I am delusional, I know, but I am fully fully convinced that the Lasso crew (whatever they may have told Apple) have known for a very long time that it was going for more than 3 seasons and that Ted/Rebecca has always been the love story at the heart of it and will be so at the end. And that Brendan & co were lying their arses off post-S3 about how we should be interpreting it all because they wanted everyone to think it was an actual ending. Because yeah, S3 got away from them a bit. It was narratively ill-disciplined. Needed a tougher editor, more time in post to fix stuff like that unforgivable Stonehenge shot, and for Jason to be a bit less of a heartbroken Virgo. But theyâre not actually incompetent writers who stumbled into things that they never realised they were stumbling into and thereâs still a lot of really interesting, deliberate things happening in S3, including Tedâs total dissociation from the world of his own show. Mom City is so layered and such a brilliant tragedy. Midwestern manipulator Dottie Lasso is a genius invention. And I really donât believe they wrote a tragedy by accident. I donât believe they failed to give the audience any sense that there was a full life in Kansas waiting for Ted by accident. I donât think the fact that everyone in the airport - Rebecca, Ussie guy, Beard - clearly thinks this is a terrible mistake was an accident. I donât think the panic attack music cue for the last shot was an accident. I donât believe the ugly, stark, bleak, washed out lighting was the result of the same cinematographers who shot S1/2 suddenly forgetting how to do their jobs - because we saw in the Amsterdam boat sequence they absolutely know how to throw a warm fairytale gloss over a scene. So the lifeless colour grading as Ted slowly gets sucked back into the vortex of his inescapable fate to end up exactly like his father was also a choice.
Luckily for him and for us, Rebecca Welton is the sort of character who sees âinescapable fateâ and thinks âbetâ. Dorothy in the fourth book (nobody ever reads past the first book!) is straight back out of Kansas and good for her lol.
The wonky pacing of S3 canât be fixed. But I do genuinely think weâll look back at the character arcs of S3 after watching S4-6 and think that they make a great deal more sense knowing they were written more as Tedâs dark forest midpoint as opposed to a triumphant ending. Maybe Iâm way off base! But I donât buy that those months of delays at the start of S3 filming when Jason threw out the initial scripts werenât because heâd decided they were continuing past S3. I mean, I donât actually think he changed the ending in the sense that Ted/Rebecca were initially supposed to have their big happy romcom ending and that he never went back to Kansas. I think he was always going to go back to Kansas but the original ending when it was meant to be the true finale leant much more into the âright person wrong timeâ of it all and acknowledged the romantic undertone. I donât think the parallel of Rebecca in the airport to Michelle was an accident either! And I donât think any of it was meaningless or trolling (minus the opening scene of the finale, that probably needed to be cut but it does also serve a purpose going forward now itâs part of the canon). I do think what a lot of Twitter doomers forget is that the one plot element that was expressly reported as being a new addition as part of the rewrites wasâŚAmsterdam, and all that entails. Because an obstacle is needed, but I also think theyâre writing a genuine friends (unhinged soulmates)-to-lovers rather than a trite will-they-wonât-they that ends up sucking up attention from everything else worthy of discussion in the show. I think theyâll keep Ă degree of plausible deniability as to them being platonic soulmates right up to the minute they narratively make the jump.
Sorry for the stupidly long self-indulgent ramble in your inbox. Iâd put my thoughts on Reddit but they all take the creatorsâ words at face value. Obviously boat guy isnât her Tish-approved lightning strike of a happy ending. Heâs not been made a main or even heavily recurring character and weâve got three seasons to go. They donât want us to actually invest in him beyond the superficial. Maybe itâll be the S4 finale, maybe itâll be mid-S5, but the prediction Iâm most confident in is that ship will sink.
Iâm not just giving you a short answer to be flippant but youâre literally voicing everything I also think. I do believe that the guy from Amsterdam is a passing distraction at best. I think the way the episode was shot inside that boat felt almost like a dream with the warm colors and hazy feeling where everything felt almost too perfect. Also, Rebecca going for another man whoâs also unavailable in every aspect (being from another country, a pilot, divorced whoâs also co-parenting) plays a huge factor. So Iâm not at all worried. I do think we will see him again and heâll play some role in season 4 but nothing like a permanent thing in Rebeccaâs life.
I also agree if Ted and Rebecca are to be something more itâll more than likely happen in season 5. Especially after going back and seeing what they set up in season three. The finale did feel like a rewrite. It was confirmed that halfway through the season they did, in fact, rewrite half of the season. Which makes sense with reshoots and how long it took for that season to come out. And how bad, quite frankly, the back half the season felt.
Iâm going into the season with zero expectations. I hope to be pleasantly surprised. I am going into the mindset of being glad to see these characters again. Happy to be in a more female centric space this time around with a womenâs team at the core of this story. I missed Ted. I missed Rebecca. I hope the show goes back to them. They were always the heart of the show. I hope we see their interactions again. Similar to season one but deeper. I also think we need some of that season one magic again all things considered in the world right now. I also miss screaming about a TV show a lot.
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