A review of this week's Ted Lasso, "Riches of Embarrassment" — with spoilers — coming up just as soon as 22 young women buy my jeans for me...
Alan Sepinwall
As has been the case for most of this season, there's some compelling stuff involving the team — albeit in a subplot that isn't quite where it wants to be in its key moment — surrounded by an extremely mixed bag full of subplots. And those subplots once again make Keeley into a child and Rebecca into a buffoon. When you couple that with Ted taking a very heavy-handed approach with Alice — even if Alice's behavior merited some kind of response — it's another instance of what's been a weird season so far for the female characters on Ted Lasso, given the desire to focus on and celebrate women in sports.
We already knew from the open tryouts episode that Alice as a player was tough to be around, and used way too much negative reinforcement on teammates like Gemma. Here, we see this in action, and also see that it springs out of her deep insecurities. When the players buy Ted a pair of jeans in the hope of kickstarting his post-divorce love life, Alice starts to disassociate, clearly envious that they care a lot about Ted while not showing much interest in her. It's shortly after this when she starts being too much of a hardass, scolding Shannon to "stop playing like you know you don't belong on this team," and forcing everyone to run laps when Gemma stands up for Shannon.