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 6 — “Sunflowers”
HONORABLE MENTION: Random Dutch dudes with houseboats (not to be trusted, generally); Keeley (off looking at lights in the sky with Jack); Sassy (I think Sassy would’ve had fun in Amsterdam); Yankee Doodle Burger Barn (“Howdy partner”); Dante Charles and the Cartel (very generous of them to let some weird dorky British guy sit in on bass); “Three Little Birds” by Bob Marley (this song will be in my head all week now); Jan’s DJ cousin (poor guy probably spent all week telling people his famous cousin and a whole soccer team were coming to his big show and then got ghosted); Dutch sex show performers (they’re very tired)
10. Pillow fights, generally (LAST WEEK: Unranked)
The team spent most of their curfew-free night in Amsterdam trying to decide between seeing a live sex show and going to see Jan’s cousin DJ, and they settled on having a massive pillow fight in the hotel instead. This is all very sweet and wholesome and presumably wonderful for the team-building they need to do after another Zava-less 5-0 loss but I do have a few notes here:
- Pillow fights seem harmless and fun until you’re a little off-balance and get full-on blindsided by a block of surprisingly solid memory foam and end up laid out on the floor with a lot of people laughing at you for getting wiped out by a pillow, which definitely did not happen to me at a sleepover in junior high
- These hotel employees are taking it all pretty well given the massive amount of feathers they’re gonna have to clean up in the morning
- I would like to see Rebecca’s face when Higgins brings her the bill for the trip’s expenses and sees that they owe like $5000 to replace and clean up dozens of mangled high-end pillows
It’s nice to have fun, though.
9. Dani Rojas (LAST WEEK: Unranked)
Just take him to see a tulip.
Jesus Christ.
He almost literally could not be asking for less.
Come on.
8. Higgins and Will (LAST WEEK: 8 and unranked)
This episode had a few different pairings off on a few different Dutch adventures. Higgins and Will going to a jazz club in the red light district was the least… I don’t want to say “necessary”… but, yeah. We didn’t learn too much we didn’t already know. Higgins loves jazz and Will is a sweet little awkward boy. It was fun, sure, and a little shading on these otherwise thinly-drawn dudes is always nice, but it also would have been okay with me if they shaved a few minutes off this hour-long runtime.
That said, the whole thing was almost worth it for the thing at the end where Will tells his mom that he had a threesome with a married couple. I very much did not expect to hear any of those words come out of his mouth and it was probably the hardest I laughed in the entire episode. So… worth it? Maybe. Send Will out with Coach Beard next. That’s a pairing I want to see. Bring Will’s mom along. Let’s get weird.
7. Trent Crimm and Colin (LAST WEEK: Unranked)
Very sweet — and kind of sad — little conversation between these two over a couple beers this week. I’m glad Colin has Trent to talk to and drink vanilla vodka with (Trent’s face was a delight), and I hope we get a nice little episode about him coming out to the team soon, if only for his own mental health. It must be very stressful to live a high-profile double life like this. I worry about him sometimes.
Or rather, I would worry about him, at least more than I am right now, if I could think about anything other than Trent’s boots. That’s one of them in the screencap up there. Just magnificent footwear. Not something you would ordinarily picture a serious journalist wearing. I’m really just very happy for him.
6. Roy and Jamie (LAST WEEK: 2 and unranked)
A few Roy and Jamie notes:
- The bike-riding thing was adorable even if I do not know if I actually buy the idea of Roy willingly learning how to ride a bicycle from Jamie Tartt, of all people
- An interesting and kind of heartbreaking glance into both of their childhoods this week, between Roy’s speech about his grandfather (please take five minutes today and picture a 5-year-old Roy Kent) and Jamie’s thing about his dad taking him to a prostitute to lose his virginity (“virginit-eh”)
- Jamie sure does know a lot about Amsterdam
I really did enjoy watching Roy fall off that bike.
5. Rebecca (LAST WEEK: 3)
I’m glad it all worked out for her and turned into a lovely memory she can carry around with her for the rest of her life…
BUT
… I really must insist none of you hop aboard a houseboat that belongs to a strange foot-obsessed man who has a trunk filled with women’s clothes in his bedroom and keeps offering you alcohol and knows you just lost your cell phone after falling off a bridge and into a canal.
Please.
Do not do this.
It is a bad idea.
4. This guy (LAST WEEK: Unranked)
I already loved this dirty little bike thief a lot. I was probably going to find a way to squeeze him into the top ten somewhere. Then I let the credits roll to check something else and an audible gasp escaped my face when I saw how he was credited in the episode…
GIZMO THE BIKE JUNKIE
GIZMO
THE BIKE JUNKIE
GIZMO THE BIKE JUNKIE
Send him out with Beard and Will. See where they end up. Let them all ride stolen bicycles through the Alps. There is very little stopping anyone from doing this. Give it to me.
3. Ted (LAST WEEK: 5)
One of the sillier things about this show is that Ted — a good man who works hard and takes pride in his job — still does not know a single damn thing about soccer even though he has coached a professional soccer team for a few years. Like, he knows nothing. It’s something that was cute early on but borders on dereliction of duty here in season three. Imagine if you got hired to drive a forklift and three full years later you still barely knew how to turn it on and steer it. The team has had success, of course, thanks to the division of labor where Beard handles all the tactical business and Ted does the generic leadership stuff, but still. Read a book, Ted.
Which all made the end of this episode interesting. Ted, under the impression he might have been tripping on what turned out to be a bum batch of mushrooms, saw triangles everywhere — food, basketball games, etc. — at the Burger Barn and started thinking up all sorts of wild soccer strategies. Did it turn out all of this had actually been invented in Holland many years ago? Yes. But we just give Ted the credit for trying here. Good for him. I hope he gave that waiter his pen back.
2. Onion Rings (LAST WEEK: Unranked)
There’s very little I can say here that I didn’t already say in this 1000-word ode to onion rings I wrote a few years ago. Onion rings are the best. Maybe a top ten food, overall. I watched the screener for this episode a few days ago and almost immediately ordered some from my local pizza place, which does them very well. I shoved them all into my face so fast. I feel great about everything here.
1. Coach Beard (LAST WEEK: 1)
Here’s the thing: Part of me is dying to know exactly how Beard went from Ted’s hotel room to full Piggy Stardust in a van full of Dutch people who he was conversing with in their own language, kind of like that episode last season where we followed him around for a whole night.
A bigger part of me is glad to let this particular mystery be.
