Also: Can AFC Richmond acquire one of the greatest footballers alive?
Season 3, Episode 2: ‘(I Don’t Want to Go to) Chelsea’
“Trent Crimm! Are you kidding me?”
If you did not share Ted’s joy — and mine! — at the reappearance of the erstwhile writer for “The Independent” (played by James Lance) in Rebecca’s office, well … I think you’re watching “Ted Lasso” wrong. But that’s just one person’s opinion. (And this is despite the psychologically bizarre and wildly unethical series of events that led him to leave “The Independent” in the first place.)
But he’s back, with a role that looks as though it may be considerably larger, and I believe the world to be a better place for it. Welcome back, Trent Crimm.
One more Trent note before I move on. I know the show doesn’t do leitmotifs. But “A Well Respected Man” by the Kinks is so perfectly suited to Trent — not the lyrics particularly, but the mood — that I desperately want it to be his regular theme music.
Instead, it looks like we may have to settle for Ted’s new nickname for Trent, “Sport.” It’s not perfect, but we could do worse.
OK, moving on (although you have not seen the last of Trent in this recap).
Roy’s very bad day
Last week, obviously, we suffered the gut punch — plenty hinted at in Season 2, but a bit out of nowhere in the Season 3 premiere — that Roy (Brett Goldstein) and Keeley (Juno Temple) have broken up. I don’t mean to dwell on this, but it would have been so much more powerful if it had taken place at the end of last season. Here it felt a little bit thrown in, a move-the-narrative-forward tactic rather than an opportunity for one or more genuinely heartbreaking scenes.
But this week we get a bit more, starting with Isaac’s delightful disquisition on the study of kinesics that enables him to instantly interpret what has happened. And then, the whole team knows. Which, of course, infuriates Roy.
But angry Roy Kent is almost always the best Roy Kent. OK, fine: He’s essentially the only Roy Kent. (I was him for a Halloween party last year — the beard was tricky — in part because it gave me such an elegant excuse to shout “Oy!” and utter various expletives all night.)
But then, the cards and balloons? The sighs and well wishes from the entire team? The fact that even the security guy for Chelsea knows and offers his condolences? It’s a miracle that no one was violently murdered this episode.
And at the end, after the famous-but-unprintable “He’s here, he’s there, etc.” chants at Richmond’s opening game against Chelsea, where Roy was once captain and superstar, a rare moment of vulnerability: “It just felt sad, or something.” After a lousy game against Arsenal years earlier, he felt, “for the first time ever,” that he was fading as a player and could no longer keep up. So he left and came to Richmond. But as he explains, “There’s a part of me that thinks I should have stayed, and just [expletive] enjoyed myself. But that is not who I am, I guess.”
Followed by Ted at his very best: “Not yet.”
And no, I’m not yet done with Roy, either.
Origin stories
How did Rebecca and Rupert initially hook up and eventually marry? Well, now we know. He went with his wife to a club where Rebecca — presumably 20-plus years his junior — served drinks. And then he came back, sans wife, and asked Rebecca out. She wisely said no. So he came back every night for weeks and just chatted with her. He told her it was fine that she wouldn’t date him; he just enjoyed her company. And then, finally, he asked her out again, and she said yes. “He made me feel special,” she confesses to Keeley. “Chosen.”
Given the man — and the husband — he turned out to be, this is genuinely heartbreaking. And then, in a scene minutes later, he twists the knife: “I guess I’m just like any man. Got bored with the same old, same old.” So, just as he had with the previous wife, he traded Rebecca in for a newer, younger model. So brutal. Men like him make me feel like Roy Kent on a particularly furious day.
A side note: I mentioned last week that Anthony Head’s turn as the kind, decent, always concerned “watcher” in “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” is among my favorite TV roles ever. (“There is no spell.” You’ll know precisely the moment I mean if you watched the show.)
But Rebecca’s description of Anthony Head’s superhuman charm reaches back still further, to the “Gold Blend”/“Taster’s Choice” commercials he did with Sharon Maughan for Nescafé between 1987 and 1993. They formed a serialized romantic story line that is considered among the best ad campaigns of all time. (Gold Blend sales went up over 50 percent in the U.K.) They were one of the greatest will-they-or-won’t-they romances on American and British TV in the 1980s and 1990s, even if they were doled out only in occasional episodes, months apart, and each lasted less than a minute. That’s the Rupert that Rebecca met in the bar: suave, self-confident and very, very persistent (without, I should add, ever being later revealed as a selfish, cheating scumbag, which probably wouldn’t have helped sell much coffee).
