Sunflowers
Story written by: Joe Kelly and Jason Sudeikis
Teleplay written by: Brendan Hunt
Directed by: Matt Lipsey
Air date: 19 April 2023
Teleplay written by: Brendan Hunt
Directed by: Matt Lipsey
Air date: 19 April 2023
After Richmond loses a friendly against AFC Ajax 5-0, Ted decides to cheer the team up by lifting their curfew, leaving them free to spend the night exploring Amsterdam. The episode then follows what each group of characters does with their night off:
Roy tells Jamie that the lack of a curfew doesn't excuse him from their extra training sessions. The two go for a run, in which Jamie leads Roy, who has never been to Amsterdam before, to various tourist destinations and tells him about the history of the city. Jamie procures bikes for the two of them so they can go see a windmill, but Roy admits that he doesn't know how to ride a bike. Jamie teaches Roy how to ride, and the two open up to each other. Roy acknowledges that he unfairly takes his negative emotions out on Jamie. Jamie tells Roy that his father took him to Amsterdam when he was 14 and paid for a prostitute to take his virginity, and then his mother took him again a few years later, where they went on a tour of the city and Jamie learned all the information he shared with Roy on their run.
The players, minus Jamie, meet in the hotel lobby to vote on a plan for the night. After multiple arguments and endless rounds of voting, they agree to go to a private party DJ'd by Jan Maas' cousin in Groningen, only to find themselves unable to agree on where to eat dinner beforehand. Eventually, they decide against leaving the hotel at all and stage a massive pillow fight.
While the team is arguing about how to spend the evening, Colin excuses himself under the pretense of food poisoning, then sneaks back out to go to a gay bar. Trent secretly follows Colin and confronts him, revealing that he's known about Colin's sexuality for months and hasn't told anyone. The two visit the Homomonument
, where Trent shares his own Coming-Out Story with Colin. Colin admits that he is conflicted about the idea of coming out: he doesn't enjoy living a double life, but he also doesn't want his sexuality to be treated like a big deal, which he knows it would be if he were to come out. Trent and Colin return to the gay bar and dance, enjoying Colin's anonymity in the crowd.
Higgins takes Will to the red-light district to visit the site where jazz musician Chet Baker died. They go to a jazz club and sit at a table right in front of the stage, where the singer notices Higgins playing air bass and invites him up to play with the band. Will eyes up a young couple at another table, who eventually approach him and proposition him for a threesome.
While walking over a bridge, Rebecca is knocked into a canal by a bicyclist, losing her phone in the process. She is rescued by a man living on a houseboat in the canal, who allows her to shower and dry her clothes on his boat. She and the man get to know each other: he was in the army, and like Rebecca, his former partner cheated on him. They both make excuses for Rebecca to stay later and later—first for a drink, then for dinner, then to wash and dry her clothes once again—until Rebecca ends up spending the night on his couch. In the morning, they kiss, but do not exchange names or phone numbers, accepting that they will likely never see each other again.
Ted tells Beard that he wants to try something new, as he feels like he has been "stuck" recently. Beard prepares psilocybin tea for the two of them, but Ted doesn't drink his glass at first. With Beard gone on his own adventure for the night and Rebecca not answering his texts, Ted drinks the tea and goes to a Van Gogh exhibit, where the museum docent tells him that Van Gogh stayed determined to search for beauty in spite of his failures, because "when you know you're doing what you're meant to do, you have to try." Ted goes to an American-themed restaurant for dinner, where he watches an old Chicago Bulls game that he saw with his father as a child. Inspired by Tex Winter's triangle offense strategy for the Bulls, Ted devises a similar strategy for Richmond that allows the players to flow from position to position depending on where they're needed. On the bus the next morning, Beard reveals that the psilocybin was from a dud batch. Ted shows the new strategy to Beard, who informs him that the strategy is called Total Football and was invented in the Netherlands in the 1970s, but agrees that it could work for Richmond. The team gathers on the bus, content after their own adventures, and Rebecca leads them in singing "Three Little Birds" by Bob Marley.
Tropes featured in "Sunflowers" include:
- A Day in the Limelight: Will gets some focus in this episode as he accompanies Higgins on an expedition of Amsterdam's jazz scene.
- Abusive Parents: Jamie reveals to Roy that his father took him to Amsterdam when he was 14 years old and paid a sex worker to take his virginity. He admits that he doesn't remember the experience clearly, implying that he blocked out the trauma.
- Ambiguous Situation: Coach Beard revealing the mushrooms in the tea didn't work for him makes it unclear whether Ted's Mushroom Samba was just his imagination or Beard simply has a higher tolerance due to his frequent use and the mushrooms did work for Ted.
