Review: Ted Lasso, "Richmond's Got Talent" | Season 4, Episode 3

As I’m writing this, The Hollywood Reporter has published the first glossy profile of the return of Ted Lasso. There are interesting insights throughout, but the central narrative for me is the introduction of showrunner Jack Burditt, and the requisite revisiting of former showrunner Bill Lawrence’s exit from the show after the second season.

It’s been easy in retrospect to blame the creative issues in the third season on Lawrence’s absence, although as you may recall I had similar issues with season two. But the show’s descent into its worst instincts can be easily attributed to Sudeikis’ sole control of the creative process. Lacey Rose goes into some of the logistical issues—overbudget, over time, multiple delays—created by Sudeikis’ lack of showrunning experience, but there’s no space in a glossy profile for the fact that the end result simply didn’t hold up. The Keeley story was a disaster, Rebecca’s wasn’t much better, and everything about Nate’s redemption arc was a mess. It’s just a bad season of television, even if the core philosophy of the show remained intact.

This is why the details in the story regarding Burditt and Lawrence were so interesting to me. Sudeikis claims that he and Lawrence “never yelled at one another,” and so it wasn’t as though things blew up into a massive fight. But given that Lawrence called Burditt to warn him about working with Sudeikis and predicted a need for ongoing advice, it’s clear that Lawrence’s way of working was incompatible with how Sudeikis’ own creative process worked. Lawrence is certainly collaborative—almost all of his shows have co-creators—but what seems clear is that Sudeikis didn’t really want a co-creator. He wanted someone who would keep the show on the rails while he executed his creative vision, and that isn’t a task Lawrence wanted to take on.

What Sudeikis wanted was what the industry refers to as a “showrunner-for-hire,” and the reason Burditt never had to call Lawrence again is that he’s used to it. Since playing a more formative part in the development of 30 Rock, Burditt has made his living taking over the later seasons of Modern Family and more recently steading the ship on the first season of Nobody Wants This. I was reminded of a conversation I had with showrunner John Wirth thirteen years ago. At the time, he was working as the showrunner for Hell on Wheels on AMC, but he’s since served as showrunner for Hap & Leonard, Wu Assassins, and Dark Winds, despite none of them originating as his own idea (though he has a creator credit on Wu Assassins). He’s made a career out of being able to combine the creative and managerial skills the job requires, especially in circumstances where a creative force within the production lacks those same skills.

I offer this preamble because early in its fourth season Ted Lasso feels on much more solid footing than it did at any point in its third season, and I think it’s fair to attribute this to Burditt’s influence. I’d also argue that part of why he never had to go back to Lawrence is that the show’s soft reboot has made this process easier than what Lawrence would have been dealing with back in season two. You’re not trying to rein in Sudeikis’ increasingly sprawling cast of characters; you’re introducing new ones, creating a foundation for a show that…might eventually become ungainly, but we don’t have to get ahead of ourselves.