But that’s not the only origin story this week. There is also the question of why Roy hates Trent so much that he threatens that anyone who talks to him will get “my forehead through their [expletive] skulls,” which is extreme even for Roy. And the answer is that, when Roy was a 17-year-old rookie prodigy, Trent wrote a withering critique of his very first game. Roy — we don’t know his precise age, but I have it on excellent authority that he is “pushing 40” — has carried that newspaper clipping in his wallet for two decades. Again, another moment of profound vulnerability and perhaps regret — for both men. Great stuff, nicely executed.
Zava
The episode’s central story line was, for me at least, perhaps its least interesting. Rebecca wants to sign superstar striker Zava (Maximilian Osinski) explicitly because Rupert wants him for his own team, West Ham. But Zava is planning to go to Chelsea. Except we already know he won’t go there because the title of the episode is “(I Don’t Want to Go to) Chelsea.” It’s a reference to the first single from Elvis Costello’s second album, “This Year’s Model.” (Personally, I prefer the songs “Radio Radio” and “Pump It Up.”)
While I self-evidently enjoy this show’s wealth of pop-culture references as much as anyone, this one doesn’t really have any connection apart from the title, which, again, pretty much gives away the whole game. Zava’s not going to Chelsea, and he obviously can’t wind up at West Ham, because that would remove any tension from the entire Premier League season. So he’ll obviously wind up at Richmond.
That he decides to do so because Rebecca accosts and “sour yells” at him while he’s at a urinal requires a higher-than-usual suspension of disbelief. Yet her diatribe — essentially, you’re already fading and can no longer carry a team — does have a nice pre-echo of Roy’s later confession about why he left Chelsea. That’s the downside of being a professional athlete: You know that your years of greatest fame and accomplishment are probably over by your early 30s.
Odds and ends
I am ashamed to confess this, but last week I failed to notice a “Jesus Christ Superstar” reference — Ted’s “What’s the buzz? Tell me what’s happening” — until it was too late to get it in before publication. I say this because I wore the original album to a nub at least twice as a boy. My wife took me to a production at the Kennedy Center for my birthday last year. But to make up for my omission last week, I will offer the tidbit that on that original album, the part of Judas — really the central figure of the musical — was sung by Murray Head, elder brother of Anthony (i.e. Rupert).
I should also say thank you to the numerous readers who pointed out that Ted’s son, Henry, is almost certainly not a “teenager,” as I described him last week. I was thinking he was 13-ish, but on reflection 10-ish seems more likely. If anyone can point to his exact age as described on the show, please do.
I don’t know much about soccer — and what I do know is mostly gleaned from my son — but something about Zava seemed awfully familiar. For those who follow the sport as little as I do (or less), he is a lightly fictionalized version of the real-life Swedish star Zlatan Ibrahimovic: also a world-class striker; also quite tall (6’ 5), with similar facial hair and a man-bun; also famed for goals both long distance and exceptionally athletic; also a famously difficult teammate who has changed teams many times.
I don’t have much to say yet about Keeley’s PR firm, her cranky C.F.O. — which, no, does not stand for “Corporate Fine Object” — or her longtime friend and new hire, Shandy (Ambreen Razia). We’ll see where this story line goes.
The scene with Jamie and Roy was a pleasure, most of all when Jamie goes in for a hug “too fast” and Roy responds as if he is being attacked. It is of course a callback to their iconic hug in Episode 8 of last season.
Ted’s semi-faint when he heard the news of Keeley and Roy’s breakup was a lot like his delight at seeing Trent Crimm again. You speak for all of us, Ted.
It was wonderful to see the great Harriet Walter again as Rebecca’s mom (she was so good last season), but blink and you’d have missed it. I assume this brief scene was a setup for things to come.
The joke about “The Office,” in which Ted explains that it’s set in Scranton, PA, not England and, when reminded of the original, describes it as a “pre-make” — spot on. (Sorry Ricky Gervais!)
More Dani Rojas (Cristo Fernández) is always better than less Dani Rojas. And his line about Richmond landing Zava, “I just wished for that 30 seconds ago”? Well, I think we can all agree that if anyone on Richmond has a direct connection to a higher power, it’s Dani.
Source: Television - nytimes.com
