“Are You Ready for Friday Night?”
October 19th, 2007
Once passed over due to its football focus, Friday Night Lights has spent its second season taking its established characters within a football environment and turning this into a purely personal drama series. This week, we finally returned to the gridiron…except not at all.
Last season, the show hit many of its finest moments when it paralleled the gridiron action with the off-field concerns: Mud Bowl, perhaps the show’s finest moment, brought a football game which intercut with Tyra being attacked and represented Coach Taylor’s field of dreams as much as it represented four quarters of high school ball.
We’re missing that this time around: football used to provide a framework, but now it’s treated as a distraction from the interpersonal drama. Football gets in the way of Tim Riggins’ drinking, football gets in the way of the Taylor family’s happiness, and football is just the reason Saracen and Smash are feuding. The only plays we saw in the football game were plays that spoke to this last point, as opposed to…well, actual football.
And I like football: I played a lot of it during lunchtime in High School, and I kind of felt like it was its own character within Friday Night Lights. Now, Football has no voice of its own, and I think that the show is hurting because of it. There doesn’t seem to be a connection between each episode, a way for us to relate these disparate storylines to one another in the web of things.
As a result, it is the storyline most disconnected with Football (Not even wasting a tenuous link) that stands out the most in this scenario: the Taylors remain the most consistently engaging and fascinating family on television. I loved Julie sitting around, waiting and constructing the perfect “We’re culturally hip and engaged” contribution to the weed-induced conversation. I loved Tami slapping the shit out of her. I loved Coach showing up at the game out of concern, more than anything else. I loved Tami’s confession that their family was falling apart. I just love everything about them.
But Matt and the nurse? Riggins and the Church? Street and the crazy surgical option? I just don’t get why these storylines were the right path forward for these characters. The same goes for Landry and Tyra: even with the murder barely even mentioned, the development of Tyra wanting to jump Landry’s bones just felt rushed and hackneyed. How they’ve managed to take characters I actually liked last season and make them nearly unbearable I still don’t really know.
But Taylor’s on board: Buddy’s plan to blackmail McGregor out of his position is most likely going to be successful, and Coach Taylor can finally return to his rightful place. Hopefully, with his own incredibly compelling drama solved, the writers might give more attention to the ones which are currently hurting for some quality. Perhaps then, in fact, the entire show will be ready for Friday night.
Cultural Observations
- Nice to finally see Riggins’ neighbour return to the fold, but she was just kind of there…no scene? No awkwardness? Where’s Bo? Wouldn’t Bo have told his best friend Tim Riggins that his brother was whoring in? Or is Bo dead? And what about Waverley? Oh, you want me to stop pointing out recurring characters likely cut due to budgetary reasons? Okay.
- Did I mention how awesome Julie was this episode? Now that she has fully embraced her rebellious side, I loved how awkward she felt. Having broken free from Matt, you can tell that she is still just as awkward, which somehow makes me feel better about it.
- The opposing team Dillon was playing must have really sucked if Saracen was playing that terribly and they never scored even a field goal. I mean, really, they were within like 15 yards at one point, how did that turn around outside of the worst QB in the history of the game? They could have at least made if 14-14 or something.
- I still want to know what they’re doing with Riggins: this episode featured him passing out, getting jealous of his brother, finding Jesus, trying to make out with Lyla, drinking again, and then driving with Street to Mexico. Where is the true Tim Riggins in this: is it the lovelorn, the soul-searching, the boozing, or the road tripping? I seriously need to know, Katims and Co.
Cultural Learnings 