Ted Lasso Season 3 Episode 6 Review: Sunflowers

Ted Lasso Season 3 Episode 6, “Sunflowers,” marks the season’s midpoint with a character-focused hour that feels more like six charming interludes than any kind of cohesive whole.

One of the biggest problems with Ted Lasso Season 3 is how disconnected many of its plots have felt from one another and how infrequently many of its stories have intersected in meaningful ways. That issue is on full display in “Sunflowers”, as virtually every character is the star of their own mini-subplot–or absent altogether, sorry Keeley and Nate, I guess—but almost none of them have anything to do with one another. 

The team heads to Amsterdam to play a “friendly” with a Dutch team, an outing that serves as the loose connective tissue that binds the rest of “Sunflowers” together. They lose, because we’re in the part of the season where Richmond is destined to lose a lot until they figure themselves out, but in an attempt to help team morale, Ted decides to give them a night off in Amsterdam with no curfew. Hijinks are destined to ensure.

This is where the episode splits into a bunch of smaller stories some of which work better than others. Leslie Higgins, man of mystery, drags team kit man Will to a jazz club.  The bulk of the team spends is evening arguing about what epic activity they should do together, an argument that ultimately devolves into them never leaving the hotel and having a pillow fight instead. (It’s actually more fun than it sounds.) 

And Ted does shrooms with Beard (or does he??) and takes himself to a hilariously over-the-top American-themed restaurant, the Yankee Doodle Burger Barn, where he seemingly has a lot of frug-induced visions and finally realizes that, as the head coach of a professional football club, he might want to try actually coaching. Or, at least, coming up with something that feels like a genuine game plan for how his team should play. 

Your mileage may vary on how you feel about this extremely convenient stroke of genius for Ted, who has seemingly spent the better part of the last three seasons determinedly avoiding learning any facts about how the game of soccer is played, but on some level, it is nice to see him finally engaged with the actual work of coaching the team beyond giving them the occasional inspirational speech. 

Easily, the best Amsterdam night out subplot belongs to Colin, who jumps at the chance to go to a gay bar in a city where no one knows who he is. Disguised in a hoodie, he heads to a place called Prik, unaware that he’s being followed by none other than Trent Crimm.

On a different sort of show, this interaction likely would have played out very differently —it’s easy to imagine a version of this story where Trent’s out for blackmail fodder, or more salacious dirt for his forthcoming AFC Richmond tell-all. Thankfully, in this one, Trent’s primary goal is simply to let Colin know that he’s not alone. 

The conversation that takes place between these two is probably the best and most heartfelt sequence Ted Lasso has managed all season, as Colin slowly explains the double life he feels forced to live and how much he longs for those two separate worlds to become one. But rather than attempt to coerce or threaten him Trent, in another amazing twist, doubles down on the importance of queer people being able to come out on their own terms, on their own timelines. 

James Lance has been a quiet star of Ted Lasso Season 3, but his performance as he explains his own coming out journey—and the ways his experiences coming out to his wife are obviously very different than Colin’s struggles as part of a professional sport that’s notoriously inhospitable to queer players—is a wonder. I’m not sure if I’m shipping these two or just want them to experience the joy of clubbing on the regular, but this is a bond I deeply hope this season continues to explore.

The growing bond between Roy Kent and Jamie Tartt has been one of Season 3’s most unexpected — and consistent — highlights. And while I’m not sure that I really needed a whole subplot that was essentially dedicated to Jamie teaching Roy to ride a bicycle, the end result was absolutely delightful so I’ll take it. 

Admittedly, I thought this was finally going to be the moment where Roy opened up about Keeley and what happened between them, but no such luck, because for some reason it seems that Season 3 has completely lost interest in what was once the show’s marquee couple. (Keeley, herself, spends the bulk of this episode offscreen on a date with Jack.)

Instead, we learn a bunch of fun facts about Amsterdam and a lot more heartrending facts about Jamie’s upbringing, which involve his father taking him to the city’s Red Light District to lose his virginity when he was just fourteen, something he still seems rather traumatized by. For his part, Roy continues to cement his position as the most self-aware character on the show as he realizes he’s lashing out at Jamie due to his own negative feelings—and the fact that he never learned to ride a bike because of painful memories of his late grandfather (who was supposed to teach him before he died.)

Have these two somehow become the most stable, healthy relationship on the show?

In what is perhaps the episode’s weirdest subplot, Rebecca lands in her own little European holiday rom-com, complete with an embarrassingly cliched accident (falling off a bridge into a canal), a rescue by a handsome stranger, a whole lot of flirting, and more. 

Look, I’m as excited as anyone that Rebecca met a hottie on her one-night-only Amsterdam vacay—and hope this interlude marks the start of her letting go of her Rupert obsession— but ladies, please do not trap yourselves on boats with strange men with no names who also happen to have a mysterious bucket of unclaimed women’s clothing, just saying. It’s like no one has ever listened to a true crime podcast before. 

At least the worst thing that happens to Rebecca is that she gets a foot rub and a home-cooked meal. Should we start speculating now about whether she’s now somehow miraculously pregnant from this one-night-only encounter? Or if Hot Dutch Stranger’s child is the family she’s somehow meant to have? 

Stray Thoughts and Observations:

• This episode absolutely did not need to be 63 minutes long and at some point, we’re going to have to have the discussion about how Ted Lasso’s apparent inability to self-edit is really harming the show. 
• Please someone get Dani Rojas a tulip.
• I know we already did “Beard After Hours” last season, but I just need to know where he got the David Bowie/Piggy Stardust costume.

What did you think of this episode of Ted Lasso? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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New episodes of Ted Lasso stream Wednesdays on Apple TV+.

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