Friday Night Lights, "May the Best Man Win": Give it a chance

Spoilers for the final "Friday Night Lights" (until the strike ends? of the season? ever?) coming up just as soon as I defend my wife's honor...

"Give it a chance." How perfect -- and sad -- is it that this would be the last line of dialogue, maybe ever?

As Jason Katims notes in his interview with Mo Ryan, "May the Best Man" win wasn't intended as any kind of finale, be it season or series. But even if the strike ends this weekend, I don't know that NBC's going to feel compelled to order more episodes for this season, and unless Ben Silverman's "Who cares about 'Friday Night Lights' when we've got '30 Rock'?" comments were wildly inaccurate, I'm not feeling confident that we'll get more new episodes ever. But intentional finale or not, there's something incredibly touching that the final line of this episode would be "Give it a chance," you know?

"May the Best Man Win" wasn't quite as outstanding as last week's effort -- far too much of Lyla and Logan for my taste, and the Smash story took too long to get to the idea that there would still be colleges dying to give Brian a scholarship, plus the ongoing weirdness of The Murder That Must Not Be Discussed Even Though It Explains Everything About Tyra and Landry -- but it was still damn good.

The Mo story was lightweight but a fine comic showcase for Connie Britton and, especially, Kyle Chandler (I loved the way his lip curled at the first mention of Mo), and it even feels appropriate that Peter Berg would finally step in front of the camera for what may or may not be the swan song. Gaius Charles played the hell out of his scenes (even the ones that were BS, like him pondering arena football for even a half-second). It was nice to see the Panthers finally get a completely easy win (as well as an acknowledgement that, whatever his heroics were many episodes back, Landry is still second string), Riggins on the radio was hilarious (even though the story was tied to Lyla), and Scott Porter was superb in his story. (Though I imagine, as with "Knocked Up" and "Juno," there will be some complaints about the script trying to stack the deck against getting the abortion.)

I don't regret any of my complaints about this season. The problems were real and at times very, very bad. But, dammit, I'm not ready to say goodbye to this town, to this team, to these people just yet.

Give it a chance, Ben Silverman. There can be room on NBC for two charity cases that aren't owned by your production company, can't there?

What did everybody else think?

Friday Night Lights, "Leave No One Behind": KHAAAAAAN!!!!!

Spoilers for "Friday Night Lights" coming up just as soon as I order a Lemon Drop...

Dammit, why couldn't the show have been this good all season?

I watch a scene like Coach throwing Saracen into the shower, or Smash firing up the team, or Tami clutching Gracie as she watches Julie (who she could once hold that way) take her driving test, and I'm reminded of why I loved "Friday Night Lights" in the first place. And that only makes the bulk of this season so much more frustrating. How could the same people responsible for this episode -- and for season one -- have given us junk like the murder, the winter of our age-inappropriate discontent, the Riggins boys robbing meth dealers, etc.?

Which isn't to say that "Leave No One Behind" was perfect. The Smash story, for instance, conveniently overlooks the fact that a guy with Smash's profile doesn't have to worry about his football career being over. Even if no Division I school will touch him right now, even if, somehow, no other four year college will touch him (which simply wouldn't happen if he's as talented as the show keeps telling us he is), he would still be able to get a scholarship to a junior college, spend a year or two staying out of trouble and scoring touchdowns, and eventually transfer to a place on the level of a TMU. Happens all the time, to people who did things far worse than the trouble Smash got into. (For only one example, you can read this amazing Seattle Times story about all the trouble NFL tight end Jerramy Stevens got into both before and during his time at the University of Washington. I should warn you, though, that the story will likely make you sick to your stomach, as Stevens comes off as a horrible excuse for a human being.)

The Saracen story, meanwhile, suffered, as much of this season has, from bad episode-to-episode pacing. It was a bad idea to have Matt spend an episode after Carlotta's exit acting like nothing was wrong; they either should have moved this story into last week's episode, or else they should have had Matt seem much sadder during the handful of scenes he had last week, so it wouldn't seem like he got over the break-up just fine and then fell off a cliff all of a sudden. And, frankly, it could have been helped had some previous episodes dealt a little more with the awkward dynamic between Matt and Coach after Eric came back from TMU.

That said, Eric hurling a drunken Matt into the shower was the best scene of the season by a long stretch, great work by both actors and a moment that was about football and yet about so much more -- which, as I mentioned last week, is what the show should be, using football as the unifying force and a fishbowl to examine all these people's lives. Saracen getting his inner Riggins on may have come out of nowhere, and the scene may have spun out of a story no one really cared about (Matt and Carlotta), plus another story the show ignored for most of the year (resentment about Eric going to TMU), but damn if I didn't get chills when Matt started to unload on Eric and Eric was reminded of just how much weight this boy carries with him every day.

"There is nothing wrong with you. There is nothing wrong with you at all." Damn.

(Does any other current show use repetition of language as well as "FNL"? So many of the best moments in the show's history feature elementally simple dialogue that gains exponentially in power when it's repeated.)

And while the Riggins apprenticeship came and went in the space of an episode, it at least gave us a bunch of hilarious lines and moments: Riggins admitting he always skips on Wednesdays, Matt calling Carlotta "the break-up fairy," Landry worrying about Matt becoming "an at-risk youth" (followed by hungover Matt's "Oh my God! Stop talking!") and our first visit to The Landing Strip all season.

And after trying to pretend that the murder didn't happen -- much as we'd all like to forget it, it did happen and should affect the behavior of Landry and Tyra going forward -- this episode finally had Tyra acknowledge, to Landry if not to Tami and Julie, the nature and cause of their close bond. I love that Landry, much as he wanted to jump Tyra's bones right there, had enough respect for Jean to not do that to her in the middle of a date, and to make sure they had broken up before he made his move with Tyra. We've only got one episode to go this season (and maybe ever), so there won't be much time to see how this relationship goes, but a part of me sides with Jean about Landry making a mistake. Is Tyra with him because she really wants him or just because of that competitive streak she talked about with her mom? Was she using that as an excuse to not admit to anyone what her real feelings are? Or is this gonna crash and burn even worse than the Tyra/Landry 1.0 did?

Despite the above-mentioned plot hole at the center of the Smash story, I thought Gaius Charles and Liz Mikel were again terrific throughout, as was Kyle Chandler in those scenes with Smash.

Also good, albeit in another undercooked storyline, were Connie Britton and Aimee Teegarden. As with the Matt thing, I don't think we've gotten enough build-up of Julie's latest reason to resent her mom, but the scene outside the DMV just about made up for the out of left field-ness of it all.

Some other thoughts:

-Another great Kyle Chandler moment: after Coach chews out a drunk Saracen, Mac asks if he could smell the booze on QB One's breath, and -- after a pause that makes it clear how much of Eric's future suddenly rides on this kid -- Eric says, "No, I don't."

-And still another: Coach turning on the charm with Grandma Saracen. At first, the scene of her back watching TV in the housecoat and not being completely clear on Carlotta's whereabouts suggested that she had immediately backslid from all the progress she made this season, but she seemed clear-headed enough to tell Coach that Matt needed help, which suggests that her faculties come and go.

-Adrianne Palicki still can't play volleyball convincingly. Maybe my whole "Tyra to strong safety" idea wasn't such a good idea, after all. (Though with a helmet and pads, it'd be easier to use a stunt double.)

-Was I the only one laughing hysterically at the scene where Jean asked Tyra about her intentions vis a vis Landry? Jean only coming up to eye level with Tyra's chest was one of the funnier sight gags this show's done.

-I've been watching some early season one episodes on the Universal HD channel, and there's a scene in episode two where Coach visits Street in the hospital and Street talks about the ways Saracen is different from him, notably that he listens to Bob Dylan and likes to draw. Matt's artistic side hasn't come up much since then; are we supposed to have forgotten about it, or is part of the point of his obnoxious behavior in art class that he's acting out in one of the classes he likes best?

-If other characters like Street and other stories like Matt's can drop in and out of episodes all the time, why must we get a few minutes with Lyla and Logan Huntzberger every week?

-I think Landry absolutely made the right movie choice. "Wrath of Khan" is freakin' genius, but even when you're going out with a proudly geeky girl like Jean, isn't it much better to go with a movie where she'll be inclined to stay very close to you the entire time? (Though, from the sound of their post-flick banter, Landry may have been the one hugging Jean's arm instead of the other way around.)

So that's it. One more episode, and then...? Since the show came back with new episodes last month, the ratings haven't gone down or up from their usual crappy level, and Ben Silverman and Jeff Zucker don't sound like guys who really care to be in the scripted TV business any more than they absolutely have to. Although a lot of that is because Zucker failed so abysmally when he was in charge of finding scripted hits for NBC, and some of their talk now is assuredly writers strike rhetoric, I don't know if "FNL" comes back next year, even if there isn't time for development of new scripted series.

Had you asked me a week ago if I would be upset about cancellation, I would have said no. (Hell, I was arguing for non-renewal at the end of season one, because I feared... well, pretty much what we got here in season two.) But I watch a really strong episode like this one and I'm not ready to say goodbye to these characters just yet, you know?

What did everybody else think?

FNL: She spikes

Spoilers for "Friday Night Lights" coming up just as soon as I apologize to anyone who may have been offended by my punching them in the face...

There are only three games left in the Dillon football season? Whoza whazza wha?

I've had lots of problems with "FNL" season two, but none moreso than the way the show has completely lost track of the damn team. We've seen, what, six games in 13 episodes? (With Smash playing terribly in almost all of them, which makes his big college recruiting story seem doubly baffling.) And now there are only three more before the playoffs start? And we spend an entire episode with zero football action or practice, but with a subplot devoted to the girls' volleyball team?

