Well, this was not a great episode. And as I finished watching, I reflected on how there seems to be a Law of Diminishing Returns with this writers’ group - both here with Ted Lasso and with their Lasso-adjacent Apple TV+ offering Shrinking - a show I initially loved but abandoned halfway through the season, even with…

I will say that Jamie's arc continues to be one of the best, possibly the best, in the whole series.

I’m like halfway through season 2 and one of the growing weaknesses is that the show seems to be becoming more about romantic relationships than the team. Sure Rebecca and Sam are cute but I really do not give a shit about them having a relationship.

I liked Roy making Lasso-like jokes and immediately despising himself for it.

The dick strings joke was fine, whatever, but watching Roy giggle about it made me fucking guffaw.

The review is correct in the sense that this was structurally a very unsound episode. Nate and Keeley’s plots were so slight they could have been cut without losing anything worthwhile. Sam’s plot was topical and emotionally nice, but the politics were clunky and so heavy-handed in their suddenness and exposition.

Lucki…

Where’s the discussion of Jamie’s speech in the locker room and overall character development? His transition from showboat to team player is one of the highlights of the series. Watching him give the assist rather than trying to score the goal himself was one of the top moments of the episode.

...is more interesting to me than seeing what needless sitcom-y setups the writers have cooked up for the show’s ancillary characters.

Comment from my wife after last night’s episode: “Who knew that an episode that kicked off with a pegging reference and continued on to footballers with red string around their gentlemen’s regions would be so great?”

No love for Will dressed as Beard? Him sitting at Beard’s desk reading Beard’s book was my favourite joke of the episode.

I laughed out loud at the dick string jokes. Between that and Beards possible foray into pegging, I worked out my humour brow is pretty low.

I’m curious exactly which unions “harm the US economy and global supply chain” and exactly how they are doing that.

Why not both? All businesses are all inherently predatory because they exist to make profit (which is theft). A union is like a condom. it doesn’t matter if the other person can be trusted, it’s safer with one than without one.

Unless it’s a police union, I’m struggling to picture one that’s actively harmful to others

Try to pay off all the subtle threads you’ve been spinning for two years to tell the story you wanted to tell?

I am very nervous about the potential implications of the last line “oh yes we did” from Boat Guy. I’m hoping against hope he meant something vague related to their minds meeting or something and not “we had sex and you don’t remember because you were too drunk and also the psychic said you’d be a mom surprise.”

Yeah, it’s hard for me to believe that someone on the Ted Lasso beat didn’t recognize one of the most obvious callouts in the show’s history.

With the whiff of a filler set piece, this subplot had all of Richmond’s players remembering that the best way to spend a curfew-free night in Amsterdam is to not go see tulips, not eat Dutch food, not attend a private party, and definitely not bear witness to a sex show and instead to have a pillow fight(?).

Considering this was every bit the filler episode that ‘Beard after Hours’ got slated for, there was so much to love this week.

The psychic also predicted that Rebecca would be upside down and drenched, but also be safe. It’s pretty obvious the Amsterdam meeting was the fulfillment of the main part of the psychic’s prophecy.