Ted Lasso thoughts under the cut once I get the gum out of the showerhead...
In the old days when TV shows weren't oversized movies split into pieces, the second episode often acted as a second pilot - the Pilot Lite, if you will, introducing the premise again while also getting into the meat of what the show is about. And that was absolutely what "Curioser and Curioser" felt like, with the added layer that of course, this isn't actually a new show.
Once again, the writing juggled all its jobs fairly neatly - nodding at the familiarity/unfamiliarity of it all, giving us a quick rundown on the Lady Greyhounds, and best of all, giving us the lowdown on Alice Chilton.
When I heard Rebecca derisively calling Alice worse than a Rottweiler last week I knew I was going to end up loving her, and I was right! Alice is, in fact, dangerously close to being my blorbo, and I spent most of the episode deeply, tooth-grindingly annoyed at Rebecca and Keeley for their treatment of her.
Especially Keeley! After her history with Barbara, she should know better than to think the blunt "un-fun" person isn't worthwhile. You'd think with the way people describe Alice that she'd be House-level rude, and she simply isn't. Yes, she could stand to do more social massaging than she does, but as far as I could tell her main crime before announcing her resignation was failing to follow the "good morning" script and being slightly awkward. Heaven forfend.
What, you don't like it when an employee doesn't laugh at your unfunny joke, Rebecca? Maybe consider why your personnel decisions were all about Alice's relationship with you and you never once considered her relationship with the team, aka the main point of the coaching position. There's something here with how Rebecca is shutting Keeley out of the financial reality of the team, too. She's treating her employees as friends, to the detriment of the organization she's running.
Which is to say: you don't have to be fucking bubbly to be a good coworker, and thankfully, the writing showed in great detail why Alice is awesome, actually. That and Tanya Reynolds' wonderfully expressive cartoon woodland creature eyes, and I'm really looking forward to seeing more of her in the future.
The choice to have Jane (presumably) leave Beard was. Certainly a thing that happened. But where on earth is Nate? Last episode made it clear we're not pretending he didn't exist, so why doesn't Roy have a second assistant share the load? Is he going to magically manage the men's team alone now or what?
That said, Brendan Hunt remains hilarious, and of course Beard's rapport with Ted and Roy is immaculate.
I'm loving Ted's new apartment and the delicious mixed signals of it. It's not the corporate housing he got last time, but someplace he chose himself, and it's lovely and warm...but it's also right above his local, even if Ted is wisely turning down the Guinness breakfast for now. I wonder where Michelle and Henry will stay.
And oh, those few seconds in the men's locker room, where the taped-up Believe sign still occupies its place of honor. There was something complicated behind Ted's eyes, then, and I don't yet know what it was. Grief for his former home? Ambivalence about that simple life motto?Something else?
Meanwhile, I'm loving all the pains that were taken to establish why Ted and Alice will make a great team. She's a professional's professional, all business, no personal stuff, but in such a high-performance environment, the personal stuff matters. It's why you keep going after tearing both your ACLs. It's why you play the sport at all when you don't even have your own locker and everyone shares one shower. And Alice secretly knows it, or she wouldn't call the keeper Boots.
The writing is also taking great pains to show why Alice will tolerate Ted at all when he's taken the position she feels should be hers. It's not just because her abrasiveness bounces right off of him - it's because unlike Rebecca, he actually understands the value of her work and respects her for it. When Alice worked her ass off on that team writeup, he met her where she was and worked his ass off to have it memorized on his first day. That shit matters.
In other words, yes, he's a woo woo personality coach, but when it comes down to it, what he cares about is the team and the work of making it great, which are the same things Alice cares about. And vitally, he cares more about that than whether she acts like his friend.
Having read A Lot of business plans/viability analyses in my life, I felt for Higgins, but also I'm clearly the wrong audience for that C-plot because I wanted to know why specifically the document said the women's team had bad odds. That's the stuff you address! In the show about business operations that no one would ever watch!
This episode maybe leaned a little too hard on the morning show audio interstitials, but they were funny, and I was tickled to see Alison Hammond outside of Bake-Off.
I'll also be tickled if Roy is mostly here to be Keeley's love interest. He's good for that!
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