Friday Night Lights Review: Bonds of Brothers

At the beginning of last season, Coach Taylor (Kyle Chandler) made a call to forfeit a game with the South Kingdom Rangers, a decision that sent shockwaves through the town and team. This week, the still undefeated East Dillon Lions are set for a rematch, and everyone’s talking revenge in a big way.

Vince (Michael B. Jordan) tells Coach Taylor what happened with the coaches at TMU. Coach is concerned at the early interest in Vince, particularly when the university was supposed to be recruiting Luke (Matt Lauria). They decide not to tell anyone else on the team about the conversation.

While getting ready to head out for the game, Coach Taylor tells the team he expects a clean game and an honest win, no matter how hard everyone is pushing them for revenge. Apparently South Kingdom is a completely dry town, so the staff expects no problems from the players.

As they’re loading the bus, we learn Buddy Garrity (Brad Leland) will be joining the team for his son Buddy Jr.’s (Jeff Rosick) first game, explaining to his son the importance of hazing to a game like football. Honestly, loading the bags in the bus is perhaps the PG version of Texas high school football hazing.

Vince and Jess (Jurnee Smollet) talk about the roommate assignments she made and how she gets a room all to herself after the game. Jess tells him he as to win before they can celebrate.

Things at college seem to be going okay for Julie Taylor (Aimee Teegarden). She’s getting along with her roommate now and is in somewhat of an unconventional relationship with her TA Derek (Gil McKinney). He even finds her at a poetry reading and whisks her away to a super secret fried dough stand he found one night while he was “trying to get lost”. Derek’s really deep and romantic like that. I’ve got to say, even though creeper flags keep flying up around him, I was still kind of rooting for this couple. The two take a car ride around town, still “trying to get lost” and start to open up about their pasts. Derek does tell Julie about his wife.

The team pours out into the hotel lobby, causing a lot of stress for other patrons and the hotel desk clerk, who asks them to stay in their block of rooms. Coach Taylor is baffled by key cards, displaying how small town their life in Dillon sometimes is. After a practice, the team hits the pool while Coach Taylor, Vince and his father (Cress Williams) sit down to talk about the scouts from TMU. They agree that moving forward, it would be best for all contact to go through Coach Taylor before being discussed with anyone else.

That night, Coach Taylor sitts on his balcony, out of view of some of the players. Vince, Tinker, Luke and Hastings talk about last season’s game and why the Coach wanted to forfeit. Vince reveals he doesn’t know why, but to trust Coach had good reasons. They joke about staying at the hotel, telling Tinker the mini bar candies aren’t free—and neither is the porn—and how they’re going to get to State before heading in to bed. The East Dillon team is starting to look more and more like the Panthers of late Season One/Season Two, finally bonded together by a common vision and mission.

On game night the Lions find themselves down early at the end of the first half. Fans and players for the opposing team jeer at them to just forfeit again and even our voiceover announcer agrees the referees aren’t making fair calls on the field.

Coach Taylor brings the team in before sending them back out for the second half, and basically tells Vince to throw out the rules and win this. The Lions come back for a commanding victory, preserving their winning streak, but ultimately leaving a bad taste in Eric Taylor’s mouth.

While the coaches play cards later that night, Vince, Tinker, Buddy Jr. and Luke sneak out with Hastings to find some fun. Hastings spent some time in the town before and takes them through the woods to some kind of strange bonefire-trailerpark-moonshine dance party, complete with mason jar drinking glasses. The boys kick back and while Buddy Jr. hooks up with a local girl, Vince tells Luke about TMU. Luke’s thrilled at the prospect they’ll get to play together again, and the two promise to win State for their team.

Back at college, Julie’s studying in a common area as a woman comes screaming her name down the hall. Julie stands up and acknowledges the woman who slaps her across the face. Other girls in the area intervene, but the woman starts screaming, revealing that she’s Derek’s wife and that Julie isn’t the first girl he’s had an affair with, embarrassing Julie in front of a room full of students. This leads Julie to take an impromptu trip back to Dillon, and into the overjoyed arms of Tami. Let’s wait and see how happy she is when she learns her daughter came home for more than a place to do her dirty laundry.

This week got back to what makes the show strong—the team learning life lessons through football. Coach Taylor pitches it as a transformative experience, being part of his team, and for everyone on the show, it definitely has been.

This set of high school males from different walks of life with varying interests come together for one purpose. It works for them, and as drunken Luke tells us this week, it makes them brothers in a most unexpected way.

Friday Night Lights, for me, is ultimately a series of moments. There are a lot of fleeting moments that just strike such a strong chord before we’re onto the next scene—Tami making a friend, the guys gathered around the fireplace, Eric calling Tami from his hotel room, the hug between Julie and her mother, Buddy Jr. twirling his girl’s lipstick on the bus. These are the touching moments that ground the drama.

There’s also the intense foreshadowing, like this week when the TMU scout approached Vince’s father. Will he be swept in by the promises of college recruiters, ignoring what Coach thinks is best for Vince’s future? Will Vince have to choose between his father and his mentor? Probably yes on both accounts.

This week’s shout-out goes to Grey Damon. After a few episodes that were rather light on his character, Hastings is back in play. Besides getting the Lions to their back water liquor fest and prompting some of the key team members to get branded fireside, he has two lines of dialogue repeated at the beginning and end of the trip—“Hey coach” and “Are we there yet”. In the quiet moments of those shots of Coach Taylor on the bus, his charm should win over the most casual fans of the series. My regret knowing this is the final season is the finite amount of time we have left with this new character.

Season 5, Episode 5 “Kingdom” (Original air date May 13, 2011)

Friday Night Lights airs Fridays at 8/7c on NBC.

Photos courtesy of Bill Records and NBC.