- Americans Are Cowboys: Invoked at the Yankee Doodle Burger Barn, where all of the waitstaff are dressed as cowboys. Funnily enough, of the three cities the restaurant based its sections on, only Los Angeles actually has a cowboy history and tradition.
- All Men Are Perverts: After Zoreaux suggests the team goes to see a live sex show, one half of the team joins him in voting for it. Others admit the idea makes them uncomfortable rather than aroused.
- Artistic License – Sports: Due to the loaded schedule top-flight teams usually have, including league, cup and possibly even European competition games, and that's without even counting the room they have to leave for international breaks, friendly matches in the middle of the season like the one depicted in this episode are extremely uncommon nowadays.
- Author Appeal: Early in their careers, Jason Sudeikis and Brendan Hunt performed improv comedy with Boom Chicago in Amsterdam, which is very likely the reason the destination was chosen for this episode, and also why Ted decides to sit in Chicago at the restaurant.
- Awesomeness by Analysis: Trent perks up when Colin feigns food poisoning and ducks out; he correctly predicts that Colin's sneaking out to enjoy a night of anonymity where he can just be a random gay man, and not a closeted footballer.
- Bait-and-Switch: Higgins says he's off to Amsterdam's red-light district. Others are shocked that the happily married Higgins would go partake in such activities but it turns out the jazz aficionado wanted to go see where Chet Baker died.
- Blatant Lies: It's abundantly clear that Dani is the one repeatedly voting for the team to go see a tulip, but he keeps insisting that "anyone" could have cast that vote.Isaac: Dani, you wrote it in Spanish.
Dani: ...Someone wrote it in Spanish, yes. - Book Dumb: Roy doesn't believe windmills are real.
- Book Ends: The episode begins with "Three Little Birds" playing at the Johan Cruyff Arena after Ajax's victory over Richmond, with Rebecca remarking that she finds the song depressing. At the end of the episode, after her fling with the unnamed Dutch man, she happily starts singing the song herself, and the rest of the squad join in as the coach pulls away.
- Brutal Honesty: In a post-match interview, Jan Maas says that Richmond's spirits were broken even before kickoff. Roy, standing right next to him, also bluntly says that things went to shit before lambasting that the game was ultimately pointless as there were no stakes to winning or losing.
- Call-Back:
- The owner of AFC Ajax corrects Higgins on the pronunciation of Johan Cruijff's name, just like Jan Maas did to Jamie.
- Ted is presented with a bottle of Arthur Bryant barbecue sauce, which he'd declared to be the best in the world in Season 1.
- At the gay bar, Colin tries to order vanilla vodka, much to the barkeeper's disgust. Early in season 1, he was part of Jamie's party posse when Roy berated him for their drink of choice.
- In the end, the team decides to let off some pent-up steam by engaging in a pillow fight, something Ted had suggested in season 1.
- When presented with psilocybin tea, Ted refuses on account of it being tea, which he's stated a dislike of repeatedly in previous episodes.
- Ted uses ketchup and mustard bottles to simulate playing tactics, just like Beard did to educate him several times.
- Roy once again talks about his Grandad who died shortly after he first moved to Sunderland's youth academy, noting that he never learnt how to ride a bike as his grandad had promised to teach him when he returned home from the academy.
- Beard has another wild night off on his own misadventures.
- Ted develops a new strategy similar to the Dutch "Total Football" philosophy. Rebecca previously suggested that Ted find inspiration from that style in the Season 1 finale.
- Keeley's in-room entertainment guide, last seen on a hotel tv in Liverpool, shows up again... dubbed into Dutch.
- Chekhov's Gun: Beard immediately recognizes Ted's new strategy as Total Football...because there's an entire chapter on Total Football in Inverting the Pyramid, a book Beard has been reading studiously since the very first episode. Ironically, Ted also started reading the book at the start of the season, he simply hadn't gotten past the first chapter yet.
- Clue, Evidence, and a Smoking Gun: When Colin asks Trent how he knew about his sexuality, Trent says he used his "Holmesian powers of journalistic deduction"...and he also saw Colin kissing Michael outside Sam's restaurant.
- Cultural Posturing: Played for Laughs. While the team are trying to work out what they should do for their fun night out in Amsterdam, Richard suggests that they all just catch a train and go to Paris instead. He also insists that, as a Frenchman, he'd rather die than eat Dutch food.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: The episode opens on the closing moments of Richmond losing 5-0 to Dutch side Ajax in a friendly game in Amsterdam.
- Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Rebecca's nameless Dutchman accidentally kisses her booboo after putting a bandaid on it, out of force of habit with his daughter.
