Huh. We just finished it and thought it was great. Good character development and a few decent smiles. I think we also needed an ep with less Keely.
Tastes vary I guess.
…yeah, that was easily one of my favourites. They are starting to tie all the show-long arcs together. The characters coming to terms with their demons in their own ways. Loved it.
I thought it was a cute episode, although the scenes with the team bickering in the hotel lobby were kind of a waste.
…the pillow fight was a callback to an earlier episode where:
Every Ted Lasso easter egg that predicted the events of season 3 | British GQ.
Everyone made a “break-through” this episode. Everybody had something that was holding them back, and everyone pushed through that final mental block and ended the episode in a much better place. (except maybe Coach.) This sets up the rest of the season. And in this context, the team bickering scenes work for me. This was their breakthrough. They had too much baggage. Too much tension. Too much stress. So they had a pillow fight.
Agreed. Felt like a filler episode.
Yes, yes emotional breakthroughs but all in one dump. Meh
I thought the team was going to spend the entire night bickering over what to do and end up not doing anything.
And Ted did have a breakthrough, in reinventing Total Football (which is not something I’m familiar with). Perhaps the new approach will turn the team’s fate around. (In the show, hasn’t he been the manager for more than a year, or even three years at this point? You’d think he’d be more familiar with the sport by now.)
…by Coach, I meant Coach Beard 
His major issue is that he is in a long-term very toxic relationship. Nothing happened here on this front.
I very much disagree. Loved this episode! This was all about character development. One of their best episodes IMO.
This was a snoozefest, I hope they got their one boring episode of the season out their system and we’ll get better ones from now on .
This season has been pretty stagnant until this episode. I don’t care about the actual soccer scenes, whenever they get too far into game stuff it gets so dull. This episode shows why it’s worth watching.
Van Damme/Zor-EAUX never got to see his live sex show. Until that injustice is resolved, the team can never be as one.
This is his third season as manager, but they’ve been pretty consistent in repeatedly reminding us that Ted doesn’t really get soccer. He doesn’t know the term for the match against Ajax is called a friendly and not an exhibition (“Man, this sport drives me nuts”). And his total football revelation is the rare time we’ve seen him get involved with tactics/strategy without the assistance of Beard or Roy or Nate.
Yes, it was clear what the point of the scenes were; they were hardly being subtle! Personally, I got tired of the arguing pretty quickly, though.
Interested though how divided and strong the reactions are?
For me this was the ep that actually moved the ball, and all the Zava silliness was filler. And I loved the Coach puns.
This ep is like that blue gold dress …
There are 2 fields, on one side are those who want to see a show about a fish-out-of-water charming football coach, on the other are those who want to see a show about a fish-out-of-water charming soccer coach.
There is no wrong and right field of course, even if the former of course has God on it (I’m pretty sure Maradona would’ve preferred the football aspects of the show).
I liked the episode a lot. The scenes with the team bickering in the lobby could have been shorter and still made the point. It seems like there’s a divide between those who enjoy watching Coach Beard act weird for its own sake and those who don’t.
So do we think Rebecca and Ted are going to end up together?
I don’t think so. I think Ted will reconcile with his ex-wife.
Yes, it seems quite evident in these comments!! The former will dislike this episode (as I did). The latter will enjoy it.
I was bored that the only soccer we got was blown out friendly. And I thought half of the arcs were just dull. Alas
I loved this episode. I will agree that the team’s bickering was the least engaging of the various plotlines, but everything else was solid gold for me.
The first handful of episodes were all about putting pieces in place and preparing to put them in motion; now, with this episode, they’re giving their first clues about how things are going to develop and how all that careful setup is going to pay off. It’s a master class in how to orchestrate character arcs in long-form storytelling.
We are in the same field my friend, surrounded by heathens 