Friday Night Lights Review: The Boiling Point

Almost every character had to finally face their issues head on this week on Friday Night Lights, as everyone reaches their boiling points and tensions burst in Dillon, Texas. I hung on to each moment of this week’s episode, and it’s so good, I swear I had to watch it twice, but the one thing I kept thinking throughout both viewings was, “Now I see how Emmy voters just couldn’t deny these actors their much deserved nominations for a season longer.”

This week’s episode kicked off with tons of coaches arguing over the East Dillon football field. The Panthers are one win away from getting to the playoffs and don’t believe the Lions’ field is up to snuff for their upcoming game. The Lions don’t want to and shouldn’t have to give up their home game because the Panthers are pansies. As race and economic issues have been the core of this season, it’s interesting to see it played out over such a “minute” issue. (I put minute in quotes because as Coach Taylor points out later in the episode, it’s really about way more than just a football game. It really is so many of these people‘s lives.) The fact that the writers even packed such meaty commentary about these issues into one episode centered around one game, a game we didn’t even get to see yet, is genius in my eyes.

Coach Taylor is so steely throughout, holding in what can only be bitter contentions. I imagined him pacing that field thinking about what’s best for his new kids while lamenting the situation he’s found himself in, fighting with his old team. (Did anyone else catch the equally silent and steely Mac during the Panther v. Lions round table? That hit me in my soft spot.) I can only imagine Coach to be a killer card player because his poker face is second to none. There were moments in this episode where he couldn’t contain his emotions, but he never showed that to the competition. Instead he lashed out at the downtrodden Luke who just wants to fight through the pain and play, but Coach told him to be Gatorade boy. He quickly apologized and said really he just wants Luke to do nothing and get better. He also smashed a phone to smithereens at home after someone (clearly the Panthers) completely assaulted their field in an over-retaliation to Landry’s genius idea for the Lions to cover the enemy field in toothpicks. All the Lions field damage forced the game to be housed on Panther turf.

Tami, on the other hand, had an even worse week when she finds her mug on the cover of the morning paper, clearly not being able to keep the abortion below the radar like the superintendent had hoped for. He offered her the chance to make a public apology when she did nothing wrong or risk losing her job and her career. Pro lifers are camping outside her job and picketing. The phone is ringing off the hook with citizens taking their precious time to call her a baby killer. If we, the audience, know anything, it’s that Tami loves her job. This is the woman who stayed in Dillon with a new baby, away from Coach who took a new job. The worst thing is how unbelievable her neighbors are to create this witch hunt, when Becky has a mother who was there with her when she had her abortion. Their logic is pretty much incomprehensible. “This wasn’t on school grounds, she’s not my student and I followed district protocol all the way,” she said while sitting with a lawyer, but he made it clear that even if she filed a wrongful termination suit, it could take years, she probably wouldn’t get her job back and during that time she won’t find principal work.

Vince also had some struggles to face. After his friend, Calvin, was shot and killed, he was left dealing with loss, temptations of revenge, pressures by Kennard, who got him and his friend in this situation in the first place and then hope from Jess that he will stay on the straight and narrow. The kids we’ve grown to love in Dillon have faced some intense things. Jason and his wheelchair and the baby, Matt and his father, and Vince has now joined the league. From the moment he went to Calvin’s wake and hugged Calvin’s mother, I was in tears. Kudos to Michael B. Jordan. She said, “I wish he would have been more like you, Vincent. I wish he would have stayed on the team.” But she didn’t know that Calvin and Vince were more alike that she thought. Vince could have been the one dead if he hadn’t chickened out.

