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Review: Ted Lasso S04E05 "Riches of Embarrassment" - Mid-season Crisis Moments Abound
September 2, 2026 - Lassoism.com Editor
Away then, lassies. Come on. (Ted Lasso/Warner Media)
The episode, which arrived on Apple TV on September 2, 2026, finds the Lady Greyhounds facing Chelsea in their first televised FA Cup match at Nelson Road. It also puts assistant coach Alice Chilton under pressure and forces Rebecca Welton to confront a complicated relationship. At the halfway mark of a 10-episode season, the story leans into the official logline's idea of leaping before looking—and paying the emotional price.
The football storyline is the episode's most straightforward and often most satisfying strand. Chelsea are the clear favorites. Richmond go 2-0 down in the first half. Alice berates the players at the break. Ted then takes the room with a speech that turns on the episode's title: embarrassment, he argues, is a useless emotion. What matters is trying. He talks about the viral photo of himself eating a hot dog alone, his divorce, his son, and the fact that he is ready to date again. The team responds, tying the game in the second half with help from Gemma and a trick play before Chelsea snatch a late winner for a 3-2 result. Richmond are out of the cup, but they look like a side that belongs.
Ted's talk works because it feels earned rather than imported from Season 1. He does not pretend the scoreline is fine. He simply refuses to let shame freeze the next action. That philosophy then collides with Alice. Her demanding style has been a useful counterweight to Ted's optimism, but here it tips into public humiliation of players. After the match Ted suspends her for the next game—the last before the Christmas break—explicitly drawing on the warning signs he once missed with Nate. It is one of the season's clearest signs that this version of Ted is willing to draw a line rather than wait for kindness to fix everything. Tanya Reynolds plays Alice's mix of competence, insecurity, and rigidity well; the character finally feels like more than a foil.
Off the pitch the episode lives up to its New York Times recap headline: pursued become pursuers, and almost everyone ends up unhappy. Two players, Margy and Mady, spot lonely Ted with his hot dog, decide they do not want that fate, and get back together. Almost every other pairing moves in the opposite direction.
Rebecca's Dutch boyfriend Matthijs arrives with his daughter and announces he has taken a Virgin Atlantic job in London so they can be together. The catch, which Jelka lets slip, is that his ex-wife (and co-parent) is also moving to London for work. Rebecca's initial delight curdles into conflicted nausea; the next morning she tells him they should have discussed the move, and they go on a break. Hannah Waddingham makes the shift from sparkle to quiet devastation look effortless. Later, a vodka-fueled Rebecca and Keeley watch "Bridesmaids" and commiserate. Drunk Rebecca remaining an icon is one of the episode's small pleasures.
Keeley learns that Roy has completed his mandated ten dates—and that several of the later ones were with the same woman, his orthopedist. The will-they-won't-they plot gets another obstacle instead of a payoff. Coach Beard attends Jane's one-woman show "What Ever Happened to the Baby, Jane?", a chaotic, semi-autobiographical piece that confirms she was never pregnant. He confronts her backstage, they still make out, and he has to smash his forehead into a mirror to stop himself going further. The Jane story remains the season's most uneven thread: sometimes raw, sometimes cartoonish. Ted, meanwhile, chats with Jane's stage manager (Charlotte Riley), planting a possible new romance.
The episode's best scenes still belong to the team and to Ted's particular brand of sincerity. The hot-dog photo becoming locker-room conversation, the BBQ metaphor that does not land with Alice, and the second-half rally all feel like "Ted Lasso" doing what it does best: treating sports as a vehicle for people figuring themselves out. Keeley's glass-ceiling promo and the half-full stadium quietly nod at the real-world challenges of growing a women's team without turning the hour into a lecture.
The weaker stretches come from trying to service too many relationships at once. Rebecca's conflict with Matthijs can feel slightly manufactured. The Beard-Jane detour swings from trauma to farce. At the midpoint, some of the personal plots still feel like they are competing with the more compelling work of actually getting to know the Lady Greyhounds beyond a handful of standouts. Critics have been mixed on exactly this point: some praise the pitch-side progress and Ted's growth; others worry the season is spreading itself thin or slipping back into old habits. Early episode scores on Rotten Tomatoes sit in a similar "generally favorable but not rapturous" range as the season overall.
"Riches of Embarrassment" is not the sharpest hour of the revival, but it is one of the more recognizably "Ted Lasso" ones. It gives the new team a proper test, lets Ted act like a boss as well as a cheerleader, and leaves several characters sitting with the uncomfortable gap between what they wanted and what they got. That is a useful place for a mid-season episode to land. The next match, Alice's return (or not), and whether anyone actually leaps will tell us whether the second half of Season 4 can turn those embarrassments into something richer.
