‘Ted Lasso’ Season 4 Premiere Recap: Begin Again

Season 4, Episode 1: ‘Home’

The last time we were all here talking about “Ted Lasso,” a bit over three years ago, it seemed to be the last time. The show had been intended, loudly and publicly, to have a three-season arc, over the course of which Ted Lasso (Jason Sudeikis), an American college football coach, would travel to England with two principal goals: to fix a subpar Premier League soccer team and to fix himself. I encourage anyone who wishes to reacquaint themselves with the show’s goings-on so far — or just to indulge a few fond memories — to peruse our collected recaps.

This new and somewhat unexpected fourth season begins with a dark screen and a familiar, rhythmic beeping. Is that a heart monitor? Is Ted dying? Or wait, has he become a surgeon?

No, no and no. The beeping emanates not from an EKG but from a cash register. Ted Lasso, former manager of AFC Richmond, is now the assistant manager at Fowch’s Fine Foods.

Having completed his initial save-team/save-self mission in Seasons 1 through 3, Ted now finds himself back in his hometown, Kansas City. He and his ex-wife, Michelle (Andrea Anders), are still divorced, although both seem substantially more comfortable with the arrangement. Ted is spending a lot of quality time with his now-teenage son, Henry (Grant Feely) — the boy having been, of course, the reason Ted returned to Kansas City in the first place.

Here, I think an early but brief digression is merited. Careful viewers of the show may recall a couple of past references to a “Ronnie Fowch,” who bullied Ted as a schoolboy and was fond of a grotesque prank that involved getting someone to eat something he had put in a Butterfinger wrapper that was not a Butterfinger.

Well, we’ve already cited the name of the grocery store. If you look closely, you’ll see that Ted’s boss, the store manager, has “Ronnie” on his name tag. And, yes, that is indeed a Butterfinger that Ronnie is eating. This particular candy bar looks legit. But the rule stands: If he offers you one, you definitely say no.

Ted is clocking out from Fowch’s early today because Henry is in trouble at school, having written lyrics from Public Enemy’s “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos” in his notebook. (I was disappointed that, in contrast to Henry’s brief bullying episode in Season 3, this will not require him to perform the Lassoesque penance of “an apology rap in front of the whole class.”)

But more important than any particulars of Henry’s offense are these revealed details: Michelle isn’t particularly happy with her job (this will be relevant later); Henry isn’t particularly happy with school (this, too); and Ted compliments Michelle’s hair, and she appears genuinely flattered. (I have no idea whether this will eventually be relevant, but I’m placing a marker.)

All in all, the situation seems stable but uninspiring all around. What could shake things up?

The answer arrives in a large S.U.V., which shows up at Ted’s suburban home bearing … three pairs of shoes: first, flesh-colored Louboutin heels; next, red-sparkle platforms; and finally, beaten-down New Balance sneakers. Yes, it’s Rebecca (Hannah Waddingham), Keeley (Juno Temple) and Higgins (Jeremy Swift), and if you didn’t recognize them from the footwear, shame on you.

The three are in town to check out Kansas City’s women’s soccer team, because — season premise alert! — Richmond is starting a women’s team and they would like Ted to come back to London to coach it. “Last time I hired you for all the wrong reasons,” Rebecca tells Ted over barbecue at a local eatery. “This time I absolutely want to hire you for all the right ones.”

Given that the mystery of whether Ted will ultimately take the job is not very mysterious — there are nine more episodes after this one, and I don’t think they’re set at Fowch’s Fine Foods — I found myself focusing instead on the enigma of the barbecue place itself. Contrary to expectation, it is not Arthur Bryant’s, the K.C. joint that has been cited so frequently on “Ted Lasso” that it seemed almost a mascot.

No, this is Gates, a competing K.C. barbecue chain. Later in the episode, we’ll see Ted wearing a T-shirt advertising both Arthur’s and Gates along with two other barbecue joints in town. I know investigative reporters have plenty on their hands these days. But boy, I’d love to read a deeply reported expose on the cutthroat tactics and backroom deals required to get your barbecue featured as tops on ‘Ted Lasso.’

Those who were on this recap ride for Seasons 2 and 3 will probably recall my deep and manifestly unhealthy investment in the romantic story lines of Keeley and Roy (Brett Goldstein) and of Rebecca and Matthijs (Matteo van der Grijn). We will, I’m certain, have an abundance of time to discuss both moving forward.

