We are back! After three long years and what was believed to be a series finale, Apple TV’s biggest show, Ted Lasso, has returned for a fourth campaign. It seemed like our characters had closed a chapter on one journey while gearing up for the next, but wait! Somebody’s got the itch to get back into the action. 

This applies to both our eponymous hero Ted Lasso and to series star/co-showrunner Jason Sudeikis, who jumps back into the fray with a new arrangement on an old theme: Ted must now lead the newly formed Richmond Ladies to victory. 

But first, Rebecca, Keeley and Higgins must actually form the team, and then convince Ted to take the job. The episode opens on Ted operating a supermarket cash register. He’s no longer Henry’s coach, and appears to be paying the bills on an assistant manager’s salary. He does his Ted thing — runs into a man he once coached who confesses Ted saved his life, takes the fall for shoplifting after he notices a co-worker lifting cigarettes — but everyone can tell he’s unfulfilled. His ex-wife (and current friend? Love interest? Unclear after one episode?) Michelle calls him out on it. His mother Dottie, in that unspoken way mothers do, helpfully reminds him how confining life in Kansas (Missouri?!) had often felt to a man whose major story arc was admitting to and treating his anxiety disorder. Even Henry can see that Ted is missing something in his life. 

In swoops the Richmond brain trust, ready to cast a side-eye at strange flyover customs but ultimately embrace them rather than sneer. Rebecca keeps getting barbecue sauce on her clothes. Higgins wants to visit the American Jazz Museum but upon discovery of its closure the week of their trip, visits the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum instead (and has some desperately unfunny “I’m not racist but I keep saying the wrong thing here take my money” banter with an employee). 

Keeley, meanwhile, loves all the loud tackiness of a proper midwestern city, though the three Brits can’t wrap their minds around the constant crossing of the state line while staying in the same metropolis. She remarks that she and Roy are still just good friends back home. Ted, smiling, asks “Does Roy know that?” The seeds are laid for future “will they won’t they but they already did and maybe still are” rapport that Roy and Keeley are bound to have throughout the season. 

Rebecca sees the offer of coaching the women’s team as the next phase in her and Ted’s journey, one that erases the manner of their meeting six  years before. “Last time, I hired you for the wrong reasons. This time, I want to hire you for the right ones.” But Ted, steadfast, refuses, claiming that being with Henry is too important to him, especially after the years lost during his time in London. 

But the itch must be scratched, and a late-night text to Michelle suggesting they all move to London together is met with resounding approval. It’s Henry on Michelle’s phone, but don’t worry, Michelle is down for the move too. Kansas (seriously IS IT MISSOURI?!) hasn’t felt like home for Ted in awhile. Time to go back to the home he found in England. 

The episode is very much a Ted Lasso episode, for good and for ill. The season 4 premiere crystallizes what is so frequently maddening about this show. So laser-focused have Sudeikis and fellow showrunners Brendan Hunt and Joe Kelly been about having their characters find some measure of emotional self-acceptance that it drains the show of conflict nearly from the moment it arises. Michelle may have decided not to get engaged to her boyfriend toward the end of season 3, but is there any reason why she would want to move over 4,000 miles because her ex-husband suggested it? Perhaps there is more to Ted’s and Michelle’s dynamic than we may realize, but it once again feels like a convenient storytelling device to ensure that our hero gets what he wants but he (and nobody else) doesn’t have to be the bad guy. Woof. 

But that is for next week. Much more awaits us, as Ted will soon be reunited with Roy, Beard, and a great many more of the motley crew that populated the series’ first edition. 

GAME NOTES

• The woman leading the gang around CPKC Stadium is right: it is the first-ever soccer stadium purpose-built solely for a women’s team in the entire world. The 11,500-capacity venue sells out every single home game, and the footage captured by director Declan Lowney is representative of the vibes at an average Kansas City Current game.

• That guy we briefly see with the long sparkly beard, covered in teal face paint? That’s Teal Man. He’s a whole vibe.

• My day job is as the host of a women’s soccer podcast, so forgive my indulgence in a nitpick or two: Higgins’s concern over the financial constraints that a women’s team might put on the club as a whole is poppycock. In reality, very few English clubs actually spent real money on salary, staff, or infrastructure for their women’s teams, and those that do spend but a drop in the bucket compared to the money set alight on the men’s side of things. In fact, in the case of F.C. Barcelona in Spain, the consequences of the club’s financial malfeasance were passed on to the women, despite their having nothing to do with it. Barcelona women recently saw a mass exodus of their best players as a result, and without any money to replenish the squad. As usual, it’s women who pay the price for men’s misdeeds. Here’s hoping that Higgins’ misdirected concern doesn’t become a prevailing theme of the season. 

Evan Davis is a contributing writer to Decider. He hosts Expected Own Goals, a podcast about women’s soccer.