Friday Night Lights Review: Let’s Finish It!

I found myself this week feeling a little torn. I’m behind Coach et al. all the way, but I do miss my Dillon champions. It pained me to see them in Joe McCoy’s and his sniveling little minion of a Coach’s hands, even though I barely know any of the kids on that team anymore. (Do you even know anyone else on the team besides J.D. McCoy who’s becoming exponentially more despicable?) I guess that’s suppose to happen. We’re feeling the same pain that the Coach and every player who’s been shuttled off to East Dillon is feeling.

The fallout, since Coach forfeited the first game of the season, has massive effects. From the opening scenes, hearing Coach snap at the eager-to-please Saracen (“I’ll get my own paper”) to watching Tami remove all those white, surrender flags on the lawn by her lonesome, was heartbreaking. (That’s what I call love.) At the end of the last episode, I remember turning to my friend and saying that “he had to do it, right?” Those kids were battered and broken. Landry was spitting up a gallon of blood. They all could have had serious internal bleeding! He had to forfeit! But I was looking at it from the viewpoint of a Coach-lover, a Coach that could rarely do wrong. But when you look at it from the viewpoint of the townsfolk or even his team, he’s just another guy who gave up on the less fortunate kids. Someone who couldn’t look failure in the eye and just see it through.

So no, the skies haven’t cleared just yet, but things start to look up when Buddy stops by and clues Coach in on a little secret. You see, he brings him to an empty field with a mailbox. And who’s supposed to live there but Luke Cafferty, an extremely polite, cute and valued member of the Dillon Panthers. He actually lives in East Dillon! So it’s a start, but it won’t be so easy for Coach to win back his team.

THE TEAM LEADERS
Two of his players that he looks to for leadership, Vince and Landry, both give him a hard time. And who could blame them. At school, Vince is greeted with tiny, white flags stuck in his locker. From the cool-guy front that he puts on, it’s evident that the loss is a huge hit to his ego. Then, Coach goes to his house trying to find him, only to find his messed up mom. She couldn’t care less about what happens to him but has no problem asking for money. All he wants is to help Vince so he gives her $20, and she tells him about Vince’s usual haunts. Too bad Vince sees all this and doesn’t take too kindly to Coach’s handouts.

They catch up to each other at his basketball spot, but Vince ignores him. Coach begs him to not throw the opportunity away because he does have talent, but it falls on deaf ears. Or so it seemed! Vince turns up, later, in his office where Coach apologizes and asks him to not quit on him or on himself. We find out that Vince supports his family and didn’t like Coach giving his mother money even though he acknowledges she shouldn’t have taken it from him. They have a heart-to-heart. Coach says that he can find another job, but this is a chance Vince can’t pass up. He asks him to talk to the teams and get them to show up at his Saturday night, special practice, but it’s left unclear as to whether Vince will actually show up or not, seeing that he walks out without a word.

Landry continues to be a fish out of water. It must hurt that the Coach he’s grown to admire would just leave them hanging with no explanation. As he said, they gave their everything. When he gets to school, kids give him a hard time about parking spaces and juvenile things like that. In trying to escape one form of torment, he inadvertently backs into another form of torment when he runs over Jess Merriweather’s (Jurnee Smollett) shiny bicycle. She’s attractive and sassy, kind of like Tyra, with a lot more attitude. (I like her immediately.) Though his interest is piqued, and she shows not even the slightest smidge of caring about anything more than getting reimbursed for the damages, you can tell this will be a rocky friendship/relationship. He promises to pay her back. In the cafeteria, he’s confronted by Coach who wants him to help rally the troops, but when Coach doesn’t answer the question of why he forfeited the game, he says he and the team are done.

Later, Landry meets Jess’s tough papa at their BBQ rib joint. Her father doesn’t take too well to seeing this pale dude following behind his daughter, trying to help her clean up after customers and carrying the trash out. (Sooooo intriguing! A budding, interracial romance! It‘s been done before with Smash and his short-term girlfriend Noelle. But throw the affable yet bumbling Landry into the mix, and it’s a whole new story.)

OTHER TEAM PLAYERS
Luke. His story was the most affecting for me. It’s possibly because we don’t know him so he hasn’t offended us or left us with a bad impression, but to see a guy break down at the prospect of not playing ball with his team, I cried! First he lied about where he lived, then he was angry, then he was begging her, then he was apologizing for lying to her face like a good southern boy. I was watching the stages of grief, and it was so well done, so beautifully acted and written. I could see the next Saracen in the making.

