Listen! I will be honest with you,

I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes,

These are the days that must happen to you:

You shall not heap up what is call’d riches,

You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve,

You but arrive at the city to which you were destin’d, you hardly settle yourself to satisfaction before you are call’d by an irresistible call to depart,

You shall be treated to the ironical smiles and mockings of those who remain behind you,

What beckonings of love you receive you shall only answer with passionate kisses of parting,

You shall not allow the hold of those who spread their reach’d hands toward you.

“Song of the Open Road,” stanza 11, Walt Whitman

The season finale of Ted Lasso brings AFC Richmond to the match that will decide whether they promote into The Premier League or remain stuck where they are.  Can the Greyhounds make the jump and bag that bird?  Or will they screw the pooch with errant penalty kicks and acts of sabotage, intended or otherwise? 

Now is the time for all good footballers to get coached up with big speeches filled with all the clichés.  Moment of truth!  Just play within yourselves and we’ll be fine!   Let’s show ‘em who we are!  Alas, Ted Lasso can’t rely on the old smooth prizes of his experience, not after a season that has taught him that “the Lasso way” is all kinds of ropy.  Would his team even listen to him, anyway? Especially after they read a certain expose written by Trent Crimm, The Independent, made possible by a certain abused towel boy-turned-“wonder kid”-turned-aggrieved middle manager with loose lips gone bitterly, smoochingly, spittingly rogue? 

Truth is, there’s a lot of Greyhounds feeling a bit vulnerable right now as a result of moments of truth that’s shown them who they are and what they’re not.  Ted’s crisis is everyone’s crisis, both in the sense that his disorientation affects the N’Sync orientation of his intimately enmeshed football club (thank you, Coach Beard, for reinforcing the point by drawing upon Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake, to teach us the socialism of trees), and in the sense that so many of them are spinning out with identity flux, too.  Rebecca, Roy, Keeley, Jamie, Nate – all are tweaking with fears and ruled by wounds they don’t understand, their confusions impairing their ability to lead or love each other as well they want or should.  Everyone’s unmentionables are showing, everyone’s sweating exposure.  If only they can hide away their risky private parts like Miss Bowen stuffing Phoebe’s risqué nudes in a drawer. 

But of course, the point is they shouldn’t.  

The brave thing to do would be to embrace the stripping chaos and accept this season of life for what it is – a season of change, one in which the old smooth prizes of the past are no longer relevant or available, one that’s calling them to the open road to find rough new prizes that life wants them to find.  Win or lose the big game (my prediction:  a victory in penalty kicks, bringing the season full circle), I think Team Lasso – its managers and players, lovers and locker room attendants – need to take a break and figure themselves out.  The trials and tribulations of this “middle passage” season – the “innermost cave” portion of the Hero’s Journey – was sucky with hurt and hurtfulness that must be grieved and atoned.  But it was also necessary to launch them forward into whatever they need to become.  These are the days that must happen to you.  Now go forth. 

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The “Song of the Open Road” certainly calls to Sam Obisanya, currently mulling an offer from reform billionaire Edwin Akufo to join a grand cultural project, rebooting a club in Casablanca into a dream team comprised of African football stars currently playing abroad. 

But can Sam trust Akufo? Do you? References to The Godfather and surrealism and an implicit allusions to Pretty Woman and Inception accumulated around this Deus Ex Helicopter liberator to cultivate uncertainty about his character and make us wonder if his offer is a Faustian bargain or even a big lie.  Can this Friend of Banksy bent on redeeming capitalist structures and Colonial legacy be taken at face value?  Or is he a reality-manipulating bad actor with a sinister-ironic I Will Destroy You agenda? 

We’ve been told this is the Empire Strikes Back season of Ted Lasso.  Is Sam our Han Solo getting lured into a trap?  If Akufo is a two-faced Lando, who’s his Darth Vader?  We remember that Sam is currently being celebrated for his goal-kicking prowess after his first career hat-trick; and we remember that in American football, at least, there is the subversive business of “icing the kicker” with time-outs to get in their head, to give them the yips.  Is that the mind-game being played here?  Is someone trying to ice Sam by taking him away from the team for a Time Out London day of museums and fine dining and flood his moment with Stuff To Think About?  Who wants to freeze our Han Solo in Carbonite?

