Season 4, Episode 3: ‘Richmond’s Got Talent’
The episode opens with screaming. A Richmond women’s player is stretched out in the treatment room in agony. Is she injured? It’s not another ACL tear like last week, is it?
No, the player in question is pregnant. And while that may be a happier condition than a lower-body injury, its impact on her season is identical.
Worse, like our ACL victim last week, this player is also a striker, leaving Richmond flat-out empty at the position. Which leads to …
Open tryouts (and Gemma)
Last week, we met the keeper, Boots, and the twin defenders, Niamh and Aisling. This week, we fill out the roster a bit more. Our first new recruit is Lizzie (Faye Marsay), a single mother and center back. We’re still in the early expository phase with these new characters, but so far, Lizzie is the one who seems most promising to me. I’m looking forward to more.
I was pleased with Shannon (Shannon Hayes) joining the team, too — more pleased, it seems than coaches Alice and Beard, who think she’s not ready. Shannon, of course, is the “soccer girl” who teased Ted with her fancy footwork on the streets of Richmond in the first three seasons. Again, it’s too early to say how the character will develop. But I like this gentle callback to earlier seasons more than some of the louder, jokier ones we’ve also been served up.
And yes, Maria Rojas (Paloma Cinco) is a good example of the latter. Her brother Dani taught her everything! Except soccer, which she’s never played before! I mean, it’s not the worst self-referential joke. But it’s going to be hard for the season to develop forward momentum with so many backward glances. (Unrelated, but delightful: Cristo Fernandez, the actor who played Dani Rojas, is back playing professional soccer for El Paso Locomotive FC.)
The final addition to the team, for now at least, is Gemma (Abbie Hern), a gifted striker whose past experience with Coach Alice was so miserable that it led her to quit soccer and go to law school. But after rewatching video of Chloe Kelly’s iconic celebration for scoring the game-winner for England against Germany in 2022, Gemma feels the pull again. She joins the team and (of course) scores a winning goal at the earliest opportunity.
Gemma’s sticking with law school, though. And Lizzie, of course, is going to keep on being a mom. These are the kind of juggling-home-and-school-and-work situations we didn’t really have with the men’s players. I don’t know whether the show will spend much time exploring them, but here’s hoping. It would be a nice way to add a new dimension to the show.
Sexist grumbling about the team
OK, we are now three episodes in, and I’m getting a little exhausted with the endless no-one-respects-women-athletes background noise. A certain amount was appropriate and even necessary. But after the news conference last week in which attendees all loudly scoffed at a women’s team, we have an all but identical scene at the shareholders meeting this week. (The only person who musters any enthusiasm is a fellow who wolf whistles at Keeley and receives a death glare from Roy in response.)
Is there a ton of sexism in women’s soccer? I imagine so. But the sport is not some bizarre new concept to be publicly ridiculed. Ted has traveled back to England, not to 1975.
Rebecca and Matthijs
Ted almost injures himself slamming into the locked door of Rebecca’s office. A moderately disheveled Rebecca — again wearing green! — opens up, and who’s there with her but our favorite Amsterdam house boater, Matthijs. As he explains, “I just landed and thought it would be fun to come and have sex in Rebecca’s office.”
And with that, we have it: Proof of the Jan Maas Theorem. Maas, of course, was the center back on the men’s team who taught us that the Dutch are not rude per se, merely unremittingly honest. Matthijs clearly shares his countryman’s tendency.
Rebecca’s missed meals with Matthijs was a charming little subplot, right up until the very end. But I can’t imagine what the writers were thinking with the waiter’s crude, unfunny “whore” line. Get a hold of yourself, “Ted Lasso.”
Keeley and Roy
Ever since Keeley became a high-level marketing executive, the show has had an odd and recurring tendency to portray her as … really bad at her job? Remember Shandy, her appalling friend hire in Season 3? So far this season, it feels like more of the same. Every idea Keeley voices involves spending money freely — new stadium, new locker room, 4,000 pounds’ worth of towels — and every one is immediately shot down as impractical by the grown-ups in the organization.
Rebecca doesn’t even share the “Higgins Report” with Keeley, her chief marketing officer, apparently out of fear it might hurt her feelings! And when the truth is revealed, Rebecca apologizes by giving Keeley an extravagant gift from Hermes. What kind of office is this?
I guess we’re supposed to applaud Keeley’s resourcefulness with the players’ bedazzled uniforms? (Incidentally, these made no sense to me: The problem was the team lacked uniforms, not glitter.) In any case, let’s go easy on the “Keeley as adorable nitwit” framing, especially in a season so acutely aware of sexism.
And with full awareness that I am a broken record on the subject, please, enough of Roy orbiting Keeley mopily and making nervous gestures of affection. Of all the paths this story line can take, the current unhappy stasis may be the least fun of all.
