Curiouser and Curiouser!
Season 4
Episode 2
Editor’s Rating
4 stars
****
While most of Richmond warmly welcomes him back, Ted still faces an uphill journey to ensure everyone on his new team is happy.
Photo: Apple TV
Because the show is titled simply after its protagonist’s name, Ted Lasso didn’t necessarily have to remain a series about an American coach leading a British soccer team. It’s possible, if unlikely, that this fourth season might have followed Ted around as he worked in the grocery, attended his son’s soccer games, helped his mom move, etc. But a series’ identity goes beyond its name, and with “Curiouser and Curiouser!” the season returns to familiar Ted Lasso territory after the previous episode’s prologue/catch-up session/Kansas City travel guide. But not everything looks the way it used to. There are a lot of new faces; some old, familiar faces are nowhere to be found; and some of those that did return have new jobs.
Some even have new apartments. As the episode begins, Ted wakes up in a sunny, nicely furnished flat that we soon discover is located above the Crown & Anchor pub, a hive of AFC Richmond fandom where Ted and the others often find themselves. Now Ted’s been promoted from regular to tenant and Mae (Annette Badland) is thrilled to have him because he’s a nice break from renters with “little yapping dogs or cocaine habits.” On his way to work, he even gets hassled by a fan. It’s like he never left.
While Ted makes his way in, Higgins arrives in Rebecca’s office with a massive report he commissioned about the viability of a women’s soccer team, a sign that Richmond’s women’s team will not be able to survive solely on good vibes. Not that good vibes don’t matter. Worried about what the report might contain, Rebecca opts to keep the report from Keeley, at least for the moment.
That’s a problem for later. For now, Rebecca has to deal with Alice Chilton (Tanya Reynolds, a face familiar to fans of Sex Education and The Other Bennet Sister), the coach who’s been helping build the women’s team from, as she puts it, “the ground up.” Yet, to Alice’s great frustration, she has not been hired as the team’s head coach, watching instead as the job went to Ted. After originally planning to stay on anyway, Alice has decided to seek other opportunities and would like a letter of recommendation after sticking around for Ted’s transition period. It’s not hard to see her point of view, particularly after Rebecca tells her, when asked, that she was never in the running for the job nor, she admits when Alice presses her, was any woman.
Alice’s discontent is so easy to understand that it serves as a kind of hole out of which this episode has to climb to convince viewers that it’s okay to want someone so qualified to play second fiddle to Ted. That sense only grows stronger after we see her in action. Ted arrives already impressed thanks to a dossier so detailed “it would make da Vinci blush,” so he takes it as bad news when he’s told that Alice will be leaving, even after Keeley, Higgins, and Rebecca try to suggest — subtly and then unsubtly — that she has a difficult personality and it might be easier if she wasn’t around. Little about their first meeting suggests otherwise. After spying Ted checking out her desk — which includes inspirational sayings on Post-it notes, an early sign that these two could end up getting along — she comes in aggressively, saying he’s probably heard she’s a real bitch. Ted doesn’t try to deny this, then presses on anyway with a smile. But it sure seems possible he’s met someone immune to his charm offensive.
Even if Alice does plan to exit, that still leaves Ted with a lot of new people to get to know, starting with Caroline Seaward (Lauren Hendricks), the team’s head physio, who quickly makes clear that she’ll help him out with any problems he might have as a middle-age man, even “bum stuff.” In the cramped makeshift locker room, Ted meets the team, who make a joke of their inadequate facilities in ways that suggest they don’t expect anything to change. (This might be a job for Keeley.) They all seem excited by his arrival but, of course, this is day one.
So what’s going on with the men’s team? That’s obviously not going to be the focus of this season, but it’s not entirely outside the show’s purview. Roy (Brett Goldstein) has taken Ted’s old job and seems to be settling in pretty well. He’s thrilled to see Ted again — well, as thrilled as Roy gets — but Coach Beard (Brendan Hunt) has a more complicated reaction. “Between you coming back and the whole thing with Jane,” Roy says, “I think he’s all fucked in the head.” (And, when Beard makes his first appearance behind some blinds, that seems like an apt description.)
Before Ted gets a chance to have any one-on-one time with his new players, he’s whisked away to a press conference, where he’s peppered with questions about the men’s team and unable to steer reporters in the direction of the women’s team despite his best efforts. If Ted hadn’t already realized he’d be traveling uphill with his new job, this would seem to make that clear. Regardless of how the press behaves, the real work will be done on the field, where he joins Alice to watch practice and learn a bit more about who will be playing for him.
There are a few standouts (and some clues about what story lines the season might pursue): Mady (Annelise Heywood) and Margy (Mercedes Assad) have been dating since training camp. Niamh (Aisling Sharkey) and Siobhan (Rex Hayes) are hot-tempered twins whose aggressive tendencies sometimes get directed toward each other. Katie a.k.a. “Boots” (Jude Mack) is the team’s star goalie whose game might be limited by her refusal to wear gloves. (Why? “She’s a goalie, isn’t she?” Alice explains. “They’re all batshit.”) It’s this issue that Ted decides to focus on the next day, though he doesn’t make much headway into changing Boots’s mind. Sure, playing without gloves stings, she says, “But what’s the point in life if you’re not feeling it all?” This new job might be an uphill journey in more ways than one.
