‘Ted Lasso’ Season 4 Review: A Good Main with Awful Sides

Ted Lasso, the character, began on a commercial character promoting the Premier League on NBC Sports and now for nearly 6 years, it’s been the biggest show on Apple TV+ and one of the biggest shows on TV in general. Season 4 is reportedly doing record numbers, but unfortunately the quality of the show is also at a record low.

Ted Lasso Season 4 opens with Ted’s new life as an assistant manager at a grocery store in Kansas City as he helps raise his son. Ted gets a visit from Rebecca, Keeley and Higgins, who are there to offer Ted Lasso a job back at AFC Richmond—a job to coach the women’s team and turn their fortunes around as he once did with the men’s team. Ted’s tempted, but he feels he can’t because he’d have to be away from his son Henry for extended periods again. Michelle, Ted’s ex-wife, agrees to move to London with Henry and Ted so he can take the job and thus begins a new Ted Lasso journey.

Ted Lasso is a show built on its lighthearted and wholesome humor, often referential humor, and its ability to get the emotional beats right. There were times in the first two seasons that the show was quite good at getting somber, especially with its titular character. It’s an ability that the show lost in its third season that the fourth season also struggles with.

There are few actors who get to find a role that defines their entire career like Jason Sudeikis has. Since the show began, Jason’s mostly done voice roles on animation projects but he’s done 44 episodes of Ted Lasso and he’s brilliant in every single one of them. His arc peaked in Season 2 but every time he’s on screen, regardless of the sometimes middling material, the show is better for it.

Which is why everything else about this show falls so flat. This show was built around Ted in a way that ensured he was the bread of the show and the side characters were the butter that made it better but now the show has flipped it and the butter is completely separate. Not that Ted is isolated but the side characters we loved are now given more storylines that really don’t work as intended.

This was a problem in Season 3 as well but it’s something that the show did not fix. Rebecca and Roy especially have largely boring solo storylines this season that just don’t add enough. They’re both fantastic characters but I really don’t care to see them without any other major characters. Rebecca’s storyline in particular, with her super bland boyfriend, is just not worth the empty bottle they keep on trying to squeeze.

I think the show’s humor also falls too flat for comfort. There are jokes here and there that work and even the bad ones are never too bad but the hit rate has fallen off. Ted Lasso has never quite been laugh-out-loud funny for me but the smart references were great and they’re not as effective here. The humor that the men’s team had hasn’t quite carried on to the women’s team either.

I think the women’s team stuff is pretty interesting, mostly because it’s the part where we get the most of Ted. Alice Chilton, the former head coach and now assistant coach of the women’s team, is a great addition because her guarded personality is contrasted by Ted and Coach Beard and we watch her become less and less guarded as a result. This is probably the strongest part of the season.

The issue with the women’s team aspect is that the plot of the success of the team is not as prevalent as the men’s team relegation and promotion. The sense of urgency sort of isn’t there and it feels too disconnected from everything else despite the fact that it should be the main attraction. There’s simply too much going on and there’s other smaller storylines that really don’t work as a result.

There’s a scene in the finale of this season that features the return of a specific character that begins the chain of events that leads to them gathering and returning as the Diamond Dogs in a scene that might be the best this show has to offer. Not to say a show shouldn’t evolve but it made me realize those types of character interactions are sorely missing from this season.

What this show has going for it is the saving grace of Jason Sudeikis. His performance is still very charming in all the best ways and Ted is always very fun to watch whenever he’s on screen. I have to imagine this show comes back for another season and if so I really hope it’s more Ted and the women’s team centric with everything else supporting that rather than separate. I’d love to see more interactions between Ted and more of the main cast because that was really missing this season.

Ted Lasso Season 4 stars Jason Sudeikis, Hannah Waddingham, Brendan Hunt, Juno Temple, Brett Goldstein, Jeremy Swift and more. The show airs on Apple TV.

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