'Ted Lasso' Season 3, Episode 12: Recap & Power Rankings

The Ted Lasso Power Rankings are a weekly analysis of who and/or what had the strongest performance in each episode. Most of the list will feature individual characters, although the committee does reserve the right to honor anything from animals to inanimate objects to laws of nature to general concepts. There are very few rules here.

Season 3, Episode 12 — “So Long, Farewell”

HONORABLE MENTION: Higgins (a good man who gets to keep his job); Dani Rojas and his two girlfriends (good for them); Zorro/Zoreaux (if you have to wear a mask, might as well be a cool one); Isaac (a tough but fair judge who can blast soccer balls straight through nets); Will Kitman (I choose to believe he’s being very territorial and bossy about his responsibilities now that Nate is back and working under him); The Sound of Music (probably a top-five musical about a family escaping Nazis through the power of song); Sassy (we could all use a friend like her, but only one); Mae (I hope she becomes best friends with Rebecca’s mom); Rebecca’s mom (need to see her skateboard); Sam (loved to see him score The Big Goal); Zava’s avocado farm (that was a big avocado); Colin (my heart grew three sizes when he smooched his boyfriend after the game); Various TedBecca ‘shippers (the misdirect in that opening scene has that corner of the internet VERY angry); Jason Sudeikis doin’ his lil “What’s Up With That?” dances (the man can move); the stewardess who called Ted an asshole (fun to picture that there’s a lady in this show’s universe out there telling everyone what a prick Ted is); Coach George (stood up to Rupert and got a little sunshine on his nutsack); Dr. Sharon (new patient, business is good); Henry Lasso (parents in the youth soccer league must be so pissed that one team just has a decorated professional coach on the sideline, like if Steve Kerr coached his daughter’s basketball team); Rupert (everything short of getting a bowl of soup dumped on his head); spaghetti bolognese (pretty good but I prefer lasagna)

10. (tie) Crying a little bit (LAST WEEK: Unranked)

Lots of crying this week. By just about everybody. The team at halftime, Nate, Rebecca and Ted a few times, even freaking Roy. Maybe me a little bit. Maybe. Impossible to know for certain. I’m a big strong man. I’m a big strong man who never cries during TV shows or movies. Everyone know th-…

NO YOU CRIED DURING A FINDING NEMO REWATCH A WHILE AGO.

SHUT UP.

HE FOUND HIS DAD.

LEAVE ME ALONE.

10. (tie) Barbara the CFO (LAST WEEK: Unranked)

A fascinating woman who loves numbers and violence equally. I would love to sit in a room with her while she watches The Accountant, the movie where Ben Affleck plays a CPA who is also an undercover assassin, the one that contains both a montage of actual accounting and multiple scenes where bad guys get shot in the head. I bet she would love it.

I don’t know what’s happening with this show going forward. It sure felt like an ending. And while the more probable spinoff is one I’ll discuss in a bit, let me state for the record that I would watch one where Barbara becomes a high-ranking executive for a UFC-type cage fighting league. Please consider this.

10. (tie) Nate (LAST WEEK: 8)

Nate is:

Back with the team
In a new role as the assistant kit man… or rather, the assistant TO the kit man, as a little Schrute shootout (Schrute-out?)
Happy with Jade
Tearing up a lot and hugging people and being kind of touched that the team is using his elaborate decoy play to score important goals

Full-circle situation here for Nate. I suspect this could rub some people the wrong way. There’s a subsection of viewers who wanted to see Nate get hit with a hammer for everything he did on his way out. And I do get that but… that was just never gonna happen. Not on this show. Everyone gets redeemed a little here. That’s just how the show works. Well, except for Rupert. He just dresses like Darth Vader — all black, flowing coat/cape — and loses another wife and his team and has a stadium full of people chant “WANKER” at him while he storms off in shame. That’s okay, though. It’s nice to have an obvious villain sometimes.

9. Ted (LAST WEEK: 6)

It’s nice that Ted is back home with his kid. I’m happy for him if that’s what he wants and if that’s going to help Henry, who is a sweet boy and deserves happiness. But also…

I mean…

It is weird. He was mostly happy in Richmond. He had friends who loved him and a great work environment and a whole community that had come to support him. He wasn’t having those panic attacks as often. Again, it’s weird. The show opened with him fleeing his actual family to go coach soccer in England and it ended with him fleeing his found family to go coach soccer back in America. I suppose there’s no good or right answer here. He was always going to be leaving someone behind somewhere.

But he has made a positive impact on a lot of lives in the process.

But, unless he was out of frame going to the bathroom or working the camera that was getting the shot, it looked like he wasn’t at Beard’s wedding either.

I don’t know. A lot going on here. Let’s go ahead and leave him at number nine.

