Some Quick Takes On the New Season of Ted Lasso, Kansas City, Southern Accents, and the Current State of Women’s Sports 

August 2026

 

Ok... I’m going to give Bill Lawrence and Jason Sudeikis credit...

 

Unlike Steven Spielberg, who set his recent movie, Disclosure Day, in Kansas City...

 

But didn’t go anywhere near that town to film it...

 

They actually sent a film crew to KC...

 

So we see shots of the Power and Light District, the World War I Museum...

And the view of the city skyline at night from the Charles Wheeler Downtown Airport...

Which brought back memories for this Kansas born and bred girl...

Who remembers when that was the airport for the city...

Before they moved it north of town...

 

And it took someone who knows Kansas City to know that airport is now where private jets land...

 

And that Gates is a go to KC barbeque destination...

 

And they filmed at the new KC Current Soccer Stadium...

 

But KC is a football town...

 

And I mean real football...

 

And that stadium was built with private money...

Some of which came from the city’s star quarterback, Patrick Mahomes...

Whose wife was a professional soccer player...

 

But we didn’t see a single Chief’s jersey in this episode...

 

And if you have been to KC lately, you know how unlikely that would be...

 

But my real problem with Ted Lasso’s trip to Kansas City...

 

Is that everyone there has a southern accent...

 

And since Jason Sudeikis is from Kansas...

He knows better...

 

So I suspect this was intentional...

 

Because for the coastal elite in Hollywood...

 

A southern accent is code...

 

And along with the bedazzled clothes...

Which BTW is Texas, not Kansas City...

 

They were obviously making a statement about this Midwest city...

By throwing it in with the Deep South....

Where ... in their opinion...

No one with any taste...or intelligence... would want to live...

 

But no one in Kansas City would say they were choosing a retirement village because Fox News had been banned from the common room...

 

First of all, Kansas Nice would keep someone from saying something like that in public...

 

And it would probably be on there...

 

So apparently Lawrence et al, are unaware of the demographic ....

Who actually watches Fox News these days....

 

But this is all small beer...

 

Because Rebecca and the crew are there to recruit Ted to come back to Richmond to coach a women’s soccer team...

 

Which smacks of Lawrence deciding to milk the Ted Lasso cow until it collapses...

 

Especially since the magic of the first season was long gone by the third.. .

And what we thought would be...

The final season...

 

And because, as I have argued previously,  we know how Bill Lawrence rolls...

As his series age...

(See my reviews of Rooster and Shrinking)

 

So I sense a cringe season coming on...

 

But women’s professional sports have been in the news...

 

A lot lately...

 

Between clotheslining players, refs who appear to be blind...

Carping athletes...

 

And now men who want to play in the WNBA...

 

So there could be a story to be told....

 

And not the You Go Girl uplifting tale of women finally getting their chance on the pitch...

 

Because...

 

For many reasons...

 

Female professional sports has a subculture...

That is very different from the men’s...

 

So we’ll see if Ted Lasso as now revived....

 

Is willing to go there...

 

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