So, this is the end of season 2. I know that a lot of people have felt that this season was a letdown after last season, which was a sort of perfectly formed pearl of excellent TV that came at the exact right moment to be maximally appreciated by everyone. As countless people have written, last year our lives were taken over by tragedy and darkness, and we had suffered through years of TV producers apparently believing that tragedy and darkness and antiheroes were the only signifiers of auteur TV. Ted Lasso provided an unexpected and badly-needed antidote: a high-quality TV show that was actually sweet and uplifting.

This is one of the best episodes of the season and made me so excited for tonight’s finale!

This was a fantastic episode! Such a contrast to last week’s episode, where nothing really happened, and we were deprived of the sweetness of Sam, the fierceness of Rebecca, the awesomeness of Keeley, and the puppyishness of Danny Rojas. All of which come in to play in this episode.

You guys, I’m not even going to pretend I’m putting a lot of effort into this recap. It’s a Beard-centric filler episode, which should strike boredom into the hearts of even more pro-Beard viewers than I. But as for me, I have already established that I am incapable of finding Beard compelling as a character, and this episode, in which Beard wanders around for a night getting into trouble, did nothing to change it. It just made me mad that I had waited all week for a continuation of plotlines I’d grown truly invested in–Jamie’s quest to become a worthwhile human being, Rebecca’s bizarre thing with Sam, Ted’s therapy with Dr. Sharon–but instead I had to spend forty-five minutes watching something completely unrelated. Gah.

Well. This episode was a doozy! The title, “Man City,” could refer to the team that Richmond plays in the semifinal–but also could refer to the many troubled iterations of manhood and fatherhood that we see in this episode.

Everyone on Ted Lasso is a little bit in their heads this week… and some of them need a little bit of space.

When the episode starts, Ted is being ridiculously friendly, throwing jokes to everyone. I was thinking to myself, “OK, we get it! He loves to crack jokes! He’s nice! He’s just what we need during the pandemic, BLAH BLAH BLAH!” Luckily I read a review of an earlier episode on NPR that points out that Ted’s friendliness feels off, that it’s become too much, and that’s what I’m reacting to. It’s a very good point and I wish I had thought of it myself! In the midst of all this joke-cracking, there’s a seemingly throwaway moment where Ted gets a call from his son’s school that Henry forgot his lunch, but of course he can’t do anything about it. It’s easy to forget about it because Ted so quickly snaps back into his usual rhythm. Until, that is, it all breaks down later in the episode.

After a couple of somewhat meh episodes, Ted Lasso returns to form in “Rainbow.” The theme of this episode is “rom-communism”: Ted’s belief that everything will work out in the end. And it serves us a solid mix of regular Ted Lasso goodness and special nods to romantic comedies, with a satisfyingly happy ending.