If there’s a Phantom Menace here, sewing discord and planting subversion on multiple fronts, it’s gotta be the insidious snake hiding in plain sight: Rupert, last seen outside a church carelessly whispering some temptation into Nate’s ear.  Perhaps he’s aligned with Akufo, too.  Perhaps he’s trying to rebuild his empire or buy into one; maybe he gave those Richmond shares back to Rebecca because he’s launching a new club or investing in Raja Casablanca.  But perhaps he’s merely conspiring to sabotage and destroy Richmond to hurt Rebecca the same way she once conspired to sabotage and destroy Richmond to hurt him. 

Any speculation that Rupert is to trying to break apart Rebecca’s club and her relationship with Sam would have to explain how Rupert even knows about his ex-wife’s workplace romance.  Here’s mine:  Rupert is trading off of insider knowledge, not gained from Nate, but from his access to a certain dating app’s proprietary data about its clients, the dating app that made the Sam-Rebecca relationship possible. 

My friends, I propose… that Rupert is a silent partner in Richmond’s corporate sponsor, Bantr.

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The needle drop of “Karma Police” by Radiohead at the close of “Midnight Train to Royston” sounded like a foreboding omen suggesting arresting consequences for secrets and lies and subversive truth-telling.  Are Roy and Keeley going to break up?  Are Roy and Jamie going to break Ted’s first rule of locker room fight club?  (“NO FIGHT CLUB!”)  Is Nate going to get fired for forcing a kiss on Keeley and betraying Ted?  Will Ted Crimm’s expose bring about the fall of Ted Lasso and the complete collapse of Rom-Communism?  Will there be a rain of frogs?

You read that correctly.  I’m seriously dreading a literal rain of frogs in the season finale of Ted Lasso.  I’ve been expecting it even since the season premiere forecast it with a conspicuous reference to “Paul Thomas Anderson’s 1999 opus Magnolia.”  In fact, I’ve spent the better part of three weeks writing an essay about how (deep breath) Ted Lasso season 2 has been an epic meta-banter with PTA’s saga about crappy coaches of men and spiraling wonder-kids – and many, many others characters, too – on a long day’s journey to shed corrupt philosophies for living and loving and grieve failed fathers for causing so much pain and suffering, culminating in a dark night of the soul that begins with a mournful, yearning sing-along and ends with an act of apocalyptic karma: a rain of frogs falling, functioning as agents of judgment and salvation, redirection and course correction, thousands and thousands of frogs plunging through skylights and hammering cars and filling streets, just shit-tons of frogs breaking and splattering and exploding everywhere.

Anyway, I didn’t finish the essay. 

But if I did finish the essay, it would have shown how Ted Lasso is warped-mirror similar to Magnolia, in story and meaning and their expression of Alice Miller’s Drama of the Gifted Child psychology, and how both interrogate bad cultural narratives of suffering – Just Do It, Shake It Off, Let It Go, Be A Forgetful Goldfish, Just Keep Swimming – get into us and mess with us and dehumanize us. 

So I’m looking for some frogs to fall from the sky in the season finale to make this Magnolia season of Ted Lasso complete.  And if they do, maybe I’ll finish that essay and show all my work on how I arrived at that prediction.  All 7,897 words (and counting) of it.

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I’ve read some comments on the Interwebs suggesting that the “Karma Police” needle drop presaged some severe discipline for Nate’s transgressions against Keeley and Ted and for just generally being a big dick this season.  Let me be clear before we move forward, lest it sound like that I condone toxic masculinity and any form of unwanted romantic advance:  Nate needs to be held accountable for his actions.  And/But:  I am also very, very curious to see if the slack that’s been cut for the more powerful, privileged, and yes, white members of the club – forgiveness for Rebecca; second-chances for Jamie; tolerance and understanding for “Led Tasso” crazy-abusiveness; space for inappropriate employee relationships – will also be cut for Nate.  Do the rules of grace apply to him, too?

Regardless, what would you like to see Ted do right now?  I mean is very next move.  That Radiohead beat ended saw him learning of Nate’s treachery and exiting stage right and off screen, a man on a mission.  But where’s he going?  What’s the mission?

