They said he wasn’t coming, but look who’s here! Ay, ay, caramba: Jamie Tartt! As Jorge Ben Jor once sang, “As Galileo used to say in Galilee, a true malandro never gets caught slipping.” When reports made a great fuss about Phil Dunster, now starring in Rooster, “not returning for Season 4,” I found it strange. How could the series leave out one of its most beloved characters, even if only for a cameo?

Season 4, Episode 6 of Ted Lasso, “Don’t Jump Around Much Anymore,” uses New Year’s Eve to bring together practically every emotional question the series has left unresolved. Some storylines move forward, others retreat, and at least one has been circling for far too long. Even so, this is probably the most entertaining episode of the season, especially because it brings back someone whose absence left a larger hole than we realized: Jamie Tartt.

The story moves between the Lady Greyhounds’ celebrations, the renewed intimacy between Ted, Michelle, and Henry, and the increasingly confusing romantic lives of Rebecca, Keeley, and Roy. Football virtually disappears. Still, the season’s central question remains: how do you belong to a group when you are convinced that nobody truly wants you there?

That question belongs primarily to Alice Chilton. Following the suspension caused by the Chelsea disaster, she tries to connect with the team and, for a while, succeeds. Away from the professional environment, more relaxed and dressed for the party, we see an Alice who can joke, dance, and lower her guard, at least slightly. Her conversation with Gemma on the boat finally appears to open a path between them, with an emotional tension that may be even more complicated than the professional rivalry we have seen so far.

The problem is that Alice does not know how to accept affection without distrusting it. Just as she seems ready to believe that people genuinely like her, she interprets their approach as pity or mere tolerance and destroys what she has only just begun to build. It is frustrating, but consistent. The series does not “cure” her in a single episode because insecurity does not disappear simply because other people say they like us. When someone has spent too long expecting rejection, any gesture of affection can feel like a trap. Alice takes two steps forward and immediately finds a way to retreat.

The players’ party begins as a New Year’s Eve celebration and turns into something resembling a version of Eyes Wide Shut organized by Zelda, whose eccentricity is beginning to take on genuinely frightening dimensions. When she pulls out a gun and fires it, Boots correctly concludes that it is time to leave. The players’ collective escape from this spectacle of wealthy people treating others like toys reinforces that Zelda is not merely being constructed as a powerful and extravagant woman. There is something more dangerous about her, and Rebecca was probably right to distrust her from the beginning.

Meanwhile, Ted spends New Year’s Eve with Michelle and Henry. There is affection between them and a shared history that no divorce can erase, but I do not see this arrangement as simply mature, beautiful, or healthy. I have already written about how cruel Ted and Michelle’s friendship can be because it preserves the intimacy, affection, and even the emotional structure of their marriage while leaving Ted as the safe haven for a woman who chose to build a life without him.

Michelle continues to rely on their bond and occupy the place of the person who knows him best, but without accepting the emotional responsibility that once accompanied that intimacy. Friendship and affection are one thing. What she does to Ted is another. She preserves everything that comforts her while he is left to manage the hope that such closeness inevitably keeps alive.

The series also returns directly to Michelle’s controversial relationship with Dr. Jacob. Ted finally says what part of the audience has been pointing out since Season 3: Jacob held a position of power as her therapist and crossed a serious ethical boundary by becoming involved with a former patient. Michelle explains that she was the one who sought him out during a period of vulnerability because she wanted someone who already knew who she was and understood her problems.

That explains why she approached him, but it does not absolve either of them. Jacob had a much greater professional responsibility and should never have transformed knowledge acquired as her therapist into romantic intimacy. Michelle, however, is not relieved of responsibility for her choices simply because she was emotionally fragile. The series attempts to retroactively correct a storyline that generated enormous rejection, but it merely offers a justification that does not work.

There is also a delicate revelation involving the “Believe” sign. By making a new one for Ted, Michelle suggests that she created the original at the beginning of his coaching career. The sign that became Richmond’s defining symbol was therefore born within their marriage. Ted brought more than his coaching philosophy to England; he also carried something Michelle had created for him.

The new sign, now with its colors reversed, belongs to a different moment. Even so, the gesture also reinforces the symbolic bond that makes a complete emotional separation more difficult. It is almost as though Michelle wants to remain the woman who understands Ted better than anyone, despite no longer wanting to be his wife.

