Pilot
Teleplay written by: Bill Lawrence and Jason Sudeikis
Directed by: Tom Marshall
Air date: 14 August 2020
After divorcing her wealthy, philandering husband Rupert, Rebecca Welton has been awarded ownership of Rupert's English Premier League football club, AFC Richmond, in their divorce settlement. Her first action as owner is to fire the team's coach and replace him with Ted Lasso, an American Football coach who recently led a Kansas college team to a national championship.
Ted and his assistant coach, Coach Beard, arrive in London, where they meet Rebecca, as well as Higgins, Richmond's put-upon director of communications, and Nate, the team's shy and deferential equipment manager. Ted is caught off-guard when Rebecca tells him that she has arranged a press conference and the journalists are already waiting for him. Ted's ignorance of association football and lack of experience coaching professional athletes invites scorn from the gathered journalists, as well as the players and fans watching the press conference. Rebecca intervenes and defends Ted's credentials. After the press conference, however, she privately reveals to Higgins that she doesn't actually believe in Ted; she intends for him to fail and bring the team down with him, because the team is the only thing her ex-husband truly loves and she wants to destroy it as vengeance.
Ted and Beard observe training, where Beard and Nate point out some of the players to Ted: Roy Kent, the team's captain who was once a legendary player for Chelsea but is now past his prime; Jamie Tartt, an extremely talented but rude and egotistical striker on loan from Manchester City; and Sam Obisanya, a young player from Nigeria. In the locker room after training, Ted introduces himself to the team, none of whom are impressed by him. Ted meets and quickly befriends Jamie's girlfriend Keeley.
Higgins tells Rebecca that he is feeling apprehensive about using Ted to sabotage the club, but Rebecca convinces him to go along with her plan by offering him a promotion and a pay raise. She also reveals that she knows that Higgins helped Rupert hide his affairs from her. Meanwhile, after arriving at his new flat, Ted calls his wife Michelle and young son Henry back in Kansas. It's revealed that he and Michelle are having marital issues. He tells Michelle that he loves her, but she is unable to say it back.
Tropes featured in "Pilot" include:
- Accidental Misnaming: The gift basket for Ted reads "Welcome Coach Tim Lasso".
- Eiffel Tower Effect: The first scene in London is Ted in front of Tower Bridge.
- Distracted by the Sexy: A sports version. As they walk into the stadium, Beard and Ted are talking about the origins of soccer, only for Ted to disappear because he spotted the pitch. They look on it from the stands for a minute, then go down to run their fingers through the grass.
- Damned by Faint Praise: Pretty much all Nate can muster when asked to describe Jamie. Ted and Beard read between the lines.Ted: Nate, what's he like?Nate: Who, Jamie? Yeah, he's great. (Beat) You know, at football.
- Establishing Character Moment: Several, as we are introduced to the main cast:
- Rebecca's calm, poised, and scathing firing of Richmond's old coach.
- At Ted's surprise press conference, Rebecca steps in to defend him... by attacking the team at every level.
Rebecca: I've witnessed nothing by profound mediocrity.- Our first exposure to Ted occurs on his plane flight out to England and we see his determined optimism shine in his conversations with Coach Beard. However, when he first returns to his seat we see he is reading The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac, strongly suggesting some Hidden Depths to his character.
- Roy's reaction to Ted's first press conference, as well as his colourful language during first practice.
- Jamie Tartt's self-centered behavior during the first practice.
- Nate switching from frantically yelling at Lasso and Beard while he mistakes them for intruders to apologizing in an extremely servile way after he realizes they outrank him. Doubles as Foreshadowing for his Character Development as he starts rising up the ranks.
- Keeley is introduced flirtatiously teasing the team and playing jokes on Ted, but she also warns Ted to stay off Twitter and is the first person to sincerely welcome him to England, establishing her as fun-loving yet kind and media-savvy.
- George Cartrick groping Higgins, using a homophobic slur, and making an inappropriate comment about Rebecca's breasts right to her face.
- The Pub Trio is introduced while watching Ted's first press conference and expressing disbelief that Ted will be Richmond's new manager. While Baz and Jeremy angrily yell at the TV, Paul laughs at one of Ted's jokes, indicating that he's the nicer one of the three.
- Sam joyfully greets Ted's appearance at the interview, welcoming him in his native language.
- Ted and Beard sit at their desks for about half a second before turning around and pushing them together in the middle of the room so they can coach as a team.
- Rebecca's calm, poised, and scathing firing of Richmond's old coach.
- Foreshadowing:
- Rebecca introduces Higgins to Ted as her "current director of communications", and Higgins picks up on the word "current". At the end of the episode, she offers him a promotion to entice him to go along with her scheme.
- Ted's later panic attacks are hinted to in his first press conference. The ringing and fading out of sound when the questions start is the exact same effect used for all his subsequent panic attacks, suggesting they are not a new development but something he was fighting before coming to England, but it goes unremarked upon here.
- While telling Ted about the club's history, Rebecca mentions that the stadium is supposedly haunted by the ghosts of fallen soldiers.
- Ted's phonecall home is rife with tension, and his talk with his wife is nothing but foreshadowing for his eventual divorce.
- Funny Background Event: After Nate panics and runs away from introducing Beard and Ted to Rebecca, they poke their heads around the doorframe and introduce themselves, he briefly pops back up and runs away again.
- I Call Him "Mister Happy": Inverted. The recently fired AFC manager George apparently cares so little about his testicles not being on public display under his shorts, Rebecca has named them Liam and Noel.Rebecca: Sadly, not an Oasis.
- I've Heard of That — What Is It?: Ted pretends to laugh at Rebecca's proverb "Can't keep a gaffer from his pitch" which he actually can't make sense of.
- Let Me Get This Straight...: Trent Crimm does this during Ted's introductory press conference:Trent: I just wanna make sure I have this right. You're an American who's never set foot in England, whose athletic success has only come at the amateur level—a second-tier one at that—and is now being charged with the leadership of a Premier League football club, despite clearly possessing very little knowledge of the game. [Beat] Is this a fucking joke?
- Not in Kansas Anymore: Ted drops this line during his sightseeing tour shortly after his arrival in London.
- Precision F-Strike: After dignified journalist Trent Crimm summarizes Ted's credentials, his only question on the matter is whether the new hire was a "fucking joke".
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: The opening scene, in which Rebecca, new owner of the club, summons the team's long-time manager to her office and fires him, lambasting his misogyny, mediocre results, and tendency to wear shorts that constantly expose his family jewels.
- The Reveal: Rebecca reveals to Higgins that she hired the clearly unqualified Ted because she wants Richmond to lose. She wants to get revenge on Rupert by sabotaging the club, since it's the only thing he truly loves.
- Spit Take: Ted embarrasses himself at his first press conference when he goes to take a sip of water, being unused to the British custom of drinking sparkling water.
- Strange Minds Think Alike: Beard and Nate both know the answer to Ted's question.Ted: How many countries are in this country?
Beard and Nate: Four. - Verbal Backspace: Ted spots a picture of Rupert surrounded by models drinking champagne and says he "looks like a good time". When Rebecca says that's her ex-husband, Ted says "I've found a good time isn't always a good time".