- Did Not Think This Through: Zoreaux's reaction when it's pointed out that he's arguing for watching two exhausted people have sex over going to a party and potentially having sex himself.
- Drill Sergeant Nasty: Roy refuses to let Jamie enjoy his night in Amsterdam, and instead makes him go training.
- Double Standard Rape: Female on Male: Averted. When Jamie reveals to Roy that his father paid for him to lose his virginity to a prostitute when he was 14 (which would be statutory rape, as the age of consent in the UK and the Netherlands is 16), Roy is suitably horrified and comments that it must have been traumatic, which Jamie doesn't deny.
- Dumbass Has a Point: When Beard and Roy correct Ted that correct terminology is "friendly" game rather than "exhibition" game, Ted responds that there's nothing friendly about a 5-0 loss. Beard and Roy nod in agreement.
- Eagle Land: Ted ends up eating dinner at a kitschy restaurant that boasts "American food served in American portions" with servers faking Texas accents and seating in Windy City, Big Apple, or Hollywood. It takes Ted three tries to inform the server that he wants to sit in the Windy City section because he makes Chicago references that the server, from Melbourne, doesn't get.
- Embarrassment Plot: Jamie finally badgers Roy into admitting he doesn't know how to ride a bike. He laughs, but when Roy explains it's because his grandfather died before he could teach him, he takes it seriously and teaches him.
- "Eureka!" Moment: Ted gets inspired by a Chicago Bulls game and adapts their triangle offence to football. Beard points out it's been an established tactic since the 70s, but notes it's a good idea that could serve the team well, and it's impressive that Ted came up with it on his own.
- Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: After Jamie laughs at him for being unable to ride a bike, Roy angrily explains that his grandfather had promised to teach him but died before he could do so, and he has never been on a bike since. Saying this out loud causes Roy to realise that, by never learning to cycle, he has disrespected his grandfather's wishes, and the realisation gets him surprisingly emotional.
- Extra-Long Episode: This episode is about 15-20 minutes longer than previous ones this season, clocking in at just over an hour.
- Failure Montage: Roy spends a lot of time falling over while learning to ride a bike.
- Foreshadowing: Ted and Beard have a conversation where Beard describes Johann Cruyff as being "bigger than [Michael] Jordan, like Jordan and John Lennon combined". Later, Ted will have a "Eureka!" Moment watching a Chicago Bulls game at the Yankee Doodle Burger Barn, a game from the 90s, when Jordan was at his height. It also foreshadows how Ted will inadvertently reinvent Total Football, which Cryuff played a key role in popularizing, as both the Bulls' triangle offense and Total Football emphasize arranging players into triangles to ensure passing options.
- Four Lines, All Waiting: The episode has six plots: Ted, Rebecca, Colin/Crimm, Roy/Jamie, Higgins/Will, and the rest of the team, with an implied seventh subplot around Beard whose ending we see, and a brief scene with Keeley leaving to go on a date with Jack.
- Friendship Moment:
- Higgins invites Will to spend the evening with him, and Will is delighted by it. He takes him to the red light district to share his love of jazz, taking him to the spot where legendary trumpeter Chet Baker fell to his death from a window.
- Roy and Jamie spend the evening in the city, with Jamie happily sharing his extensive knowledge of the city and then teaching Roy how to ride a bike.
- Gay Paree: Richard's suggestion for the team's night in Amsterdam is... to get on a train and go to Paris instead.
- Gone Horribly Right: Roy makes Jamie continue his training in Amsterdam. Jamie complies—and cheerfully drags Roy all over Amsterdam to show him the sights, never seeming to run out of energy while Roy is left struggling to keep up with him.
- Hidden Depths:
- Jamie is revealed to be incredibly knowledgeable about the city of Amsterdam. He explains that he had two very meaningful (and very different) trips to the city with each of his parents, with his knowledge of the city having come from when he visited the city with his mother.
- Beard is revealed to be fluent in Dutch but swears Will to secrecy.
- Higgins once again shows his love of jazz, being a particularly big fan of American jazz musician Chet Baker. His skill at playing upright bass comes in handy when the jazz group he and Will are watching invites him to play bass for them.
- History with Celebrity: It's revealed that Dutch DJ Martin Garrix is Jan Maas' cousin.
- I Just Want to Be Normal: Colin admits to Trent that he's considered coming out of the closet, but that he's afraid people will either shun him or try to force him into being a symbol for gay people and he just wants to be a regular footballer.
- Implausible Deniability: Dani insists to the others than someone else might have wrote down seeing a tulip as their vote. Isaac shows that the ballot says "tulipán", the Spanish word for the flower, meaning that it was clearly Dani's vote.