Matt. He gets some props from the teacher who dissed him last episode. She tells him that she submitted him for an internship with a respected artist, and he was chosen. “You have what every important artist needs. Pluck.” I have no idea what that means, and Matt is so flabbergasted he doesn’t care to ask, but at least he had enough mind to thank her. He shows up on his first date dressed in a suit (awwwwww!) but is greeted by a half-naked guy in dirty underwear and socks. He even asks if Matt is wearing shoes before walking into his tool shed pit of death. “Yeah, I wear shoes.” Later, he gives him a piece of his mind over not being taught anything or even being spoken to besides orders. He looks at his art, giving him no feedback, but rips off a tiny piece of his work and says, “This part here doesn’t make me want to puke. Try to work from this place.” It’s not much, but it’s something.

Riggins. There is one storyline that hasn’t dazzled me yet, and it is the Becky-Riggins storyline. I was pleased to see him go back to Coach and offer his assistance. If I can’t see Tim grow into a responsible adult by going to college, then he should follow in Jason Street’s footsteps and take a stab at coaching. But that has nothing to do with the romantic aspect of his storyline. First, Becky coyly got him to come pick her up and drive her to school by calling and pretending to need a tow. Then her mom offers him her trailer behind her house so that she can pick up a little extra money. She makes it clear that their one-time hanky panky won’t be an issue. She can tell they’re not really into each other. This is reinforced with the goodnight look Riggins gives Becky as he says hello and steps into his new home.

PRINCIPAL VERSUS THE WORLD
Tami is dealing with her own hardship as she’s pressured from Joe and Wade to let Luke stay at Dillon. They try the guilt approach. “It’s not going to do anything but hurt this kid. We can’t let that happen to him. We can’t let that happen to our team, and we can’t let that happen to the school.” Then, there’s bullying. “We can’t let that happen to you, Tami. What’s going to happen to you if this goes down…I think you’re going to get lynched.” Then, there’s the borderline blackmail. “Who put up that mailbox because the Dillon Panthers have been using that mailbox long before I got here. And if I want to do a little digging around, I think things could come up. I think games could be forfeited. I think rings could be lost.”

This leads to some hot, hot fighting between Coach and Tami that goes kind of like this. ‘Did you know about the mailbox?’ ‘Of, course not. I don’t pay attention to all that stuff.’ ‘You seemed to care today when Luke became East Dillon property. And if you didn’t guess, they’re threatening your titles and the titles of your team.’ ‘Well, I barely have a team now!’ ‘Well, how do I know that if you don’t tell me! I’m sorry. But you still should have told me about the mailbox if you knew.’ ‘I’m getting milk.’ How have these two not been nominated for an Emmy or Golden Globe? It’s truly a travesty because you can feel the electricity between these two whether things are good or bad.

Nothing makes Tami back down though, and that’s why we love her. She walks straight into the boys club and throws Joe’s weak attempts at blackmail right back in his face and in front of all his buddies. With all their rings and their sons’ and nephews’ and grandchildren‘s, I’m sure they wouldn’t be too keen on any kind of investigation. Unfortunately, Joe gets the last laugh when the entire student body boos her at their first pep rally. I mean it’s the kind of booing and chanting that could send Carrie into a blood-fueled rage. But in the end, Tami is proud of herself. “I did get one bit of satisfaction. Just being able to stand up to the good ol’ boys for one moment, Joe McCoy and his crew. So, I’ve got that going for me. And wine.” In the end, everyone does show up to practice. “They showed up. It’s a start,“ Coach tells his wife and then apologizes for lying.

WRAP UP
At his special practice, Coach gives a rousing speech, apologizing for giving up on them earlier. “Last week we got our asses beat doing our best, and there’s no shame in that gentleman. But I’ll tell you what. I’ve got shame, and I apologize to you. I apologize for not giving you the chance to finish your fight. I want to finish that fight with you, and I’m asking you, right here, right now, to allow me to help you finish that fight.“ He starts a bonfire and burns all his old tapes and their even older-looking jerseys. “This is the past. Who’ll finish this fight with me?” Vince, then Landry, steps up and the rest of the team follows. “Let’s finish it!” (I think we’ve got a new though not better “clear eyes” mantra.

I am intrigued by the themes the writers will be diving into. Though FNL has touched on them before, it looks like race and class will be just as prominent as football and family, and this theme of new beginnings is breathing fresh life into the show. Fridays have never looked so good.

Season 4, Episode 2: After the Fall (aired May 14, 2010)

For more on Friday Night Lights, click here.

Fridays at 8/7c on NBC

Photographs courtesy of NBC Universal and Bill Records.