'Ted Lasso' S2: Jason Sudeikis Avoids The Sophomore Slump With Another Winning Season [Review]

How does a show as big as “Ted Lasso” avoid a sophomore slump? The success of the first season of the Apple TV+ hit felt incredibly tied to the pandemic as the Jason Sudeikis vehicle gave people in need of a pleasant escape the kind of diversion that the real world denied them. Viewers fell hard for the undeniably likable title character and the ensemble of memorable characters around him, but the producers have to be wondering if those same fans will return to the pitch now that the world has started to regain its normalcy. Wisely, the new “Ted Lasso” season, premiering on July 23, embeds “second acts” into its narrative and expands its storytelling beyond its title character and “Major League” set-up to feel more like a character-driven ensemble piece, focusing more on people than set-ups. The folksy charm meter is sometimes turned up a bit too high, even in comparison to year one, but there’s so much to like here that it feels like fans will be satisfied and possibly even a bit surprised.

At the end of the first season of “Ted Lasso,” AFC Richmond was relegated in a heartbreaking finale, and yet most of the characters felt like they had reached a certain level of personal peace. While Lasso struggled through a divorce and panic attacks, he achieved a degree of respect from his team and the local fans. Rebecca (Hannah Waddingham) came clean with Lasso about her original plan to destroy the team, Roy Kent (Brett Goldstein) got his moment in the sun before his retirement, and even Nate (Nick Mohammed) got a chance to express himself from the sidelines. Roy and Keeley (Juno Temple) started a relationship, and Jamie Tartt (Phil Dunster) took his giant ego to Manchester.

The second season premiere finds Lasso and the team treading water. They’re on a streak of tie games that’s almost record-breaking, reflecting a show that’s not sure whether to make its central team a winner or a loser. A show can only be about lovable losers for so long before it gets old, but the writing on the second season of “Ted Lasso” smartly moves further out of the stadium and locker room than the first, expanding the impact of supporting characters, giving them lives outside of Richmond.

For example, Keeley encourages Roy to get a job as a pundit, where he doesn’t seem to care much about network standards regarding profanity. Jamie fails miserably on reality TV before inquiring if he could possibly return to Richmond in some fashion. The always-smiling Dani Rojas (Cristo Fernandez) faces tragedy in the season premiere, but he eventually forms it into his optimistic worldview, in part thanks to the help of a new team doctor (Sarah Niles) who quietly reshapes the larger-than-life personalities of AFC Richmond. There’s less acrimony and more harmony in season two of “Ted Lasso,” but it makes for richer character work as the performers feel more allowed to have personal interests and needs. It shifts from being a show about overcoming adversity and expectation into one that’s more about managing daily setbacks and unexpected developments (even if a few of those setbacks too often feel resolved by episode’s end in a manner that feels more sitcomish than the show really needs to be).

In ways that may even upset fans who love Sudeikis’s admittedly delightful performance, the second season of “Ted Lasso” also shifts away from its title character in ways that make it a richer program overall (although it should be noted that only six of ten episodes were sent to press and it does feel like a stage is set for Lasso to be the centerpiece of the final arc). Most of all, Sam Obisanya (Toheeb Jimoh) becomes a lead on the show, first in the manner in which he deals with Tartt’s potential return and later in a very rich episode about how athletes manage their personal social concerns with business ones. Jimoh is fantastic, taking a pleasant character from season one and making him into one of the richer ones in season two.

He’s not alone. Goldstein was a stand-out in season one in a way that made that arc feel like a tough one to follow, but Roy Kent gets arguably richer in the second year as he attempts to find a new kind of happiness in a stable relationship and away from his adoring fans. Mohammed gets a great episode in which Nate learns how to stand up for himself. Even Jamie Tartt finds unexpected growth in his personal and professional life. What’s most satisfying about season two of “Ted Lasso” is how the writers clearly refused to take their characters through the same drills, giving them new moves and plays instead of just trying to recreate what people liked about year one.

Having said that, the folksy charm meets pop culture brilliance that so many loved about season one sometimes feels almost overplayed in season two—an episode refers to both Radiohead’s “Karma Police” and “Magnolia” in quick enough succession that the self-aware writing calls attention to itself. There’s sometimes a showiness to the writing on “Ted Lasso” that feels too eager to please, never more so than in a Christmas episode (the fourth of the new season) that is basically the Uber-Lasso. It’s so loaded with the smalltown pleasantries of this show that it’s the point where those on the fence about it seem most likely to either go all in or give up entirely.

However, the creators and cast of “Ted Lasso” don’t seem as desperate to win over those fence-sitters as many shows do in their second years. They come into this season far more confident—every performer seems more comfortable than last year, and the writing plays more to each actor’s strengths. Everyone involved in “Ted Lasso” knows what this show is now, and they seem proud about the role it played in so many people’s lives during the pandemic. But they’re smart enough to know that the amount of entertainment options out there means viewers won’t be satisfied with more of the same. They want something familiar but also demand characters who have grown along with the real world. Last year, it felt like Ted Lasso’s team was dealing with the growing pains of newness. This year, the confidence of the writing and performances clarifies that pain is a thing of the past. [B+]