Ted Lasso Recap: Take a Knee

Ted Lasso
Don’t Jump Around Much Anymore
Season 4 Episode 6
Editor’s Rating ★★★
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Happy New Year, everyone! Ted Lasso’s a bit early to the celebrations this year (although technically it’s a bit late since an earlier episode established that this season began in the year 2025). But it feels kind of fitting to watch this episode out of season since it’s a relatively low-key — and for some, kind of downbeat — night. Or at least as low-key as any night that includes a masked woman on ketamine (probably) firing a gun into the air.

“Don’t Jump Around Much Anymore,” which gets extra credit for the season’s best title for reasons that don’t become clear until later, opens on a quiet night at the Crown and Anchor where Henry is learning the ropes of pub life from Mae. He’s there with his parents, even though Michelle seems a bit puzzled as to why he’s not hanging out with his team. This gives the friendly exes time to catch up. Michelle shares that her book on Mark Twain is going well, then again questions why Ted is here rather than with the team. He is, they determine together, “adrift,” partly because of the overwhelming assignment and partly because he’s not sure he did the right thing by suspending Alice. Michelle, however, suspects he’s overthinking things. 

At the party on Zelda’s boat, a luxurious vessel whose guests include several politicians whose reputations have dipped since their time in power, the team doesn’t seem to care too much that Ted’s not with them. Instead, they’re wondering if Alice, who’s due to come back from her suspension soon, will show. They naturally have mixed feelings about this, though perhaps not as mixed as Alice might assume. They don’t really have time to talk this over before Lily arrives to drag them away and show her off to the guests. These include Hugo Riddles (Alex Blake), Tracy’s hated enemy/best friend, who flirts shamelessly with Higgins’ wife Julie (Mary Roscoe) in front of him. His striking new seasickness glasses can’t hide his discomfort. 

Inside the boat, Boots expresses concern that they could have walked into an “Eyes Wide Shut situation” while Liz, who’s never been anywhere so fancy in her life and doesn’t expect she ever will be again, freely samples the cheese plate while filling her purse with ham for later. (This season hasn’t made class a front-and-center issue, but moments like this serve as reminders that many of the show’s characters come from different circumstances.) While Liz loads up, Beard gets a warm greeting when he arrives decked to the nines, but the question remains: “Is Alice coming?”

The party has other notable absences, too, though they start the night thinking they’ll simply be arriving later than the others. Rebecca and Keeley have decided to begin the evening in a club decked out in a Garden of Eden theme, complete with models offering shots of what will soon be revealed as a new variety of vodka with hands painted like snakes that the pair knock back, despite Rebecca noting that it “Looks like the color of soap in my gym.” Neither has left their romantic troubles at the door. Rebecca is worked up because Matthjis is seemingly ghosting her, and Keeley becomes instantly flustered by the unexpected arrival of (an unexpectedly unaccompanied) Roy. Roy soon makes it clear why he’s there, saying, “I’m here to watch a man make an absolute tit of himself.” And, honestly, that’s probably why they’re all there: Jamie (Phil Dunster) is in town to launch Apple Tartt Vodka. 

Is Alice coming? Yes, if she can find the right outfit. At home with her previously unseen partner Camille (Rebekah Murrell), Alice has seemingly landed on a nice green dress. As Camille notes, she’s stressed, but it’s a different variety of stress than we’ve seen before. At home she’s far more relaxed than we’ve seen her be on the job. She smiles and jokes more easily and, in Camille, she seems to have found someone who gets her and accepts her quirks. It looks like they have a good thing going on, even if Camille refuses to accompany Alice to the party, offering the excuse that she needs to do this on her own and not rely on Camille’s charm to get her through the night.

At the Apple Tartt launch party, Jamie catches up with Rebecca, Roy, and Keeley, telling them about his “tapas and napas”-filled life in Barcelona, which he’s enjoying, even though he misses his London friends. But did they miss him? Roy claims not to, saying that if anything it’s a relief that Jamie’s not there anymore, but he doesn’t do much to hide that he’s not telling the truth. Roy, who has “other plans,” is the first to break up the party, but the siren song of House of Pain’s “Jump Around” lures him back to the dance floor to join Jamie in, well, jumping around. Bad idea: the song’s barely begun before Roy hits the floor in pain thanks to his bum knee. He instantly regrets jumping around but, as Jamie points out, he really had no choice. He’s hospital-bound, with Jamie serving as his first mode of transport. Soon he’s on “the good stuff” at the hospital where Keeley meets Erin and is shocked to discover that (a) a woman that gorgeous could also be a gifted doctor and (b) this gorgeous, gifted doctor is Roy’s girlfriend. 

As Alice arrives, the team starts to make jokes about her until Gemma, of all people, rushes to her defense. Alice and the team are just getting past their initial awkwardness when Zelda arrives with Hugo to offer effusive praise (especially for Gemma) while ignoring Alice and bragging about Ted and Beard, never mind her past statements about the importance of women’s sports and of women standing up for themselves. After Alice slinks off, Gemma goes to comfort her, and they take steps to sort out their old differences. Alice apologizes for her past behavior as “an arsehole,” and Gemma assures her that the team doesn’t hate her; they’re just “figuring her out.” It’s a nice moment that later developments seem to undo. 

