Ted Lasso comes out of the closet this week as Colin and Isaac tackle their unspoken problem. Meanwhile, Roy has a goals problem. Rebecca has a Roy problem. And Nate gets put to the test by Rupert and Jade.
In the episode, entitled “La Locker Room Aux Folles,” AFC Richmond must learn a quick lesson in tolerance that would be better put to the writers of this show. It’s a uniquely frustrating episode — the type that only the people at Ted Lasso can provide.
Ted Lasso recap: ‘La Locker Room Aux Folles’
Season 3, episode 9: Roy Kent (played by Brett Goldstein) hates to admit it, but Ted Lasso’s (Jason Sudeikis) midseason change to Richmond’s playing strategy paid off. The team is better. The players are having fun, and they seem more connected than ever. Well, most of them.
Isaac (Kola Bokinni) and Colin (Billy Harris) are on the outs. Isaac encouraged all the Richmond boys to go on a bizarro puritanical deletion spree after Jamie Tartt’s (Phil Dunster) email got hacked and a sexy video of team PR head Keeley Jones (Juno Temple) leaked online.
As a result, Isaac asked everyone to delete all the pictures they’d kept of girls over the years. (It was one of this show’s patented “everyone just trying their best” moments — the kind that gives me hives — and further proof that the Ted Lasso writers think of football players as huge children.) When Colin refused, Isaac took his phone and saw something surprising — pictures of guys. Oooh, ahhh … yes, horrifying. How dare … it’s only 2023.
Anyway, Isaac hasn’t told anyone yet. (I’m willing to bet he’s actually mad that Colin felt like he had to hide this part of himself. Let’s check back at the end of this recap.)
Breakups and misfires
Keeley’s still smarting from her breakup with Jack (Jodi Balfour). So, team owner Rebecca Walton (Hannah Waddingham) invites Keeley around to comfort her, when Ted asks to skip a press conference. Keeley needs someone to fill in, so she asks Roy to do it. And he only says yes because Keeley is there. But he skips the PR conference, too.
Coach Beard (Brendan Hunt), Rebecca and Leslie Higgins (Jeremy Swift) try to fill in, but they blow it comprehensively. Rebecca, fuming, asks Roy into her office to berate him. She tells him to start thinking about what he actually wants from life, because not asking for anything — and never accepting nice things — isn’t working for him. Which is perhaps her way of suggesting he try to patch things up with Keeley.
Nate (Nick Mohammed) makes the mistake of introducing his girlfriend, Jade (Edyta Budnik), to the owner of his team, West Ham United FC. Rupert Mannion (Anthony Head) acts like a little freak when he meets Jade. He heavily implies he’s going to try and steal her from Nate, or break up the couple, or so something else nefarious. (As we know from his relationship with Rebecca, he cannot help but screw other women.)
When Rupert invites Nate out for a beer later, his tone suggests something shifty.
A troublesome treatment of a troublesome term
Later that day when Richmond plays Brighton, things are off — and never more so than when Billy and Isaac must communicate. Something happens that drives Isaac absolutely insane (and me even more so). Someone in the stands shouts that Richmond is playing like a bunch of “faggots.” Isaac rushes the guy and tries to beat him up.
Now … OK … a couple things. The Ted Lasso creative team bleeps the slur. Characters on this show say “fuck” all the time, but apparently didn’t have the heart to say a word that’s heard in sports stadiums the world over, to say nothing of schools, the internet, etc., etc., etc. How are you meant to teach people a lesson about the power of words if you yourself are afraid of them? Bullshit.
Isaac has a meltdown in the locker room and makes Sam (Toheeb Jimoh) captain because he’s been removed from the game. The players surmise that Isaac freaked out because he himself is gay. Colin can’t let Isaac take the heat for it, so he finally comes out to the team. Meanwhile Roy, in the other room, tries to comfort Isaac, of course relaying lessons to him that Roy himself needs to learn.
Ted tries to turn the team’s noncommittal acceptance into something more positive, but fumbles because the story he tells is dumb. (So dumb, in fact, that maybe someone should have cut it from the episode.) But Ted’s point is not that they don’t care how Colin lives, it’s that they support him. As if it could have gone any other way on this show, but still, nice-ish moment I guess. After that, Richmond wins the game.
The moral of this story is …
When Nate and Rupert go out after West Ham wins, the team owner brings a couple of girls with him, clearly trying to hook up his coach with a skankier class of high-price woman. At the risk of his job, Nate tells Rupert he won’t be hanging with him in the champagne room, and goes home to Jade instead.
After Richmond’s win, Roy tries to make up for his previous screwup by doing the post-game press conference. The first question is about Isaac’s outburst, and he seems like he’s gonna whiff and embarrass Rebecca. However, Roy takes his task seriously. He makes the point that people can yell mean things at football players all day, but they’re not just athletes, they’re human beings.
To prove that point, Isaac goes to Colin’s house that night to ask why he hid his sexuality from him all these years. Colin says he was worried Isaac wouldn’t take it well. And then … not exactly proving his point … when Colin asks Isaac if he wants to come in for a beer and to play some video games, Isaac hesitates for a long second. Colin later says, “I love you boyo,” and Isaac says nothing in reply.
“You can’t say it, can you?” Colin asks.
“No. But you know I do,” Isaac says.
This show … I don’t know, man.
Photo: Apple TV+
Ted Lasso fails to tackle homophobia
Just what is the point being made here? Ted Lasso has never sufficiently tackled the obscene ugliness of so much of sports fandom. (Homophobia is by no means exclusively a European football problem.) Nor does the show address the way so many people let their hatreds and their passions mingle freely and without shame.
So in this episode, the show admits several things at once: For one, Colin was right to keep his secret. Because even someone who “loves” him like Isaac does is still dealing with internalized homophobia, and that means that there is a problem. But then the show immediately says, in effect, “Don’t worry about it. This will sort itself out.”
That’s not exactly the patented Ted Lasso “believe” energy the problem calls for, frankly. It’s more of a “keep calm and carry on” vibe. That’s easy to say when you’re a millionaire soccer player or, frankly, a bunch of guys in a writers’ room. The Ted Lasso scribes had a real chance with this storyline, but they whiffed it.
What’s in a name? A missed opportunity.
Even the name of this week’s episode is a cop-out. La Cage aux Folles was a play, then a movie, then a musical, then finally another movie called The Birdcage. And the plot of all four of them is this: A homophobic couple meet a homosexual couple who are playing straight to not offend them. It’s funny in all its various forms, but its message has dated awkwardly.
Why should gays have to meet straights in the middle? To nod to that, with a “clever” reference to one of the most-watched movies of all time about hiding your sexuality, instead of mentioning any of the media about actually being proud of your sexuality … that’s telling.
★★☆☆☆
Watch Ted Lasso on Apple TV+
New episodes of Ted Lasso season three arrive every Friday on Apple TV+.
Rated: TV-MA
Watch on: Apple TV+
Scout Tafoya is a film and TV critic, director and creator of the long-running video essay series The Unloved for RogerEbert.com. He has written for The Village Voice, Film Comment, The Los Angeles Review of Books and Nylon Magazine. He is the author of Cinemaphagy: On the Psychedelic Classical Form of Tobe Hooper, the director of 25 feature films, and the director and editor of more than 300 video essays, which can be found at Patreon.com/honorszombie.