8. Jamie Tartt (LAST WEEK: 2)

Jamie:

Made up with his dad
Is friends with Roy now
Also got into a fistfight with Roy over who would “get” to date Keeley, which backfired for obvious stupid reasons related to “maybe the girl you both like doesn’t want two goons punching each other over who wins her affection without actually checking to see if she has any affection for either of them”
Scored a goal and helped score another with some hilarious acting
Got in one last classic Jamie pronunciation with “guacamol-eh”

It’s a good thing Jamie and Roy had their fistfight after Trent finished the book. That would not have looked great out there in black-and-white ink.

7. An open bar with live band karaoke (LAST WEEK: Unranked)

This right here is a recipe for a good time. The Richmond team party is gonna be a blast. The only downside here — the reason it’s ranked at seven instead of in the top three — is because I will be haunted for the rest of my days about who sang what song at this party. I need to know. And now I need to know if one of them sang “Need to Know” by Marc Anthony. My guesses here:

Beard sings a Black Sabbath song
Keeley shows up with the crimped hair and bow from the other week and sings a Madonna song, maybe “Material Girl”
Dani sings the theme song from Friends
Rebecca and Ted duet on “Don’t Go Breakin’ My Heart”
Will Kitman blows the roof of the place with a version of “Suspicious Minds” that features audience participation for the backing vocals
Barbara sings a different Black Sabbath song and does it much better than Beard
Isaac sings a surprisingly stirring version of “Didn’t We Almost Have It All” by Whitney Houston that leaves the crowd in tears

Let’s go do karaoke this weekend.

6. Keeley (LAST WEEK: Unranked)

Okay, two Keeley things. Maybe three…

NUMBER ONE: While the Roy-Jamie fight was weird, it was nice that Keeley got to make that face and let them know how stupid they were being.

NUMBER TWO: If there is a spinoff here, my money is on Keeley and Rebecca and maybe Higgins and Barbara running that women’s soccer team with the influx of cash from the sale, which, by my math — 49 percent of the suspected $2 billion valuation — comes out to about a billion smackeroos.

NUMBER THREE: It is not lost on me that both of my proposed spin-offs here feature Barbara in some capacity. There’s a simple reason for that: I love her.

5. Roy (LAST WEEK: 4)

Roy:

Is a Diamond Dog now
Is the coach of the team
Started going to therapy to work on himself, which is nice and is also a reminder that Brett Goldstein co-created Shrinking, another good show about therapy

Lot going on with Roy. Most of it pretty solid, or at least on the way to being solid. He did kind of just stop wearing those fun colorful shirts after one week, though. I like those. Roy, please reconsider.

4. Having a cookout at the end where everybody shows up and eats grilled meats (LAST WEEK: Unranked)

It is not lost on me that both Ted Lasso and the Fast & Furious franchise tell stories about finding your own Family that end with a scene where everyone gets together for a big cookout at the end. This is very funny, to me, and maybe only just me, if only because these two entities could not be much more different in just about every other way. Also, I desperately need to see Vin Diesel play soccer now. And I need to see… oh, let’s say Will Kitman drive a neon Honda outfitted with NoS. Which he might do. You don’t know.

In conclusion, please picture Mae’s face if someone walked into her pub and ordered a Corona.

3. Rebecca (LAST WEEK: Unranked)

Rebecca:

Has a billion dollars
Has a new boyfriend
Got to watch her crappy ex sulk away in shame with a crowd of people chanting mean things about him

These three things alone, even stripped of their context (some of which was a little weird, but still), rocket her into the top three.

2. Trent Crimm (LAST WEEK: Unranked)

ON ONE HAND: Trent has perfect hair and finished his book. And the book is absolutely LOADED with fascinating material. It’s easy to forget all of that because we’ve seen it all through the lens of the show, but… the general public inside the universe of this show is really not aware of about 95 percent of it. Yes, sure, the book seems to be a glowing portrait of Ted and the team and not exactly full of bombshells that cut prominent figures down to size, but still. Go back and look at everything this season and remember Trent was there for it all with a notepad in his hand. I really want to read this non-existent book. Or at least get a little Ted Lasso post-credits epilogue that shows him on the book tour with the public reaction to it.

ON THE OTHER HAND: Imagine how stressful it must be to write a book about people and then hand it to them and watch them read the things you wrote about them. Or to read the words someone else wrote about you after following you around for a year. No thank you to any of that. I would rather go live inside a deep hole.

ALSO: It’s pretty funny that the character named Ted Lasso on the show titled Ted Lasso told Trent to change the book’s title from The Lasso Way because “it’s not about me.” I don’t know if that was intentional or not but it did make me giggle a lot when I realized it.