Keeley has made arrangements for a sophisticated, Rat Pack–inspired “Sexy Christmas” at home with Roy, and Coach Beard is keeping his date to attend a pagan Christmas at Stonehenge with Jane despite their recent, latest breakup. Higgins is hosting the players who can’t get home for the holidays. Rebecca’s off to Elton John’s holiday party and, hopefully, a puppet show put on by Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz. With a little money in his pocket for the first time, Nate is determined to buy his demanding father a present he won’t hate. Nearby, the Diamond Dogs, joined by Keeley and Rebecca, trade their gifts and share their Christmas plans. ( Ted Lasso’s been pretty good about giving supporting players on the team moments in the spotlight all along, but this episode is particularly generous.) This mostly means an exchange of booze - which makes supplying a last-minute bottle for Jamie, who didn’t really understand what the tradition was all about, pretty easy - but Colin (Billy Harris) gets a beautiful homemade scarf from Moe Bumbercatch (Mohammed Hashim) and seems deeply moved by it. That doesn’t mean everyone’s having an easy time at the holidays, however, even if the episode opens with the AFC Richmond locker room in high spirits thanks to the swapping of Secret Santa gifts. A crisis doesn’t make Higgins dream about what the world would be like if he’d never lived. Three Christmas ghosts don’t visit Jamie. It’s a sweet, funny episode that explores the central Ted Lasso theme of what it means to be a good, generous person without making anyone behave out of character or getting cute about it. Yet, when that moment arrives, it feels not just right but inevitable. It doesn’t feel like it’s going to end in a big moment, say one in which much of the cast shares a sing-along in a picturesque snowy street. “Carol of the Bells” does it right, and it does right in an inconspicuous, almost sneaky way. But done right, a Christmas episode can crystalize everything that makes a comedy great. Done wrong, Christmastime ambition can get the better of a show, making it descend into soppiness. Just about every great sitcom has delivered a memorable Christmas episode or two, the best of them mixing laughs with a more ambitious than usual attempt to say something meaningful. That has a lot to do with history and tradition. It’s never easy to make a great sitcom episode, but making a great Christmas episode adds extra layers of difficulty.
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