Rebecca’s admission that she never considered a woman for the job kicks off a crisis of conscience. Is it possible that she’s not as committed a feminist as she considers herself? She still seems a bit rattled when she opens Ted’s press conference with an intro that attempts to establish, restate, and underscore her feminist bona fides and her commitment to stand up for all women under any circumstances, a pledge that opens her up to admitting there are some exceptions: Ghislaine Maxwell, Eva Braun, Cruella de Vil, etc. Perhaps sensing she’s being performative, Rebecca decides to do some reading, but seems at first only to seek out affirmation that she’s already a feminist, not that she still has work to do. Nonetheless, her conversation with Higgins the next day, in which she quotes Eleanor Roosevelt, suggests she’s not done with her extracurricular studies, and it’s still on her mind when she lunches with her mother, who’s decidedly not comfortable calling herself a feminist yet makes an observation that reminds Rebecca of bell hooks.
Meanwhile, Keeley hits on a solution to the locker-room problem: Claim the visitors’ locker room for the women’s team. (Won’t this create a problem for the visitors, who presumably still need a locker room? Seemingly not, or at least the episode isn’t interested in exploring this.) Keely gets help from Roy, who sets about undoing all the tiny booby traps built into the locker room, from uneven benches to a trained rat named “Jonathan.” While the two officially remain just friends, the look on Keeley’s face during this renovation process suggests she might be open to changing her mind.
So how fucked in the head is Beard, really? He’s messed up enough to feel like he has to don a disguise so no one will see him talking with Ted in public lest rumors fly. He’s also messed up enough to frame his talk with Ted as a discussion between lovers with new partners. “He’s very good to me,” Beard says of Roy. “I’m happy to hear that,” Ted replies. But can they still be friends? Both agree they can (though Beard flees the moment Ted raises the Jane issue). Still, as weird as Beard is acting, Roy seems to see it the same way when he talks about the issue with Keeley, who tells him, “I think keeping two people apart who belong together is bad, not just for them but for everybody.” Later, under the pretense of Beard having violated a team code, he lets him go, freeing him to rejoin his pal.
So is Alice really leaving? She might be acting like someone halfway out the door who’s trying not to care, but that facade drops the moment Josie (Stevie Abrahms), a talented striker, goes down with an injury. Rebecca, for one, wouldn’t hate to see her go. But Ted’s a different story. When Alice returns from the hospital, she finds Ted’s stuck around to get an update. When Ted notes that she accidentally uses the word “our” to refer to the team, her stony expression melts a bit. And when she sees the renovated locker room — and its ecstatic reception — it falls apart completely. Overcome with emotion, she flees. She’s a bit more put-together when Ted finds her in the office as she packs up her stuff, but Ted knows she’s now looking for an excuse to stay. So he launches into a speech that touches on her career highlights before pressing the issue, even prompting a smile in the process. They’re soon joined by Beard, and her expression shifts yet again as Ted and Beard celebrate their reunion. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all?
In a different corner of the Richmond complex, Higgins shares the report’s conclusions. There’s a “low probability” that the team will be financially successful. What’s more, the women’s team could drag down the men’s team if they fail to thrive. They have a hard choice, but it’s not that hard a choice. Neither Higgins nor Rebecca could live with themselves if they didn’t at least try to make the women’s team work, report be damned.
As the episode draws to a close, Rebecca decides to talk to Alice about the journey of self-discovery on which Alice’s previous comments have sent her, re: her commitment to feminism. It’s a long, not entirely kind speech that couches an unspoken “Fuck you” in the middle of an elaborate “Thank you.” So it’s a bit awkward when Alice tells Rebecca she’s staying, and even more awkward when Rebecca’s subsequent attempt at humor lands with a thud. It seems like these two are going to have to do a little work when it comes to getting along, much less understanding one another.
This is the second episode but, in some respects, the real kickoff to this new season. It’s a promising one, too. Reynolds is a real standout as Alice. The character begins the episode as a near-caricature of no-nonsense toughness and barely contained rage but picks up depth with each scene in which she appears. Her anger also gets at the elephant in the room: Was Ted really the most qualified person for this job? Why didn’t Rebecca consider Alice given her obvious talent and passion? Whether or not any tensions will linger, and whether Rebecca will keep trying to prove her feminist credentials to her all season, remains to be seen, but so far, Alice is a terrific new addition that shakes up the dynamic between familiar characters.
We don’t really spend enough time with the other players for any of them to make as deep an impression, but “Curiouser and Curiouser” — the episode title is likely a reference to Alice’s name — does establish that Ted has a lot of work to do, even if his new players seem to like him. And while Coach Beard’s subplot is a little broad, it’s also quite funny.
• This episode was written by Leann Bowen, who’s been with the show since the first season. Bowen’s other writing credits include the season-three premiere.
• “That thing with Jane” remains a mystery at this point. Will we ever learn what it is? Could it ever live up to our imaginations? Does it have something to do with why Beard is reading (or sort of reading) Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife?
• The reporter with the Paddington-like hat seems also to be eating a marmalade sandwich.
• Goldstein has some of the episode’s comic highlights, including the straight-faced delivery of his “biscuit,” which he describes as, “Better for your macros. No sugar. High protein. And instead of using butter, I used beef tallow.”
• “Oh, you like Batman, huh?”
“No, he’s a fascist; it’s just that every middle-aged man is obsessed with Batman.”
“Yeah, that’s true. Probably because of all the wearable tech.”
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