At the hospital, Keeley has worked herself into an agitated state thinking about Erin while Rebecca, missing Matthjis and assuming she’s screwed it up for good, pours her heart out to Jamie. Jamie replies with a surprisingly apt comparison of her situation and the perfectionism that led to him looking like “an Adam with a squashed face” on his vodka label, then closes with a quote from the famous French philosopher “Voltron” about perfect being the enemy of good. While this unfolds, Zelda announces to the party that Rebecca won’t be joining them before declaring it was time to take the party “to the next level,” a development that involves carnival masks and a blindfolded accordionist. Boots was right, and the Eyes Wide Shut vibes prompt the team to make an exit (after nabbing some champagne bottles).

Up in Ted’s apartment, Ted and Michelle continue their heart-to-heart. Ted reveals that he hasn’t dated anyone but also that he might want to date someone, specifically the stage manager whose name he still does not know. But he only admits this after Michelle sets Ted straight about her relationship with Dr. Jacob, which wasn’t the breach of ethics he thought it was. She pursued her former therapist. It wasn’t the other way around. And also she was sad and lonely in ways she’d never before fully expressed to Ted. It’s the sort of conversation that’s only possible once people have fully worked through their troubled past.

On the boat, another small drama plays out after Beard meets Zelda’s charming young friend Claudine (Sophie Simnett), whom she introduces as a kind of multi-purpose acquaintance who tends to her well-being. They instantly start to bond over Beard’s Burning Man experiences, hit the dance floor, then get cuddlesome as midnight approaches. But when Beard goes in for a kiss, it turns out he’s misread the situation. Claudine does really like him, but not that way. And she’s blunt about the reason: he’s “old.” Beard takes it in stride, but he’s clearly unsettled, less by the rejection than the “factually accurate” reason behind it.

As midnight approaches, both Keeley and Rebecca’s romantic issues take turns, and not in the same direction. With Erin elsewhere, Keeley swoops into Roy’s room to share a phone call from his sister Jenni. When Erin returns, however, she takes off, only to linger outside where she overhears Roy delivering a beautifully phrased, if chemically impaired, profession of love to Erin. But she leaves for a lonely cab ride home before hearing Roy mistakenly (?) say the name “Keeley.” Then Matthjis shows up. He’s been ghosting Rebecca because he wanted to surprise her by showing up in London unexpectedly. They embrace, with some help from Jamie, and all seems well. 

Having left the boat (thus missing Zelda’s firearm-assisted midnight celebration), the team heads to the Crown and Anchor, where they brush up against the rival, all-male, not-too-enlightened-seeming rival trivia team with whom they got into a fight a few weeks back. It looks like there’s going to be a rematch until the men reveal themselves as newly converted fans of the Lady Greyhounds. In an instant they’re friends. But they’re all still technically banned from the pub until midnight; Mae sends them out to the green. The celebration quickly resumes outside where they’re joined by Ted. Then the celebration hits a sour note when Liz assures Alice that the team doesn’t hate her. In fact, they really like her. It’s a nice sentiment, but it also makes Alice realize that Gemma has been talking to the others about her insecurities. Maybe the new year isn’t going to begin on such a high note after all. Or maybe it will for some. Up in the apartment, Ted finds that Michelle has used Henry’s construction paper to make him a replacement “Believe” sign. 

Despite some strong comic highlights — among them Liz’s party behavior, Jamie and Roy’s dancing, and a nice bit of silent comedy between Hannah Waddingham and Phil Dunster as Rebecca and Jamie jokingly negotiate a midnight kiss — “Don’t Jump Around Much Anymore” is uneven in many of the same ways as the previous episode, “The Riches of Embarrassment.” In short, all the plot strands involving the team and their complex relationship with the coaching staff feel more compelling than what’s going on with Rebecca and Keeley, characters who are increasingly defined by their relationships with the men in their lives (or, in Keeley’s case, not as in her life as she’d prefer). Keeley eavesdropping, then missing Roy’s verbal gaffe (if it was a gaffe and not an accidental confession) feels only slightly less contrived than the last-minute arrival of Matthjis, whose relationship with Rebecca seems to turn hot and cold when the show needs some added drama. 

The show’s other storylines, however, are considerably stronger. Zelda remains an enigma, but increasingly an enigma flying some red flags. And the time we get with Alice at home sheds new light on the season’s most compelling character (though her anger in the episode’s moments also felt a little forced). With luck, the show will have fewer narrow victories as Richmond returns from winter break. 

Biscuits

• “Reject the sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.” Camille is quoting Marcus Aurelius. She’s also eschewing the party to stay home and read Anaïs Nin’s A Spy in the House of Love. This is an intriguing character. Maybe we’ll get to learn more about her?

• It’s a pleasure to watch Goldstein play an under-the-influence Roy. 

• It’s also always fun when Mary Roscoe, who’s also Jeremy Swift’s real-life spouse, shows up as Higgins’s wife. 

• “Good luck, Dad.” There’s no obvious place for Jamie’s story to go, and Dunster has other commitments, but it’s nice to have him stop by for a visit.