Ted Lasso S4E3

In all of sports movies and television, is there a trope more beloved than open tryouts?

It is, of course, something that very rarely happens in professional sports, and only then generally as a publicity stunt. The notion that some yahoo off the street would be ready to compete with finely honed athletes who’ve been practicing their craft since childhood is ludicrous on its face.

But it makes for fun storytelling, so get ready to see some of it in episode 3 of “Ted Lasso” season 4.

The story setup is that their star striker (never named, far as I can tell) has gone out with a serious knee injury, so Ted (Jason Sudeikis), Coach Beard (Brendan Hunt) and Coach Alice Chilton (newcomer Tanya Reynolds) are scraping the bottom of the barrel to find worthy players.

Alice has a candidate in Gemma (Abbie Hern), a former star now studying law, but she gave up playing the game competitively — plus there’s a clear indication of some bad blood between them. Not romantic, it would seem, but more a strict coach/hardheaded player clash.

In the meantime, Ted and Beard decide open tryouts are needed to fill in the gap, so get ready for chuckle-worthy scenes of regular shmoes (shmoettes?) struggling to run across the width of the field. One promising figure turns up who has a connection to the men’s team, but I’ll say no more.

Meanwhile, team owner Rebecca (Hannah Waddingham) is attempting to further her relationship with Dutch boyfriend Matthias (Matteo van der Grijn), who’s come over for an extended visit. But he keeps getting stood up for dates as Rebecca dashes all around on team business, including dealing with a big sponsor who threatens to pull out in the wake of a leaked report that concludes the Lady Greyhounds, along with the rest of the women’s league, are not financially viable.

It also appears that long-dormant embers of romance between PR maven Keeley Jones (Juno Temple) and gruff men’s team coach Roy Kent (Brett Goldstein) are coming back to a glow. So far it’s Roy who seems to be doing most of the stoking, while Keeley is feeling out how that fits into her busy bedazzled life.

Ted’s son Henry (Grant Feely) is now living in merry olde England with him, including starting school and settling into British social life. As they’re living above the pub, that means he has to put up with a lot of swearing.

The throughline of this season remains pretty clear: convincing everybody that women’s football — to use the British term; it’ll always be soccer to me — is a real going concern that people should get behind. Even some of our lovable background figures from previous seasons, such as the Greek’s chorus of diehard fans at the pub, seem very determined not to give the ladies a fair shake.

We’re seeing some of that in real life here in the States right now with the WNBA, which is finally taking off after 30 years of struggles, drawing big crowds and ratings, and with players getting compensated at something higher than plumber’s wages. Speaking as an Indiana guy, I think we know why.

Alice and Ted are still on a cool footing, and I’m predicting it won’t be long before they have some kind of major disagreement about how the team is being run.

This was a solid outing, probably the best episode of the season so far, and I’m eager for the next match.

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