Warning: This article contains spoilers for Ted Lasso season 3, episode 11.
Although it was a pun on Richmond’s opponents in this week’s episode of Ted Lasso, “Mom City” was very much about the impact of mothers in a show that, up until now, has — for the most part — focused on dads.
Perhaps it’s because it’s a series about a male sports team, but until this point, the only person in Ted Lasso we’ve really seen have issues stemming from their relationship with their mother is Rebecca. Everything else has been dad-based, whether it’s Nate’s issues with never feeling good enough thanks to his demanding father (somewhat resolved in last week’s episode), Jamie’s rocky relationship with his dad (a large part of this week’s plot), or Ted’s father’s suicide hanging over the entire show. There’s also been a lot of dad-adjacent relationships, whether it’s Roy, Jamie, and their burgeoning bromance, Roy and his niece Phoebe, or Ted and Nate.
Ted Lasso being about dads isn’t an accident, either. As Trent Crimm actor James Lance said in an interview with Vulture, even the characters we don’t know the backstory of have daddy issues:
“I said to him that I felt the reason Trent was the way he was has to do with his father. He had a dad who really wanted him to be a manly man and be sporty, but Trent wasn’t that guy. So, he hit the library and donned intellect as his shield and armor. Jason was looking at me sort of mystified, and he said, ‘Hey, I’m going to tell you something. This whole show is about bad dads.’ And I said, ‘Really?’ And he said, ‘Yeah. The reason Ted is the way he is is because his father committed suicide and he decided to embrace life and adopt that positive attitude.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, wow. Well, this is really resonating with Trent as well.'”
At the beginning of the season, we also saw Crimm butting heads with Roy, which was revealed to be because of a negative article the journalist had written about the rising player back in the ’90s. This also ties in with the dad issue (the writers of Ted Lasso love a callback), according to Lance:
“As a younger man, Trent wanted to be Roy Kent because Roy was everything Trent’s father wanted him to be. That’s partly why Trent does the takedown article for Roy’s debut on the pitch, because he’s lashing out and trying to minimize the idea of Roy. That was an interesting place to come into it.”
However, “Mom City” bucked the trend by introducing us to Ted’s mother and Jamie’s mom, both of whom gave us a great insight into why the two men are the people they are (after all, despite what some are complaining about, it is a character-driven show). Dotty Lasso was upbeat and jokey, always trying to see the best in people and things, even if it meant she went a bit overboard at times. And, in an emotional scene near the end of the episode, she and Ted have a truth bomb showdown, where Ted expresses his anger at Dotty’s inability to talk about his father’s suicide, and she reminds him he had a son at home in America. Heavy stuff to dive into right after 45 minutes of classic (terrible) Lasso puns between the pair, but very real and quite cathartic for viewers, who could sense the tension simmering under the surface the second the Lasso matriarch appeared.
Jamie’s relationship with his mother was shown as a lot more positive, if not slightly childish. He begins the episode with a bout of heavy anxiety at returning to Manchester to face his old club, especially with the thought his villainous dad would be in the stands. However, after escaping from the team hotel, we see him wander through Manchester to end up back at his childhood home, where he’s greeted like a returning hero. After an open and honest chat with his mom, he gets the love he needed to bring him out of his hole, contrasting the way we’ve seen him be around his father in previous episodes. This, plus a classic Lasso pep talk, helps him to put forward a star-like performance the next day, earning the appreciation of the fans he once played for.
So, we got to see both the nurturing and the devastating, which makes it a classic Ted Lasso episode, even if it was about moms and not dads. And, like parents with their kids, we’ll be sad to see the show depart from our lives after this season is over.