Ted Lasso season 2 episode "Beard After Hours" was a divisive one for viewers but it's actually perfect for the character of Coach Beard. The sophomore season of Apple TV+'s breakout hit won four Emmys at the recent Emmy Awards, with three of those awards coming in acting categories and one for Outstanding Comedy Series overall. Despite the impressive accolades, Ted Lasso season 2 has generated intense conversations among audiences, from criticism of the second season initially feeling less impactful than the first season to a truly bizarre conspiracy theory that Brett Goldstein's Roy Kent is a CGI creation.
Adding to that pile is the most recent episode, "Beard After Hours," which followed Coach Beard (Brendan Hunting) in an entry that was an enormous departure from the usual Ted Lasso. Not quite a true bottle episode, it can be considered a standalone as the other main characters of the series only briefly appeared in the final scene and others not in the episode at all. Likewise, it was a sharp turn away from Ted Lasso's usually upbeat and sunny tone, instead unfolding entirely at night and leaning heavily into noir with a surrealist twist. Unsurprisingly, it provoked a strong reaction from viewers, with some recognizing the episode for what it was – a brilliant homage to Martin Scorsese's After Hours – and others unhappy it wasn't the Ted Lasso they know and love.
While it's completely fair to dislike the episode for various reasons, in the context of being an episode about Coach Beard, Ted Lasso's "Beard After Hours" was absolutely fitting. Beard is a taciturn man of few words; in the episode he even alluded to that, saying, "I listen more than I talk." From the start, however, the show has dropped hints that there is far more to Beard as a character than meets the eye and that he has a rich, fascinating life off screen. Not only does he recognize and instantly riff off of every single one of Ted's obscure pop references, he's also shown himself to be well-read and educated, with a mind able to instantly call up incredibly niche terms like "semantic satiation." Every one of these moments has quietly but deliberately built Ted Lasso's Coach Beard up as potentially the most interesting character of them all and after a season and a half, he finally got an episode focusing on him and audiences got a glimpse into that hinted-at personal life. An episode in Ted Lasso's usual vein wouldn't have done the eccentric, enigmatic character justice.
The surrealist tone of "Beard After Hours" is also appropriately fitting for Coach Beard. It's not just his massive breadth of knowledge that he has and can reference offhand that has hinted at the interesting character beyond the screen. Beard has also made multiple allusions to things from his past that come out of left field, from the impressive bordering on the bizarre. In a meeting after AFC Richmond losing another game, Coach Beard mentioned that they had metaphorical teeth marks in their butts of "the kind you usually have to pay for," prompting the naive Nate to ask incredulously, "You paid someone to bite you?" "No, of course not," Beard scoffed. "Been paid," he corrected, his casual delivery underscoring it's just a routine kind of situation for him.
Other pieces of Beard's life are just as fascinating but never discussed on screen, such as how he became a chess master, so skilled he doesn't even need a chess board to play. Or that he was a Lumberjack World Championship qualifier once. In his headcanon for Coach Beard, Brendan Hunt says he fully believes Beard was a roadie for Phish in the past and then The Chemical Brothers and went M.I.A. in Europe for a while. [via Vanity Fair] He's just one of those people for whom life is effortlessly, normally strange, which is exactly why the Ted Lasso season 2 Beard episode couldn't be anything other than the surrealist adventure it was. Something "normal" would have been a disservice to the strange and surreal life of Coach Beard, Ted Lasso's riddle wrapped in a mystery wrapped in an enigma.