“Pantherama!”
November 16th, 2007
Jason Katims and the writing staff of Friday Night Lights have been getting a lot of flack recently due to a single storyline dragging down what could be the best drama on television. Landry’s justified homicide, an act of self-defence, has sat over the series like a cloud, and critics have piled doubt onto the show’s ability to escape this concern. And yet, each week there has been an element that reminded us of why we loved this show: as long as the murder story was just one story, we could look past it.
If we follow that pattern, this week’s episode of Friday Night Lights should be the best of the season: a single conversation about his father’s action is the only storyline Landry gets this week, and the murder is pretty well shelved for the time being. And yet, as opposed to being one of the season’s best episodes, it was actually perhaps one of its worst. Proving that murder is not the only problem in Dillon, Texas, the series focused on storylines which were cliched, predictable and uninteresting, and the good (for once) did not outweigh the bad. And, this time, we can’t blame the murder.
Cultural Learnings 