I know the company line is that "FNL" isn't really about football, but that's just a lie to lure in the people who would otherwise refuse to watch a show about football -- and who, based on the ratings for season two, aren't going to watch anyway. Season one was absolutely about football, and that's what made it great. It was about how a town defined itself through this team and how the pressure of being that defining element shaped the lives of the coaches, the players and their friends and family. There was plenty of action that took place away from the gridiron, but the season was always there in the background. We were always aware of how the Panthers were doing, how Saracen and Smash and Riggins were playing, how secure Eric's job was, etc.

Football was the foundation on which everything else was built, and now it's become this obligatory thing that the writers feel like they have to bring up from time to time, when they'd rather be spending time on another romance or crime plot.

Think of some of the stories that could have been told this year within the framework of what's been established: How is proud outcast Landry fitting into this celebrity jock subculture? How much heat is Coach getting in and around town for his role in what's been a very troubled post-championship season? How is Street going to shape a life for himself without football still living in this town where everyone knows his tragic story? But they've either been given cursory treatment or ignored entirely in favor of silly, off-mission stuff like manslaughter and Carlotta and stolen drug money.

I'm not saying there needs to be game action every single week, but we need to have a sense that games have been played in between episodes, how the team is doing, how Smash is still playing brilliantly enough to attract all these recruiters, how Matt's playing now that he's the undisputed leader of the team, etc. I complained a while back about how all the characters seemed sealed off from one another in separate little shows. The football team and its season is the show's unifying element. Without it being front and center, you've got... well, you've got "Friday Night Lights" season two.

(Oddly, if NBC was really that insistent on downplaying the football stuff, Katims and company had a built-in way to accomplish that without ignoring the reality of this world: they could have had season two begin not long after season one, covering the spring semester of the school year. There could still be some football content -- spring practices, maybe some early recruitment -- but the game's absence wouldn't have been as glaring, and we also wouldn't have had to skip over major events like the team adjusting to the post-championship glow, Eric's early days at TMU, Smash and Waverly breaking up, etc.)

By making the football such a minor element, it takes away a lot of the power from a story like tonight's Smash plot. Okay, so he's going to miss the final three games of the season. But what does that mean? Are they struggling so much that they won't qualify for the playoffs if they lose two or three of these games? What little game action we've seen suggests the team has almost been winning in spite of Smash; how big a blow is this, really?

That said, Smash's story and Street: car salesman were the highlights of "Humble Pie." Not coincidentally, both had at least a tangential connection to football.

Gaius Charles is often underutilized (he was MIA for the early part of this season), but when called upon -- in this case, in the scene where he has to listen to Mama Smash (Liz Mike, wonderful as always) tell him to take the damn deal, and the one where he comforts his little sister after she gets the prank call -- he delivers. I just think the plot would have been better if we had more context about the season.

Scott Porter's been MIA of late, because I think the writers are at a loss about what to do with Street as Jason himself is. I don't know that having him sell Chevys is the ideal answer for either man or show, but at least it plays off Jason's history with Buddy (who was on his way to being Street's father-in-law once upon a time) and puts him in another place where he has to use his force of will to beat a stacked deck. Plus, Herc is never not funny, and the brief montage of Jason getting dressed for work was another nice reminder of the commitment the show and Porter have given to showing what life in a chair is like.

The rest of the episode? Meh. Tyra as volleyball badass was amusing, but not nearly as amusing as Tyra as Powder Puff badass. (Plus, nowhere is it mentioned that Tami's new coaching job is eating into more time she could be spending with the beautiful baby she feels so guilty about leaving at daycare.) I think I went into a coma at some point in the Lyla/Tim/Logan Huntzberger triangle story. (Also, my review screener had some sound problems, so the line may have been looped in later, but how does Lyla know how much money Tim owes Guy? And how easily can a girl in Dillon -- even the daughter of Buddy Garrity -- toss around three grand?) I got a kick out of "God's little gift to Landry," as Matt described little Jean, but given the way the show is now completely ignoring any emotional fallout from the rapist story, it makes me regret its existence even more. I watch Landry hanging out with Riggins and Smash like they're total BFFs, and I wish we could have spent the first half of the season showing how he got to that point, instead of on stupid melodrama that no longer has any impact on what's happening on the show.

What did everybody else think?

FNL: Everything in black and white

Spoilers for "Friday Night Lights" coming up just as soon as I bring over a box...

For an episode that was so much about the ugliness of stereotypes, "Who Do You Think You Are?" sure trafficked in a lot of them. We got the hood trying to drag down the buddy who just wants to get out, the racist bullies, the racially disapproving parents, the sexist good old boy giving his friend bad advice, even the ever-popular declaration of love that's so belated that the object of it is already kissing someone else.

The ideas behind all these scenarios were fine, but the execution of most was as subtle as an air horn.

I'm not saying that racism doesn't exist in small Texas towns, or even that it doesn't sometimes get as overt and ugly as it did in that movie theater, or even with Noelle's parents. But "Friday Night Lights" handles social issues best when it doesn't feel the need to present them in all-caps with yellow highlighter. The last time the show did a racism storyline, with Mac's comments to the TV reporter, the genius of it was the ambiguity of what Mac said and how he said it. You could see how what he said was offensive, just as you could see how Mac would never think that it was, you know? The premise of Noelle's parents and/or Mama Smash trying to break the two of them up over the interracial thing isn't a bad one, but I think it would have worked much better if her folks kept going on about how enlightened they are in the kind of patronizing fashion that makes it clear how much they aren't. There were a couple of lines where the scene almost seemed to go there, but most of the dialogue could have been straight out of the original "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?" from 40 years ago.

The Buddy/Santiago story, meanwhile, featured the usual stellar work from Brad Leland (particularly the moment where Buddy slaps the watch down on the floor because he no longer gives a damn about it compared to the welfare of his foster kid), and some really nice characterization for Buddy, who's trying really hard to be as open-minded as any car salesman from Dillon can. But did they really have to make Francis Capra (Weevil!) utter a line like "When did you forget where you came from?" That's like a cliche of a cliche, and shouldn't be allowed in any script produced from about 2003 on, if not 1993. I winced when I heard it.

Of our stories dealing with prejudice and preconception, the best by far, as usual, was the one with the Taylors, because it was always aware of the stereotypes it was addressing. (And because, as always, Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton rock.) Even the scene with Eric and Mac was fine, because Eric rejected Mac's caveman attitude out of hand. Even though he knows it would be easier for Tami to quit her job, that's not the kind of husband and father he wants to be -- and good on the writers for having him point out that one of the main reasons Tami didn't follow him to TMU (and, therefore, why Eric gave up on the college coaching career he'd always dreamed of) was so she wouldn't have to quit her job. The argument at the dinner table -- one of those overly-polite, seemingly-reasonable fights where even Julie had to ask if they were fighting -- was hilarious and dead-on. (And it was, of course, elevated to another comedy stratosphere when Buddy showed up with his Box Of Stuff, which none of the Taylors wanted anything to do with. Britton's delivery of "Buddy's here. He's got a box" may be the funniest line reading she's ever given.) Wherever else the show may stumble, it always gets the little details of marriage right.

The Lyla/Tim/Logan from "Gilmore Girls" love triangle? Meh. When the show bothers to remember that Lyla's still a regular and that she's supposed to be a good Christian and not just a poseur, she can be kind of interesting. And Tim prank-calling the radio show while Herc cackled in the background was damned amusing. (One question: if Tim's on such good terms with Herc and blink-and-you'll-miss-him Street, why couldn't he have crashed on their floor during his homeless odyssey?) But of all the various storylines the writers have tried out with Riggins this year, the only one I'm less interested in than his pursuit of Lyla is the money he and Billy stole from Ferret Guy, which blessedly wasn't mentioned.

Finally, did my eyes deceive me or did we get an honest to goodness scene of Landry and Matt hanging out together and acting like best friends? What's up with that? Is that still allowed?

And so Carlotta's gone, and I'm still not sure what the point of that story was, other than to fulfill the show's quota of age-inappropriate romances. As I noted a while back, it's been kind of unremarked upon that Grandma's mental state improved dramatically under her care, and the one way in which the story could have been justified was if the relationship went south, Carlotta left, and Grandma backslid as a result of Matt not thinking things through. She may still have a problem (though I suppose the insurance company should be sending a replacement), but Carlotta's exit had nothing whatsoever to do with Matt. I'm guessing he'll wind up back with Julie in a few episodes, which would make the point of Carlotta a stalling tactic while the writers got Julie through the end of her bratty phase.

What did everybody else think?

FNL: Mid-life, mid-game crisis

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

FNL: Close quarters

Spoilers for "Friday Night Lights" coming up just as soon as I ask my wife for some lasagna...

First, I'm especially grateful to NBC PR for sending out a screener of tonight's episode, since I got to watch it before tuning into NBC last night and getting several promos that heavily featured the climactic misunderstanding 'twixt Coach and Riggins. Not that it was that stunning -- things were going so well for Riggins that you knew something bad would happen to ruin it -- but I'm starting to believe that the single greatest advantage of illegal downloading is being able to avoid spoiler-filled ads for future shows.

I'm glad to have the show back, and that they started production so early this season that they have more episodes left than most. I don't know that the show's ever going to get back to the creative heights of season one -- here, even with the manslaughter arc over and done with (sort of), there were a number of storytelling choices I found odd -- but at this moment in time, even slightly overcooked "Friday Night Lights" is like a feast for a starving man.

