So Long, Farewell, Ted Lasso - It's Been A Blast

Saying goodbye to a show that meant so, so much to so many...

‘Well, I hope they stick the landing.’

That is a common term when it comes to TV finales. If they are going to end - and all good things must come to an end, I’m afraid - then the least we can hope for is a farewell that leaves us warm and satisfied.

After all, we’ve just invested a wealth of time and emotional currency into said show and the least they can do if they insist on breaking our hearts is to give us an ending that doesn’t suck.

Not too much to ask you would think but, trust me, a lot of all-time great shows have been stained by a crappy finale.

Here’s looking at you Seinfeld.

Well, I’m writing this in floods of tears having just watched the Season Three finale of Ted Lasso for the fourth time. And, while there has been no official announcement confirming either way, it was probably the last ever episode of Ted Lasso.

Just go and look at various interviews with the stars of the show - as well as their Instagram pages - and you tell me if the show in its current form is coming back.

It is over, folks. Yes, I know, sad times.

Before I get into what Ted Lasso meant to me overall, allow me to quickly run through some of the things I loved from the finale.

SPOILER ALERT - SPOILERS AHEAD FOR SEASON 3 FINALE

Oooh, now I feel like a proper TV critic. But, seriously, if you haven’t seen the episode yet, please get a life. It is nearly a week old. Get your priorities straight.

And, please do allow me to stress that this won’t be a true nuts and bolts breakdown of what happened in the Season 3 finale - I’ll leave that to the true experts.

Anyway, let’s dive in…

Things I Loved

That’s How You End A Show - I’ll lead off with this. As mentioned at the top, the geniuses behind Ted Lasso haven’t said whether this is the end or not, but they have given very, very strong hints that it is. After all, the standard answer we’ve been given in interviews is that there was always a three-season arc for this show, and that Season Three officially brought that story to a close. And, by the time you got 10 minutes into the finale, it sure felt as though this was a fond farewell. A final goodbye. The entire episode just had a finality feel to it and that was reflected throughout. This is a very, very basic point I’m making but, if this was goodbye, the creators hit it out of the park. That’s how you bring a much-loved series to a close. I wouldn’t have changed anything about the finale at all. I loved it all and felt it stuck to the essence of the show and stayed true to what Ted Lasso was always about. It didn’t try to be too cute or too clever, it just delivered in the sweetest, most heart-warming way possible and it is an episode that will stand the true test of time. Now, there will be people who want a reboot or a spin-off but I don’t think that’s really necessary. After all, many TV shows these days fall victim to the pressure of pushing things further than they need to go, and it very rarely ever ends well. It is always better leaving the audience wanting more, after all, and it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. Okay, that’s enough of the cliche crap. Moving on….

Nate’s Redemption - I’ve seen a few articles that argue the show butchered Nate’s character in Season Three and that the finale didn’t do him justice. I disagree. Strongly. Nate was always going to return to AFC Richmond and it didn’t need to be some dragged out, overplayed side show. Nate, like all of us, is human and he has very real flaws that got the better of him. He made a mistake and seeing him cast out forever wouldn’t have been realistic, nor would it have been realistic for the writers to have Nate waltz right back into Richmond as an Assistant Coach. That would have felt forced. Instead, by easing Nate back in, we were treated to a simple but emotionally brilliant moment between Ted and Nate where the latter finally got his redemption. That was all that was needed - a few words, tears and a long-ass hug in the place where the two first formed a friendship. The moment during the crucial showdown against West Ham when Ted used a play from Nate for the winning goal - and when Nate jumps into Ted’s arms during the ensuing celebration - was also a really nice touching nod back to Season 1. The show did plenty of those in the finale, which added to the emotion.

Coach Beard Remains - I always kinda felt it would be cheap just to have Coach Beard return to Kansas with Ted like he was some sort of nodding dog or something. Especially given how much development the character went through throughout the show. So, it made me very happy that we were treated to a twist right at the end when, sticking on brand for Coach Beard, he pulled off a hysterical ruse to get off the plane in order to remain in Richmond, stay with the team as an assistant and, as we later saw in an utterly baffling but brilliant montage, marry the love of his life in Jane. The show did a unique and super fun character justice with that ending. Oh, and the fact that his first name is Willis also felt very, very on brand for the character. I loved how we finally got that reveal right at the end. It felt right.

Right Man For The Job - A big part of me was always terrified that Nate would be the guy to replace Ted as Head Coach of Richmond. Instead, the job went to Roy Kent and that’s the way it should have always been. It didn’t feel as though we got a whole lot of Roy in Season 3 - aside from his blossoming friendship with Jamie Tart - but his ascension to the role of manager and his eventual acceptance that becoming a member of the Diamond Dogs was fate was just a real neat way to put a bow on his character arc.

So Long, Farewell - Okay, I’m not lying when I say I have watched the scene where the players sing ‘So Long, Farewell’ - there just had to be a reference from The Sound of Music, didn’t there - to Ted and Coach Beard over 20 times since last Wednesday. I mean, I am just obsessed and I cry every single time I watch it. The whole sequence is just perfection and the end where everyone, including Trent Crimm, are celebrating like they’ve just won the league with Waterfall by the Stone Roses playing in the background made it my favorite moment of the finale. That’s how you do TV.

