A world of pain

'Twas a football-themed night of TV for me. Spoilers for, in order, "Veronica Mars" and "Friday Night Lights," just as soon as I pour myself a white Russian...

I have a friend who's a massive Veronica/Logan 'shipper, so when a "Veronica Mars" episode barely has the two interacting, she gets mad, no matter how good the rest of the hour might have been. After the two of them shared only one scene last week, I think she was on the verge of driving to the production office and smashing all the windows on Rob's car while bellowing something about how this is what happens when you do something bad to a stranger...

Sorry, went on a "Lebowski" digression there for a second, though I was helped along by maybe the best shout-out to The Dude and Walter that they've done so far, with the Wichita linebacker's "Where's the playbook, Larry? Where's the playbook? You're entering a world of pain, Larry." Really, the only thing that would have made it better was if Larry's roommate was in an iron lung at the time.

Anyway, back to Veronica and her fella. This was a rare episode when all the mysteries took a backseat to Veronica's love life, with the playbook story in particular almost feeling like an afterthought. But I suppose you have to feed the 'shippers from time to time, and I liked that Veronica realized what a paranoid loon she was becoming. Plus, that story featured my favorite non-Lebowski line, with Logan's joke about Madison Sinclair being able to testify to Dick's status as a minute man.

This was a fairly light-hearted hour, with the two darkest events -- Weevil beating up the abusive boyfriend and the blonde getting raped -- taking place off-screen. And if the purpose of doing shorter arcs was to avoid the loss of momentum that both the bus crash and the bridge stabbing suffered in the middle of last year, I'm not sure it's working yet. There's going to be a significant rape storyline next week, but that'll still mean two out of the first four episodes barely dealt with it at all.

And am I the only one who wishes Weevil got to keep his job as Keith's new guy Friday?

Meanwhile, "Friday Night Lights" offered up its first non-Berg-directed episode. At first, I didn't feel the same sense of urgency I got in the first two episodes (the ditching of the day of the week title cards didn't help), but then we got to Taylor taking a page out of the Herb Brooks playbook and making the guys run until they came back together. (Though as a huge fan of "Miracle," the blatant theft/homage was a little distracting even there. It's one thing for "Battlestar Galactica" to steal from a 40-year-old movie like "The Great Escape," and another for this show to steal from a movie that came out two years ago.) Even without Berg behind the camera, the show continues to look amazing, particularly those shots at the end of the ringer QB from New Orleans wandering through the Dillon practice. And Kyle Chandler, usually such a mellow guy on screen, really had me believing in Taylor's new red-ass approach.

Haven't gotten all the way through "Gilmore Girls" yet, and probably won't until tonight. Off to write a column...