Ted Lasso Season 4 Episode 1 Review: A Slow Warm-up Lap

Critic’s Rating: 3.25 / 5.0

3.25

After three years away, Ted Lasso is returning to AFC Richmond — but our favorite mustached, relentlessly optimistic football coach won’t be heading back to the UK right away.

You’ll be joining him in Kansas (or is it Missouri?) for the Season 4 premiere. 

If you’re eager to see Ted back on the pitch and meet the new women’s team that the trailers have teased, you’ll have to wait. 

Ted Lasso is gearing up to unknot some of the storylines the Ted Lasso Season 3 finale left tied, but not without laying some expository groundwork first.

When we said goodbye to Ted at the end of Ted Lasso Season 3, he had left the gang in Richmond and returned to Kansas to be closer to his son Henry.

His relationship with Michelle was left open-ended, and some of the episode’s final moments teased that he was the new coach of Henry’s soccer team.

Ted Lasso Season 4 opens on Ted, who has now taken up a job at a local grocery store, and we spend five minutes being introduced to coworkers we’ll undoubtedly never see again.

All of this seems to paint the picture that, while optimistic as ever, Ted is making the most of an imperfect situation.

Now that he has seemingly left his ties to football (or soccer… when in Kansas, right?) behind, something is missing.

When he’s asked about it, we learn that Ted is no longer coaching Henry’s team.

Ted: I kind of realized that sometimes coaches and dads have conflicting jobs.

While it’s clear Ted relishes being home with his son, the numerous longing glances he keeps shooting at various soccer fields make it evident that he misses being back in the football world.

Ted soon discovers that Keeley, Rebecca, and Higgins have come to visit him in Kansas. Naturally, instead of immediately asking them about their impromptu drop-in, he takes them out to BBQ.

Only after we see Rebecca spill BBQ sauce all over her blouse do we finally get to catch up on all we’ve missed over the past three years.

Rebecca’s Dutch pilot is still in the picture, and they are navigating their long-distance relationship.

Keeley and Roy are “very, very good friends,” which is good news because there’s now reason to hope that Season 4 will recreate some of the magic of Ted Lasso Season 1 as they fall for each other all over again.

Henry, now recast with actor Grant Feely (Obi-Wan Kenobi), is becoming a young soccer star in his own right.

And the reason for their visit is revealed: they’re looking for a head coach to take over their new women’s team.

Of course, Ted can’t immediately accept the job without undermining the growth that brought him home at the end of Season 3.

Instead, the episode examines the flip side of his decision.

“It’s good for a boy to see his father do something he loves,” Ted’s mother says in a sweet albeit quite random scene at her yard sale.

Now, of course, the show presents a new solution. What if Henry and Michelle come with Ted?

And, because it’s past time to get Ted back to England, they agree without hesitation.

Because Season 4 is bringing quite a lot of cast shakeups — which are necessary for the new direction the show is committing to — I’m curious to see how Henry and Michelle will take on larger roles.

I’ve been eagerly waiting to see how Ted Lasso planned to envelop its viewers back into the fold after its very series-finale-like ending to Season 3.

Almost every storyline was wrapped up in a clean and satisfying way — with the exception of Keeley and Roy. Although I never thought their initial split made sense in the first place.

It pulled off what most series finales dream of doing: give its ardent fans the relief of a happy ending, close out its major arcs, and also drop a little tease of what could be, allowing the future happiness of the characters to live on in our collective imagination.

For Ted Lasso, this future tease was Keeley’s proposal to start a women’s team at AFC Richmond.

Its purpose was to bring viewers joy that the world of Richmond football would live on and expand in Ted’s absence, dropping a cherry on top of a solid finale.

However, I wasn’t content to let this plot point remain a footnote in Ted Lasso’s history, and I’m thrilled that the creators agree it’s fundamentally a story worth telling.

This premiere lays the groundwork for an interesting premise for the season ahead, but it isn’t an entirely effortless slip back into the characters and setting that rallied its legions of die-hard fans.

I can’t quite put my finger on whether it’s growing pains, the difficulty of coming back to an established world while also trying to let it become something new, or whether I, as a viewer, have lost familiarity with the show’s dialogue style and narrative feel. 

Regardless, I was left with the impression that the wheel wasn’t entirely greased.

Some of the dialogue felt slightly stilted, straining for a laugh rather than landing the effortless comedy the show is known for.

Season 4 Episode 1 appears to be the show’s attempt at a warm-up lap, easing you back in after so much time away.

But if the dynamics feel stilted, maybe that’s the point. A lot can change between people in three years.

What makes Ted Lasso — well, Ted Lasso — is that Ted is always a bit of a fish out of water in the UK, the hyper-positive American in the midst of diverse British sensibilities.

Instead of reminding viewers of this, it attempts to flip the script, focusing on what happens when Rebecca, Keeley, and Higgins enter Ted’s neck of the woods for a change.

There’s something to be said for this approach: it’s a reminder that this is a new narrative arc with a new story to tell.

And I understand the impetus to give Ted’s decision to come back to the UK a full episode of screen time.

It takes time to build the belief that his decision to return to Richmond isn’t just right for him but for his family too.

But while the episode does bring some enjoyable moments, the episode — running at 42 minutes — feels drawn out with filler as you follow Rebecca, Keeley, and Higgins on their journeys around Kansas City. 

Of course, it’s full of BBQ sauce and shopping for bedazzled suits, but when it’s not teasing the upcoming tension between Keeley’s vigorous excitement for the women’s team and Rebecca’s financial pragmatism, it ultimately does little to advance the core plot.

I’m hopeful that as the season progresses, the new season can recapture some of the first season’s magical combination of meeting a new team of quirky, lovable characters and watching Ted and crew take the underdogs and help them come out on top.

Most of all, I’m ready to see women’s sports get their time in the spotlight, and the show has real potential to shed light on the barriers women football players face in receiving the same respect as their male counterparts.

However,  it looks like we’ll have to wait another week until we get into the (Kansas BBQ’d) meat of things. 

So Ted Lasso fans, what did you think of this episode? Are you excited for Season 4? Let us know all your thoughts in the comments below!