The tornado was pretty quite artery-clogging in its cheese factor (no doubt a sacrifice at the altar of the Promotable Moment), but at least we were done with it quickly, its primary purpose to set up one of our two uncomfortable living situations for the episode with the Laribee team moving into Dillon for a few weeks. Contrived though that situation was, the pressure cooker tension between the two teams -- one run by our heroic disciplinarian, the other by an overcompensating hothead eager to cause trouble -- created some nice dramatic moments. Even the more football-focused first season didn't deal too much with how ugly high school athletic rivalries can be (the only time they touched on it was in the racism two-parter), and for the first time in a long time, the football scenes felt more than obligatory. Football stories are good. Not only is football what the show is about, but it forces large numbers of characters together in the same plot, as opposed to going off in their own isolated twos and threes. This is a show about a community, or a series of interlocking communities, and all of them revolve around the team. If it took a bad CGI tornado to make the team important again, so be it.

(Plus, a point was finally given to the Stereotypical Lesbian Soccer Coach scene from a few weeks back, as Eric's decision to give her the bigger locker room made things worse here.)

Our other uncomfortable living situation was over at the Taylor house, which was already overcrowded with Shelly in residence, let alone Riggins. As Tami said, bringing Tim into that household was like putting gasoline next to a lit match -- just not in the way she meant. Sure, Julie is attracted to him -- having already crossed the "dating football players" threshhold and now in the standard bad boys phase, he's pretty much her ideal male -- but Tim, for all his epic self-destructiveness, knows not to cross that boundary, even if Coach doesn't know he knows. Rather, Tim's presence -- and his ability to once again ignite the hormones of a woman of a certain age -- brought the running conflicts between Tami and Shelly to the surface. "It's no wonder you're single" is pretty much the worst possible thing that a married person could say to an unattached, lonely sibling, but that moment felt so real. Mrs. Coach, much as we all revere her, is as human as everyone else on this show, and she's going to have moments when her temper gets the best of her and she says and does the wrong thing

The usual stellar work by Connie Britton, and by Jessyln Gilsig -- and by Taylor Kitsch, who became immeasurably more interesting as an actor once the writers realized last season to give him the minimum amount of dialogue possible. (Oddly, that's how the "Animal House" writers realized they needed to treat Belushi after a few weeks of filming.) It's not that he can't deliver dialogue, but that the mythic brooding quality of Riggins works best the less he says to anyone.

A great talker -- if not a great salesman -- is Brad Leland as Buddy Garrity, who played the hell out of Buddy's reaction to the news about his wife and the tree hugger, and especially the hurt little boy face upon realizing that he wasn't going to win her back with his sales pitch. On the other hand, that was an exceptionally weak pitch from the guy who's allegedly the Texas Car Salesman of the Year five years running. "You must forgive me" is beyond the hard sell; it's the no sell. (Which isn't to say it was a badly-written scene; I can easily buy Buddy being too blinded by ego to think he had to put more than a minimum of effort into winning Pam back.)

Finally, we have Tyra and Landry, who got a perfectly fine John Hughes type plotline with one rather large problem: it seems to be taking place in a universe in which Landry never killed a guy and they never conspired to dump the body. I know Landry makes a brief reference early on to having put that unpleasantness behind them, but none of what comes afterward -- none of what's said, or the feelings on either side, or the tone, or any of it -- is remotely informed by this great traumatic event they went through together. You could have inserted most of their scenes into an imaginary episode right before the season one finale with very minimal changes.

Now, as somebody who's been very vocal about the murder story being the dumbest thing this show has ever done, I suppose I should be grateful that the show is acting like it didn't happen, is taking steps to restore Tyra and Landry to the characters they were before the season began. But you can't unring this particular bell. It happened. They spent a whole lot of time on it, and it's the kind of thing that should both change both these people and inform all their interactions going forward, and there was absolutely none of that here -- just Jesse Plemons doing his best impression of Jon Cryer circa Duckie.

Short of permanently separating the two characters (and the actors who play so well off each other) or banishing them from the show outright, I don't know what the solution is. But as annoying as the murder storyline was, it's just as annoying to try to ignore it, you know? And that's precisely why I wish they hadn't done it. Whatever might have been gained in the short term doesn't come close to matching the long term effects that are now being awkwardly swept under the rug.

Still, it's good to have this one back for the next six weeks, and it would be a rare strike benefit if the number of original episodes helps boost viewership enough to ensure its continued survival.

What did everybody else think?

FNL: End of an error

Spoilers for "Friday Night Lights" coming up just as soon as I feed the ferrets...

I've made my feelings on the Unfortunate Incident pretty damn clear by now. I'm glad it's over -- even if they had to completely skip over any ramifications for Chad over the stupid car fire -- and yet I wonder how well the characters of Tyra and Landry will survive it. Plemons and Palicki totally justified the writing staff's faith in them, even though they couldn't keep this albatross of a story airborne, but when the show comes back in January (I think there are five or six episodes left, more than most shows since they started production early), is Landry just back on the team, goofing around with Saracen like nothing happened? Or does the look in his eyes in the final shot imply that, even though the legal part of this story is behind us, the season will continue to be haunted by the rapist's death? Ordinarily, I hate when shows don't deal with the emotional ramifications of a life-altering event, but I'd almost prefer that they treat this like the people of Springfield treated Armin Tamzarian, you know?

I might have been more engaged by the later stages of the storyline if it hadn't taken place in complete isolation from the rest of the show. After his big moment on the field, Landry's barely shared the frame, let alone dialogue, with Coach or his teammates, not least of which one-time best friend Saracen. Not that I necessarily wanted even more time given over to this story, but wouldn't word of this get out, cop's son or no cop's son? Wouldn't Buddy, even with Santiago on his plate, be aiming to put the fix in for the team's new star tight end? Wouldn't Matt be able to tear himself away from his live-in love buddy long enough to reach out to Landry? Wouldn't Riggins be pointing out to Coach that that Lance kid has brought far more shame to the Panthers than he ever did?

When "Friday Night Lights" is at its best, it's about a community, and about how one part of it (the football team) reaches out and touches everyone in it. The Landry story, and the Carlotta story, and most of the plots this season have been so compartmentalized from each other that it feels like each one has its own separate writer, and their scenes get jammed together to fit a script that covers a given week of the football season.

That said, some of the stories are working even though they're disconnected from everything else. Take Santiago, who's on his own little island with Buddy and, from time to time, Coach. I really liked what the show did with him this week, and not least because they finally put the kid at linebacker, where the team and the show had a far greater need. They're doing a nice job of showing how damaged this kid's psyche is, and of how Buddy's fumbling along, partly out of self-interest, partly out of a growing recognition that Santiago needs help. As predictable as Santiago's sack and forced fumble were, that sequence did something that Landry's big game didn't: it put us inside the head of a neophyte tossed into the pressure cooker of big-time Texas football. It's obvious how that would intimidate Santiago, just as it's obvious how he might start to feed off it, especially after the O-lineman started talking to Santiago like someone from his juvie days.

Street's story was amusing enough -- Herc is always funny, and Scott Porter's reaction to the girl's golden shower fetish was priceless -- but I'm wondering what the guy is still doing on the show. When he quit the team, he seemed to realize that he needed to get the hell out of Dillon and start his life anew, and yet here he still is, first in his folks' place, then in Herc's nearby apartment. I realize that making a big change is hard for someone in Street's physical and financial condition, but his behavior here didn't really seem to follow the decisions he made a few weeks ago.

Riggins getting out of his own rut with Ferret Guy was more interesting, if only because it's pushing Coach back into the surrogate father role that's as much a part of his job as the X's and O's. Eric's not a perfect man, and he doesn't always relate to these kids and their problems as sensitively as he could (he was oblivious to the way his yelling made Santiago shut down in practice, for instance), and the town as a whole has turned a blind eye to Tim Riggins so long as he does a good job blocking for Smash, but when the kid turns up asleep in his truck in front of your house, it's hard not to notice the problem. I liked the wordless sequence of Coach inviting him to crash in the garage (Kyle Chandler's best moments tend to be ones where he's allowed to let his expression do all the talking), and look forward to the Taylors turning Tim into their new project to replace Tyra. (Anyone want to place odds on a Julie/Tim romance arc?)

Finally, the christening story featured the usual acting goodness from Connie Britton, but Tami and Julie's argument where they kept saying the same things at each other seemed too on the nose, and none of it really tracked with where their relationship was last week after the Noah thing. If this means Julie's going to be less of a brat going forward, then I'm okay with it. But as with the Landry story, it felt like the writers just decided they wanted to be done with this arc with as few consequences as possible.

What did everybody else think?

FNL: All apologies

Vacation weekend looms, so brief spoilers for the "Seeing Other People episode of "Friday Night Lights" coming up just as soon as I do some laundry...

In the interest of discussing as much of the episode -- which had its ups and its downs but largely seemed like a transitional show setting up next week's (hopeful) conclusion to the rapist storyline -- as possible in as little space/time as I have available, let's go straight to the bullet points:

• Riggins' time rooming with the meth-cooking underwear model was handled in just about the right way, I thought. Clearly, there was something wrong with the guy well before he made the suspicious cold medicine request, but Tim actually seemed to be enjoying his time there (a little) for a day or so. I liked him doing individual apologies to all the players on the team (calling red-headed Bradley "Firecrotch" was a nice touch), and wish that the scene had carried on as if he was going to do one for every player, even as Coach was putting the guys through their calisthenics and barking at Riggins about all his future probationary work.
  
