Ted Lasso - Season 4, Episode 4, "Greyhounds’ Day Off" - Recap & Review
- Jimmy Palmquist
- 14 hours ago
- 5 min read
⚠️ Spoiler Alert: This review may contains spoilers. ⚠️
Ted Lasso Season 4, Episode 4, Recap & Review: “Greyhounds’ Day Off”
“Greyhounds’ Day Off” proves that Ted Lasso doesn’t need to resurrect Led Tasso to shake things up. Instead, Ted finds a much more entertaining, and ultimately more effective, way to get his new team to connect.
One of the biggest challenges of Ted Lasso Season 4 has been turning AFC Richmond’s women’s team from a collection of individual personalities into a group we actually care about. Episode 4 takes a big step in that direction, giving the players room to interact away from the pitch while reminding us why Ted’s unconventional methods work so well. The centerpiece is a team-building exercise that eventually leads everyone to Mae’s pub and one of the episode’s highlights: Pub Quiz.
Once again, I sort of doubted the validity of this issue. Like I've mentioned before, I played soccer throughout my life, competing in Europe and through captaining my college team. I know soccer. I have never experienced the cliques that are the focus of this episode. Until I reanalyzed my career. We never referred to them as cliques, and I'd like to think once we were all on the field we left our attitudes on the bench. But there were definitely players I didn't want to be around once the final whistle blew. So yeah, I did experience the cliques. It just took the Lady Greyhounds to make me realize it.
There’s something wonderfully Ted Lasso about watching a group of professional footballers become fiercely invested in trivia, particularly when their opponents are an all-male pub quiz team made up entirely of men named Brian. What begins as another one of Ted’s seemingly ridiculous exercises becomes exactly what the team needs. The players have to communicate, recognize one another’s strengths and work together if they want to defeat the
Brians.
And, of course, they desperately want to defeat the Brians. But that isn't even the team building that brings them all together. The Brians accuse them of cheating. Enter my favorite, Katie 'Boots' Quinn. She doesn't drink. Until she does. But only to spit the beer into the face of their accuser and bringing the fight to the Brians. Bar brawl leads to jail time for the ladies. And Ted and Coach Beard too.
It’s silly, competitive and surprisingly effective as a way of allowing us to become better acquainted with the Greyhounds. More importantly, Ted manages to bring the team together without dusting off Led Tasso, his screaming alter ego from earlier seasons. Instead of intentionally making himself the common enemy, Ted creates a situation where the players naturally discover that they are better together.
The episode also explores an interesting complication that comes with Ted being a man coaching a women’s team. In previous seasons, some of Ted’s most important conversations happened inside Richmond’s locker room. Now there’s a physical and social barrier between Ted and his players that he didn’t have with the men’s team.
It’s a relatively simple problem, but it says a lot about why Ted has struggled to establish the same connection with these players. His greatest strength has always been understanding people, and suddenly he doesn’t have the same access to the little conversations and personal moments that helped him understand his previous team.
That idea is strengthened by the very welcome returns of Trent Crimm and Dr. Sharon Fieldstone.
I especially enjoyed the way the episode bookends the story with Trent’s podcast and uses conversations involving Trent and Sharon to help describe the problems developing within the team. Both characters have always been particularly good at examining Ted from perspectives he can’t, or sometimes refuses to, see himself. Bringing them back doesn’t feel like nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake. They actually help illuminate what Ted and his new Greyhounds are going through.
And it’s simply great seeing them again.
As usual, Mae is a huge bright spot. Annette Badland continues to make even the smallest Mae moments worthwhile, and putting a significant portion of the episode in her territory is never a bad decision.
And then we have Tracey Ullman as Zelda Southport, eccentric millionaire who steadfastly supports woman sports with her wealth. She also makes a point of showcasing her male counterparts short comings when she can. And in this episode, it's with a public stage as she the guest speaker. It's glorious. But it also showcases a rift between Rebecca and Keeley. At first I was afraid this would lead to jealousy or something ridiculous. In true Ted Lasso fashion though, it brings them closer together as they communicate the issues and find common ground. Their relationship has been one of my favorite developments over the course of the whole show. I'm glad it's still a focus.
Lest we forget Roy.
Roy makes his intentions clear to Keeley. He feels like he's waited long enough and grown as a man, so that he would like to revisit the possibility of them dating again. She is not convinced because he hasn't gone out and experienced the dating game enough. He concedes and they come upon an on odd agreement. He'll go on ten dates and complete his journey. In his own perfectly awkward way, Lesley happens to witness the whole discussion and inadvertently becomes the moderator of said agreement. He does not want to be involved.
We also get to see more of Roy's sister Jenni, which is also delightful. She saves the day as Roy continues to have knee issues that ignores. This is perhaps rock bottom though. He's making out with the bartender that called him out for all his odd dates. In mid passionate kiss, Roy falls over when his knee gives out. In a very business like transaction, she leaves him there to get back to work, and he assures her he's fine. Enter Jenni who pulls some strings to get him into see one of her fellow doctors. Long story short, Roy is a pain in the ass. And we love him for it.
Among the newer characters, Katie “Boots” Quinn continues to be my favorite, while Alice Chilton is quickly becoming another standout. Season 4 is still asking us to become attached to an almost entirely new collection of players after spending years with the original Greyhounds, and that was never going to happen overnight. Episodes like this are exactly what the season needs. Rather than simply telling us these players are becoming a team, “Greyhounds’ Day Off” allows us to watch those relationships form.
That’s ultimately why this episode works so well.
Ted Lasso has always been at its best when soccer is the framework rather than the entire story. “Greyhounds’ Day Off” gets Ted and his players away from training, puts them into increasingly ridiculous situations and allows personalities and relationships to emerge naturally.
Between the Pub Quiz battle against the Brians, the exploration of Ted’s difficulties coaching a women’s team, the jail antics and the welcome returns of Trent Crimm and Dr. Sharon, this feels like one of the most complete episodes of Season 4 so far.
Most importantly, I finally feel like I’m starting to know the new Greyhounds rather than simply watching Ted coach them.
And if defeating a pub full of Brians is what it takes to turn them into a team, then Ted Lasso may have found his strangest team-building exercise yet.
Check out the trailer for Season 4 of Ted Lasso:
