[This story contains spoilers for “La Locker Room Aux Folles,” the ninth episode of Ted Lasso season three.]
After several nearly hour-long installments, Ted Lasso comes in at a comparatively lean 44 minutes for “La Locker Room Aux Folles,” which despite its title and the opening and closing tunes on the soundtrack, is definitely not a farce about an elaborate attempt by anyone at Richmond to hide their true nature.
It does, however, bring some resolution to Colin’s (Billy Harris) coming out story and takes a big step in positioning Roy (Brett Goldstein) to become Richmond’s next manager if Ted (Jason Sudeikis) ends up heading back to Kansas at season’s end (and, of course, the even larger if of Apple TV+ continuing its biggest show even if its title character isn’t there anymore).
Written by Chuck Hayward — who, Harris noted to THR, has had a key role in shaping Colin’s story this season — and directed by Erica Dunton, “La Locker Room Aux Folles” picks up Colin’s thread from the previous episode, which saw team captain Isaac (Kola Bokinni) discover that Colin is gay by snatching his phone to ensure Colin was deleting pictures from his phone as ordered. Since then, Isaac has barely spoken to Colin and even refuses to touch hands in a pre-match huddle.
It gets worse on the pitch, when a poor play by Colin leads to both a Brighton & Hove Albion goal and Isaac blowing up at his teammate. As they walk off at halftime, a heckler — the same a-hole seen berating Richmond players in earlier episodes — uses a homophobic slur and Isaac charges into the stands to confront him, earning a red card.
In the locker room, Isaac goes off again, shouting, “What if one of us is gay?! We shouldn’t have to deal with this shit!” before stomping out. The team then begins speculating that Isaac is talking about himself, until Colin steps in to reveal what the captain was actually talking about …
But rather than linger on Colin, the scene cuts to Roy talking — in a measured, compassionate way — about the incident: “I don’t know what happened out there, but I do know that whatever it was isn’t what you’re really angry about, is it?” And if Isaac doesn’t deal with it, “you’re going to fuck up whatever it is you actually do care about.”
Back in the dressing room, Colin has told the team he’s gay, and his “We cool?” is met with well-meaning but oversold “Of course!” and “We don’t care!” sentiments — and an extremely tortured analogy from Ted about how he abandoned his buddy who was a Denver Broncos fan (a grievous sin in the Kansas City area) during Denver’s late-’90s Super Bowl runs. To the show’s credit, Colin calls him out — “Did you just compare being gay to being a Denver Broncos fan?” — and Ted finally gets to the point: “We don’t not care. We care very much. We care about who you are and what you must have been going through. And from now on, you don’t have to go through it by yourself.”
The episode ends with Isaac going to Colin’s house and explaining it was his sense of broken trust that hurt him. “I was 99 percent sure you’d support me,” Colin says, “but the 1 percent chance that you wouldn’t scared the shit out of me.” They end the episode playing FIFA and chatting. Colin tells Isaac he loves him, then “You can’t say it, can you?” “No,” Isaac replies. “But you know I do, yeah?”
Isaac’s arriving at Colin’s doorstep is clearly a product of his conversation with Roy, who himself is spurred to action earlier in the episode thanks to Rebecca. He blows off a midweek press conference that Ted can’t attend, despite Rebecca specifically asking him to do it. (It does lead to the episode’s best bit of pure comedy, with Beard (Brendan Hunt) getting into a war of words with the assembled reporters over the merits of a few classic-rock guitarists.)
Rebecca rightly rips him a new one, wondering if he’ll just go through life quitting things if they become difficult — and talking as much about Keeley (Juno Temple), though not saying her name, as about anything related to the club. “What do you want, Roy? What do you really want?” she asks him. “I just wanna be left alone,” he says.
“Oh, bullshit, Roy,” she replies. “You want way more than that. You’re just so convinced you don’t deserve anything good in your life that you’d rather eat a bowl of shit soup and then complain about the portions. Get out of your own way, man — this whole woe-is-me thing you’ve got going on is just fucking ponderous.”
Roy shedding his hard-man persona has been an ongoing theme throughout the series, but especially so this season, even as he’s botched all his tentative attempts to become part of Keeley’s world again. Making Ted-style puns a couple of episodes back might have felt a little too out of character, but Goldstein has played the other aspects of Roy’s transformation so well that it doesn’t feel like Rebecca going at him is a light bulb going on above his head, but just the latest push for Roy to step up to the notion that just being an ex-footballer won’t get him where he really wants to go.
(Incidentally, Roy’s opening up also contributes to the second best comedy moment of the episode: Coach Beard mock-fainting after Roy tells the team “great job” at the end of a training session.)
Roy’s evolution seems a key part (the key part?) of Ted Lasso’s endgame for this season, regardless of whether the show closes out for good after three more episodes. Richmond has at least 48 points on the season, based on evidence seen in the show, which means they’re probably somewhere in the middle of the Premier League table and in no danger of being relegated. Ted seems to be leaning ever more toward returning home, knowing he’s left the club in a good place. Nate (Nick Mohammed), girlfriend and good decisions about not doing a “guys night” with Rupert (Anthony Head) aside, has probably burned too many bridges in Richmond to land the head job should Ted in fact depart.
Which would leave Roy, who already has the players’ respect and has shown he can be open to less rigid ideas about how to play the game. If Ted Lasso morphs into Richmond Till I Die or whatever, Roy Kent could well be the manager-trying-to-become-a-better-man leading the way.
Source: Hollywood
