In season two episode nine of Apple TV’s Ted Lasso, Coach Beard (Brendan Hunt, We’re The Millers) goes out on the town following Richmond’s immense loss to Manchester City, which he took particularly hard. The unusual episode follows Beard throughout the night, rather than following Ted (Jason Sudeikis, We’re The Millers), as the episodes typically do. The episode starts off where the previous episode left Beard – saying his goodbyes to Ted and walking away from Wembley Stadium.
Haunted by the team’s loss, Beard makes his way home via the Tube, only for devastation to follow him when the football announcer Thierry Henry discusses his bad job throughout the game on TV. Resultantly, Beard finds himself at the pub, where he reveals to Mae (Annette Badland, Bergerac) that he and Jane (Phoebe Walsh, Behind the Filter) have broken up because she was unable to say “I love you” to him. To distract himself from her misleading text messages, he has several beers with Baz (Adam Colborne), Jeremy (Bronson Webb, The Dark Knight), and Paul (Kevin Garry, Timewasters) and they end up sneaking into a private club called Bones & Honey.
Still, in an attempt to distract himself from the football game and his doomed relationship (or lack thereof) with Jane, Beard chats up three arrogant and clearly wealthy men playing pool, and convinces them he is an Oxford professor – which turns out to be their alma mater. Meanwhile, Beard is consistently captivated by a beautiful woman in a red dress eyeing him from the bar. One thing led to another and one pair of ripped pants later and a failed attempt to go after the red-dressed woman, a security guard suspects Beard is not where he belongs and throws him out, only for him to run into the woman outside the club. She offers to “mend his pants” for him and they walk to her nearby apartment. However, after opening up about Jane, Beard is chased out of the apartment by the red-dressed woman’s muscular boyfriend.
Later, in a stunning turn of events, Beard finds himself alone, with another man’s pants and without a phone or a wallet. Desperate to find his way home, he consults three men in a dark tunnel, one of whom turns out to be Jamie’s (Phil Dunster, The Rise of the Krays) father. As payback for earlier, James Tartt and his friends beat up Beard, who is then heroically saved by Red Dress’ boyfriend, who actually turns out to be a pretty stand-up guy. He returns Beard’s wallet, phone, and keys, only to find over 50 missed calls and texts from Jane saying she loves him and getting angry when he doesn’t respond. His phone dies and Beard is left to walk the rest of the way home alone.
Although, Beard is promptly saved by Baz, Jeremy, and Paul in a limousine, paid for by their calculated gambling and pool playing with the Oxford snobs. They drop Beard off at his home, however, when he attempts to get in, his key breaks and he cannot get inside. Again, he goes off on another adventure and finds himself at a church, in which he prays to God as a “long-time listener, first-time caller.” He tells Him that Jane makes the “world more interesting” and that he cares an immense amount for her. Almost out of instinct, Beard walks to the back of the church where he finds a secret club and for just a second, he is free. He swings his arms, jumps up and down, and lets loose to the beat of the music without a care about the events of earlier that day. Then, he sees Jane. And Beard is more happy than he’d been the entire season.
This episode served as the second of two additional episodes in a season of 12. Both episodes – the first being the Christmas episode – provide interruptions for the usual order of events in which further development for certain characters is introduced. Beard’s dreamy and almost unreal episode shows Beard as a character outside of Ted. As Ted’s number two, his job is usually to react to Ted, uplift Ted, correct Ted, support Ted, etc. But he does exist as a character with his own life even though he isn’t the primary focus of the story. In fact, Beard has a lot going on in his head that no one could have known about.
Unlike Ted’s happy, go-lucky attitude, Beard is troubled by his failure to stand up to his fellow coaches and fears that if he did, Richmond may have won against Manchester City. Even further, he cannot stop thinking about Jane, despite the elephant in the room that is their toxic relationship. For one, she has a major outburst over text earlier in the episode when Beard does not respond to her messages right away. These are not the actions of someone you’d like to be involved with. However, at a time where Beard is at odds with himself and everything he stands for, Jane is what makes it better. It seems as though the issue isn’t that Jane makes life interesting for Beard, it’s more that she is the only thing that does.
Several themes are repeated throughout the episode, such as Beard’s keys and their inability to do their job. He loses them at the pub, where Jeremy returns them, he loses them at the club, where the Red Dressed girl returns them, and he loses them at her apartment, and the Red Dressed girl’s boyfriend returns them. Then, when he finally makes it home, the key breaks in the lock. Perhaps this represents Beard’s inability to find his way back to a metaphorical home, or the fact that he doesn’t want to. Essentially, he is losing his way, just as Ted and Jamie have throughout this season. However, Beard’s loss seems more personal. His demons seem more harmful and, while he has people to turn to, Beard is much more private about his life. This is shown at the end of the episode when he cites oversleeping as his reason for being late to work the next morning. He keeps his all-night adventure just for himself.
Overall, this episode was a nice reminder that the world exists outside of Ted, and that each character has their own storyline and their own demons to deal with. While this is Ted’s story, each player, fan, and coach must go forward even after practice ends, after they get to go home (if they do).
Rating: 7/10