Ted Lasso Season 4 Just Tried To Insert Itself Into A Legendary Cinematic Universe

Apple TV

The first thing we hear in "Ted Lasso" Season 4 is a repeated beeping that sounds like something a heart monitor would produce. But we quickly realize that Ted (Jason Sudeikis), now an assistant manager at a Kansas City grocery store, is scanning items for a customer. And if you pay close attention to what that person is purchasing, you'll find one of the weirdest crossovers in recent memory.

Ted is scanning packs of cigarettes — but not just any brand. They're Red Apple cigarettes, a fictional brand created by Quentin Tarantino that appears throughout the writer/director's filmography as a way to indicate a shared universe of movies, years before Marvel popularized that idea on screen. The reference isn't an accident: In "Ted Lasso," you can see the same logo on the packaging that's appeared in the Tarantino-verse. (The credits scene for "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" even has Leonardo DiCaprio's character doing a commercial for Red Apple.)

Personally, I find this idea almost offensive. (Yes, I'm being hyperbolic. I realize there are genuinely offensive things happening in this world every day. Just go with me on this.) 

The characters in "Ted Lasso" straight up do not make any sense in Tarantino's universe — they're too sweet, too cringe, too maudlin. Tonally, this show is about 180 degrees away from anything Tarantino has made. Even "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood," arguably Tarantino's "nicest" movie, features imagery of Charles Manson's acolytes being brutally murdered — imagery that would make Ted vomit if he stumbled across the scene. That the "Ted Lasso" Season 4 premiere has the gall to suggest that characters like Ted or Higgins (Jeremy Swift) belong in the same sphere as some of the best Quentin Tarantino characters – Hans Landa, O-Ren Ishii, Jules Winnfield, etc. — is laughable and borderline insulting.

Miramax Films

When Quentin Tarantino explained the concept of his cinematic universe in 2016, he said there are two distinct components to it: 

"There are actually two separate universes. There's the realer than real universe, and all the characters inhabit that one. Then there's this 'movie' universe, so 'From Dusk Till Dawn' and 'Kill Bill' take place in this special movie universe. Basically, when the characters from 'Reservoir Dogs' or 'Pulp Fiction' go to the movies, 'Kill Bill' and 'From Dusk Till Dawn' is what they go see."

The most heavily stylized projects seem to be in the "movie" universe, so if we're to assume the Red Apple connection is enough to canonically force "Ted Lasso" into the Tarantino-verse, the show would certainly fall in the "realer than real" universe. That would put it (again, laughably) in the same space as movies like "Pulp Fiction," "The Hateful Eight," and "Inglourious Basterds," just to name a few.

I reached out to Tarantino's publicist to try to find out what QT himself thinks about this "Ted Lasso" situation, but he was apparently not available.

Look, it's no secret that I think "Ted Lasso" totally crapped the bed after its first season. But even if I didn't actively dislike the show, and even if it was somehow still operating at its peak, this Tarantino connection would still make me scoff aloud at my screen as soon as I saw it. We may eventually learn that this was ultimately just a case of the production designer having a bit of fun, but if this decision was supposed to delight the cinephile viewers who picked up on it, the clanging dissonance between intention and reality means the show unfortunately whiffed at this particular shot on goal.

"Ted Lasso" Season 4 will debut new episodes weekly on Apple TV until the season has concluded.