• Beyond Riggins' return to the team, the football stuff seemed odd. Even in a strange season where the new coach was forced out after a handful of games, shouldn't the natives be a lot more restless when the team has two losses (or is it three?) already, and one a humiliating, Knicks vs. Celtics-style blow-out? Shouldn't Coach be in bunker mode trying to fix the defense, with him as the one letting the marriage slip away again? Instead, the only comment anyone made about the loss was Glenn; even Saracen didn't stay mad at Smash for very long after Smash seemed to not care about losing.
• I thought the handling of the Julie/Noah story was much more interesting this week, particularly if it turns out that Tami was overreacting to that just as much as Eric was to her and Glenn. I continue to find Julie an intolerable brat this year, but she's a realistic brat, and in the scene where she confronted her mom about Noah, Aimee Teegarden reached down deep to a place I'm not sure even she knew existed. That wasn't just her cranking up the volume; that was pure, unadulterated, unforced rage.
• On the other hand, Matt and Carlotta continues to bore me, and it was strange how the Smash storyline ended halfway through the episode and largely turned into an excuse for Smash to play love doctor for Matt. I don't mind a lighter story now and then, but after playing Smash's college choice much more seriously in the last episode (and even in the Mama Smash scene here), the stakes suddenly seemed much lower tonight. On the other hand, Zach Gilford's delivery of "Was it Cabo in your pants?" made the entire thing worth it.
  
• If it hadn't been for Lyla hitching a ride in the Landry Love Wagon back in "State," I guess this would have been the first Lyla/Landry scene ever. I'm waiting to see how this ends up (if, in fact, it ends up) next week, but the one thing I can never complain about with this story arc is Jesse Plemmons' performance. The kid brings it every week, whether the material deserves it or not.
  
• Just because it merits saying every week: Connie Britton is amazing. Highlights this time included her response to Eric accusing her of not spending time on the family, her tearing into Noah, the look of guilt and shame on her face as the argument with Shelley got away from her, and her joy at hearing Eric say he liked her.
  

What did everybody else think?

FNL: I don't know Julie, instead

Spoilers for �Friday Night Lights� coming up just as soon as I find a store that sells tearaway pants...

So here�s a conundrum: I�ve been complaining about the Landry storyline for weeks, and yet last night�s episode � about 95% manslaughter angst-free � was maybe my least favorite of the season. If it hadn�t been for the Smash subplot, which was repetitive but thematically on point, it might have been completely forgettable.

As soon as Carlotta the Magical Latina nurse showed up for lots of wacky misunderstandings about sleeping quarters, laundry and porno mags, I assumed she and Saracen would be entangled romantically. It took longer than I had feared, mainly because Carlotta and Grandma Saracen disappeared for the last batch of episodes, but now we�re here, in the midst of an episode packed with age-inappropriate relationships. Tim moves out after catching Billy and his ex-girlfriend Jackie the MILF in casa Riggins, then flirts with Tyra�s older sister Mindy to the point of being threatened by Tyra. Julie, having broken up with slimy older guy The Swede, now falls under the spell of the school�s dreamy, deceptively young-looking new newspaper advisor, Noah Barnett (played by John From Cincinnati himself, Austin Nichols). And, of course, Carlotta gives Saracen some lessons in dirty dancing, and, after the initial shock, doesn�t seem that unhappy to have been smooched by QB1.

I�m baffled for all sorts of reasons. First, why are the writers so fascinated by stories where the high school kids date older people? I suppose some kind of thematic point could be made about how Dillon is such a dead-end town that the kids are desperate to get with more mature partners outside the high school gene pool. But the only stories where that really applied came last year, with Tyra�s forgettable dalliance with the traveling salesman (back when the writers had no idea what to do with Tyra) and Street�s hook-up with Tattoo Girl. These other stories just feel phony and larded with cheese.

Second, as my evil doppleganger Fienberg points out in his own take on �Pantherama,� the show has adopted the familiar, unfortunate double-standard about May-September (or, at least, May-July) romances: younger woman + older guy = creepy, but younger guy + older woman = potentially hot. Complicating matters is the fact that we�re not clear on how old some of the older partners are supposed to be, and using the actors� ages doesn�t help. Aimee Teegarden is nine years younger than Austin Nichols, but she�s also seven years younger than Zach Gilford.

Speaking of age confusion, it turns out that Lyla is still enrolled at Dillon High, even though, as I vaguely recall, she was planning to go to college with Street. (Did Jason have no friends in his own class?) This provides an excuse for the writers to remember that Lyla and Tyra kinda sorta reached an understanding in the first season finale, but mainly it�s an excuse for a lighter story where Tyra flirts with a lot of boys and teaches them how to shake their booties.

I don�t object to lighter stories on principle � some of my favorite �FNL� moments are the funnier ones, like Landry and Matt�s various shopping trips � but this one wound up being another illustration of the wider-ranging folly of the Landry/rapist plot.

Again, that story barely got mentioned here, other than a scene where Landry told Tyra about the car fire and she largely blew him off. (�Landry, I don�t know what you want me to say.�) But it still colors how I then look at Tyra and Landry when they�re participating in unrelated plots. I don�t think there�s a believability problem with tough, pragmatic Tyra being untroubled by both the killing itself (which she was never bothered by) or even by the way Landry�s tearing himself up about it, but it makes me like her a lot less. I shouldn�t be watching a comic relief storyline and focusing on how callous one of its main characters seems to be, but that�s what happens when you introduce a subject as big and scarring as death and a cover-up into a show that�s not about that.

I�m glad to see that the writers remembered that Smash � and, especially, Mama Smash � existed, and that both were placed in a storyline that was germane to the series� main subject matter. The shadiness of college recruiting and the unrealistic dreams of athletes who assume they�re destined to turn pro aren�t exactly new subjects, but they�re still relevant, and they apply well to Smash. As Mama Smash, Liz Mikel is one of the show�s best recurring players, and in scenes like the poster-ripping or her confrontation with Coach, the show felt grounded in itself in a way that it didn�t for most of the episode.

(I do think, though, that the 2-9 black college with no athletic scholarships was an odd choice for Mama to hang her hat on. There happen to be schools with equally strong football and academic programs that could offer Smash a full ride. Also, while the Whitmore recruiter mentioned academic scholarships, aren�t those merit-based in some way? Otherwise, what�s the difference between the school having athletic scholarships or just giving academic ones to football stars like Smash?)

I�m not sure how I feel about the Santiago plot yet. First, it still seems odd that a defending state champ football factory school would be spending so much time on an inexperienced walk-on (and at a position where they already have another inexperienced walk-on in Landry). Second, the wounded puppy Santiago of the last couple of episodes doesn�t seem quite the same character who first challenged Lyla about her beliefs when he was still in juvie. I think there�s potential in the idea of shameless booster Buddy doing what he thinks is a favor to the team and finding himself seriously involved in this damaged kid�s life, so I�ll wait and see.

Some other thoughts on �Pantherama�:

• In the midst of all the Matt/Carlotta silliness, it�s hard not to notice how much more lucid and focused Grandma has become since Carlotta�s arrival. If this story is heading in a place where the relationship � or, more likely, it�s awkward end and Carlotta�s departure � causes Grandma to backslide, then it might be slightly redeemed.
• Connie Britton is almost as good at the sarcastic faux-charm as Kyle Chandler, as she displayed in her strong-arming of Tyra and Lyla into helping with Pantherama. ("Oh, honey, you are not using Jesus Christ our lord as an excuse to get out of helping your counselor, are you?")
• Was I hallucinating, or was that a �Thundercats� logo sticker on the inside of Matt�s locker? Or did the show introduce a new Panthers logo modeled on the �Thundercats� logo and I only just noticed it?
• �Don�t whisper-yell at me.� Ha!
• Speaking of seeing things, did I catch the long-forgotten lesbian mayor of Dillon in the Pantherama crowd? If that was her, she�s clearly still in the closet, judging by her overenthusiastic response to the striptease.
• I have no idea where they�re going with Tim�s new roommate, but despite the obvious attempts to make him look like a complete sleaze, any guy who names his pet ferrets after the sheriff from �Dukes of Hazzard� can�t be all bad, can he?

What did everybody else think?

Friday Night Lights: Stuck next to Midland with you

Spoilers for "Friday Night Lights" coming up just as soon as I catch a pig...

Questions I still need answers to after watching "How Did I Get Here?":

• Given the show's historical lack of any notable defensive players, not to mention Landry's ascendancy last week at tight end, why would the writers or Coach Taylor consider putting a completely inexperienced guy with bad hands like Santiago at a skill position like tight end?
• Why didn't Street or Lyla or even Riggins himself tell Coach the reason for his "sojourn," which just might have been compelling enough to get Tim out of the doghouse and back on the team?
• Why doesn't an apparently smart veteran lawman like Landry's dad realize that disappearing/burning one of the 20 cars in town that match the list the detectives are using will just point a shiny neon sign of guilt at his son?

The Santiago question is kind of football geek minutiae, but the other two are contrivances designed to keep stories moving when they otherwise might be over. I actually don't mind the Riggins storyline (more on that below), but somebody somewhere needed to bring up the Mexico trip, even if it was in the context of the three road trippers agreeing not to explain it to avoid embarrassing Street. (That, or Coach deciding that the reason doesn't matter, given Riggins' long list of infractions.)

As for the great car fire of '07... sigh. Glenn Morshower is so brilliant at depicting Chad Clarke's unconditional love for the son he's never understood, or maybe even liked -- my heart was in my throat as he tried to get Landry to confess -- that it makes me sad he was brought in for this silly, over-the-top subplot that doesn't remotely fit with the rest of the series. And this week, it turns out that the Clarke men share a tendency to make terrible decisions under pressure. If Woody had gone straight to the police... um, I mean, if Landry had just called the cops back at the time of the killing, he probably would've been fine. Even here, if Mr. Clarke had just said that they were going to get a lawyer and march into the station, I think some kind of plausible resolution to this story could have been reached that would have kept Landry out of jail and part of the high school world. Instead, he does something guaranteed to bring attention on himself and his son, and to drag this thing out even longer. Jason Katims promised this wouldn't turn into "CSI: Dillon," but that's exactly what it feels like.

