Ted Lasso S3E8 Review: We'll Never Have Paris and the Cost of Apologies
A trip to Paris, a stolen video, and a pub singalong force four characters to decide what to keep and what to defend.
Richmond is on a four-game winning streak when this hour opens, and the show clears the football off the table almost immediately. Arlo’s commentary kite-tails into a diner in Kansas, where Jason Sudeikis’s Ted sits across from his ex-wife Michelle, her new partner Jake, and their son Henry — eating an English breakfast in the middle of America and getting told that Michelle is being taken to Paris. Not Paris, Texas. The default Paris. The hour is built around four people handed news they did not ask for, and it is the strongest of the back half of the season because it lets discomfort sit.
Paris is the news, and Ted’s response is to hire a detective
Ted’s first move in the diner is the funniest sustained piece of denial Sudeikis has played all season. He hears “Paris,” runs through the Paris in Texas, Arkansas, three Parises in Ohio, and lands on “très bien” by way of asking for the French word for nice. Jake — newly upgraded from Dr. Jacob — has just told Ted to use his first name. Ted agrees and immediately says it still feels weird, like white folks calling Jay-Z Jigga man, like a priest in shorts. The bit is the surface. Underneath, Sudeikis plays a man working out in real time that he is being asked to sign a permission slip nobody asked him about.
The Diamond Dogs meeting that follows is the episode’s first sustained joke about the show’s own habits. Ted summons the group, Brendan Hunt’s Coach Beard barks, Jeremy Swift’s Higgins sprints across the building and arrives light-headed, James Lance’s Trent Crimm takes notes with the politeness of a man cataloging a new species, and Ted’s news — He took her to Paris — lands with a thud. Trent volunteers the Hall of Mirrors at Linderhof Palace as his proposal venue and then concedes “or Paris.” Find out before you flip out is the line that gets to Ted, and the show walks him into Rebecca’s office to ask her to hire a private investigator on a man he met for breakfast.
Hannah Waddingham’s Rebecca refuses to let the bit be only a bit. She lists every other reason to visit Paris — the food, Oscar Wilde’s grave, the Louvre to mock people taking blurry photos of an overrated painting — and Ted answers each one with “before getting engaged” or “after getting engaged.” Her tell is that she will not say where she and Rupert got engaged. Rebecca agrees to the call and tells him the Eiffel Tower is just a lamppost with a publicist, which is the meanest line she has had this year and also the most affectionate.
The leak, the statement, and the moment Keeley refuses to sign
The other half of the hour is the locker room being handed a story it does not know how to hold. A mass leak of private videos and photos hits the news. The Sun calls it The Great A-wank-ening. Phil Dunster’s Jamie says the right thing first — the only people to blame are the dickheads who steal your stuff and put it online — and a beat later the article is on a phone and the right thing has a name attached to it. Keeley.
The locker room scene is the best ensemble work the show has done with this cast in a season. Jan Maas says privacy is private property and Toheeb Jimoh’s Sam agrees the law is not the point — the point is Les Misérables, the point is Jean Valjean, the point is doing the right thing because it is the right thing. Isaac orders the team to delete every photo they have ever been sent. Bumbercatch starts. Colin does not. Isaac yanks the phone, the moment goes physical, and the camera holds on Colin long enough that the audience understands what he is afraid of being seen. It is the closest the season has come to writing him a thesis without writing it.
Across town, Juno Temple’s Keeley has a longer version of the same conversation with Rebecca. The scene is the best two-hander Waddingham and Temple have had together. Rebecca confesses that her own first thought was a topless photo passed around her school when she was fifteen, that the teacher she had taken it for was Mr. Daniels, and that men who act like teenage boys actually are awful. Keeley says she knows there are tons of topless photos of her online but those were her choice, and Rebecca agrees the difference is everything. Rebecca then reads the apology statement Jack has had Barbara deliver, calls it caked in lawyer ick, and tells Keeley to give Jack a chance to surprise her. The Beatles joke that follows about the parents’ couch and the dog the family did not own is the show’s small grace under pressure: a friend buying you the dignity of laughter while you decide what you are going to do.
