{"id":891182,"date":"2026-09-11T01:42:22","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T01:42:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/891182\/"},"modified":"2026-09-11T01:42:22","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T01:42:22","slug":"ted-lasso-season-4-is-running-out-of-time-to-fix-itself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/891182\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Ted Lasso’ Season 4 Is Running Out of Time to Fix Itself"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIt may be time to admit something to ourselves and to each other: Season four<\/a> of Ted Lasso<\/a> is a bit of a dog\u2019s dinner.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe hit show\u2019s return, after a tidy wrap-up to three sweet seasons, promised a new team and \u2014 one hoped \u2014 a fresh wave of storylines for its sprawling cast of women footballers, team leaders and idiosyncratic coaches. Instead, it\u2019s brought in a cast of still-underdeveloped supporting characters, subbed in caricature analogs (you\u2019re a legend, but I\u2019m looking at you, Tracey Ullman<\/a>) of the fleshed-out characters from the original three-season arc, and stitched together a suite of plot threads riddled with tired sitcom tropes.<\/p>\n

\n\tCase in point: the Roy-Keeley-Erin love triangle, the No. 1 offender in episode six \u2014 a kind of bottle episode that gathers most of the show\u2019s characters in one glammed-up location to ring in New Year\u2019s Eve aboard Zelda\u2019s boat. Ahead of that, Roy winds up hospitalized (again) after a jump-around to House of Pain\u2019s \u201cJump Around\u201d with his old frenemy and teammate Jamie Tartt ends in injury. Then, in a twist pulled from a dozen other sitcoms and dramas, eavesdropping Keeley overhears the wrong part of his profession of love, walking away just before a drugged-up Roy can finish the sentence with \u201cKeeley\u201d instead of Erin\u2019s name.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s a lazy trope we\u2019ve seen so many times before, and unfortunately it isn\u2019t the only one in this episode, which has Rebecca pining for Matthijs only to end up in a heart-to-heart with none other than Tartt, now shilling his Old Testament-themed hooch. There\u2019s a brief will-they-won\u2019t-they that\u2019s impossible to care about, since Rebecca and Jamie ending up romantically entangled would make little sense and likely cause a fan revolt. So it amounts to a \u201cwhat if\u201d fantasy that almost sees the two kiss at midnight (such high stakes, right?).<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Lady Greyhounds, gathered and glammed for the night, finally had a chance to reveal more of their lives, and the writers teed up an opportunity to create new plotlines that could propel the season forward. As with the episodes so far, though, we\u2019ve been handed only snippets and small gags to define these women \u2014 here, swings at humor and character development (Lizzie sneaking ham from the buffet, Alice discovering the team doesn\u2019t hate her after all) pale next to what the show did with the rich, perfectly sentimental storytelling around the men\u2019s team in its first three seasons.<\/p>\n

\n\tSo we have a series that sets out to confront the inequity between men\u2019s and women\u2019s sports and falls directly into the same trap \u2014 leaving its women underdeveloped and lacking support. It\u2019s a shame but the series still has time to fix it \u2014 but it had better come fast: Season four is fading, and it won\u2019t be a memorable return for Mr. Lasso if it doesn\u2019t turn things around soon.<\/p>\n

\n\tSpeaking of our titular hero: he spends the episode away from his team, down at the pub with his ex on New Year\u2019s Eve, talking through their history. Some revelations about Michelle and her therapist follow, and she eventually nudges him to join the team to ring in the New Year. Then comes the reveal of who kisses whom as the clock strikes 12 \u2014 but for many of us, at that point, it was time to kiss this episode goodnight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It may be time to admit something to ourselves and to each other: Season four of Ted Lasso…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":891183,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[49,48,75,57295,60683,68179,348],"class_list":["post-891182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-jason-sudeikis","tag-ted-lasso","tag-tracey-ullman","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/891182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=891182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/891182\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/891183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=891182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=891182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=891182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}