Our ranking: 7.5/10
A David-and-Goliath night, then a reckoning
The football storyline is the episode's most straightforward and often most satisfying strand. Chelsea are the clear favorites. Richmond go 2-0 down in the first half. Alice berates the players at the break. Ted then takes the room with a speech that turns on the episode's title: embarrassment, he argues, is a useless emotion. What matters is trying. He talks about the viral photo of himself eating a hot dog alone, his divorce, his son, and the fact that he is ready to date again. The team responds, tying the game in the second half with help from Gemma and a trick play before Chelsea snatch a late winner for a 3-2 result. Richmond are out of the cup, but they look like a side that belongs.
Ted's talk works because it feels earned rather than imported from Season 1. He does not pretend the scoreline is fine. He simply refuses to let shame freeze the next action. That philosophy then collides with Alice. Her demanding style has been a useful counterweight to Ted's optimism, but here it tips into public humiliation of players. After the match Ted suspends her for the next game—the last before the Christmas break—explicitly drawing on the warning signs he once missed with Nate. It is one of the season's clearest signs that this version of Ted is willing to draw a line rather than wait for kindness to fix everything. Tanya Reynolds plays Alice's mix of competence, insecurity, and rigidity well; the character finally feels like more than a foil.
Romantic reversals everywhere
Off the pitch the episode lives up to its New York Times recap headline: pursued become pursuers, and almost everyone ends up unhappy. Two players, Margy and Mady, spot lonely Ted with his hot dog, decide they do not want that fate, and get back together. Almost every other pairing moves in the opposite direction.
Rebecca's Dutch boyfriend Matthijs arrives with his daughter and announces he has taken a Virgin Atlantic job in London so they can be together. The catch, which Jelka lets slip, is that his ex-wife (and co-parent) is also moving to London for work. Rebecca's initial delight curdles into conflicted nausea; the next morning she tells him they should have discussed the move, and they go on a break. Hannah Waddingham makes the shift from sparkle to quiet devastation look effortless. Later, a vodka-fueled Rebecca and Keeley watch "Bridesmaids" and commiserate. Drunk Rebecca remaining an icon is one of the episode's small pleasures.
Keeley learns that Roy has completed his mandated ten dates—and that several of the later ones were with the same woman, his orthopedist. The will-they-won't-they plot gets another obstacle instead of a payoff. Coach Beard attends Jane's one-woman show "What Ever Happened to the Baby, Jane?", a chaotic, semi-autobiographical piece that confirms she was never pregnant. He confronts her backstage, they still make out, and he has to smash his forehead into a mirror to stop himself going further. The Jane story remains the season's most uneven thread: sometimes raw, sometimes cartoonish. Ted, meanwhile, chats with Jane's stage manager (Charlotte Riley), planting a possible new romance.
What works and what feels crowded
The episode's best scenes still belong to the team and to Ted's particular brand of sincerity. The hot-dog photo becoming locker-room conversation, the BBQ metaphor that does not land with Alice, and the second-half rally all feel like "Ted Lasso" doing what it does best: treating sports as a vehicle for people figuring themselves out. Keeley's glass-ceiling promo and the half-full stadium quietly nod at the real-world challenges of growing a women's team without turning the hour into a lecture.
The weaker stretches come from trying to service too many relationships at once. Rebecca's conflict with Matthijs can feel slightly manufactured. The Beard-Jane detour swings from trauma to farce. At the midpoint, some of the personal plots still feel like they are competing with the more compelling work of actually getting to know the Lady Greyhounds beyond a handful of standouts. Critics have been mixed on exactly this point: some praise the pitch-side progress and Ted's growth; others worry the season is spreading itself thin or slipping back into old habits. Early episode scores on Rotten Tomatoes sit in a similar "generally favorable but not rapturous" range as the season overall.
"Riches of Embarrassment" is not the sharpest hour of the revival, but it is one of the more recognizably "Ted Lasso" ones. It gives the new team a proper test, lets Ted act like a boss as well as a cheerleader, and leaves several characters sitting with the uncomfortable gap between what they wanted and what they got. That is a useful place for a mid-season episode to land. The next match, Alice's return (or not), and whether anyone actually leaps will tell us whether the second half of Season 4 can turn those embarrassments into something richer.
Our ranking: 7.5/10