Thanks to your service, “Ted Lasso.” Now pack up your cleats and go home.
The hit Apple TV+ comedy series a few doofy college football coach who becomes an unlikely Premier League soccer club manager within the UK debuted throughout the first, trying 12 months of the pandemic — in August 2020.
And the initially excellent show, starring Jason Sudeikis, proved a cathartic break from the onslaught of bleak news and our 3 a.m. doomscrolling.
Ted was our guy.
We cried when it turned out those delicious biscuits within the pink box he gave AFC Richmond owner Rebecca (Hannah Waddingham) on daily basis were actually baked by him the entire time. Awww!
And we sniffled when the Richmond fans did the “He’s here, he’s there!” chant for aging midfielder Roy Kent in his time of need.
The team was being mean to kit man Nate (Nick Mohammed) — after which Ted taught them to be nice to kit man Nate. Blubber blubber blubber.
During wine-soaked lockdowns, we cooed at these basic acts of kindness like they were Olympic gold medal-winning feats that would never occur in unforgiving reality. Getting smug striker Jamie Tartt (Phil Dunster) to work together together with his teammates was a successfully landed quadruple axel.
But now that the pandemic is over — as President Joe Biden said that it’s — and life has gotten back to business as usual, Care Bear Ted has overstayed his welcome.
“I do know why I got here,” Ted tells his therapist, Dr. Sharon (Sarah Niles), within the sugary first episode of Season 3, which premiered March 15. “It’s the sticking around I can’t quite work out.”
Neither can we, Ted. Your non-stop goodness is flippin’ exhausting, and not required.
Throughout the first two episodes of Season 3, Ted cutely tries to get his always-professional therapist to confide personal details; journalist Trent Crimm (James Lance) emotionally — unrealistically — apologizes to Roy for being cruel to him early in his reporting profession to “make a reputation for myself”; and Saint Keeley (Juno Temple) attempts to get a model friend a job despite her total lack of qualifications.
And hokey Ted, with groaner puns on the ready, takes his cartoony team down into the Richmond sewage system to show them an inspirational lesson about how they need to collaborate just like the pipes and tunnels do. Oy vey.
That stunt results in Nate, who’s now the rival manager of West Ham United, mocking Ted during a press conference by saying, “They probably had to coach in a sewer because their coach is so s – – tty.”
Barney The Dinosaur, er, Ted then shoots back during his remarks — by ridiculing himself! “I appear like Ned Flanders is doing cosplay as Ned Flanders,” he jokes because the press corps smiles and laughs and heart-tugging music plays.
That was the fill-in-the-blank moment of each episode that’s meant to make us cry tears of affirmation. Nonetheless, I didn’t weep this time — I winced.
This constant sweetness has gone from vital to nauseating.
Ted isn’t a personality anymore a lot as a flat embodiment of the askew motivational “Consider” poster he hangs within the locker room.
And, like Ted, AFC Richmond are perpetual underdogs who absorb and repeat niceties while treading water. Or sewage, because the case could also be.
Television tastes have modified. The most important recent show on TV this 12 months is HBO’s “The Last of Us” — a few zombie apocalypse.
One other recent talker, which debuted in late 2022, was Hulu’s dramedy “Fleishman Is In Trouble,” by which a young NYC dad’s life is thrown into chaos when his ex-wife has an affair and abandons him to lift their kids alone.
And HBO’s “Succession,” with its cutthroat, loveless family vying for power, scored its best rankings of all time — 2.3 million — for last week’s premiere.
Audiences are not any longer seeking to be coddled.
Sure, there’ll all the time be room for feel-good stories on TV or at the flicks. Successes like “Top Gun: Maverick” and “Avatar: The Way of Water” weren’t dark journeys into despair, but they weren’t a kindergarten singalong either.
Simply put, “Ted Lasso” OD’d on heart.
Season 1’s finale was called “The Hope That Kills You.” Too right.
Latest episodes of “Ted Lasso” stream Wednesdays on Apple TV+.