That the rest of the episode -- back in the show's wheelhouse about the institutional grind of big-time high school football and the sense of hopelessness that comes from living in a place like Dillon -- was so strong only annoys/mystifies me even further. Clearly, Katims and the other writers understand what makes "FNL" great, and yet somehow they thought the Landry plot was a good idea and a tonal fit with everything else. I don't get it.

Oh, here's another question: has there been an episode yet this season where Tami didn't cry? This isn't a complaint, mind you -- Connie Britton is a fantastic crier, and if ever there was a time in a woman's life where she'd be justified in constant waterworks, it'd be shortly after the birth of a new baby -- but as I watched her deliver that hilarious/poignant speech about going through parenthood all over again and having another daughter who will hate her 16 years from now, I thought, "Boy, Tami's weeped a lot this season, hasn't she?" Not that Connie Britton ever has a bad episode, but this one felt like an especially strong showcase for her. The opening scene in particular was like one large palette of all the colors that make up Tami Taylor: the tough woman who can order Eric to fix the paycheck thing, the overwhelmed woman still dealing with the responsibilities of the new baby, the sexually vibrant woman proud of how her body still looks after all this mileage and another pregnancy, the woman who can still act all giddy and girly at the arrival of her sister, and the family woman who sometimes wonders what the hell she's doing in Dillon.

Tami's not the only one asking that last question. As the episode's title suggests, nearly every character with a significant storyline winds up questioning how they get into the mess they're in: Tami and her sister Shelly having a lot of grass is greener envy, Eric stuck with a reduced paycheck and the added pain in the ass of becoming the school's athletic director, Street realizing he doesn't belong in this world anymore, Riggins trying desperately to get back into that world while he still can, and Julie reaping what she sowed with The Swede. Even the Landry story, dumb and clumsy as it is, fits the "How Did I Get Here?" theme.

I don't know too much of the mechanics of Texas high school football economics, so I don't know the plausibility of Eric's new salary situation. I vaguely recall reading somewhere that a small school like Dillon doesn't have the budget to pay for a big football staff, and that the bulk of the salary for Eric and his assistants would come from the booster club; if true, this would make some sense. I'm glad that there are going to be some lasting consequences to Eric's, um, sojourn to TMU, though I'm undecided on whether I ever again want to see walking stereotype soccer coach Bobbi Roberts (the role that was allegedly written with Rosie O'Donnell in mind, God help us all).

The Street story is progressing the only way it can, even if that means he'll start having less and less connection to the rest of the cast (if he isn't written out of the show altogether, about which I know nothing). Sure, he coached up Saracen last year, and the spinal injury couldn't take away his greatest gift as a player -- the leadership that, as Coach put so powerfully, lets Jason "lift up everyone around you" -- but MacGregor, control freak tool that he was, wasn't wrong when he called Jason a glorified mascot. So long as he stays affiliated with the Dillon high school team, it doesn't matter how well he can communicate X's and O's to his players; he's always going to be the cautionary tale/ghost of the once-great franchise quarterback. (Hell of a way to spend your 19th birthday, watching game footage of the man you can't be anymore. Classy move, Mr. Street.) So what does Jason do now? Presumably he got his GED, and I got the sense he was an achiever as a student as well as an athlete; is there room on this series for "Jason Street: The College Years"? Do we go back to the quad rugby world, or is that no good now that the actor who plays Herc is busy helping the Bionic Woman save the world?

Whatever he does, the scenes where Jason asked Lyla for advice and said goodbye to Coach were both terrific. There's so much history between Jason and Lyla that they can each cut through each other's BS. Jason can warn Lyla not to proselytize, and she'll stop instantly, just as she can slice through his self-pity and explain that if he wants to change, he just has to do it. And Eric's exit conversation with Jason? I'm not sure I have the words for that one, or else I just used up the lump in the throat cliche back in the talk about Landry's dad. This is another relationship with a lot of history, some of which we've seen, but going all the way back to Jason's childhood. The child becomes a man, and Eric knows him well enough to understand why Jason needs to leave, but also that there may come a day where he wants those tapes back. Jason's one of the few characters on the show (along with Julie and Landry) who comes from an intact two-parent home, but Eric Taylor is more of a father to him than his actual dad, and that kind of bond has a power that doesn't need very much dialogue to convey.

Even if Riggins' banishment is a contrivance, I'm okay with it for now. Either Taylor Kitsch has grown on me or the character, epic in his self-loathing and self-destruction, has become actor proof (I think it's a bit of both). I like the idea of him taking his best friend's place as a tutor to the younger players on the team, even if he doesn't particularly want to be. Plus, Tim and Billy scenes are always gold, even if Tami the uber guidance counselor should have picked up on the whole "he's sleeping with my girlfriend" line as evidence of a deeper problem. (Back when she was teaching Glenn how to fill in for her, she talked to him about how important it was to stay tuned into problems at home.)

I can't say that I feel sorry for Julie in having to witness Matt finally taking advantage of his QB1 status and making out with a random cheerleader groupie, simply because her behavior was so horrible for most of the season to date, but it's a mark of Aimee Teegardeen's skill that I even thought about feeling bad for her for a moment. And while I'm glad that the writers have remembered that Julie and Tyra are somehow BFFs, Tyra the accomplice after the fact suggesting they watch "Thelma and Louise" was probably funnier than the writers intended.

A few other thoughts:

• My brain hurts trying to figure out how old everybody's supposed to be. Does Lyla -- Street's girlfriend since the womb, practically -- even go to high school anymore, and if not, why isn't college talked about for her? And shouldn't Tami/Tim counseling session been a perfect excuse for her to mention that he's been held back before, which would explain why Street's best pal didn't graduate after last season? And while Santiago must be high school age, since he got out of a juvenile facility, it seems odd that returning to school wasn't mentioned during his previous appearance.
• Smash still hasn't had much to do this year, and I still think the reconciliation between him and Saracen happened too easily, but I liked him finally taking his captain's responsibility seriously -- even if it was for selfish reasons -- by trying to get Riggins to dedicate himself to getting back on the team. Not enough Mama Smash for my liking, but I got a kick out of Smash's sisters taking Tim's side on the "don't flirt with my mother" issue.
• If I didn't want to visit a network website and therefore side with the studios over the WGA right now, I'd want to hit NBC.com to see if I can buy a Crucifictorius t-shirt like Landry was sporting.
• Who knew there was such a big airport right there in Dillon?

What did everybody else think?

Friday Night Lights: Lance headstrong

Spoilers for the "Friday Night Lights" episode "Let's Get It On" coming up just as soon as I get in the pool for some upper body exercises...

For the last few weeks, I've tried to hold my tongue (or typing finger, or whatever) with regards to the murder storyline. Kinda hard to do that this week, not just because it was so prominent, but because of how it affected -- or failed to affect -- the other Landry storyline.

Simply put, I have a hard time reconciling the football-playing Landry with the rapist-murdering Landry. The two subplots seemed to be taking place on different shows, or at least with a different central character. Until the final scene at the victory party, nothing that Landry did or said in one storyline in any way influenced or was influenced by what was going on in the other. The guy giving the allegedly stirring halftime speech in the locker room didn�t seem like the same guy being forced to lie to his dad about the murder he committed, just as the guy counseling Tyra to stay calm about the investigation didn�t seem like the same guy mocking Saracen for even thinking about getting back with Julie. They look like the same guy, but they exist on two different planes of reality, only occasionally touching one another.

Beyond that, I�m having a hard time buying into any part of the Landry, football hero story, even if it gave Kyle Chandler repeated opportunities to say �Lance� with as much contempt as he could muster. The Landry of season one had nothing but contempt for the football team, barely tolerating its existence only because of his buddy Matt. Maybe I go with him trying out as a misguided attempt to impress Tyra and/or his dad, but we needed more set-up than we got by having the season begin with pre-season practice already underway. And even if I accept Landry�s willingness to go out for the team, it becomes harder and harder to accept that a defending state champion Texas football factory like Dillon would have room for an inexperienced outcast like Landry to make the varsity as a junior, then that he might be able to catch Coach�s eye with a single play in the middle of an intentionally goofy scrimmage, and then that he would have been indulged by the real players during his halftime speech. (Which, by the way, was pretty clich�-filled and not that inspiring.) Yes, some guys griped when he opened his mouth and Coach forced everybody to listen, but Landry�s a tackling dummy at worst, QB-1�s manservant at best, in this hierarchy. I appreciate that he didn�t turn into Jeremy Shockey once he finally got onto the field, that his two big moments in the game were a hustle play and then being the victim of a pass interference penalty, but there were way too many plausibility problems up to that point.

The thing is, I think the football story could have worked if so much of Landry�s time as a character wasn�t being taken up with this silly, overwrought murder plot. Take all the script pages spent on the cover-up and reassign them to Landry�s motivations for going out for the team, the other player�s reactions to him, Saracen�s reaction to having his unpopular sidekick cross into his football world, etc., and this could have been a great storyline. The writers wouldn�t have even needed to tweak Landry�s speech to Tyra from episode two about being a man all that much; done properly, and played with the conviction and power that Jesse Plemons and Adrianne Palicki are bringing to a subplot that doesn�t deserve it, I think everyone absolutely would have bought Tyra falling for Landry the football player just as easily as her doing it with Landry the avenging angel.

And yet the non-Landry portions of the episode were terrific. The show seems to finally be finding its season two footing, but there�s this millstone of a storyline that keeps tripping it up.