For now, the episode merely gives us two starting points. Yes, Rebecca and Matthijs are still blissed out, as they demonstrate on a video call. (Note she is wearing green, her new favorite color.) And no — angry Roy Kent growl — Keeley and Roy are not together, just great friends, as she explains to Ted. Keeley is apparently OK with this situation; Roy is clearly not. Count me, as ever, on team Roy.

But back to Ted. He is initially reluctant to take Rebecca up on her offer, for all the obvious reasons. But Michelle says he should take it. And his mom, Dottie (Becky Ann Baker), goes further, telling Ted that Henry won’t admire him if he remains in a job he doesn’t care about. Ted is at a loss: “You tell me that my son needs me so I’ve got to come home. Now you’re telling me I should go back? What am I supposed to do, split myself in half?”

That’s a lot of words already, so let me scoot to the inevitable ending and then circle back with final thoughts. Earlier in the episode, Ted remarked, “I kind of realized that coaches and dads sometimes have conflicting jobs” — another variant on his “split myself in half” line to Dottie. But of course Ted’s “conflict” is merely that the coaching job is on one continent and the parenting is on another. And there’s an obvious way to fix that. (Yes, actually, there are two obvious ways. But despite his career history, Ted seems somehow unaware that there are also coaching jobs in this country.)

So, Ted makes a Big Ask: Do Henry and Michelle want to move to London with him? It’s obviously a huge and complicated decision. Michelle has her job. Henry has school. They can’t decide on a whim to just up and … My mistake. They can and do, via text. The entire plan to uproot jobs, houses, school, friends and a wealth of local barbecue options takes maybe 30 seconds.

So there we have it: the preamble. Ted will in fact return to London, this time bringing Henry and Michelle with him (although not with him in the case of Michelle). In that foreign land, Ted will coach a team whose members we have not yet met, playing a sport he still only dimly comprehends.

But he won’t do that until next week. In the meantime, I invite you all to share thoughts in the comments section, which, if past years are any indication, should feature a sharp and lively conversation.

Odds and ends

• Has there ever been a musical choice that is simultaneously more perfect and more completely wrong than playing “Kansas City” by the New Basement Tapes during Ted’s crucial decision-making drive home? The mood is perfect, one of those sublime pairings of scene and music that “Ted Lasso” pulls off now and then. But as Ted drives past one after another of Kansas City’s landmarks, the refrain of every verse is “I’m going back to Kansas City.” Which Ted, of course, is emphatically not.

• I was a bit perplexed by Higgins’s accidental visit to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, with its many cringe-y invocations of white guilt. It seems to be intended to suggest an analogy between the travails of Black baseball players in America and those of women soccer players in Britain. But then it immediately — and correctly — declares that the comparison it just presented to us is a terrible one (“much much much worse”). At least Higgins gets a jersey of the legendary Negro League team the Kansas City Monarchs out of it.

• You have to love the endless — and entirely appropriate — confusion over the precise geographical parameters of “Kansas,” “Missouri” and “Kansas City.”

• The Daniel Manning Elementary school that Henry attends does not appear to exist in real life. But it is surely a reference to the former college and N.B.A. great Danny Manning, who won championships with the Kansas Jayhawks as both a player (in 1988) and a coach (in 2008).

• “Of all the ladies soccer joints in all the towns in all the world … ” Ted follows up this nice “Casablanca” reference at the barbecue place with another near the end of the episode: “Oh, I’m sorry. I thought we were doing ‘Casablanca,’” he tells Rebecca at her plane. Well played, Ted.

• A while after Henry’s issue with writing down Public Enemy lyrics comes to light, Ted offers another twofer, telling Higgins that his vintage jersey makes him look like Mookie from “Do the Right Thing” — which of course featured Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” as its central anthem.

• Additional references: “Oliver, “Aladdin,” and their joint impact on Ted’s view of the morality of theft; Tina Knowles, mother of Beyoncé and evidently an active parent; and Janelle Monáe, Ariana Grande and Bruno Mars, all of them apparently “real tiny.” I’m sure I missed plenty. Please let me you what you saw that I didn’t in comments.

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