Throughout the Ted Lasso episode "Beard After Hours," Coach Beard (Brendan Hunt) is repeatedly visited by visions of footballers Gary Lineker and Thierry Henry. No matter where Beard goes on his sprawling late-night crawl through London, the two are on the sidelines commentating on the troubled assistant coach's actions. However, just who Lineker and Henry are and why they keep appearing isn't readily apparent.
The episode opens following AFC Richmond's humiliating loss to the mighty Manchester United. Ted Lasso's (Jason Sudeikis) coaching staff is reeling but no one takes it harder than the competitive Beard. He tells Lasso, "I don't want to ride back with you guys. I want to shake this off." The redheaded assistant ambles home to drink and flips on the TV to find Lineker and Thierry discussing the match. Their commentary begins innocuously criticizing the team's play with Thierry saying, "It just felt like Richmond had no plan" but it soon becomes surprisingly personal and pointed at Beard.
For soccer fans, this is a treat. Gary Lineker and Thierry Henry are legendary strikers turned popular commentators with impressive credentials. Lineker's the only player to be the top scorer for three English clubs and Henry was a three-time FWA Footballer of the Year. These bona fide legends are why Beard keeps seeing them. Coach Beard, a previously underused character, feels like a failure as a man and coach which leads to imagined judgment from legitimate footballers. At his rock bottom, he turns the voices in his head into those he admires making it harder to ignore.
The criticism from Lineker and Henry is a surprise as commentators typically don't remark upon assistant coaches. However, it becomes doubly surprising when they dish putdowns like Lineker's, "Does anything say 'sad, single man' more than a chessboard coffee table?" and Henry's, "I know I'm French and expected to say things like this but I hate Coach Beard." Clearly, Beard has a lot on his mind, and by having these two literally speak his thoughts aloud, the audience is given a clearer picture of how he takes the blame for a loss as well as his personal failings.
Later, in the wild, choose-your-own adventure-like night that sees Ted Lasso's season 2 episode 9 homage to Martin Scorsese, Lineker and Henry are there to point out Beard's flaws to Beard when he gets in a fight in an alleyway. Lineker zings, "Well, it looks like Beard's done for, doesn't it?" Thierry adds, "Part of me thinks Beard really wanted to get beat up tonight." Then, Lineker gets to his core with, "Clearly he'd rather punish himself than accept the love and support of the people around him." Finally, Henry gets to him one last time saying, "I'm beginning to think Coach Beard hates himself." The insults are no longer playful; they're downright sinister. To combat this, Coach Beard replies, "Shut up Thierry Henry."
With that, he quiets the voices in his head, wins the fight, goes to church, and finally, heads to the club his on-again-off-again girlfriend Jane (Phoebe Walsh) invited him to earlier that night wrapping a bow on the Coach Beard episode, which some fans don't like. He's made the right move; all he needed to do was shut the announcers off. While dancing, he sees Lineker and Henry sitting at the bar. They've finally gotten through to him and approve. The two raise a glass to Beard. As always, on the uplifting Ted Lasso, joy wins over negativity and self-doubt even if it's a tough pill to swallow. In this case, Lineker and Henry didn't make it easy but their pointed criticism got the guarded Beard to let go.
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September 22, 2021 at 12:35AM