That is why the real progress does not lie in a possible reconciliation, but in the rejection of that fantasy. Ted and Michelle do not kiss at midnight, thankfully, and their relationship finally appears to have found a boundary. Ted is open to trying again with someone else. After his encounter with Charlotte Riley’s character in the previous episode, that possibility no longer feels like a passing flirtation and begins to represent an emotional way forward. He does not need to erase his history with Michelle, but he does need to stop remaining available for a relationship that has always existed on her terms.

Rebecca also begins the evening trying to conceal how much she misses Matthijs. The series insists on presenting him as the perfect man who appeared by chance and restored her faith in love. The problem is that I have never liked him. It is not because I prefer Rebecca with Ted or cannot accept another partner for her. The possibility of a romance between Ted and Rebecca has been practically dismissed, and that is fine. Rebecca deserves a partner who is not Ted Lasso. But did it have to be this man?

The uneasiness began in Amsterdam, when Rebecca spent the night on Matthijs’s boat, woke up unsure of exactly what had happened, and received a deliberately ambiguous answer. He denied that they had sex, but after she left, he said to himself that “everything happened.” The line can be interpreted romantically, as his realization that they had fallen in love, but the scene chose to play with the uncertainty of a woman who could not fully reconstruct the previous night. I never found that romantic.

This season, the feeling has only grown worse. Matthijs suddenly appears at the hospital without Rebecca calling him, as though he always knows where to find her and can reenter her life whenever he pleases. The series calls it destiny; to me, it looks like stalker behavior. There is also his voice, the way he speaks, and a calculated sensuality that is meant to be seductive but produces the opposite effect. Rather than charming, he seems strange, intrusive, and far too conscious of his role as the mysterious man.

After their conflict in the previous episode, Matthijs returns on New Year’s Eve to find Rebecca, and the two kiss at midnight. The series clearly expects the audience to see this as a grand romantic reconciliation. I continue to see a creepy man who appears out of nowhere during her most vulnerable moments. Rebecca deserves a good partner, but the show has yet to convince me that Matthijs is that man.

Fortunately, not even their kiss can happen without Jamie Tartt literally placing himself between them. Jamie’s cameo is a highlight in a lukewarm episode. Now playing for Barcelona, Jamie returns in exactly the right measure, without losing his vanity, his complete lack of talent for languages, or the emotional growth that made him one of the show’s best characters. When asked about his Spanish, he answers in French. He then interrupts Rebecca and Matthijs with an awkward hug and displays the happiness of a child who has just discovered that his parents have reconciled.

His reunion with Roy is even better. When “Jump Around” begins to play, they look at each other from opposite sides of the dance floor and immediately know what to do. The dance is fan service, of course, but it is the best kind: the kind that rewards a relationship built over several years and reminds us how much this duo has been missed. Jamie and Roy went from enemies to a strange pair of friends who would never admit how much they love each other. When Jamie ends up carrying Roy out of the party, the episode recaptures a comic chemistry that has been absent this season.

Less entertaining is the latest round of misunderstanding between Roy and Keeley. An intoxicated Roy talks about the woman he loves while Keeley hears part of the conversation and walks away before realizing that he is talking about her. It is a classic romantic-comedy device, but it is becoming tiresome. After everything they have already experienced, it is difficult to believe they remain trapped by interrupted conversations, half-heard confessions, and feelings that everyone can see except the two people involved.

The title “Don’t Jump Around Much Anymore” plays with the song, Roy’s age, and characters who can no longer keep jumping from one emotional possibility to another without making a choice. Ted finally seems to understand that loving Michelle does not mean waiting for her. Rebecca admits that she wants Matthijs, although I still do not understand why. Alice almost accepts that she wants to belong to the group, but retreats. Roy and Keeley continue postponing the inevitable.

It is not a perfect episode. The attempt to rewrite Michelle and Dr. Jacob’s history does not resolve its ethical problem, Zelda still appears to belong in another series, Matthijs remains creepy, and the Roy and Keeley romance urgently needs to move forward. Even so, Jamie’s return, his dance with Roy, and the new “Believe” sign restore something Ted Lasso had been missing: the feeling that these characters are not merely completing stages of a script, but genuinely finding their way back to one another.

Now we only need Sam. After concealing Jamie’s appearance so effectively, the series has practically created the expectation that other former players may return. Sam is the reunion that makes the most emotional sense, both because of his connection to Ted and because of his never entirely resolved history with Rebecca. If Jamie Tartt can come back, we can still believe.