Rebecca Gets Her Happy Ending - I loved the journey for Rebecca throughout the entire run of Ted Lasso. She went from being a cold-hearted, vindictive wrecking ball to becoming a role model and an absolute icon for everyone to aspire to. Hannah Waddingham played the role to absolute perfection and she played a crucial role in some of Season Three’s most uplifting moments. Therefore, it felt justified that she finally got her happy ending at the end of the finale when, in a romantic as hell twist of fate, she ran into her Dutchman again and became a mother in the process. Something she had always wanted. And, having toyed with the idea of selling AFC Richmond all episode, it was a really nice twist for the writers to have Rebecca to sell 49% percent of the club to the fans, keeping in line with her character development over the course of the show. Rebecca got the happy ending she so deserved.

The only thing I didn’t really like about the finale was the fact that AFC Richmond didn’t end up winning the Premier League. Having teased us with so many unlikely and unrealistic twists during the game against West Ham, the writers may well have just leaned into going against reality by giving us the happy ending we all craved for the team. But, then again, as viewers we want both a sense of realism and happy endings in the shows we watch, and we can’t have our cake and eat it too so I’m not going to dwell on that too much.

Of course, the writers and the powers that be did get some things wrong both in the finale and throughout Season Three. Keeley Jones became a sideshow character and both the character and the actress didn’t deserve that. That was probably the most glaring error that the third season committed.

There was also a scene in the finale between Ted and Rebecca in the stands, where the latter declares she’s finally ready to talk about Ted leaving. It was a very simple scene but Ted hardly muttered two words throughout the whole exchange and it didn’t seem real compared to the character we all fell in love with in Season 1. It played into the fact that Ted’s character was kept very understated for the entirety of Season Three.

I know there were also people unhappy that we didn’t get a solid conclusion to the Keeley-Roy-Jamie love triangle, nor did we ever find out if Ted was able to salvage things with his wife. I’ve got two points on that. Firstly, and more pertaining to Ted’s return home, there were clear hints throughout the game against West Ham when they kept cutting back to Kansas City that both Michelle and Ted’s son were getting increasingly pissed off with Dr. Jacob’s attitude towards the game, and his lack of care towards what was going on. The fact that Michelle showed so much passion for what was happening in Richmond was telling. And sometimes the writers want the audience to come up with their own conclusions as to what happened, and I think there was enough there to think that Ted and Michelle eventually did work out their issues and found a way back to each other. That leads me to my second point. And this is more in relation to the whole Keeley-Roy-Jamie storyline. Sometimes, it is okay for things to be left unsaid or to be left open-ended. Not everything gets neatly wrapped up or is dealt a concrete ending straightaway. That’s life.

Overall, I thought the Season Three finale was great and if that is it, then it was a hell of a way to go out. They hit all the right notes and it was one of the more satisfying endings to a show I can remember.

And I do hope that is it. As I mentioned earlier on in this piece, a lot of shows have tried to push past their expiry date and it hasn’t exactly ended up great in most situations. Season Three left most of the characters where we would have wanted them to end up, and I don’t think there is any sense in risking the legacy of what is a great show by forcing something that is not there. All good things must come to an end and I feel Ted Lasso ended exactly when it should have.

Of course, the fact that there will be no more Ted Lasso - the greatest gift from Kansas City besides Patrick Mahomes and barbecue sauce - makes me sad. It makes me damn sad because this show impacted me in ways I didn’t think was possible.

The funny thing is, I tried as hard as I could to avoid Ted Lasso for as long as I could because I’m not a soccer fan and I wasn’t interested in watching a show about soccer. However, it was impossible to avoid the show during its initial burst onto the scene because it seemed like nearly damn everybody on the planet was raving about it. So, eventually, I conceded defeat and decided to see what all the fuss about.

I’m glad I did.

I ended up binging Season 1 in one whole day and I couldn’t stop smiling throughout, aside from the moments I was in waves of tears because that happened a lot while watching this show. There was or has been nothing else quite like Ted Lasso, and it was a series we could all take really valuable life lessons from and apply them to our own respective journeys. I know I did. Around the time Season 1 came out, I was at a real crossroads in my life and, believe it or not, that lovable, irresistible Kansas City spirit from Ted Lasso guided me towards the right path and for that I will forever be grateful.

Season 1 was what we all needed at a time when we were all mired in COVID-19 fatigue, beaten down by the Pandemic with no end seemingly in site. Ted Lasso arrived like an absolute hurricane of positivity and provided a ray of light we all desperately needed to see in order to claw our way out of the darkness.

Sure, Season 2 felt like a slog at times and it didn’t feel like the same show at points but, then again, it was always going to be hard to follow up a home run of an inaugural season. Plus, we evolved as we began to emerge from a post-Pandemic world and the show also evolved. It wasn’t just about Ted’s sunny outer shell or a slew of laugh-out-loud jokes, the show became a lesson in how to deal with being at war with oneself. Season 3 was about tackling real-life issues that impact us all, like depression, racism and homophobia. That was the only direction the show could go in, we just didn’t willingly go with it and that’s on us.

Anyway, I’m sounding like a TV critic here so enough of that.

Ted Lasso was never about soccer. It was about character, development, heart, and that’s why the finale got it right. And that’s why I will always be grateful to a goofy American for impacting my life in the best way possible.

Ted Lasso taught me that it is fine to be vulnerable, that putting a mask on your daily struggles is, ultimately, a doomed mission and it is more than okay to ask for help, to be open and to be yourself. It’s okay to admit you are struggling. It’s okay to admit you have depression and not to bottle everything up. And, just as I did during some of my darkest and most uncertain days, I know I can always go back and lean on Ted Lasso to help cheer me up and provide me with the side-splitting laughs we all need every now and then.

Ted Lasso was the show I needed, the show everyone needed, at exactly the right time and, no matter what happens from this point on, nothing will ever change the way I feel about this show. It was a true gift from the TV Gods.

So Long, Farewell, Ted Lasso. It’s been a blast.