‘Ted Lasso’ Season 3, Episode 6 Recap: Dutch Treat

Season 3, Episode 6: ‘Sunflowers’

This was for me an odd and largely dissatisfying episode in addition to being, at over an hour, the longest episode to date. It felt an awful lot like the “bottle episodes” added to the run late last season: “Carol of the Bells” (which I rather liked) and “Beard After Hours” (which I did not). It is not, however, a bottle episode, as two characters’ story lines move notably forward; it’s just an episode that, apart from those characters, goes essentially nowhere. And did I mention it was really long?

The team is visiting Amsterdam for a “friendly”(an exhibition match) against the Dutch team AFC Ajax. They lose 5-0, but this blowout is quickly forgotten. The team’s dejection leads Ted to declare that there will be no curfew in this city of vice — a more accurate episode title would have been “Everyone After Hours.”

In any case, let me start with the story lines I thought were dull or unnecessary and then reward your patience with the ones that were actually moving and/or interesting.

The team (minus Colin and Jamie)

What will the team do, set free in this world capital of legalized drugs and prostitution? Van Damme (formerly known as Zoreaux) proposes, plausibly enough for a pro athlete let loose in Amsterdam, that the team attend a sex show. Jan Maas, back in his home country, recommends an all-night party where his cousin is DJ-ing, located two hours away. (Dani suggests the team look for a single tulip but finds no takers).

The sensible route, as Dani notes, would be for the players to split up and seek their pleasures wherever they wish. But Isaac, the team captain, demands that they all do something together, and from that moment it’s clear that there will be an exceptionally silly resolution to the dilemma. Although they finally choose to make the trip to Jan’s cousin’s party, they immediately fall into a subsidiary argument about where to get food beforehand.

So, of course, it winds up that they go nowhere and instead have a pillow fight at the hotel. If I’d made a list of 10 possible lame conclusions for this story line, “pillow fight” probably would have been worse than any of them. C’mon, “Ted Lasso.” You’re better than this.

Higgins (and Will)

Shortly after the match, Higgins announces that he can’t go out with Rebecca and Keeley because, “I have a date with someone special in the Red Light District.” Later, after inviting Will the kit boy to join him, he announces, “Tonight’s the night young William becomes a man.”

Scandalous! Higgins, who seemed so happily married with five boys at home, is going to the sex hub of Amsterdam — and he’s taking young Will with him!

Except, of course, anyone who’s watched more than 10 minutes of “Ted Lasso” knows perfectly well that this is a red herring, and that Higgins will have some perfectly innocent reason for visiting this zone of iniquity. Moreover, as with the joint team activity, it seems likely that the faux-surprise will be silly, bordering on annoying.

And indeed it is. The “someone special” whom Higgins drags Will to see is jazz legend Chet Baker — or rather, a plaque commemorating the spot where he fell out a window to his death in 1988.

As for making young William “a man,” Higgins means that he will introduce him to jazz, a meaning that I suspect has never before been imputed to that phrase in human history. Later, Higgins himself ascends to the stage of the jazz club they visit and is delighted to play Baker’s “Let’s Get Lost” on standing bass with the band.

Cute? Sure. And if Higgins’s previously (if briefly) glimpsed love of jazz were a significant theme of the show, it might have been a charming scene. But mostly it all felt like many more minutes spent for very little payoff.

Jamie and Roy

This subplot is a bit better, in large part because the evolution of Jamie, however quick and improbable — his namesake on “Game of Thrones” took seasons to achieve the self-improvement Tartt has accomplished in mere episodes — is pretty enjoyable.

But what is it with “Ted Lasso” and bikes? Last season, Dr. Sharon was run over by a car while cycling, which itself seemed to be an inside joke on the fact that the actress who plays Sharon, Sarah Niles, didn’t know how to ride a bike when she got the “Lasso” gig.