Start with Saracen finally growing a pair and telling off anyone and everyone within earshot. Last week�s episode too quickly glossed over the resentment that the Dillon players would no doubt feel about Coach having abandoned them and then returned only after MacGregor was allowed to make a mess of things. Somebody needed to make their displeasure known to Eric, and Saracen -- who matured in so many ways last season and yet was still the stammering pushover at the start of this one -- was just the guy to do it. I hope that one outburst isn�t the end of any post-TMU discomfort between Eric and the team, though I have a feeling it is. I also liked the complete awkwardness of him asking Tami for advice on how to deal with her daughter, and Tami rightly pointing this out to him. In an episode in which Connie Britton had a lot of funny moments � including pretty much every second of the storyline with Eric trying to get lucky and Tami seeing through his every move -- her attempt to get the hell out of the Alamo Freeze before that boy could say another word may have been my favorite.

The Mexico trip came to an interesting end. That Street wasn�t going to have the surgery seemed a given, but the final scene in the bar where Lyla was affectionate with Street, then Riggins, in full view of each guy -- and with neither of them seeming that troubled by it -- demonstrated a moral and sexual complexity that I didn�t think the show would be willing to approach. I actually thought, for the 5 seconds before Lyla had a retreat-to-Jesus moment, that a threesome was in the offing, and I wonder where all this is going once they get north of the border next week.

What did everybody else think?

Friday Night Lights: Sing it, Six!

Spoilers for the "Friday Night Lights" episode "Backfire" coming up just as soon as I work on my Spanish pronunciations...

"Backfire" was a definite "Do the ends justify the means?" kind of episode, as the producers appeared to shut down a number of storylines that weren't working, but in a far more abrupt manner than they could or should have.

I'm glad to have Coach back in Dillon and coaching the Panthers, for instance, but the dispatching of MacGregor felt much too easy. The previous three episodes (plus the disastrous game at the start of this one) had shown MacGregor to be such a stubborn tyrant that no one (except Smash) could possibly want him to stay, just as the TMU had been shown to be such a clearly bad fit for Eric that everyone could see he needed to leave it. Wouldn't it have been more interesting if one or both of those situations was reversed? What if MacGregor was a tinpot dictator but Eric was having the time of his life as a college coach? Or, what if Eric hated TMU and knew his family needed him but MacGregor hadn't made any obvious missteps with the Panthers? The scene at the end where MacGregor confronted Eric about what he and Buddy had done was well-acted by both Kyle Chandler and Chris Mulkey and had a moral complexity that the rest of this arc lacked, but that doesn't change the fact that MacGregor was a strawman bad guy.

(Also, how did Buddy go from being a drunken pariah a few episodes ago to having the political capital to pull off this coup d'etat? Even if the rest of the town felt uncomfortable with MacGregor, I'm sure Slammin' Sammy Meade wasn't the only one who resented the hell out of Eric for quitting after last season. It might have been interesting to watch Buddy build himself back up into the power broker he used to be, as we watched him sell the other committee members on the swap, but instead it got glossed over.)

Meanwhile, I'm sure many people are glad that Julie and Tami have stopped being at war with each other (I never minded this subplot, but that seemed to be a minority opinion), and yet the turnaround came awfully quick. Having Eric back in the fold certainly helped, as he convinced Tami to not ground Julie, which in turn made Julie slightly more willing to listen to Tami's story about losing her virginity (and also made a date with The Swede less an act of rebellion). But she's just now noticing that "Anton" is a no-account slob just floating through life after high school? It's not like she hadn't been to his dive of a house before. Some more superb acting from Connie Britton (albeit not up to The Talk from "I Think We Should Have Sex," where the virginity story was implied but not articulated), but there was definitely a feeling that the writers were in a hurry to wrap this one up.

I'd like to think that they've also wrapped up the dead rapist storyline, but I don't think that's what's happening. When the detective who interviewed Tyra talked about closing a case, he meant the attempted rape from last season, not the cause of this guy's death. I suppose this could go in a direction where the small-town Dillon sheriff's department decides not to waste resources looking into the death of some lowlife serial rapist, or that they assume he died from the fall into the river (barring a crossover with the people from "CSI: Dillon"), but there's been so much talk about Landry's watch and the impending grandfather visit that I don't think we're done with it yet. When Tyra talked to Landry about how they had no choice, how they had to stick to the path they were on, it felt unintentionally meta: once the writers chose this unfortunate storyline, they had to follow it through all the way.

On the plus side, one storyline I was dreading -- Street and Riggins road-tripping to Mexico for the shark surgery -- turned out to be the episode's highlight. I used to complain a lot about Taylor Kitsch in season one, but damn if he hasn't won me over. As the karaoke scene devolved from drunken fun into a very loud expression of pain from Street, you could see Riggins finally doing the math and realizing how bad this has the potential to become. In an episode where a lot of characters either shed tears or expressed deep feelings of remorse, the most powerful moment turned out to be Riggins begging Lyla to come help him talk Street out of this dangerous con game.

Now that Eric's back in town for good, I want to give the rest of the season a clean slate (murder storyline aside). Maybe all the narrative shortcuts of last night's episode will allow the show to go in a more promising direction from here. Glass half-full, I hope.

Some other thoughts on "Backfire":

• Loved Eric's confusion ("The what?") in response to Buddy's (no doubt rehearsed) "The eagle has landed" call.
• MacGregor's "I'll be seeing you again" threat implied another Voodoo arc where he winds up on a team that faces the Panthers in the playoffs. For the Texas high school football types, how realistic is that? Do teams often switch coaches in mid-season? And wouldn't the fanbase of the defending state champs be far more panicked at a loss in only the second game of the season?
• I wish the writers would treat Lyla's born again conversion as something other than a phase she's going through, and an excuse to meet new boys. The show usually does a superb job of portraying how faith helps govern these people's lives, but Lyla seems very much a poseur. If nothing else, she should have had an answer for Santiago the hunky delinquent's question about why God allows suffering. That's one that true believers get asked all the time, and they're supposed to have an answer.

What did everybody else think?

Friday Night Lights: South of the border...

Spoilers for the latest "Friday Night Lights" coming up just as soon as I get into a brawl...

I'm going to be a little briefer than usual, both because it's my birthday and I want to get this done, and because it's been so long since I watched the episode that, even with detailed notes, some of the impact (positive and negative) has faded.

While I continue to have major problems with the Tyra/Landry/corpse story, I want to start elsewhere, because for the moment, that's where the have bigger problems lie.

As I explained last week, I wish Katims and company had taken advantage of last season's ambiguous ending and come back with Coach having turned down the TMU job. It takes him out of the central action and turns the early episodes into one big contrivance to get him back to the Panthers sideline. And while these episodes have served as an illustration of Coach's importance to the team and his family -- who are both falling apart, violently, in his absence -- all the conflict feels artificial.

Connie Britton played the hell out of Tami's reaction to slapping her own daughter, but I admired the series much more when it could portray subtler forms of strife within the Taylor family, moments when husband and wife or parent and child argued in a way that still fundamentally showed how much they loved each other. And Saracen going so crazy with jealousy over Smash that he would actually tackle a teammate in the middle of a game feels worlds removed from the guy we knew last year, even after he started to grow a backbone late in the year.

MacGregor was written with some complexity in the first episode -- he had a point in his dressing down of Street -- but now he's just a straw man villain, there as both excuse for Eric to want to return and obstacle to that return.

All of this bickering and slapping and rasslin' -- and Magical Latina love interests and wacky Mexican road trips -- may be flashier and make for a more promotable show, but even without the murder plot, this doesn't feel like the show I loved so much last season. My only hope is that Buddy's scheme is so brilliant that the status quo is reset by the end of next week; it wouldn't solve every problem, but it would solve a number of them.

Some other thoughts:

• Interesting how Riggins is involved in three separate stories at once: dealing with Jackie the MILF now dating his brother, having a genuine spiritual moment at Lyla's church (and then immediately perverting it into an excuse to hit on her) and taking Street on the trip to Mexico, which I hope leads to some drunken hijinks but not an actual attempt to cure the poor guy. Of course, the Jackie and Lyla stories are the reason Tim is available and interested in leaving the country with Street.
• Smash speaks! Infrequently, but still! It's odd how the nine-month gap allowed the writers to essentially reboot both Smash and Riggins back to their personalities from the start of the series. Riggins even seems to have forgotten the period in the middle of season one when he sobered up and started playing so well, as evidenced by his "That's kind of what I'm afraid of" line about playing without booze.
• I'm only going to say a few things about Tyra/Landry/corpse: 1)I still believe that all the stuff with Landry and his dad, and Tyra and Landry's dad (a lovely scene) could have been accomplished without the death, and nothing's happened yet to change my mind; 2)Tyra cracking a joke about killing Landry to keep him silent was possibly the most uncomfortable moment of the series; 3)Mr. Clarke's comments about the watch and the impending grandparent visit mean we're not done with this thing yet.
• Glad to see that Kevin Rankin has time for both of Katims' shows, here as Herc, "Bionic Woman" as the resident techie.
• I really did like the church service scene. Whether or not we're meant to take Lyla's conversion at face value or just her retreating from last year's problems, the show takes religion itself very seriously.
• How many more episodes before Saracen and Carlotta are sleeping together? Two? Three? One?

What did everybody else think?

Friday Night Lights: The replacements

Spoilers for "Friday Night Lights" episode two coming up just as soon as I kill, stuff and mount a 10-point buck...

So let's see, where do we stand? Rapist, still dead and floating down the river. Coach, still in Austin with the TMU job. Tami, still overwhelmed and crying. Julie, still chasing after The Swede. Buddy, still on the outs with both his family and the new coach. Street, still crippled (and, possibly, still wanting to listen to Nirvana).

Show, still brilliant at times, maddening at others.

