Spoiler alert! Major plot points revealed from “Ted Lasso,” Season 3, Episode 9

The latest remarkable episode of “Ted Lasso” proves once again why the Apple+ show is pretty much the best TV series there is about sports, the best TV series there is about musical theater, and pretty much the best TV show there is about life. All at once.

And the episode that dropped last night might be the best of the best – even if the Denver Broncos are the butt of all the best jokes.

“Ted Lasso” follows a folksy, ill-prepared football coach from Kansas City (played by series creator and Chiefs superfan Jason Sudeikis) as he navigates the highs and lows of the Premier League – that’s the first tier of the English football system.

Despite having no equivalent experience – and little knowledge of the game we call soccer – Lasso was hired three years ago as coach of the AFC Richmond Greyhounds by a woman who had inherited the team in a nasty divorce. She turned to the oblivious American because she assumed he would fail.

It was part of her overall scheme to burn her beloved ex-husband’s precious team to the ground. That, of course, was before she (and millions of viewers) fell fully under the folksy spell of the affable Midwestern interloper. The considerable charm of the series is that Lasso is far more concerned with helping his players to become better humans than champion footballers.

A major subplot of this third season has been the discovery that a popular player named Colin Hughes (played by Billy Harris) is in a closeted relationship with a man. While coming out as gay has become much more common in some professional sports leagues in recent years, it remains largely taboo in U.S. team sports like the NFL and NBA. Internationally, the story is far different. In the past 18 months, no fewer than three professional footballers have come out.

Because the “Ted Lasso” series has a giant, beating heart, it was safe for audiences to assume the show would use Colin’s coming out as a teachable moment for the entire world.

One large clue was that this climactic episode is titled “La Locker Room Aux Folles” – a nod to Harvey Fierstein’s groundbreaking 1983 Broadway musical comedy “La Cage Aux Folles,” about a loving gay couple whose son marries the daughter of a homophobic French diplomat. It inspired the 1996 runaway hit film “The Birdcage,” and an excellent local stage production just closed last week at the Littleton Town Hall Arts Center.

But you know the happy ending isn’t going to come easily. When team captain Isaac McAdoo (played by Kola Bokinni) accidentally learns Colin’s secret, he not only shuns his friend, he reacts violently to a taunting fan, gets ejected and blows up in the locker room – forcing Colin to come clean at halftime. “Big whoop,” says one. “We don’t care, right, guys?” says another.

Enter Ted Lasso’s homespun worldview – and his hilarious antipathy for the Denver Broncos.

Hold on, the coach says. “Actually, Colin, we DO care.”

He then proceeds to tell the wildly circuitous story of growing up back in Kansas City, where his best friend, Stevey, was a huge Denver Broncos fan. Stevey caught a lot of guff for that back then, but Ted told him he did not care. That his loyalty to the Broncos didn’t affect the way he felt about him at all.

Only, it did. Because when the Broncos won Super Bowls after the 1997 and ’98 seasons, Stevey had to watch the games all by himself, because none of his friends joined him to share in his victory. Believe me, there is much more to this crazy story, including the overconsumption of a seven-layer-dip and $9,000 in damage done to a toilet. But the point was – Stevey both won, and suffered, alone.

“Because I wasn’t there. Because I didn’t care,” Ted says. “But I should have cared. I should have supported him. I should have been at his house both them years. Sharing that seven-layer dip with my friend. While his garbage-ass team wins back to back Super Bowls.”

Cut to Colin: “Coach, did you just compare being gay to being a Denver Broncos fan?”

Ted: “You know what? I did, and I regret it. Yeah, sorry about that.”

Cut to star player Jamie Tartt, a Brit: “What the (bleep) are Denver Broncos?”

Ted: “You know, that’s a very good question, too. It’s an American football reference; an absolute fumble in this situation. I apologize.”

But the point is, he tells Colin, bringing the whole absurd conversation to a gloriously winning conclusion: “We don’t NOT care. We care very much. We care about who you are and what you must have been going through. And, from now on, you don’t have to go through it all by yourself.”

With the weight of the world fully lifted from his shoulders, Colin leads the team from behind to victory. And in a series that regularly and proudly flaunts its unapologetic love for musical theater, the comeback montage is accompanied by the signature song from “La Cage Aux Folles,” titled, “I am What I Am.”

To bring things full circle, we next learn that Isaac didn’t brutishly reject Colin because he is gay. He was angry because his friend didn’t trust him enough to be honest with him.  

We love sports stories, even when we know from the start that the home team will almost always emerge triumphant because unlikely, even impossible underdog stories play out in the real sports world all the time. A team rallying around an utterly vulnerable, exposed teammate in the homophobic world of pro sports is … less expectable.

Watching this episode of “Ted Lasso” play out, remarkably balanced as it is in tone, humor and heart, I was reminded of a long-ago interview where “Glee” creator Ryan Murphy talked about intentionally giving a fictional gay teen named Kurt a blue-collar, fiercely accepting and protective father all the way back in 2009, because that’s the father he would have liked to have had himself. Sometimes, Murphy said, you have to create the world you want to see on TV – and then hope real life follows suit and catches up.

That’s what Jason Sudeikis and his team have accomplished with this episode.