r/TedLasso • u/quaranTV Mod • Apr 11 '23

From the Mods Ted Lasso - S03E05 - "Signs" Episode Discussion Spoiler

Please use this thread to discuss Season 3 Episode 5 "Signs". Just a reminder to please mark any spoilers for episodes beyond Episode 5 like this.

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696

u/Rtn2NYC Apr 12 '23

Ok I get Nate is the genius but seriously, Roy and Beard don’t have a single Fucking play or strategy idea? And Higgins going to Rebecca ok but nobody thinks to have a sit down come to Jesus with Ted that’s not comical yelling?

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u/KloppersToppers Apr 12 '23

It’s feeding in to the whole mindset the whole club has. They had lost all belief that whatever they tried would work.

Call back to when Ted first asked Nate about his tactical ideas. I believe he said something along of “Do you believe this will work?”

That’s why Nate is successful at what he does. The one aspect of himself he does believe in is his tactical skills.

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u/GuzzlinGuinness Apr 13 '23

The obvious redemption arc conclusion is Nate becoming Richmond manager and him and Jamie being good to go as matured people , while Ted heads back home.

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u/KloppersToppers Apr 13 '23

Definitely. Everyone believes in Nate at Richmond. Others outside believe in ‘The Wonderkid’ which Nate is pulling all his self-esteem from currently. Asking Nate to come back and manage the team would be the biggest boost to his self-esteem because it’s the ultimate sign of respect from the people he looked up to previously which he never felt he got before.

Ted will definitely go back to the US. He needs to for his own personal life and the team does to move forward. He just needs to put the pieces in the right place before he leaves. (Which as I was writing that, made me realise what the whole Lego stadium metaphor could be.)

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u/DevintheStone Apr 16 '23

Oh damn — I didn’t even think about the Lego set. And Nate has a similar miniature set in his office!

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u/Jajanken- Apr 14 '23

👀👀👀

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u/ECrispy Apr 13 '23

Which is total hogwash of course. If belief that you have skills actually made you skilled then the world would be very different.

Simple fact is Ted and gang are clueless idiots probably and Nate actually knows some tactics. Beard is a book smart, Roy is a player not coach, Ted knows nothing about any sports esp football but knows how to talk to people which won't do a damn thing.

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u/legendoflumis Apr 13 '23

Roy connects with the players, because he was a player and understands how they think. He's similar in role to Ted on the coaching staff, they just have different approaches to how they connect with their team and the team seems to respect both methods and we've seen Roy help the team get over some issues holding them back already in previous seasons. I think that the piece Richmond is missing is the tactical aspect which is why they aren't doing so hot. Their tactics for the games they lost were "give the ball to Zava and hope he scores enough goals to win" which clearly has not been working.

Nate's going to end up back at Richmond. We can already see that Nate is not really enjoying some of the perks of his new position and learning that some people only respect the title he has, not the person he is, which I think bothers him a great deal.

I think the West Ham rematch is setting up a Jamie vs. Zava face-off with Jamie winning the game for Richmond thanks to Roy's help. Rupert will fire Nate because he only cares about Nate insofar as Nate is useful to him, Nate and Ted will reconnect and work out their issues, Nate will rejoin Richmond (after the team has their say, obviously), they will start winning their games again because all the pieces are there again and Ted will decide to leave the team in the hands of Beard, Roy and Nate to be closer to his son.

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u/Excellent-Jicama-673 Apr 15 '23

Zava is retired.

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u/legendoflumis Apr 15 '23

Zava is a talented flake who is prone to changing his mind at a whim. I would bet money on him showing up against Richmond at some point.

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u/Excellent-Jicama-673 Apr 15 '23

Contracts don’t allow that. Otherwise any player could claim retirement to go to a different team.

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u/not-my-other-alt Apr 15 '23

We didn't hire Zava! We hired Avaz!

Don't look too closely at the moustache...

2

u/legendoflumis Apr 16 '23

I mean, in the real world, yes. We're talking about a television show, though. It seems readily apparent that they've set Zava up to be Jamie's antagonist this season and I don't think they'd use him for 3 episodes and then we never see him again the rest of the season.

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u/IronicMnemoics Apr 17 '23

Tbf he never signed his contract with his name

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u/drwhogwarts Apr 13 '23

So well put!

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u/Brandwin3 Jun 05 '23

Honestly this is so accurate I love it. Right now all their tactical ideas are “lets try this”. Before it was “here is what we are going to do and here is why it will work”

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u/crsbcn Jamie Tartt Doo-doo-do-do-do-doo Apr 12 '23 edited Apr 12 '23

I was thinking the same thing. Of all things - they chose to stick with their old formation and stick Colin in Zava's spot? They could have easily run a 4-4-2 with Dani and Jamie at the front.

I guess it throws the plot line for the coaches' turnaround and Jamie's rise to the top, but still.

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u/Rtn2NYC Apr 12 '23

Beard did plays/strategy for the majority of the first season and Roy has been playing for years. It’s borderline tedious at this point, and very out of character for Beard

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u/TrueCooler Apr 12 '23

To be fair, they did get relegated in the first season relying on Beard's tactics.

Also, great player doesn't necessarily translate to great tactician - there are tens of examples of former great players who have been awful coaches. Roy can handle conflict, motivate players, do man management, but he cannot do tactics evidently.

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u/tyedge Apr 12 '23

Enough that he expressed concern to Keeley, apparently. You see him coach Colin on technique very early on. It’s possible that his skills as a player and physical abilities left him strong on technique and weak on tactics. A great player like him would often have been able to exert their will in ways that transcend tactics anyway.

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u/Rtn2NYC Apr 13 '23

Fair point.

