’s being London Ted, not Kansas Ted, but his mother is making that impossible to avoid.

Megan: Yeah like, I think he must know that for her to come over to the UK, there must be something wrong. Even just that it makes him feel unsettled and that makes him worry, forces him to think about everything. Whereas right now, because everything is going so well with Richmond and because he and Michelle seem to be doing the long distance co-parenting thing okay, it might have been easier for him recently to pretend everything is okay.

Natalie: Even if he doesn’t think something is “wrong,” I think it’s just the reminder of reality, honestly. But yeah. The confrontation between them at the end was something I felt was almost self-explanatory at this point. The whole thank you/fuck you – nothing about that exchange shocked me, nothing at all. But I WAS surprised about the further crying breakdown about Henry. The issues Ted accused his mother of felt very, very much like exactly what I expected they’d be in terms of the whole… outburst element, “Why are you here, fuck you for how you handled everything.” And of course she wanted to bring up plainly how Henry needs him. But Ted saying he’s scared to get close to him? That threw me, and it made me see his whole situation a little differently. The idea that he’s actually been avoidant rather than just incidentally absent after the initial choice to give Michelle space.

Megan: Yeah, Ted’s issues with his mum were well done, but not remotely surprising. But honestly I didn’t expect this to be Ted’s issue with Henry! I really thought that with Henry, Ted’s anxiety and stress came from feeling like he would hurt Henry the way his dad hurt him. That he had to leave to give Michelle some space – though he didn’t have to give her this much distance alongside the space – but he was worried that not being there would do damage to Henry. And that even before then, if Ted knew how much he was bottling up his feelings, he was worried that behaviour would end up hurting Henry too or repeat that repression cycle with him. I never thought that there was actually some choice there, that he was scared of losing Henry and so couldn’t allow himself to be close or to care or be involved. And that actually makes Henry’s attempts to like the things Ted likes that we’ve seen in earlier episodes, so he can feel closer to him, even sadder.

Natalie: Yeah, the onus being put on the child here feels…Bad. I don’t know. Very bad.

Megan: Henry is clearly a great kid, and I don’t think he’s irreparably fucked up yet, but fuck,Ted. I feel like the day after you win the whole fucking thing you really need to be on a plane back home.

Natalie: I truly think most people should not be parents, and if you make the mistake to be one, you can’t fucking do this, LOL. You can’t put your OWN feelings of abandonment first. After what happened with his dad, a non-therapised Ted should absolutely not have had kids. But he did. So.

Megan: Yeah, he made that choice, he can’t now choose to extract himself from the situation because it’s hard. Like with Dottie… yes, she handled it wrong, she closed up and that repression was passed on to Ted. But she tried, and she kept trying, and she was there putting him before her own heartbreak.

Natalie: I definitely came out on his mom’s side here. If you could call it a side.

Megan: Before the reveal of how he felt about Henry I was quite 50/50, like…both of them are trying. But yeah, that definitely frames all of Ted’s choices a bit differently for me

Natalie: I think she took his anger well, and saying she’s sorry he carried it so long, that was a good call. I think much like Nate’s dad, Dottie knows NOW, or can see now, the damage of the past, but doesn’t really know how, or see the point, of going back to hash it out now that Ted is an adult. Like she wasn’t SHOCKED. It was more like, in retrospect she knows vaguely where the messy parts were, so she sees where he’s coming from. Like how Nate’s dad knew in retrospect where he was coming from. In these cases it would have been good if the parent came to the child and said “Hey I fucked up with this
“
Megan: Rather than the child having to spell it out.

Natalie: But this is something parents really don’t like to do

Megan: Yeah.

Natalie: It is much more common for the child to come to them with these issues, “here’s how you fucked me up,” and the parent to be like “I know, of course I know.” Not just in media, in life, LOL. There is a real barrier for parents taking the responsibility to go to their kids and say “Hey I’ve been thinking about how I treated you about this, here is how I feel about it.” Don’t know if it’s a thing about admission of fault or whatever, but Ted is on the verge of either having to go to Henry to apologise for leaving for three years, or acting like it is something he doesn’t have to apologise for. Ted avoiding getting close to Henry – in fact making the relationship more distant – because he’s scared of the eventual pain of Henry maybe not wanting to be as close to him as an adult… It truly isn’t right. If this is meant to be a relatable parenting moment… Please stop breeding, people.