I don't want discussion to be dominated every week by talk of the killing and cover-up, but I can't not start there this time. The premiere left the door open, however slightly, to the notion that Tyra and Landry didn't go through with it, that they called the authorities -- hell, even that Landry did a bad job of taking a pulse. Sadly, no. Dead and dumped.

And for what? What benefit does this possibly bring the show compared to what's being lost -- in terms of Landry as a character and in terms of the series as a whole? Katims said the goal was to push Landry and Tyra closer together, that "their relationship would never become as intimate as it does if not for this event."

So, essentially, the writers came up with this storyline that no one can defend (even the people who aren't out on the ledge with me are saying things like "I don't like it but I trust the writers" or "I'm not ready to throw out the baby with the bathwater") so they could get Landry laid.

Okay, so that's cruder and maybe more reductive than the love confession scene at the episode's end deserves. Jesse Plemons played the hell out of that moment -- and, as Katims also said, another reason for this story was to give Plemons a dramatic showcase after he wowed everyone late last year -- and out of Landry's overall anguish over what he did (and what he then failed to do by giving into Tyra's panicked demands to keep the cops out of this), but I hate that the writers had to contrive this character-redefining, series-altering development to accomplish a goal that could have easily been met under different circumstances.

Okay, so you want to have Tyra and Landry hook up, right? Why does Landry have to kill the guy to accomplish that? And why does he then have to participate in a cover-up on top of that? And, more to the point, why does Tyra have to be turned into a damsel in distress (as opposed to the hellcat who chased her mom's boyfriend with a fireplace poker and saved her own damn self the last time the rapist came at her) to accomplish this? Why can't she come to recognize the awesomeness of Landry without such a melodramatic, ridiculous plot twist?

The only value whatsoever that I see in any of this has nothing to do with the dramatic reality of the show itself, but in NBC's ability to craft a more exciting promo. I get that this is a business, and that if "Friday Night Lights" can't hit a certain number, it's not going to be around very long. But this seems like Katims and company going for the nuclear option right away, when something much less drastic could have been turned into a loud commercial by the NBC promo wizards.

I know last week I said that the killing almost bothered me more than the cover-up because I couldn't see Landry being credibly funny again for a long time -- a fear borne out by the clumsy reintroduction of his one-liners like the one about Tyra writing a how-to book or Julie keeping a part of Saracen's anatomy in her panty drawer -- but at this point I'd almost be willing to let that go if it meant Landry had reported it and the story might be over sooner. I still think it does too much damage to Landry and is a betrayal of Tyra, but you get your killing, your brooding, your declarations of love, and we can move on to the next thing. Instead, the body's just out there somewhere -- possibly with Landry's engraved watch -- and this story's just going to keep going and going.

God. I promised myself I wasn't going to get so worked up two weeks in a row about that one story element, especially since I had a number of other concerns about episode two.

Start with the continuation of the TMU storyline. Individual parts of it are superb, I'll readily admit. I liked seeing Eric struggle with being low man on the totem pole and dealing with far more pampered college stars like Antoine (who may as well have been named Big Smash or Ax or Crush or something), as well as the way the TMU coach's line about Eric being a great high school coach played at once as a compliment and a condescending put-down. And I continue to love every minute Connie Britton's on screen; Mrs. Coach made this particular bed, and now she can't get any sleep in it.

But the TMU plot's a narrative dead end. We know that sooner or later an excuse will have to be made for Eric to come back to Dillon -- probably as a result of Buddy's ongoing resentment towards MacGregor (more on that later) -- and it feels like an artificial attempt to create friction and pretend like the status quo's really been altered. ("House" is doing something similar this fall, but with two key differences that make it work: the series can continue on long-term without the original status quo being restored exactly as it was; and in the meantime, it's really funny.)

I felt like "State" left things just ambiguous enough about what Eric would want to do -- especially with that slow-clap at the end -- that the writers could have easily come back this season with him having changed his mind and stayed in Dillon, and it wouldn't have felt like a cheat. Instead, they're sticking with the ramification of that story, and while it's providing some interesting material within the Taylor family, it's taking the show's central character out of its central world. It's not nearly as big a problem as the killing, but it's a direction the show might have been better off not taking.

I continue to be untroubled by what Julie's doing with The Swede -- it feels very teenage girl authentic -- but the introduction of Carlotta the Magical Latina live-in nurse seems like yet another bad direction. I hope to be proven wrong here, but I'm assuming this is going to lead to her and Saracen hooking up in a story that's going to make me long for the subtle nuances and emotional heft of Rigggins and the MILF.

Still, the other trouble spots are of a much more minor variety, akin to some of season one's speedbumps (the MILF, Smash on 'roids). It's that big matzoh ball with Tyra and Landry that's still hanging out there and still worrying me.

Some other thoughts on an episode ironically titled "Bad Ideas":

• Lord, Brad Leland is great as Buddy, isn't he? He and Connie Britton are the only carryovers from the movie's cast, and while it's been obvious from day one why Peter Berg wanted to keep Britton around, Leland spent a lot of season one as just one large piece of the tapestry of Dillon, adding to the verisimilitude but not gettin much to do beyond that. But he's been more than up to the expanded role, and his drunken meltdown at the kick-off party was my favorite part of the episode not involving Coach or Mrs. Coach.
• As a reminder that this show is often at its best at the little moments, I give you Eric calling Tami and being forced to endure a "conversation" with baby Gracie because Tami can't hear him asking her to get back on the phone. When our daughter was a baby, my wife and I both used to annoy each other with that particular stunt; I think it's one of those things that's hardwired into the DNA of new parents (and Eric and Tami may as well be new parents, given how long it's been since Julie was born).
• After spending much of the first season borrowing liberally from the documentary "Murderball" for the Street stories, it seemed only fair to have that movie's star, Mark Zupan, cameo as the guy who suggests that Jason check out experimental treatments in Mexico. Zupan's appearance, coupled with the news that Street had regained some small mobility in his hands, led my buddy Fienberg to point out that, under the rules of quad rugby -- in which players are assigned a set of points ranging from 0.5 (least mobile) to 3.5 (most mobile), and that the four players on the court at any one time can't exceed 8 points (to provide equal opportunity to people with various levels of impairment) -- Street gaining added use of his hands would actually make him a less valuable player, since it would prevent his team from having as many skill players on the court at once, even though Street would probably only be a marginally better player. (He kicked butt without even being able to properly open his hands, after all.) This then led to a long digression in which Dan and I tried to apply sabremetrics to the world of quad rugby and tried to come up with an equivalent to VORP, but this then proceeded down several avenues probably best not repeated here. Suffice it to say, we probably put more thought into the entire concept than was healthy for anyone.

What did everybody else think?

Friday Night Lights: Very bad things (and some good ones, too)

Very long thoughts on the "Friday Night Lights" season two premiere coming up just as soon as I swim a few laps...

I almost feel like I should be writing two different blog posts here: one about The Bad Thing (Landry killing the rapist and then, with Tyra, dumping the body in the river), which I hated, and another about the rest of the episode, which I loved.

But "Friday Night Lights" has always been about the whole, not just the parts, and one subplot affects all the others, in spirit of not always in action. The problems in the Taylor marriage, or between Julie and Saracen, or the friction generated by the new coach may not be directly touched by this idiotic, "I Know What You Did Last Summer" by way of "One Tree Hill" plot with Landry and Tyra, but there's a butterfly effect at work. Once you know that the show is willing to go to this place, it changes how you look at the entire series. As I wrote in the column, the key to the show is how Katims, Berg and company have created this grand illusion that Dillon is a real place, that Coach, Mrs. Coach, Smash and the rest are real people, and that gives the storylines emotional weight that goes beyond any one individual script or performance. The murder/corpse-disposal plot, above and beyond what it does to Tyra and Landry -- and believe me, we'll get back to that -- loudly shouts that, this season, "Friday Night Lights" is more than capable of being Just Another TV Show, and if it doesn't ruin my enjoyment of Connie Britton or Kyle Chandler or Brad Leland yet, it makes me less eager to see where everything's going.

Before I go into more detail about the murder storyline and then move on to the many good parts of the episode, I want to present a longer version of my interview with Jason Katims, which I had to dance around in the column for spoiler protection reasons. It's long, so feel free to scroll past it if you just want my take on the show.

ALAN andreikirilenkotattoo: While I loved a lot of the episode, especially scenes like Eric and Tami arguing on the couch about when he had to go back to TMU, I was really concerned about the developments in the Tyra and Landry storyline. Can you talk about how that story developed, and what you're trying to do with it?

JASON KATIMS: First of all, I've heard some people say it's Ben Silverman trying to change the show or something. The first thing is it's a storyline that we were talking about doing last year in the first season. It's not something that we're doing because the network asked us to change the show. This is a storyline that the writers and producers of the show came up with separate and apart from any network dictate

Now, have you seen the second episode?

AS: NBC only sent out the premiere.

JK: We should get you that episode, because honestly, a lot of questions you might have about why we're doing this... Here's our idea behind this storyline. What we want to do is not turning into a murder mystery or CSI, but it's basically these two teenagers in a position where it leads to this incredibly intimate storyline between these two characters that would never -- their relationship would never become as intimate as it does if not for this event. It really becomes this story, like all "Friday Night Lights" stories, about character, about two people trying to deal with it, what they've done, all the guilt and everything would happen to them, and that the two of them get more connected than they ever would have.

The other thing that it does is it allows us, through this storyline, we meet Landry's family and in particular his father who's a local cop. As the story develops, his father becomes very connected to the storyline as well. The story gives us an opportunity to get into Landry's house and see who he is and who his family is. it's something that's served the show so well in the first season, when we would develop our characters, to start to really get to know the families, where they come from. I feel we did that successfully with Tyra's character where you meet her mother and her sister, Smash with his mother. By meeting the characters' families, you really get to know who they are. We never saw Landry's life outside of being Matt's buddy, so now we're going to get the opportunity to do that.

