‘Ted Lasso’: Led Tasso Makes His Richmond Debut & Sam Takes a Stand (RECAP)
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Be a Goldfish, Sam
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[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Ted Lasso Season 2 Episode 3, “Do The Right-est Thing.”]
First, there was Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde… and now there’s Ted Lasso (Jason Sudeikis) and Led Tasso.
When the team bristles at Jamie Tartt’s (Phil Dunster) presence, Ted decides to give ‘em a common enemy in hopes of changing their minds about their much-humbled teammate — and thus, “Led Tasso” travels to England to set them straight. Meanwhile, Sam Obisanya (Toheeb Jimoh) gets a sports-activism storyline that’s in line with today’s headlines.
No one’s particularly pleased that Jamie Tartt’s back on the team, and for good reason. The players haven’t forgotten how he made their lives a living hell, and now that Jamie genuinely wants to be a good teammate, they’ve continued nursing grudges against him. That’s understandable: After all, he did get them relegated. And the list of grievances doesn’t end there. He also flirted with their mothers, called them “jaundiced worms” and cupped farts and threw them in their faces (which sounds more poetic in French).
Jamie’s solution to this, as he tells one of his only allies, Ted, is to buy the team PlayStation 5s. But Ted, reluctant to allow Jamie to buy affection, brings out “that guy” — “that guy,” of course, being Led Tasso. Led is the polar opposite of Ted: He’s cranky, harsh, and brutal. The team hates him, but he doesn’t quite serve his purpose. It’ll take more than a common enemy in Led Tasso to get the Richmond players to like, or even grudgingly tolerate, Jamie again. (The fans, on the other hand, are back to gleefully singing “Jamie Tart, do-doo-do-doo-do-doo!”)
Meanwhile, Sam and Rebecca’s (Hannah Waddingham) storylines intertwine. At Keely’s (Juno Temple) behest, Sam’s done an ad campaign with the team’s sponsor, Dubai Air. At first, he’s overjoyed to have had the opportunity… and then he finds out from his deeply disappointed father that Dubai Air’s parent company is responsible for polluting along the Niger Delta.
Apple TV+
Sam, disgusted with the company and with himself for not knowing about what happened, asks to be let out of the campaign. This puts Rebecca (and her teenage niece, Nora, who is staying with her for the weekend) in the uncomfortable position of having to break that to Dubai Air’s owner, who was a good friend of her ex-husband’s. The guy asks her to cut Sam from the team, which she doesn’t want to do; ultimately, at Nora’s urging, she tells him off and says they both refuse to do the campaign and refuse to cut Sam from the roster.
But that’s not all! Sam also decides to protest Dubai Air by placing black tape over the organization’s logo on his jersey. The rest of the team joins in, and when they take the pitch for their latest match, all of their jerseys have the Dubai Air logo covered. “This could be a problem,” Higgins (Jeremy Swift) observes, and that seems to be the case: The company’s owner calls Rebecca, but she sends him straight to voicemail.
Apple TV+
Well, Richmond breaks its tying streak — they lose. But that’s not what anyone’s going to be talking about after the match. Ted brings Sam to his post-game press conference, where he’s to field questions about the protest. He openly accuses the Nigerian government of corruption, which is bound to make a few headlines…
…but back in the team locker room, everyone’s celebrating. Why? No more ties! Jamie hands Sam a beer and tells him what he did was extraordinary, and it’s clear he means it, too, which wipes away the bad blood between them. All’s well as the team poses for pictures with Nora and her mom, but between the (presumably) lost sponsor and the lost game, it seems a storm is coming for Richmond… It’s just a question of when the trouble begins.
Ted Lasso, Fridays, Apple TV+
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