‘Ted Lasso’ Season 4, Episode 8 Recap: There’s Crying in Football

Season 4, Episode 8: ‘Follow the Anger’

Well, that’s more like it: a central story line involving Gemma and Alice; more attention to the Lady Greyhounds’ success on the pitch than we’d seen so far; a nice moment with Ted and the team; a mysterious plot; and even a step forward for Keeley and Roy! There’s a lot more going on than usual.

Let’s dig in …

The team

They’re good, evidently! Early in the episode, we get a nice look at the team on the pitch, and watch them run up their record to 9 wins, 4 draws and 3 losses — good for second place, between Birmingham City and Bristol City. Gemma is the top scorer in the league! (Yes, we’ll get back to her in a minute.)

There’s even a mention of “promotion,” which is the opposite of relegation — meaning the team is potentially in position to move up into the Women’s Super League, the top women’s division in England and equivalent of the men’s Premier League.

Of course, it’s possible I’m wrong, because Zelda’s mention of promotion was an aside and completely devoid of context. “Ted Lasso” still has a way to go before it gives the Richmond women players their due. But this was a significant step in the right direction.

Gemma and Alice

Only moments after we learn that Gemma is dominating the league, she goes down in a fashion that’s familiar to anyone who watches sports.

It’s a sprained knee, but we don’t know how serious yet. If it’s Grade 1, Gemma will recover relatively quickly; Grade 2 or 3, she’s out for the season.

Add in the fact that Gemma just won a prestigious legal internship, and she’s understandably asking herself whether the high-risk, low-pay path of women’s soccer is really best for her.

But even though it’s Gemma’s injury, ultimately this is Alice’s story line. We’ve gotten glimpses before of the existential crisis that accompanied her run of career-ending injuries. But we dig deeper this episode.

Alice’s two awkward trips to Gemma’s house, her sit-down with Rebecca, the brief period of silence she shares with Ted in the coach’s office — whatever material the show gives to Tanya Edwards, she continues to crush it.

Last episode’s “Yes, and” story line had been Alice’s best to date. This episode’s story line eclipses it. Give her more to do, “Ted Lasso.”

Ted

Ted also had a couple of his best scenes in a while, beginning with the aforementioned moment of silence with Alice.

From there, he segues into one of his now relatively infrequent locker room speeches, inverting Tom Hanks’s classic line from “A League of Their Own” to announce that there is crying in soccer.

And lest you doubt him, Ted has a litany of examples to offer: Messi, Ronaldo, Maradona, Neymar, and on and on.

Another Derek!

Last episode, the main subplot was driven by Derrick Tarp, Dani Rojas’s sleazy agent, and I noted that one of the show’s many longstanding inside jokes has been naming minor, unlikable characters “Derek/Derrick” (the manager at A Taste of Athens and others.).

Now, just one episode later, we have multiple mentions of “Dr. Strudwick,” the surgeon who is appallingly blasé about operating on Gemma’s knee. It’s only near the end that we learn his first name is — of course — Derek.

The mysterious plot

Well, this seems like a major story line to be introducing so late in the season. An enigmatic outsider is quietly buying up shares of Richmond, sometimes at wildly inflated prices! Are they trying to seize control of the team?

Of course, this conspiracy is only discovered when Higgins accidentally spills a printout on the floor, seeming to validate all of my ongoing skepticism of Richmond’s senior management.

The atmospherics of this subplot are rather over the top — I could’ve lived without Mae and the nightstick — but the question lingers: Who is behind this villainous scheme?

Mae tells Higgins to “follow the anger,” and it leads him, and later Rebecca, to imagine that the mastermind could be her vile but charming ex-husband, Rupert, whose motivations are all too apparent to anyone who’s watched the show.

But there are reasons to doubt this is the case including, sadly, the fact that Anthony Head, who played Rupert, died in June. I also haven’t seen anything suggesting the actor was intended to be a part of this season, although I’m not certain either way.

My guess for the wicked puppet master is Zelda. What is her motive? I have no idea. But when she echoes Mae — “Never underestimate the power of anger as fuel” — it certainly feels suggestive. And Zelda clearly has the capability to undertake a ploy like this, as even she notes: “I’ve got some people who just love to wade through the slime.”

I don’t know about anyone else, but it’s felt to me for a while that we were on the verge of some kind of heel turn by Zelda. Remember the weird scene at the boat party when she thoroughly ignored Alice? Or in this episode, her odd eagerness to declare the season a lost cause after Gemma’s injury?

I’m not sure whether this all adds up to anything, or who else might be involved in the share-buying scheme. (Hugo Riddles seems like an obvious lackey.) But I picture Zelda in her Disney-villain outfit from the boat party and I think: She’s the one.

Keeley and Roy

What did I say last episode about the Keeley-Roy story line moving fast? I’m not sure precisely how far Richmond is from Chelsea, but the couple covered an awful lot of emotional distance on their crosstown journey to Roy’s induction ceremony as a Chelsea “legend.”

Between Roy’s tricked-out car, and his phone, and the traffic barriers, and the sunroof, and the outage on the Tube, he and Keeley have nearly countless opportunities to escalate their mutual irritability.

But then Keeley asks about Dr. Beaumont, and Roy tells her: “We broke up.”

The couple of scenes that follow seem almost suspended in time. Something is happening, but it hasn’t quite happened yet.

After a near miss on the train, Roy and Keeley make it to Chelsea, but too late for the ceremony. So Roy changes his speech. “Keeley, tonight was a [expletive] disaster,” he tells her. “And it was the most fun I’ve had in years, because I got to spend it with you.”

He asks her to give him a “second chance,” and she happily complies.

As a loud and longstanding enthusiast for this particular couple, I just hope we can enjoy at least a few episodes of them navigating their relationship together before we have to watch another round of breakups and makeups.

Odds and ends

While we’re on the subject of relationships, I should note that, contrary to my expectations, Ted and the still-nameless stage manager are no closer to dating than when they first met back in Episode 5. I had assumed that romantic dawn for Ted was coming, but perhaps it lurks further over the horizon.
In Ted’s “crying in football” speech, he conjures the single most tear-jerking scenario he can imagine: “Watching ‘Beaches’ while listening to Adele’s second album.” The references are of course to the 1988 film with Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey and Adele’s “21.”
I’ve been hard on Beard, but he had a nice, small moment this episode. After Ted and Alice had their quiet scene together, Beard gave Ted a quick glance seeking reassurance, and received it. He is at his best in understated moments like this, rather than goofy tales of how amazing he is at Burning Man.
Maybe it’s me, but it sure feels like “Ted Lasso” is indulging in more off-color jokes than in prior seasons. And while I don’t mind them in the abstract, I don’t love what they do to the tone of the show. Mae’s description of the taste of her watermelon vape — it evidently evokes the Kool-Aid Man’s anatomy — was one. Another was the Roy-Ted exchange that culminated with the latter’s, “If I had a lower bar, I’d make a ‘That should be the title of your autobiography’ joke.” This is not what I come to “Ted Lasso” for.
Another nice one by Beard: Following Ted’s confusion about the spelling of Niamh and Siobhan, he tells him, “Wail until you see how Saoirse Ronan spells her name.” Well played, Beard