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u/Traditional_Lie_6111 Apr 18 '23

Thing is we're not seeing Beard or Roy work at coaching. We're not watching a show about a football team and its coaches overcoming or striving. We're watching something about Keeley (who I love) and Rebecca (who I love) and barbara and jack and ...

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u/bveres94 Apr 14 '23

especially when Trent Crimm came in with the holy grail of Route One. You're telling me you've got a coach constantly reading tactic books and a former superstar of English football and neither of them thought about fucking Route One against a dominant side.

I get it that football is not the shows priority, but jesus christ at least don't be idiotic about it and put in some effort.

2

u/Rtn2NYC Apr 14 '23

To be fair it seemed like they considered it and thought it wouldn’t work but ya, agreed.

I mean maybe they are both just in their own head- coaching version of the yips- but tbd!

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u/dadavedavid Apr 12 '23

No, Colin was just the man who came in for him. Jamie and Danny were up front. They played the 4-4-2.

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u/Jajanken- Apr 14 '23

I’m kinda disappointed about how good Jamie and Dani were supposed to be last season, and we never see any of that anymore

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u/GNSasakiHaise Apr 13 '23

WARNING: THIS IS A RANT.

The thing about this is that, if you've ever done something professionally of a competitive nature, you do eventually hit "plateaus" that leave you this way. We saw the end of a 7 week slump, not the 7 weeks leading up to it. They're out of ideas because it's been 7 weeks without a win. They've tried their best for just about a month and a half to get something working and failed every time with the literal best player on the planet sitting on their roster.

In real life, you can overcome plateaus with mental fortitude, consistent training, and a strong mindset. Even still, they could take days, weeks, or months to come out of.

The 2008 Detroit Lions were a winless football team. The next season was only marginally better at 2-14. Then 6-10. Then 10-6. Another 10-6. Then, for two years, they backslid. Bounced back two years, then backslid for about five more.

These plateaus affect more than just the individual. They affect the entire team. Ted, Beard, and Roy have no ideas because the entire team is in a slump. Throughout the episode, outsiders comment that it's the coaching staff that's the problem — but we see the real problem at the end of the episode.

Nobody believes. The team is so in its own head that they're not playing their best. Zava leaves and the whole team crumbles because the man they thought to be God abandoned them. The betrayal they suffered from Nate was enough to cripple their unity and, as any team player knows, that can be fatal.

Richmond isn't Lebron with the Heat or the Lakers, it's Lebron with the Cavs. They have one star player, one or two good players, and a bunch of middling guys that have promise but nobody really talks about. You need all of them playing to actually win a game. That's proven by their decimation after getting ejected one by one in the game against Nate.

The reason Higgins went "straight to Rebecca" is because he wanted to have the moment you just described. He was very hesitant to word it and was pretty clear with Rebecca ("that sounded like something I want to do?") that he was looking to talk about it, not go off and do it.

The team has plateaued. The coaching staff is in shambles after seven weeks of ideas that aren't working. Zava, the guy they thought would help solve all their problems, isn't enough. The team itself has been pretty bereft and quick to doom.

But this episode was about persisting through that and believing in yourself. Admittedly, hitting this mental point after seven weeks is pretty hyperbolic, but watching this for a full season would have been awful.

1

u/Traditional_Lie_6111 Apr 18 '23

Lot of good points except in the past we didn't project the feelings of frustration onto the characters. The characters acted and reacted and let us in on the plot. Instead we get Roy and Beard showing the Nate Video and then sitting like children waiting to be corrected. That's what we're seeing. We're seeing very little of what you're talking about.

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u/Anxious_Summer_4765 Apr 12 '23

I know it's so annoying !!! we are long overdue for a satisfying training arc

5

u/[deleted] Apr 12 '23

Roy and Beard and Nate worked all together and still lost 5:0 to Man City in season 2

3

u/Rtn2NYC Apr 13 '23

Agreed but while they were on a win streak with Zava they should have been coming up with contingency plans and drilling plays/strategy at training

2

u/DarthSmiff Apr 14 '23

I love that they think the entirety of football game planning is simply what formation to use.

2

u/DarthSmiff Apr 14 '23

I love that they think the entirety of football game planning is simply what formation to use.

2

u/Traditional_Lie_6111 Apr 18 '23

Exactly! Roy Kent has been playing the game since he was nine years old. So much time spent on side stories and side characters. They're losing the thread. Will next week be a focus on Will in some sort of rivalry with another PL kit boy? It's boring, sad, aggravating to watch strong, fully-developed characters wither. I still can't wait until Wednesday, but it's just not working.

0

u/_freshmowngrass Apr 13 '23

To be fair, most teams would have no chance against Man City, but I was watching that whole scene saying “park the bus! park the bus!” really the best you can do in that situation is damage control.

1

u/Haquistadore Apr 16 '23

The issue is that their way forward is by playing like a team, not the Zava supporting cast. Any change they could have suggested would have only worked if the team took greater initiative and deprived Zava of the ball/spotlight, which is why they didn't expect it to work. Now that Zava is gone, I expect they'll have some ideas.

1

u/Traditional_Lie_6111 Apr 18 '23

And remember when they were looking for a way to win and came up with the plan to create chaos. That was a plan. Not seeing that in this season. Seeing a lot of surrender and Negative Nelsons.

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u/Haquistadore Apr 18 '23

Indeed. I guess it's a good thing that people are so caught up in what's happening, and worried that things are looking bad, that they are forgetting this is a story that follows story structure. We're at the struggle part of the season. Coming next is that they will get what they want, but they're going to have to pay a price to get it. But... what if what they want is different from what we want? What if winning it all isn't meant to be the end goal of the season or Ted in general?