How Dare You Make Me Feel Feelings, ‘Ted Lasso’

I’ve been critical of the new season of Ted Lasso for its oddly flat treatment of its legacy characters at the expense of its biggest strength, the women’s team, for quite some time now, the result of which has left me mostly frustrated and more than a little cynical. However, something happened this week that caught me wholly by surprise: I found myself caring again.

Now, unless they manage to stick the landing with the finale in a spectacular fashion, the overall season ranks a C average. But the excitement of the game, Mae having a great (and sadly final) hurrah, and the best Roy/Keeley plot line of the season, made me recall how Ted Lasso used to feel in earlier seasons, skillfully juggling triumph and despair undergirded by hope. Hopefully no one else has to die to keep this momentum going forward.

The first time I saw Annette Badland as the hard but secretly tender pub owner Mae way back in the first season of Ted Lasso (episode two, “Biscuits,” for the curious), I assumed the Leo “I know that guy” posture in my chair. I quickly put two and two together, because if you’ve watched the first few seasons of the 2000’s era Doctor Who as many times as I have, it only took me a minute to recognize her as Blon, the wicked alien criminal of the Slitheen family, who Christopher Eccleston’s Doctor eventually captures. It’s a lone credit for an actor with a lengthy list of them going back to 1975, but her impish performance always stuck with me, and seeing her appear on Ted Lasso with her bright silver locks and that same fae-like smile made Mae an instant favorite.

Clearly others shared the same opinion; her guest appearances grew more frequent, and this season saw her take on some childcare duties in addition to running the Crown & Anchor. She was also one of the Lady Greyhounds’ most fervent cheerleaders, a facet of Mae threaded throughout the season. But once she made it on the bus, I was suddenly struck with the sinking feeling that she wasn’t going to be coming back. Once Mae was delivering the locker room pep talk (“So go out there and make an old lady happy…and beat the f***ing s**t out of them!”), I knew that an emotional bear trap had been set in place and I was about to plant my foot right in it.

It’s a hell of way to lock in viewers, and though I usually don’t take kindly to that level of emotional manipulation, the show was just clever enough to follow it up with the most exciting football match of the season. Like a pediatrician using a sock puppet to distract an infant from an incoming hypodermic needle, it was so great watching the Lady Greyhounds get it together (Shannon’s game winning goal!) that I didn’t feel the horrible sting until the beaming, overjoyed Mae abruptly disappeared from view, winding up on the ground.

Damn you, Ted Lasso.

Hannah Waddingham made for a perfect audience substitute, because her Rebecca carried the stunned weight of all that grief right in her eyes. Even Sudeikis, who’s relegated himself as a background character in spite of the copious amount of screen time, managed to do the most powerful acting in the season merely with his posture as the once-ebullient Ted learns what happened to his dear friend. The loss will reverberate throughout the remainder of the series (however long that turns out to be). Even if the show quickly reestablishes new ownership of the pub, Badland’s presence will be sorely missed.

In the classic story conceptualization of ‘life and death/as one sun sets, another rises,’ we discover that Keeley’s pregnant thanks to film and television’s favorite pregnancy symptom, fainting—no seriously, if an otherwise healthy female character faints in film, she’s 1000% pregnant every single time. Juno Temple also gets to do some of her best work of the season, bounding between shock and excitement (much appreciation to the writing team for bypassing any strangeness/resentment with Rebecca) to glassy-eyed happiness as she looks on Roy, who’s keeping her apprised of the match by way of her cosmetics (“Really good teamwork from Rouge and Contour”). Finally, a worthy reminder of their special relationship that made so many Ted Lasso fans eager for their reunion.

Director Matt Lipsey, who also directed “Man City” (when Jamie confronts his dad and winds up crying in Roy’s arms) among a handful of other episodes, has delivered the best episode of the season. There’s still enough that’s gone awry that deserves to be pointed out—[deadpan voice] oh wow, Zelda is secretly the bad guy, who could have seen this coming—but for a season of a show that’s clearly trying to find itself again, this was a solid reminder of what it once was in its heyday.

Ted Lasso season four finale streams next Tuesday at 9pm EST on Apple TV.

Kaleena Rivera is the TV Editor for Pajiba.