Jess tried to be there for him, especially since he broke down to her in the first place, but Vince would rather take on the persona of the bad guy who doesn’t deserve good. I’m not sure if it’s because it could have been him or because he really does want revenge. None of that seemed too clear, but he does tell Landry that he realized he’s a good guy and that he’s glad Jess is with him. (Landry did buy her a shiny new bike, even if he didn’t think about the lock that Jess’s mom said she’ll definitely need or that giving her a present before a funeral is never good timing. But Landry did put aside the fact that Vince often gave him the evil eye to tell him that he’s sorry his friend died. Even when Vince gave him attitude saying, why does he even care. He didn’t even know Calvin’s last name or care about Vince. One, Landry did know his last name: Brown. And he did care about Vince because he cares about his teammates.) But while Landry might think he’s caught Jess, well, because she does cute things like kiss him in front of his teammates now and make him a practice playlist of crowds cheering to help him out, Jess is not really 100% there. But I can see she’s 100% behind Vince. She even realized that Vince was getting in deeper than he’d been before, went to his house to dissuade him from taking his gun and getting revenge, and then waited for him to come home. That’s way more than the 10 minutes it probably took Jess to make Landry’s playlist.

Still, the bike without a lock was a metaphor for how different Landry is from Vince and Jess. He doesn’t think the same way because he didn’t grow up with the same problems East Dillon kids had. You know, on that “other” side of town, the one Panther parents are complaining is scary. Jess gets Vince though, even when he’s down on himself. She told him that he is a good guy, but he screamed that he’s a monster before heading out. When he and Kennard find the target, he can’t do it. Kennard tried to pump him up first with stories of his tough, gangster father who never thought that Vince had it in him, and in the end, telling him that his father was right. He even pointed a gun at Vince, basically ordering him to follow through on his promise, but Vince would rather die. Instead he gets pistol-whipped and left with the promise of worse things to come. Left alone, Vince let out the most bloodcurdling, unfiltered screams of anguish and terror and shame. I imagine it to be so guttural, you’d feel like you got sucker punched just hearing it. The director made the beautiful choice to drop out sounds which made me feel all those things I just explained and then get goose bumps. Vince returned home, and as expected, Jess hadn’t given up on him. She was there waiting and so relieved when he broke down and said he couldn’t do it.

The Riggins boys, not to be outdone, joined the fray, as Billy became a dad and Tim became an uncle to Stephen. We saw some remnants of last week’s trailer ousting. Becky’s mom is still angry, Becky said, bringing over some of his belongings and the dog. He gets a call from Billy who told him that it was time, to which Tim replied, “For real D-Day? She’s gonna pop or what?” Oh, those Riggins boys. Later on, Tim tells Becky that he finally feels like he understands life and is happy, as they’re looking over his new piece of land. She sort of ruins the moment by telling him that she loves him, which he knows can’t happen. But to see Riggins so content is a rarity, and it’s something I like to pause and appreciate, but I also knew all this was just foreshadowing. Billy seems to have grown up, after marrying Mindy and now having a baby, but this chop-shop business had to bite them in the butt eventually. Unfortunately, the timing happened to be at the happiest time in both these brothers’ lives. After the birth, which was hysterical from Billy being thrown out of the delivery room to Tim cutting him off of Rockstar caffeine to Billy getting the guts to declare “I’m the dad!” and force himself next to his wife. But the best moment was daddy and uncle staring at the munchkin in his crib with wonder. Sadly, Tim is caught red-handed by the Dillon police, after giving the new daddy a day off from stripping cars, and Billy can only apologize to him in a holding cell.

I want to note that Julie’s storyline this week, needling her parents about wanting to head out of school early and join Habitat for Humanity at the ripe old age of 17, might seem like a slight annoyance. And if I were her parents, I would be annoyed too, but it also demonstrated how much she’s grown. At first, Julie is angry that her mother so curtly dismissed her new direction in life with a $3,000 tag. (I love how Tami replied, “Honey, you’re hilarious.”) But Coach cuts her off right before the mini retaliation would begin by asking so earnestly that she lay off her mother for this week because it was going to be a long one. That’s a man who’s 100% connected and in tune with his family, and Julie is getting there too as she’s becoming more of an adult.

As Julie’s maturing, so has this season. Landry is proving that he doesn’t have to be a sidekick. Becky went from annoying to intriguing. Jess and Vince have taken unknown characters and infused them with award-level honesty and reality. Now, I just want to know how the Lions will end their season, what Tami will decide to do and, most importantly, what will happen to my poor Riggins.

Season 4, Episode 12: Laboring (aired July 30, 2010)

For more on Friday Night Lights, click here.

Fridays at 8/7c on NBC

Photographs courtesy of NBC Universal and Bill Records.