Ted Lasso Season 4 Episode 7 Review: “Yes & Baby”

TLC’s “Unpretty” plays over the cold open of Ted Lasso Season 4 Episode 7, and it’s doing more honest work in five minutes than the BELIEVE sign has done all season.

“Yes & Baby” is the episode where the show finally asks what “Believe” actually means to people who aren’t Ted.

Catch up on our Episode 6 review or head to the PX2S Ted Lasso Season 4 hub if you’re behind. New episodes stream weekly on Apple TV+.

TL;DR (For The Skippers)

• The opening montage lays out the team’s off-pitch stress: Lizzie’s ex bails on the kids, Gemma’s chasing a law internship that conflicts with practice, rent’s going up on Niamh and Siobhan, Boots’ car dies, Shannon’s still delivering pizza
• Alice hangs Ted’s BELIEVE sign in the women’s locker room and it backfires, sparking real talk from the team about how hollow the mantra sounds from their side
• Ted and Beard steer Alice’s forced positivity toward “Yes, and…” instead of a flat yes, and it actually clicks for her
• Zelda talks agent Derek Tarp out of his bluff on Dani Rojas’s contract and gets herself named special advisor at Richmond
• Dr. Erin ends things with Roy after realizing his feelings for Keeley never went away
• Ted lets Keeley help him build a Bantr dating profile, bails on the apps entirely, and heads back to the black box theater instead
• Beard shows up with a spray tan and blue contacts in the middle of an apparent midlife crisis

Alice’s growth is the best version of this show

The “Yes, and…” beat is a small correction, but it says a lot about where Alice is in her arc. A flat yes to everything the team throws at her is just capitulation, and the show knows it. Ted and Beard nudging her toward the old improv rule, respond and build instead of just agreeing, gives her a tool that actually fits who she’s becoming as a coach instead of a gimmick for one episode.

The team montage up front is the strongest ensemble writing the Lady Greyhounds have gotten all season. Gemma weighing law school against football, Shannon still delivering pizza on a pro athlete’s schedule—that’s the stuff that makes the second team feel like real people instead of a plot device for Alice’s redemption arc.

The stuff that’s still spinning its wheels

Roy and Erin ending things because Erin can see what Roy can’t admit is the correct call for the story, but it’s also the show doing cleanup on a relationship it never gave enough room to matter in the first place. And Beard’s spray tan and blue contacts bit is broad in a way that doesn’t match the more grounded comedy the rest of the episode is going for. It gets a laugh. It doesn’t get much else.

Ted’s Bantr detour works better than it has any right to, mostly because Keeley’s the one guiding him through it. Watching him take every prompt too literally is exactly the kind of small, character-true comedy this show does best, and it ending with him walking away from the apps entirely feels true to who Ted actually is.

We rate everything on the following scale:

PRESS X — This is worth your time. Go watch it, play it, listen to it.

YOUR CALL — Solid enough, flawed enough. Depends what you’re in the mood for.

SKIP IT — Not worth the time you’d spend on it. There’s better stuff out there.

So where does that leave the episode?

This is a table-setting episode, and it knows it. Alice gets real growth, the team gets real texture, Zelda gets planted deeper into the front office in a way that’s clearly going somewhere. The Beard bit and the Roy/Erin breakup are the weak links, there mostly to clear the board before the season’s back half. As a piece of the whole, it’s doing exactly the job it needs to.

Verdict: PRESS X