She delivers a monologue about how people come and go in her life, leaving only their pants behind, then offers him a pair of flashy pants from a dead lover (though they look like they could have belonged to Elton John). Fortunately, Mary is something of an expert on men’s pants, both how to repair and collect them.īut where it looks at first as if Beard has connected with Mary, this turns out to be an illusion. Adding to the humiliation, he rips his pants in the process. She lures him first into a private room where Henry and Lineker’s criticisms continue, then finds him in the alley after he is ejected as a trespasser. It’s a kind of siren that lures him away, a bewitching woman - referred to later as “Mary” but listed in the credits simply as “Red” (Charlotte Spencer) - wearing a red dress who keeps making eye contact with Beard. (Scorsese’s not the only one getting a tip of the hat in this episode.) And while Ted Lasso easily could have built a whole episode around Beard and the lads hanging out with a bunch of elites, adopting funny accents and offering convincing supporting details about Beard’s time as a professor at Oxford, the Bones and Honey club is just the first stop on Beard’s odyssey. Although their methods are pretty mean - tricking the snooty greeter into thinking her apartment is on fire - Beard justifies it with some logic borrowed from Fight Club.
However, Beard’s journey begins with an attempt to infiltrate the Bones and Honey club, a place so exclusive it once reportedly turned away Cher.īeard is no Cher, and though he and his companions do their best to match the Bones and Honey dress code with items from the pub’s lost and found, it still takes a bit of deception to get in. The boys win, and it’s here that the title, “Beard After Hours,” reveals itself as an acknowledgment of the deep debt the episode, written by ( admitted cinephile) Brett Goldstein and Joe Kelly, owes to Martin Scorsese’s 1985 film, After Hours, which sends an ordinary white-collar New Yorker, played by Griffin Dunne, through the wilds of the city’s wild after-dark underside. After recapping his thoughts on simulation theory and finishing off a round of drinks, he seemingly has two options: Seek out Jane (Phoebe Walsh), who has reached out despite the state of their relationship and asked him to come find her, or hit the town with the boys. And though Beard chooses the most obvious destination, the Crown & Anchor pub where Mae (Annette Badland) and the trio of Greyhounds fans - Baz (Adam Colborne), Jeremy (Bronson Webb), and Paul (Kevin “KG” Garry) - seem permanently ensconced, he is not destined to stick around for the whole night. As Beard watches Thierry Henry and Gary Lineker recap the loss, their criticisms turn personal, noting his failures as a coach and his sad single-man chessboard coffee table. Until, that is, the hallucinations kick in. He is not in a good place, and as he walks home under a full moon, it seems like a beer and a sulk might be all he has in him. Accompanied by a wistful version of the Ted Lasso theme performed by Jeff Tweedy, Beard looks reflective and a little angry as his Tube ride brings him closer to home, a round of rumination that only ends when he realizes he has taken a scowling contest with the little kid on the seat next to him too far. So it comes as a bit of a surprise that “Beard After Hours,” an entire episode devoted to what happens to Coach Beard after the credits of “Man City,” opens with Beard going home. It seemed like he could be heading anywhere and that anything could happen. Asking to be left alone to “shake this off” following AFC Richmond’s humiliating loss at Wembley, he walks off into the night toward some unknown destination with seemingly no interest in heeding Ted’s advice to “be careful out there.” We’ve only gotten glimpses of Beard’s life away from the pitch and hints of a wild past that might not be that far in the past.
As “Man City” drew to a close, it didn’t look like Coach Beard was headed anywhere good.
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