‘Assistant to the kitman’: ‘Ted Lasso’ hits nostalgia gold with a sly reference to ‘The Office’

This article contains spoilers for Ted Lasso‘s series finale.

Like the Diamond Dogs so eloquently stated in the emotional last episode of Apple Plus’s soccer comedy smash-hit Ted Lasso, no one’s perfect, but there are a lot of perfect things. Among those are the Jason Sudeikis-led comedy and The Office, two examples of near-perfect sitcoms. For the writers of the former to decide to honor the latter in their show’s very last episode? Also perfect.

The moment, which only the most attentive of sitcom devotees picked up on, happened during the first minutes of the episode when Nick Mohammed’s Nate Shelley officially returned to AFC Richmond a reformed man. The club’s current clubhouse attendant, who replaced Nate in the second season of the show, aptly named Will Kitman, introduced his former boss as the assistant kitman, leading Nate to correct him with, again, a perfect nod to The Office.

Nate replies by saying he’s the “assistant to the kitman” – a direct reference to Rainn Wilson’s character in the popular workplace comedy, Dwight Schrute. Fans of both shows were instantly reminded of the numerous times Dwight called himself Assistant Regional Manager, only for Steve Carell’s Michael Scott to remind him of his actual job title: Assistant to the Reginal Manager. Same thing? Not really.

On The Office, the recurring gag served to highlight Dwight’s deep hopes for a promotion, as well as Michael’s resistance to actually promoting him. On Ted Lasso, the joke is made backward – Will uses the best title of the two to refer to Nate, but Nate humbly puts himself in place by stating he’s actually an assistant to the kitman, which basically means being Will’s personal assistant, rather than the second-in-charge in the clubhouse assistant chain of command.

It could be the case that the Ted Lasso writers simply accidentally jumbled the joke, but it seems more likely that they purposefully switched it around in order to spotlight Nate’s character growth on the show.

Catch up on the third and final season of Ted Lasso while it’s still hot, now streaming on Apple TV Plus. Read our review of the show here.