- Insistent Terminology: Beard and Roy once again have to correct Ted on the correct terminology of football - it's a "friendly" game and not an "exhibition" game.
- Internal Reveal: Trent reveals to Colin that he knows about his sexuality and saw him making out with Michael outside of Sam's restaurant.
- Irony: Despite Roy's long career as a footballer, including several international competitions like the UEFA Champions League and European Championship, and having lived in London which is only an hours flight away from Amsterdam basically his entire life, this episode is actually his first time visiting.
- It's Been Done: After a moment of inspiration watching a Chicago Bulls game from the 90s, Ted adapts the Bulls' triangle offence to the game of football. When he shows Beard what he'd come up with, Beard informs Ted that the tactic already exists and has been known as "Total Football" since the 1970s. However, Beard does note that the tactic is a good idea for Richmond to implement, and is impressed that Ted came up with the strategy completely independently.
- Kitschy Themed Restaurant: Ted goes to a restaurant called "Yankee Doodle Burger Barn", which serves American food and is split into three sections themed after New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles.
- Learning to Ride a Bike: This episode inverts the father-son dynamic by having the son (Jamie) teach the father (Roy) how to ride a bike. The latter never learned because his grandfather promised to teach him shortly before he died. Realizing that never learning went against his grandfather's wishes sends Roy into a spiral before Jamie pulls him out of it.
- Like a Son to Me: Higgins takes Will under his wing, sharing his love of jazz. Trent does the same for Colin, sharing his experience as a older gay man with experience living in the closet. This also plays out with Roy and Jamie, with Jamie enthusiastically sharing his love of Amsterdam like an excited kid; they then reverse the usual relationship as he's the one to teach Roy how to ride a bike.
- Mentor in Queerness: Trent consults Colin on his situation, both from his expertise in sports media as well as an older gay man.
- Mundane Made Awesome: Jamie excitedly telling the rest of the team that he and Roy saw a windmill results in a happy cheer from the rest of the team.
- Mushroom Samba: Ted eventually drinks some of Beard's "special" tea, leading to have a vision where the Spirit of Adventure helps him figure out a new tactic for the team to try. Possibly subverted, in that the mushrooms in the tea were revealed to be inactive (at least, they didn't work for Beard or his supplier Kenneth).
- My God, What Have I Done?: Roy never learned to ride a bike because his grandfather died before teaching him, but as soon as he says this out loud he realizes not learning was "a great disrespect to his memory" gets upset.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: Various male celebrities have come forward about being taken to visit prostitutes when they were underage, although, like Jamie, few seem to realize that what they have recounted was a rape experience. Jamie's experience is perhaps closest to that of Donald Drumpf, whose father frequently brought young women to visit him and whose autobiography states he lost his virginity at 14 (like Jamie) despite not having a girlfriend at the time.
- Noodle Incident: Coach Beard disappears to go off on his own adventures. The details aren't provided, but he shows up the next morning exhausted and dressed as Ziggy Stardust… with a pig nose. Piggy Stardust.
- Oh, Crap!: Colin, already nervous about being in a gay bar, freaks out when Trent follows him into the bar. He runs away, but Trent follows him and assures him he's known his secret for months and hasn't said anything because, as an older gay man, he knows that pain.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: In the previous episodes, Rebecca is paranoid about Tish's prophecies and panics any time one of them comes true. In this episode, Rebecca is so angry at being dumped in the canal - and later, enjoying herself so much at the unnamed Dutchman's boat house - that she fails to realise she's fulfilled the third prophecy, about being tipped upside-down and left soaking-wet, but safe. When she arrives back at the coach the morning after, she's on such a high that Ted realises something must be up.
- Out of Focus:
- Keeley appears with Rebecca and Higgins at the end of Richmond's friendly with Ajax, but quickly departs to go see the Aurora Borealis with Jack and isn’t seen for the rest of the episode.
- Nate doesn't officially appear in this episode, but he does appear as a hallucination of a cowboy waiter. It Makes Sense in Context.
- Coach Beard is with Ted at the start of the episode, supplying him with tea containing magic mushrooms. He then vanishes for the rest of the episode and only shows up at the end, coming out of a van with complete strangers, while dressed as Ziggy Stardust. This isn't notable unto itself apart from being a Noodle Incident, but considering what happened the last time Coach Beard got up to all night shenanigans, the audience probably missed an entire sub-plot unto itself.
- Queer Establishing Moment: Trent comes out to Colin after revealing that he knew Colin was gay.