Jack’s surprise is to bring back a softer statement and ask Keeley to read it. Keeley says no. The argument goes ugly fast and quiet. Jack says it is not a great look when the person whose company she funds has a porno online. Jack escalates to “maybe you shouldn’t have made the video in the first place,” and Keeley answers with the line the episode has been building to: she does not regret making it, and she does not regret sending it. The next question, asked low, is whether there are more out there, and Keeley’s “I don’t know” is the moment the relationship ends. She does not say it. She just leaves. The episode does not score it. Jack says “Right” to an empty room.
Nate’s new label, Jamie at the door, and a song in a pub
The episode rotates its B-stories with the discipline of a season-best. Nick Mohammed’s Nate spends his half of the hour trying to find a word for what is happening with Jade. He suggests breakfast, then asks in a stammer what terminology she would best recommend describes the relationship, then takes it back, then says he is just cool and casual. By night, after a charity golf afternoon where she calls herself the daughter of a billionaire and reads a green better than a book, Jade tries on the word “boyfriend” out loud and Nate tries it back. The show wisely does not let Nate enjoy that win on its own. He arrives at the Richmond match the next morning in West Ham gear and gets greeted by his old kit-room call-out from Henry in the stands, a beat the camera holds on long enough to make Nate notice he is the one in the wrong jersey now.
Roy’s contribution is one of the quietest scenes Brett Goldstein has had this year. He finds Keeley outside her flat after she has left Jack, asks if she is okay, asks her back, then asks a question that is none of his business — Who was it for? — and Keeley does not answer. The scene closes on his fist in the steering wheel and a second “Fuck.” It is the third or fourth time this season the show has written Roy as a man who knows what he wants and cannot say it, and the only one that does not feel like a sketch.
Jamie at the door is the episode’s softest landing. He says he was nervous to text, confesses he kept the video longer than he should have because part of him thought he and Keeley might get back together, says he deleted most of it when she started seeing Roy and the rest when he realized that was real. He admits he forgot the emails. He admits his password was “password,” misspelled with two S’s. Keeley laughs once, the first real laugh she has had in the hour. An apology that names what it is can land where corporate fuckery cannot.
The pub scene is the centerpiece of Ted’s half. A busker plays Hey Jude. Ted talks his son through the song’s origin — the little boy named Jude, the parents who broke up, the best friend who wrote him the song so the words might help him down the road — and the whole pub joins the chorus. Rebecca calls in the middle, asks why Ted never took Michelle to Paris himself, and tells him to stop letting yesterday get in the way of today. He gives her a mercy buckets, she gives him a de rien and tells him to get back in there and sing Hey Jude with his boy. The singalong lands without sentimentality because the lyric is doing the writing the show would otherwise have to do out loud.
What this episode argues
The four threads share a shape. Ted is given news about Michelle and decides whether to flip out before he finds out. Keeley is given a script about her own life and decides whether to read it. Nate is given a word and decides whether to use it. Jamie is given the chance to apologize for something only he knows the size of and decides whether to ring the doorbell. The hour’s argument is that the meaningful choice is whether to sign the version of yourself someone else is handing you. Jack hands Keeley a statement. Jake hands Ted a first name. Jade hands Nate a label. The locker room hands itself an order to delete. Some of those gifts are kind. One is corporate. The episode lets the audience feel the difference without naming it.
The hour also writes Ted’s parenting more honestly than the show usually does. The pub scene, where Ted tells his son he has the power to take a sad song and make it better and then they actually sing it together, is new ground for the series. It is staking a claim that Ted’s job as a father is not to win Henry back from Jake. It is to be present in his son’s London the way he failed to be in his own marriage’s Paris.
Verdict
The hour is the most evenly weighted Ted Lasso has been all season. The Paris runner is funny and lands. The Diamond Dogs bit lampoons itself without breaking. Rebecca’s scene with Keeley is the best women’s scene the show has written in two years. The Jamie monologue at the door is the kindest apology the season has produced. The Nate-Jade material is the only thing in his redemption arc that has felt earned in real time rather than promised. Hey Jude as a needle drop is the kind of swing the show used to take in season one. Skipping a Roy-Keeley reconciliation it has been threatening for weeks is the right call, and the Jack-Keeley split is the only honest ending that pairing could have had. A few seams show. Higgins’s pratfall lives at a register the rest of the hour does not. The Henry scenes are slightly over-narrated. None of that is fatal.
Rating: 8.8/10