And the actor, Jesse Plemons, has so much to offer, that while we love his comic relief sidekick stuff and don't want to lose that, we know he's capable of giving us so much more. What inspired us to do this story, when we did the attempted rape storyline last year and we saw what Jesse did with those scenes after he finds Tyra in that vulnerable state, we though, 'My god, we're sitting on a goldmine with this actor.' That, more than anything was the impetus to do this storyline.

The only other thing I'll say about this is that, although this is something very different from what we've done on the show before, that it is in the tradition of storytelling we've pursued on the show. When you look at the pilot episode, you have a situation where the guy set up to the be the star of the show gets paralyzed at the end of the episode. That has served us well where you have this very big, shocking moments in the show and surround that with the smaller character moments and the more intimate storytelling that we also do on the show. To me, this feels very much in concert with the kind of stories we do.

AS: Okay, but for argument's sake, when you talk about wanting to introduce Landry's father, you're already doing this story where Landry tries out for the football team, and you could introduce his father there, and this (the murder) kind of overwhelms that. Couldn't you have just done the football tryout story?

JK: We could have, but we are doing that and we're not stopping that

AS: I just worry that I'm not going to be able to look at Landry the same way again. Regardless of what they did with the body, I don't know that a Landry who killed somebody can still be Landry.

JK: You need to see the next episode and the one after that and the one after that. All I can tell you is it's (bleeping) great. I don't know what to say other than the story, the way the story is woven into the fabric of the show is something the show really does not break tone with the show, but adds a grandness to it. And as I said, we've already mixed these kinds of storylines, whether it's Jason getting paralyzed, or Lyla and Riggins having this affair, the big racism story that happened with Smash, or the steroid story. This is really what we do on the show. While it's different from what we've done before, if it wasn't different from what we've done before, we'd have another problem. This is a show that is going to continue to evolve and surprise. That's in the spirit of everything that's kind of gone into going down this road.

AS: Obviously, some fans have already seen the episode on Yahoo!, and a lot of them seem unhappy with this direction. Is there anything you would say to them right now to reassure them?

JK: I would tell them what I just told you. Just get them the second episode, because it's so great. You immediately see the scenes between Landry and Tyra in the next episode, you see where this story is going. I feel like it will really, for fans of the show who might be concerned about this, it'll really be a relief. I think people will be on board with it going forward.

I think that once they see the next episode and the episode after that, they'll see that it's a really compelling storyline that is about character, it's not changing the show or trying to take the show into a murder mystery. The show very much stays tonally in keeping with everything the show has been before.

A few days later, NBC sent out episodes two and three, and, as I said in the column, they didn't provide the reassurance that Katims had promised. I'm not going to spoil them, either, except to borrow a phrase from the comic books of my youth, and say that the later episodes show that the murder and cover-up is not a dream and not an imaginary story. The second episode doesn't open with a flashback to Tyra and Landry driving the body up to the nearby emergency room and discovering that rumors of the rapist's demise were greatly exaggerated by Landry's pulse-taking abilities. Nor is it the rapist emerging from a shower, Landry telling Matt about this wacky dream he had about killing a guy, Tyra handing in a creative writing assignment about it, or anything else that, while completely lame, would get the show out of this corner it's painted these two characters into.

The version I initially saw was staged a bit differently than what aired, in that Landry brained the rapist with a beer bottle while the fight was still going on, where in the final version, he beats the guy with a lead pipe after the rapist is already walking away. Either version has problems: the original because there's absolutely no reason for Landry to not call the cops (especially with his dad on the force), the final because it takes away the "defense of others" justification for Landry's actions and makes the killing far, far worse.

Either way, I'm not happy. Hell, take away the cover-up altogether, and I'm still not happy. I'm simply not interested in a Landry Clarke who has a death, justified or not, on his conscience. That takes away so much of what made Landry one of the richest characters on the show: the everyman quality; the sense of humor (though episode two clumsily tries to have it both ways with a few scenes where Landry cracks wise like always); the notion that, while he may have a brighter future than some other characters, for the moment his life lacks the glamour of a Smash or Riggins or even his buddy Matt. Katims talks about this storyline adding a grandness to the show, but that seems to be missing the point of Landry, who used to be defined by his complete lack of grandness.

Worse, though, is the sense (which becomes clearer in the later episodes) that this ridiculous, over-the-top subplot is really there just as an excuse to do other things like bring Landry and Tyra closer together or to introduce Landry's dad -- things that could have been accomplished without making Landry a killer and Tyra his accessory in covering it up.

Maybe by episode five, six, seven, whatever, something will happen to prove me wrong. Maybe there will be some kind of extraordinary scene between Landry and his old man that would be impossible without this set-up, I don't know. But it would have to absolutely eclipse all of the previous best moments in the history of the series -- Tami and Julie have The Talk, Tami's speech at the pre-championship dinner, Saracen singing "Mr. Sandman" to his grandma, the Panthers getting pelted with garbage, etc. -- to remotely justify the damage I think it's already doing.

I understand that the ads the last few days have been mentioning a murder. Maybe that brings enough eyeballs to the set this evening to keep the show on the air a while. But, as with all the serial killers and hottie detectives who drifted through latter-era "Homicide," I'm not sure that extending the show's lifespan is necessarily worth the cost of tarnishing the perfection we got last year.

Whew. And that's about 2000 words about one scene (1,000 if you take out the interview portion). Can you tell this has been consuming my thoughts for a while? Let's move on, so I can end this post on a more positive note.

What more can I say about the brilliance of Connie Britton? You want to talk about a dedication to realism, they don't get realer than Mrs. Coach. Plenty of brilliant moments from her, but I want to focus on two: the delivery room scene and the silent fight in the Taylor living room after Eric finds out he has to go back to Austin, immediately. Both of them are of a type that's an awards show cliche -- woman gives birth, woman breaks down crying -- but Britton immerses herself so deeply into the part that it never seems like Emmy-bait (not that the lame Emmy voters would notice), just how Tami would behave in that situation. I'm not sure I can remember another actor conveying exhaustion as well as she did when she greeted Eric in the delivery room, and the woman kills me very time she cries, dominating a scene where she barely opens her mouth. (She can cry funny, too, which you'll see next week.)

Kyle Chandler, meanwhile, has his own "a good expression's worth a few pages of dialogue" moment in the scene where Coach runs into Saracen at the supermarket and has to listen in silence as Matt runs down the ways McGregor is changing (ruining?) the team that Eric built. You know that Eric wants to say something, even as you know that he can't. It's not his place anymore -- he gave up that place to go be at TMU. Plus, he had another one of his hysterical deliveries of a line that's not very funny on the page, with the way he sneered "You've gotta be kidding me" when he had to pick up Julie at the club after curfew.

Speaking of which, I know some of the people who watched the episode on Yahoo! have complained about Julie flirting with The Swede and distancing herself from Matt, but I liked it. Not only do I recognize her fear of turning into her mom -- especially at a time when her mom's in a bad way, seemingly abandoned by her dad -- but, as she points out, she's 16. You do stupid stuff at 16, try on different identities, different relationships, whatever. It feels realistic that Julie would drift away from Matt through no fault of Matt's, and also that she'd be drawn to some slightly older guy who's the lead singer in a band. It happens, and, like Coach, it doesn't make me like her any less -- even though it makes me feel sorry for her that she doesn't realize how good she has it with Matt.

Outside the Taylor family and Bonnie and Clyde, our other regulars are in the process of either adopting new identities or falling back into old ones.

On the backsliding tip: Smash (not that he has much to do in this episode -- or the next two) is back to being the cocky guy he was back in the pilot, if not moreso, since he doesn't have a mobile Jason Street to overshadow him like he did a year ago; and Riggins is back to drunken bimbohood. (In terms of the women they were attached to at the end of last season, Waverly's gone -- Katims decided they broke up sometime between "State" and this episode -- while Jackie the MILF will be back in some capacity soon.)

Trying to be different: Street's still struggling to fit in as a coach, and while MacGregor for the most part seems like a tool, his advice about being a coach or a friend/mascot, but not both, felt just about right. Lyla's trying to deal with the crumbling of every relationship around her (including her own lifelong romance with Street) by giving herself to Christ, while her mom's new boyfriend is driving Buddy to make an even bigger ass of himself than usual. (Mo Ryan made a great comparison in an e-mail to me the other day, when she said that Brad Leland/Buddy is to "FNL" as Michael Hogan/Col. Tigh is to "Battlestar Galactica," the older, unglamorous guy who seems like a sleazy afterthought and then becomes an essential part of the fabric of the show.)

In looking at some of the last few paragraphs, reliving Tami and Eric's fight, Eric picking up Julie at the club, Buddy picking a fight in the dealership lot, even Riggins and Lyla's snotty conversation about how they spent their summers, I really want to put aside my misgivings about the murder subplot. I want to be able to divorce that storyline from the rest of the show. But all I know is that, when that DVD screener arrived a few weeks ago, I could not have been more excited to watch it, and I literally felt nauseous when it was over. Episodes two and three are going to have some equally brilliant stuff (as well as, unfortunately, some non-Tyra/Landry plots that feature varying levels of cheese), but when I got to the end of each one, all I could think about was how mad I am about the latest Tyra/Landry scene.

I've seen reviews by other critics who either seemed unconcerned by that storyline or not willing to let it affect their enjoyment of the rest of this great, great show. I wish I could be like that, but I keep thinking back to that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach as the final minutes of this episode unfolded, and it makes me sad.

Live fast, die young, leave a good-looking corpse. Who knew we'd be dealing with a genuine corpse right at the start of season two?

What did everybody else think?