Megan: Scared of losing a child for other reasons, maybe? I can imagine that’s a huge worry for parents, because of the uncertainty about life. But losing them just in the sense of them not wanting to hang out? That’s not the same thing, and it’s kind of entirely in your hands. Be a good parent and they’re going to want to spend time with you. Fuck off to the other side of the world and maybe one day they’ll stop trying.

Natalie: What she says to him, that parenting has wins and losses but is generally just a tie – like a baseline, I guess – but you have to keep playing… I mean that sounds miserable to me. I’d rather have my cat. Stop inflicting life on new people if this is the vibe! But given this IS the vibe, I think it’s safe to say that Ted has not been playing the game at all lately.

Megan: Yeah, I do not personally get the appeal, but since Henry is there and not doing very well, I think Ted really needs to stop sitting on the sidelines.

Natalie: Yeah, I mean I don’t think it’s any surprise at all, where all this is leading. It is absolutely mandated that he go home.

Megan: I think if you watch Ted Lasso because you love Ted, and think he’s a good guy, you absolutely have to want him to end this season living in the same country as Henry. Because for him to do otherwise would mean he wasn’t a good guy. In which case why would you like him?!

Natalie: Yeah. Now, the song used here at the end was written for Ted Lasso specifically I believe. It’s co-written by Tom Howe, the show’s composer, and the singer Sam Ryder, with guitar by Brian May of Queen, and it’s kind of designed to be sung by Freddy Mercury. The whole “same time, same place next year” is to remind us of the Rebecca bombshell situation, which we know is coming. But right at the beginning of the season from the trailer, we saw this shot of Ted entering the locker room in that blue sweater. And even then, I said it felt final. In the trailer breakdown I said that my instant gut reaction was that this is actually Ted visiting the dressing room one last time, at the end of the season. And it isn’t that, but it’s him having decided he’s going

Megan: Yeah. It’s not going to be his last day walking into that dressing room – he’s still got a final match to play – but it is him walking in and mentally saying goodbye to the place.

Natalie: If anyone thinks this is anything other than Ted telling Rebecca he’s leaving after the season ends…

Megan: It’s a bit redundant as a cliffhanger, LOL.

Natalie: Like there is NO other option

Megan: What else could he be about to say?

Natalie: There isn’t another option, it is very much just this. I assume it’ll pick up right at this moment next week.

Megan: Yeah it’ll either pick up here, or maybe they string it out with like, Rebecca in her office asking when he’s going to tell everyone, and try and make it seem like it could be something else.

Natalie: The finale is called “So Long, Farewell,” which seems pretty fucking obvious. So obvious that I worry that he won’t actually leave, LOL. That there will be some twist.

Megan: Haha yes! I did have the same concern lol. But Ted Lasso does generally like to tell us where it’s going. So I will be very surprised by any twist.

Natalie: We could spend a long time predicting where this is all ending up, but honestly all the articles so far contain ideas about that, and there’s so much potential. So in terms of what is to come, I’m going to offer up a few options here about endgames and we can share maybe our most preferred option – or say if we have a strong prediction that isn’t actually the most preferred for us but what we suspect will happen.

Megan: Let’s do it.

Natalie: Will Ted leave Richmond and go back to Kansas, or will some other thing happen to keep him in London like Henry apparently moving there?

Megan: I think he will leave, and go back to Kansas. No other outcome makes sense to me.

Natalie: I agree. Too much Wizard of Oz. Okay. Rebecca – romance implied with Sam? Boat Guy? …. Ted I guess?

Megan: Not Ted. I am 50/50 on Boat Guy and Sam. I think my preferred outcome is back to being Sam after the last few episodes, but I would accept either, and I think Boat Guy might be more likely.

Natalie: I really wasn’t expecting this Sam renaissance, and now that she’s ready to be loved in a way she wasn’t ready for when they were together, I think I want it to be Sam.

Megan: I agree. Sorry Boat Guy, you were so gezellig.

Natalie: But what about the motherhood thing? She does want it. Easiest option is stepmother to Boat Guy’s kid. Will it be that, or will it be Sam plus another different child, like the Kakes Baby or even, I don’t know, Rebecca and Bex life partners with Diane (not Jamie’s daughter)?

Megan: Honestly it might be that the psychic was always just wrong. But yeah, that’s the one element that makes me think Boat Guy might be more likely.

Natalie: Psychic might be wrong, but Rebecca definitely WANTS it. So I feel like she’ll get it somehow.

Megan: Yeah.

Natalie: Okay. The league. Are they going to win the whole fucking thing? If so, how?