Now it’s Roy who is lacking in basic bicycle skills, because the grandfather who was going to teach him died before he had the chance. So it falls upon Jamie to teach him, so they can go out in search of a genuine Dutch windmill.

Like the Higgins story line, it’s modestly charming, and in this case has the advantage of being part of the ongoing Roy-Jamie subplot. But it’s still an awful lot of time spent to move that story forward only incrementally.

That said, there are a few amusing moments along the way. When Jamie reveals that his degenerate father brought him to Amsterdam to lose his virginity at 14 and Roy notes, “That must have been traumatizing,” Jamie’s response is priceless: “No, she loved it.” Pause. “Oh, it’s me you mean.”

And we see Good Jamie at his best when Roy, clearly upset all day, reveals “I think Keeley’s got a girlfriend.” Jamie does not take the bait, replying only, “Hmm. Let’s go find us some windmills, eh?”

Relatedly, the scene earlier in the episode, when Roy learned of Keeley’s trip to Norway with Jack to see the Aurora Borealis, led to one of the best exchanges of the episode. Roy: “Where’s she going?” Rebecca: “Somewhere that believes they deserve her.” I tire of saying this, but the show was simply better when Roy and Keeley were together. Please fix this before it’s too late, “Ted Lasso.”

Ted

Coach Beard unsurprisingly follows the motto, “When in Amsterdam, do as the Amsterdammers do.” And so he makes cups of hallucinogenic tea for him and Ted. Beard drains his quickly and heads out for what we can assume is another chapter of “Beard After Hours” — we are only privy to the postscript, when he shows up for the team bus as “Piggy Stardust.”

Ted, on the other hand, is understandably conflicted. He’s uncertain about the drugs, and he already despises tea. But he nonetheless ultimately gives it a shot, following which he heads out to the Van Gogh museum, where a docent provides Ted with what can only be described as a series of Lassoisms — i.e., “When you know you’re doing what you’re meant to do, you have to try.” Is this a hint about Ted’s complete failure to learn anything much at all about coaching soccer (a failure many commenters here have pointed out)?

The next scene suggests it may be. Ted, having had his fill of foreignness, heads to the Yankee Doodle Burger Barn restaurant, which advertises American food in American portions. (For those who didn’t make the connection, the barbecue sauce the waitress brings him is from Arthur Bryant’s, Ted’s favorite joint in Kansas City.) Faced with a pyramid of onion rings, he begins thinking about triangles. Coincidentally, an old Jordan-era Bulls game is on the television, featuring the triangle offense implemented by the coach Phil Jackson.

I initially thought that this was merely a callback to the John Wooden “Pyramid of Success” that Ted has hanging on his wall, and at which he gave a meaningful look late in the last episode. Instead, after a rather tedious hallucination in which he believes himself to be speaking to the True Spirit of Adventure (Disney voice actor Corey Burton), Ted begins formulating a variation on the triangle offense suitable for soccer, utilizing ketchup and mustard squeeze bottles.

It all leads to two late exchanges with Coach Beard. The first is the revelation that Beard’s drugs were duds: Ted wasn’t high at all! I’m not sure how precisely we are meant to take this. Ted’s hallucination was rather a lot to be a placebo effect, and the only alternative would be that he is clinically mentally ill. It’s another element of the episode that would have been better left on the cutting-room floor.

The second interaction is better: Coach Beard, impressed by the fact that Ted has come up with a game strategy for perhaps the first time in the series, recommends the term “Total Football,” before explaining that the concept was in fact invented right there in Holland back in the 1970s. But as the Van Gogh docent recommended, they will give it a try.

Colin

At last, a story line with some genuine emotional impact. Colin, feigning a stomach ache, sneaks away from the team to head to a gay bar. But he is followed by Trent Crimm. Colin is horrified, but Trent reassures him: “I’ve known for months. I haven’t said anything to anyone. I must have a good reason for that, mustn’t I?”