- Rescue Romance: Subverted. Rebecca forges a genuine connection with the man who helped her out of the canal, but they part without even learning each other's names and are unlikely to ever meet again.
- The Reveal: Trent opens up to Colin that he's gay and he's able to be a friend Colin can be honest with.
- Rule of Symbolism:
- "Sunflowers" is a series of famous paintings by Vincent Van Gogh. Sunflowers are also the state flower of Kansas, Ted's home state. Ted's arc in the episode is all about drawing inspiration from familiar things to better adapt to unfamiliar challenges. Going through a Van Gogh exhibit is what helps Ted channel his nostalgia and homesickness into something constructive, even in a place as ridiculous as Yankee Doodle Burger Barn.
- Pyramids have been a common theme in the show, through the pyramid metaphor for football tactics and John Wooden's Pyramid of Success in Ted's office. Ted's apparently inane comment that "a pyramid ain't nothing but a triangle" is what helps him link the Triangle Offense successfully used by the Chicago Bulls into the first coherent soccer strategy he's ever come up with.
- Just to reinforce it even further, Trent and Colin have their heart-to-heart talk at the Homomonument... a triangle made up of three smaller triangles.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Upon hearing that Jan Maas' cousin's party will involve picking up women, and the alternative is a live sex show, Colin claims that his stomach is bothering him and bows out of the team's plans.
- Secret-Keeper: Colin reveals to Trent that no one currently at AFC Richmond knows about his secret and the one person who did was Sharon.
- Secret Secret-Keeper: Trent admits to Colin that he's known about Colin's sexuality for months.
- Serious Business: The team chooses to spend their night off mostly with an intense debate on how to spend their night off. When Richard takes great offense at the idea of eating Dutch cuisine, it briefly devolves into a shouting match.
- Shout-Out:
- When Ted walks into the American restaurant, it closely follows the Jackrabbit Slim's entrance scene in Pulp Fiction, right down to the music being played.
-
According to Brendan Hunt in a Reddit AMA, Jamie's laughter when Roy admits he can't ride a bike was based on Butch Cassidy's laughter when Sundance admits he can't swim. - Ted's vision is one to the Donald Duck cartoon Donald in Mathmagic Land, complete with the unseen "True Spirit of Adventure".
- Near the start of said vision, Ted jokingly suggests that triangles were invented when God dropped a square and it broke in two, illustrated by a distinctly Pythonesque hand doing exactly that.
- Smarter Than You Look: Despite still having trouble with the rules and terms for football, Ted spends the evening working out positions and strategies to independently discover the tactic of Total Football.
- The Stoic: The nameless Dutchman Rebecca spends the night with has a sad story. His partner cheated on him and left him and took their daughter with her. That last part is never stated, but Rebecca sees a little girl's bedroom, pink and full of unicorns, and the man unthinkingly kisses Rebecca's booboo after patching her up out of simple habit. Nevertheless, he keeps a calm demeanor and goes out of his way to help Rebecca, starting with his disastrous attempt to warn her out of the bike lane and continuing through a warm shower, washing her clothes, tea, dinner, drinks and dancing, and ultimately an emotionally passionate evening.Rebecca: Did we...? [have sex]
Him: Did we? No, no we didn't.
Rebecca: [thanks him, kisses him, and leaves]
Him: Did we? Yes we did. - Strange Minds Think Alike: Higgins tells Rebecca and Keeley he's going to spend the evening in the red light district, then later tells the team he's going to take Will there to "become a man". Both parties react the same way: exchanging baffled glances and going, "Naaah".
- Suddenly Shouting: Poor Isaac can only take so much of the team's bickering about their night out in Amsterdam before he completely loses it.
- Take That!:
- The staff at the team's hotel convince them not to go to one of Amsterdam's infamous live sex shows, explaining that they're just "[paying] to watch two tired people have sex" without the audience members getting any themselves.
- When Dani suggests that the team get some Dutch food, Richard angrily tells him that he would rather die.
- When Keeley runs off to spend the day with Jack in Norway, Roy wonders where she's running off to. Rebecca tells him it's "to be with someone who thinks they deserve her", showing that everyone's aware Roy called it off because of his insecurities.
- Team Dad: It's implied that, as captain, Isaac is so intent on getting the team to agree on a shared activity is because he thinks they should be together as a team after their abysmal match. After a lot of debate, he finally gets his wish with a team pillow fight.
- Vacation Episode: The episode is set entirely in (and around) Amsterdam.
- Where Everybody Knows Your Flame: Colin sneaks out to go to a gay bar, an entirely pink bar called Prik. Colin's obviously scared, but the bartender reassures him that "tonight, you're whoever you want to be".