Megan: I think yes. As for how… maybe City will lose, Richmond will be ahead in goal difference and just need a draw to win. This show loves a draw as much as Ted hates one.

Natalie: I genuinely am hoping for this too, to win the whole thing with a draw. To mirror the relegation game in season 1, the goal difference element was a factor there too. Winning with a draw feels relevant to the stuff with Ted’s mom. Okay. Ted leaves. New manager?

Megan: Preferred outcome is Roy, with Beard as assistant. I will also accept Nate as his assistant, but would prefer Nate back at West Ham somehow. I don’t know if Nate being the new manager is more likely, and I don’t want it.

Natalie: I want it to be Roy but I have a gut feeling it’s Nate. I am trying to redirect my gut. But if I’m honest about what I think the show is setting up… It might be Nate.

Megan: Yeah. I think you could be right, but I really hope not.

Natalie: I really hope Roy gets to be the manager his legend status deserves as I really think he’s Ted’s biggest success story. But what about him, Keeley and Jamie? Roy/Keeley reunion with Jamie not playing much of a role? All stay as they are in this ep, intensely linked single friends? Straight up they’re in bed together OT3 confirmation? Jamie/Keeley and friend Roy? Roy/Jamie and single Keeley?

Megan: My top preference, unlikely to happen: all three of them together. The plausible outcome that I would prefer: intensely linked single friends. Probably most likely to happen: Roy/Keeley with Jamie playing a role. Because well…we’ve covered this a lot already in this article, but the three of them work together way better than any scenario where two are paired off.

Natalie: I’m hoping for better than your “most likely.” It feels too far gone now to go back. But let’s see. Trent: Will he confess how he feels about Ted? I am sure it won’t be reciprocated but will we learn he’s in love with Ted?

Megan: I think maybe. I’m really not sure about this one. I definitely think he is, I just don’t know if he’ll confess.

Natalie: I want to say yes to this one. I believe. Maybe not to Ted’s face.

Megan: I hope so.

Natalie: But to the audience in some way, we will learn it’s true.

Megan: I hope we, the audience, have it confirmed, yeah.

Natalie: Will Colin kiss a dude in public and give us a public coming out story we don’t ever properly unpack?

Megan: I don’t think so, but I hope he gets to kiss Michael or another guy in front of the team.

Natalie: I fucking hope they don’t do that anyway.

Megan: Same.

Natalie: Will the pub lads get to watch a game in person?

Megan: I hope so. If they want to. Maybe they prefer the pub, LOL.

Natalie: I think they should, but by putting them at Nelson Road, it means they can’t cut to the Crown and Anchor and Mae – it raises issues with reaction shots for the match. Like Georgie being at home in this episode rather than at the Etihad – that was done for reaction shot storytelling purposes.

Megan: Yeah that tracks. They need to be there so we can see the pub react.

Natalie: Will we find out anyone other than Ted – a player like Sam or Isaac – is leaving Richmond due to how football goes?

Megan: Possibly, but I don’t feel strongly either way on this one. However the title has farewell in it, so it’d make sense if more than Ted did leave.

Natalie: I don’t know who, but I feel like the answer is yes.

Megan: Yeah.

Natalie: Will Zava or Shandy pop up again?

Megan: At this point, probably not, but I think there’s a possibility Zava might somehow show up at West Ham. Maybe Rupert will make him interim manager LOL. I don’t really think we’ll see him though.

Natalie: I think George is the interim.

Megan: Yeah that’s my actual prediction for that.

Natalie: Okay, but the really important ones – will there be a small flash forward over the summer like last season had, maybe to wrap things up via Trent’s book?

Megan: I think that is quite likely.

Natalie: Will there be a stupid-ass long flash forward that ruins the idea of a future for the show, going years ahead in a montage?

Megan: That one I really hope not. I don’t think there will be, I think Apple will have wanted to leave it a bit open.

Natalie: It’s the hope that kills you, Megan.

Megan: That is true, but I’m hoping really hard.

Natalie: But I agree. If they don’t know what they’re doing with it, I think Apple definitely wants the chance for more. It could be that Sudeikis is so against the idea of more that he’s made sure to make the ending very very closed. But I feel like if it was really the end they’d have truly properly announced it, not whatever this ongoing edging is.

Megan: Same.

Natalie: Well, not long until we find out, I suppose.

Megan: Nope. Almost time now.

‘Ted Lasso’ is streaming on Apple TV+ now. The season 3 finale airs Tuesday, May 30 at 9pm ET.