Great analysis. I think you can draw a straight line between Keeley’s experiences with Jack and Shandy in Season 3, and the resolution of the love triangle with her, Jamie, and Roy: she learns says ‘no’ to all of them, and is happier for it.

She went from being a ‘wife and girlfriend’ of a soccer star to someone who doesn’t need to be so defined by her relationships. Being Keeley Jones is enough.

I think Zava was the clearly necessary character in terms of plot progression - he allowed Richmond to have a period of true suckiness but still be in a position to realistically come back and win once they figured out what was wrong.

Unfortunately Barbara, Jack and Shandy were all as you said necessary for Keeley, but only because they could not figure out how to connect Keeley to the main plot anymore and needed to give her something to do. Zava at least drove both the main plot (in terms of positioning Richmond on the table) and character development (mostly Jamie, but also I think he progressed all of the coaching staff because they took the “easy strategy” at first and then after he was gone they had to figure out how to actually strategise… something they had in the past just outsourced to Nate/Zava’s easy scoring).

I wish Keeley had been more connected to the main plot and characters… she could have stayed on as team PR for another year (realistic given her level of professional experience) and still had plots with the team…

I always thought Zava was their way of showing that Ted, Beard and Roy are struggling / regressing without Nate to contribute on strategy.

If you go back to season 1 pre-Nate’s contributions, and Ted and Beard have the team funneling the ball to Jamie on at least one occasion.

Hiring someone new, Zava, and regressing to that strategy shows that they need to find a way to fill the niche that Nate once occupied.

I’m so unbelievably happy that you mentioned alcohol use. I will continue to read the rest of your post after I leave this comment, but it really bothers me that the writers have the foresight to tackle topics like LGBTQ + Mental Health but damn near glorify alcohol.

I was never even dependent on alcohol, but I’ve been to rehab multiple times for other drugs that are not socially acceptable. Whenever I found out, they had beer on tap at my gym, I was floored. Anyways - good first paragraph lol. I’ll be back to comment when I’m done. :)

Update: Excellent Analysis & Insight.

Shandy, to me, is a milestone marker to show us how much Keeley has grown, and how she must make sacrifices to keep doing so, baptizing the old self by fire.

Before Ted’s arrival as the catalyst for growth, she believed that she belonged to that archetype of a model who is vapid and all about the money and the fame, dating players and putting up with poor emotional wellbeing in order to remain part of that world, in which she believes she belongs.

When Shandy comes along, Keeley is feeling insecure about her ability to execute her vision, and Shandy shows knowledge in the area, which reverts Keeley to glorifying that lifestyle/the echo of her former self and letting that back into her new life.

She quickly knows that it feels wrong, but she still doesn’t quite want to let go of the person she was, so she keeps her around and tries to help the mirror of her old self grow to fit the person she has become.

It is not until she is faced with the reality that “the old her” is not something she can or wants to return to/let drive her anymore, and that she will be dragged down if she keeps trying, that she takes the step of cutting ties with her reservations and her ideas about her old self rooted in nostalgia.

For this, her instincts are immediately confirmed by Shandy’s outburst. Just as your brain and body fight back with manipulation when you try to get clean, Shandy does the same and puts Keeley through a kick to detatch from her old self and move forward with the new.

As for Jack… While I appreciate that Jack was an allegorical representation of the way wolves come in all kinds of clothing; I do think it was a bit crappy to make the only character foray into a queer relationship that gets any kind of real screen time, part of the evil lesbian trope.

For someone like Keeley who has already had relationships with men who hurt her badly, it would have been really nice to see her find real stable love with a woman who shared her ambition and interests, along with truly valuing her for who she is and not seeing her strength as a threat. We only had a couple of queer characters and only saw a sliver of Colin’s relationship, while Trent’s were never aired, so it just doesn’t feel good to make the only lesbian character a Slytherin where there was otherwise an opportunity to show Keeley growing as a direct result of her openness to being someone she doesn’t quite know yet, and benefiting from her belief in her own heart’s ability to guide her.

Had she not kicked the boys out in the last episode, this would have been far more queerbaity than I could manage.

I think a storyline where Jack is a man with a very similar storyline, who hurts Keeley the same way, but then has a daughter who she falls for and ends up with, dividing the two sides of that character and giving her the opportunity to choose between the relationships she knows (including the one with herself), and the ones that she needs, would have been far stronger and not fallen into Hollywood tropes about queer women where it is just a phase and the bisexual woman can’t end up in a queer relationship long term.

In fact, the gayness in the show feels performative in a lot of ways. We have little insight into any healthy, ongoing queer relationships, and it would have been great to address the fact that sports and queerness have always coexisted and what that really looks like, outside of the brief and fairly stereotypical insights we received. Hell, it would have been pretty cool to see Sassy and Keeley develop a romantic relationship; that kinda feels like a match made in heaven.

Sorry, end rant. You just got me thinking a lot about these side characters and what they represent! It definitely feeds bi erasure when bisexual women’s queer relationships are consistently undermined in media, where those relationships must be followed up with the woman in question going back to men. Keeley was an opportunity to subvert that trope, particularly after so much of her growth came from developing connections with other women, but instead they fell into it, face first.

When Keeley leaves the Richmond club, Rebecca tells her to hire your best friend. I think Keeley felt like she could help out an old friend while trying to recreate the closeness of the Richmond group.

I felt that Zava was a way to emphasize the importance of the team over the superstar. It reminded me of “Miracle” when Herb Brooks said, “I’m not looking for the best players. I’m looking for the right ones.”

Zava made Jamie motivated to be better but he also drew a stark contrast between the player Jamie started as (“I’m the one that scores all the goals and I’m the only one they come to see”) and the one he became, who valued more than just winning (“We don’t need him. We’ve got a good thing going here.”) or being the superstar.