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The impeccable feel-great Ted Lasso has finally returned with the second season, starting off with the aptly named ‘Goodbye, Earl’. The title refers to the heretofore unseen mascot of the Richmond team, a greyhound named ‘Earl’ — it’s just simple enough to feel completely realistic. An initial source of potential conflict is introduced as we start the season with a bit of a time jump.
We find our team in the next season with seven consecutive draws — no wins but no losses either. It’s not exactly the ideal way to get promoted, despite the strong as ever fan base of supporters. The particular driving incident of this episode (and therefore the season) is skilled scorer Dani Rojas accidentally killing Earl with a truly dizzying sort of horrible coincidence. Thus the normally optimistic guy has a dream with a cartoon dog (a first for the show to get into such absurdism) and wakes up now feeling that ‘football is death’.
The technique used to help Dani is the introduction of a sort of mild antagonist, hiring a sports psychologist Sharon Fieldstone (Sarah Niles) with a history of results. Ted expresses his initial negative feelings, offering both cultural (his ‘midwest’ skepticism) and personal (he feels like the marriage counselor he and his ex-wife saw only made things worse).
The way many people are skeptical of therapy is certainly reflective of the real world, but here it does seem that Sharon is doing good work. She appears to be impervious to Ted’s charms, although there’s also a sort of professional distancing there. Ted is so used to simply getting his way by being himself that he’s taken aback by Sharon’s pleasant but distant interactions with him. Cleverly, the episode doesn’t paint either as villains, and even seems to imply that perhaps it is Ted that needs to respect the idea.
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This is made more clear when Sharon (who is shown speaking at least two other languages) helps cure Dani of the ‘yips’, and his only summation to Ted is that although football is death, it is also life. Whatever she actually did remains a mystery, but it cannot be argued that it works as Dani immediately is back to normal.
A few other things are introduced in the episode, like new Dutch (and overly honest) player Jan Maas (David Elsendoorn) and new kitman Will (Charlie Hiscock) that Nate is clearly overcompensating by being overly critical of. Of course, we also get to see what’s going on with everyone else, and it feels pretty reasonable.
Rebecca is dating a new man and is willing to share that with Ted, while Roy has been coaching his niece’s team of eight year old girls at soccer too. It’s cute, but also amusing that he doesn’t change his gruffness at all. The episode actually ends with Roy hanging with his older yoga lady friends, as they watch a pitch perfect parody of the reality sensation Love Island called “Lust Conquers All” where Jamie is one of the contestants.
Although obviously Roy is furious about it, it’s something that’s clearly setting up more complicated things in the future — because Jamie being on the show is a bit of an issue if he’s meant to be playing for the premiere team at Manchester City. The episode has a bit of a slow start at first, and then we get a heartfelt story from Ted as he waxes rhapsodic about his own history with a dog.
After that, it’s a bunch of interesting setups and amusing lines — it’s a great start to the season, and admittedly I did feel the need to watch more episodes which is always a good sign. I appreciate that the show isn’t playing it safe, and is willing to shake things up for the characters. There are a lot of characters to think about, and sometimes it can be tricky to balance that sort of thing — but I suspect Ted Lasso is up to the challenge.
New episodes of Ted Lasso drop Fridays on Apple TV Plus. Subscribe through the link below.
What did you think of the season premiere? Give us your thoughts in the comments section below.
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