My answer begins with this interpretation of the show’s use of the Radiohead song.  To me, “Karma Police” meant that Ted had realized that “Karma” – in the form of an article exposing the flawed character he’s been hiding behind his Ned Flanders visage and queasy fish stories – had come for HIM, not Nate.  It’s the consequence for a year of questionable coaching choices – bad game management, bad personnel management, bad stress management – that had come at a cost, one of them being Nate.  Ted failed Nate this year.  Failed to recognize his struggle and suffering – or if he did, failed to be sufficiently curious about it, follow it down, and help him find healthy ways to deal with the pressures and demands and obligations of leadership.  Nate is the great casualty of Ted taking too long to look inward and confront his pain and fix his yips.  And Ted knows it. 

I think the breaking point in Nate’s shattered faith in Diamond Dog Ted came in “Man City,” during the season’s most memorable and remarkable “innermost cave” sequence, Jamie’s confrontation with his father is the cavernous changing room in Wembley Stadium.  It was a profoundly excruciating humiliation for Jamie – and an opportunity for enlightenment and empathy for everyone who witnessed that encounter.  It explained everything about how and why Jamie became the “little prick” that he is.  Still:  Awwwwk-ward.  No one seemed to know what to do, most critically, Ted Lasso.  He stood shell-shocked frozen, his mind spirited away:  Jamie’s agony had triggered memories of his own Dad, and Friday the 13th of September, 1991, the day Ted lost him forever to self-inflicted violence that felt like abandonment. “Karma Police” now sings back to tweaking Ted, echoing his vacancy and paralysis with its haunting fade-out:  For a minute there, I lost myself, I lost myself/For a minute there, I lost myself, I lost myself.  So it was Roy fucking Kent coming to Jamie’s emotional rescue, rolling up on him with that macho cop strut and then administering the most fucking awesome hug in the recent history of fucking awesome TV hugs. 

Nate must have been triggered, too.  We remember that Nate’s got his own bad dad – silent; chilly; critical; impossible to please – and that Nate’s mad thirst for significance – his power tripping; his addiction to Twitter affirmation; his grousing for credit; his rebellious ambition to be The Boss – is in service of trying to fill a leaky love cup that needs fixing.  (I wonder if Nate’s final destination this season is… a trip to Royston for some off-season sessions with Dr. Sharon.) 

Nate has no great love for Jamie, but if he wasn’t empathizing with him while Papa Tartt was debasing his son – and when Jamie broke and lashed out at his father – I have to think Nate was feeling really-really-really crunchy, in part, because he recognized himself in Jamie’s crisis. During the scene, Nate looked to Ted, either hoping he would do something (Help him!  Lead us!  Please!  Get us out of this!) or feeling unsettled that Richmond’s father figure was doing nothing.  Of course, anyone could have stepped up to love on Jamie, including Nate himself.  That it was Roy Kent must have made a complicated moment even more complicated for Nate, given how he regards Roy as hero and threat, with a combustible mix of idolatrous envy and alpha male resentment.  Now Nate’s forlorn gaze in Ted’s direction contained a valid critique:  That should be you, Coach Lasso.  Why isn’t it you?

But Ted Lasso is not the same man that he was in “Man City.”  Yes, I do think there’s more work for him to do.  His Mom is the hole in his origin story.  And there’ reckoning with his own status as a distant, absent father to his son.  But one thing at a time.  Bird by bird and all that.  I like to think what he accomplished with Dr. Sharon has given him what he needs to meet the challenge of doing what must be done with Nate. 

So when Ted saw that text from Trent tipping him to Nate’s betrayal and flew into action, I think he had some Yoda in his head: 

The Cave. 

Remember your failure at the Wembley Cave… 

Ted isn’t rolling out of his apartment to play punishing Karma cop.  C’mon.  Ted knows a cry for help when he hears one.  He always has.  He just forgot for a minute what he does when he knows someone in his life is hurting – or being hurtful – or both.  It’s the thing he thinks Walt Whitman said except really didn’t:  Be curious, not judgmental.  He remembers it now.  Just as he remembers this time last year and what was achieved by forgiving another hurting, hurtful soul.  In that moment, Rebecca had the courage to go to Ted and confess.  But sometimes people can’t do that.  Sometimes, they need the people they hurt to make the move, to venture into their innermost caves and help them do what they can’t do themselves.  It’s not fair.  Not everyone can do it, nor should. But Ted Lasso can. 

What I’m saying is this: 

Nate needs one of those big fucking Roy Kent hugs.  So go give him one, Ted.  And then start being the coach that he needs you to be.