The reason, of course — and I know I’ve been writing “of course” a lot, but it’s that kind of episode — is that Trent himself is gay and out to both his wife and daughter. Which is all well and good, but seems unnecessary. How about letting his “good reason” for not outing Colin be merely that he is a decent human being? Memo to the “Ted Lasso” writers: You don’t need to be gay to want not to potentially ruin a gay person’s life.

The scene is redeemed, however, by Billy Harris, who plays Colin. “I don’t want to be a spokesperson; I don’t want a bunch of apologies,” he explains. “All I want is for, when we win a match, to be able to kiss my fella the same way the other guys get to kiss their girls.”

Rebecca

I have saved the best for last, a subplot strong enough that it almost justifies the whole episode. Rebecca, alone in Amsterdam after her abandonment by Higgins and Keeley, is nearly run over by a bicyclist while standing on a bridge and falls head over heels into a canal. It appears that this is what the psychic predicted back in Episode 3: “You’re upside down, and you’re drenched.” There is, however, no “thunder and lightning” — unless that is a metaphor for what happens next.

A nearby houseboat resident, kind and endearing, helps her dry her clothes and offers her the use of his shower. (The character, as yet unnamed, is played by the prolific Dutch actor Matteo van der Grijn.) He makes her tea and later dinner, and Rebecca gradually sheds the emotional armor in which she encased herself following dates with jerks such as John Wingsnight.

It’s not easy at first, as each shows signs of sexual paranoia sheathed in jokes: Is the tea drugged? Could there be a peephole into the shower? Are the women’s clothes he has in his closet “trophies”? Happily, the answers are no, no and no.

As she did last episode, Hannah Waddingham does marvelous work. You can almost hear the tension gradually leaving her body. Dinner, which had been a “no,” becomes a yes. Likewise, the invitation to a drink (or several), and ultimately a foot massage. (Shades of “Pulp Fiction”: As Vincent Vega would explain, “There’s a sensuous thing going on.”)

The next morning, Rebecca asks this nameless charmer, “Did we?” He answers, accurately, that they did not. (We saw him pull a blanket over her after she fell asleep during the foot massage and then retire to his bedroom.) But after she departs with a rather significant kiss, he asks himself the same question, and answers “Oh yes, we did.”

That’s because he’s asking himself a different question. Something happened between them. It was not sex; rather, it was more important than sex — a genuine connection of kindred spirits. I mean how often do two people find themselves sharing a bilingual duet of Kenny Rogers’s “She Believes in Me”? It is, as he keeps noting, “Gezelligheid.”

I found this truly lovely. TV and film typically operate on the premise that a romance is not real unless it is consummated in bed. It’s heartening to see a show recognize that that is not the case. Oh, and did I mention that Rebecca, post-shower, looked into what was clearly the bedroom of a young girl and beamed with delight?

I don’t know where this story line is headed. Will Rebecca learn her quasi-paramour’s name and track him back down to make the “family” the psychic promised her? Or will the house-boater merely have served the purpose of proving to her that she can take the armor off, that she is still able to love and be loved? Given that I found the scenes between the two of them to be perhaps the best of the entire season, I am strongly rooting for the former. And let us not forget that Sassy shared a premonition with Rebecca — a warmth in the belly — right before Rebecca tumbled.

Odds and ends

• Two enjoyable moments with the Dutch reporter after the blowout match: Jan responding (in Dutch), “Luckily our spirits were already broken,” and Roy deriding every element of the proceedings, including the reporter, as “pretend.”

• A nice little joke with the Zava poster in the Ajax stadium, which shows him characteristically to have played with the team from 2013 to … later in 2013.

• Ted is pretty quick to interpret Coach Beard’s “Pineapple Percussions” to be “doldrums.” And one has to like him name-checking “Hill Street Blues” as the inspiration for his “Let’s be careful out there.”

• You have to love the use of “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” as Roy is learning to ride a bike, especially if you remember the scene from “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” that it was written for.