Ted Lasso Season 3 Episode 11 Review: Mom City

How you feel about Ted Lasso Season 3 Episode 11, “Mom City,” will almost certainly depend on whether this installment turns out to be the penultimate episode of the season or the entire series.

If it’s the next to last episode of the entire show, then a ton of its choices at least make emotional sense, as we rush through various beats that seemed aimed at getting the characters to specific places in their stories rather than caring about whether how they got there. (With plenty of emotion to paper over the narrative holes and tug on the viewer’s heartstrings, because, like Ted, we root for happy endings even if they may have cheated us a little bit to get there.)

Jason Sudeikis in “Ted Lasso” Season 3 Episode 12 (Photo: Apple TV+)

But if we’re just setting up for a Ted-less Ted Lasso Season 4 — or spinoff or however Apple is planning to handle this —then “Mom City” takes on something of a different tone. We’re not, suddenly, wrapping things up, but rather cynically moving pieces into play for the streamer’s next brand move, and you can feel however you need to feel about that. 

It seems more apparent than ever now that whether or not Ted Lasso continues in some form past Season 3, Ted Lasso himself is absolutely going back to America in next week’s finale. It’s a story that this run of episodes has dealt with in fits and starts, from the American coach’s early season sense of purposelessness to his strange renewed obsession with ex-wife Michelle’s dating life.

(If you still believe this isn’t the case, just check out how much of this episode references The Wizard of Oz, including the fact that Ted’s mom is named Dorothy and hails from Kansas. It’s happening guys.)

But because Season 3 has focused very little on Ted himself — whole episodes have passed between his big emotional moments little to connect them in the intervening installments and, like many other aspects of the show, we have to accept a lot of this must have just happened offscreen — instead of watching a continually conflicted man genuinely wrestling with his future, we see a guy who feels bad about being an absentee dad when the show happens to remember he should. 

It feels a little cruel to say all of that because “Mom City” is actually a pretty great Ted episode: We meet his mom and get a glimpse of a very different version of the generally sunny coach, one who’s edgy and angry and nervous in ways we’ve never really seen before.

So much of this season has danced around its titular character’s anxiety issues, referencing them when it’s convenient but not really digging into what Ted’s various extreme reactions to things — or complete lack thereof, I guess he’s just…not at all mad at Nate?? — mean about what he’s going through emotionally. The arrival of his mother gives the show a chance to finally do some of that, and it’s powerful stuff.

(It also doesn’t hurt that Becky Ann Baker is perfectly cast as Dottie Lasso.) 

His outburst full of alternating thanks and obscenities conveys so much about not just the ways that losing his father damaged Ted emotionally, but the ways he fears he’s doing the same thing to his own son by working in England is a solid example of the show allowing the audience to connect the dots about what he needs to do along with the character. (And thankfully is missing some of the more lecture-y, “here is the point of what you’re watching” dialogue that has been so prevalent throughout the season.)

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for whatever is happening with Nate, which still seems as though it’s fastfowarded through like a season’s worth of content to get the character back to Richmond. It’s so frustrating that after one (1) small moment of character development/growth last week — and an interminable violin solo — we’re supposed to somehow understand that Nate’s not only very sorry for betraying his former friends and colleagues but that those same friends and colleagues are now no longer angry about what he did and…begging to have him come back?

Sure! That makes sense! Granted, I personally wasn’t the biggest fan of Nate’s sudden heel turn last season. I suspect many people weren’t! But if you’ve done it, commit to the bit. Show us that guy who stormed off in Season 2, show us him realizing he was wrong to do what he did. Let him feel regret. Let him actually try to make amends. Let him earn the second chance Beard speaks so eloquently about.

I realize that’s not the point of the story Beard’s telling—here, Ted Lasso seems to imply that Nate deserves a chance to come home with no strings, simply because he was a person who was hurting and we shouldn’t judge anyone by their weakest or worst moment.

And while that sentiment absolutely speaks to my Catholic social justice-loving heart, it also feels like the laziest cop-out on Earth, deployed in a not-even-subtle attempt to cover up the fact that this show completely bungled whatever Nate’s arc was supposed to be with what is essentially emotional blackmail, and is now pretending that we’d just let it all go if we were really the good people Ted wants us to be, right? I hate it here.

 Jason Sudeikis and Hannah Waddingham in “Ted Lasso” Season 3 Episode 12 (Photo: Apple TV+)

Thankfully, the bulk of this episode is actually about the one thing that Ted Lasso Season 3 has consistently got right: Jamie Tartt, who has what is perhaps the most satisfying arc in the show’s history, sees it pay off in beautiful style as he comes home to Manchester to play against his former team. 

Can you believe the journey this character —initially set up as one of the series’ worst individuals—has been on? This growth? This self-actualization? Whew. 

His literal journey to his childhood home? Realizing he can simply let go of his anger toward his father, and that forgiveness is a gift to himself, not the man that so horribly did him wrong? Everything about Jamie’s story is Ted Lasso at its absolute best, and it’s so deeply satisfying it almost makes everything else about this messy season worth it.

Stray Thoughts and Observations

• Sometimes I think about what the tighter, not 60+ minute versions of these episodes might have looked like and make myself sad.
• Despite the fact that they slept together last week, Ted Lasso very clearly doesn’t seem to know what to do with Roy and Keeley’s relationship, determinedly assuring us they aren’t back together even as they spend virtually every minute of the episode with one another and are behaving almost entirely the same as they did before their break-up that’s never been fully explained. I almost suspect that Keeley’s answer to Roy’s admission that he doesn’t want to be just friends with her is also contingent on whether or not the show is really ending, and it feels like nothing so much as the story keeping its options open in case we need a will they/won’t they romance for Season 4. 
• The various women in Rupert’s life are all unionizing the same way that Logan Roy’s exes and side-chicks did on Succession and I’m not mad about it.
• The team crying together over You’ve Got Mail is everything I love about this show.

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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