Ted Lasso turned a lovable soccer team into a bunch of boring therapists

polygon.com:

Ted Lasso has ended, and everyone is handling it great.

We don’t see the moment when Ted (Jason Sudeikis) announces he’s leaving AFC Richmond and England to head home to Kansas City; that happened between the last two episodes. People are a little sad, but that’s OK. This is the story of a man who made the club what it is: caring and emotionally in touch with each other. They almost won the title, just as Ted promised they would in the season 1 finale. But at leastTed Lassocan rest easy knowing it made its characters into better people who are able to talk about their feelings. Unfortunately, that “growth” came entirely at the cost of the show’s quality.

Ted Lasso seemed like a breath of fresh, pandemic-free air when it first premiered. Dropping in 2020, the Apple TV Plus show became a sleeper hit, thanks to the half-hour comedy ease with which it tackled everything from big character divisions to soccer drills. Though the truths of Richmond’s situation could be tough to reconcile (an owner actively trying to tank the team; a coach going through a slow divorce), the solutions were always so clearly rooted in the characters. In this way, Ted seemed like proof of concept: He’s an optimistic person because he chooses to be, not because nothing has happened in his life to make him angry. Some of the first season’s most pivotal moments — the darts monologue or Rebecca’s confession — are powerful because they acknowledge how instructive his philosophy could be. They’re quieter wins than they might be on a different show. But they work! If other people just followed his lead — hey, the world could just be a better place. You just had to, as the sign said, believe.

By contrast, season 3 was ultimately so frictionless it’s hard