“Friday Night Lights” — Let’s Get It On
Y Tu Football Tambien
I had some pretty big problems with this week’s episode, most namely Landry and the unsettling level of character inconsistency. I also felt that a lot of the dialogue was particularly cheesy, something the show has always done a good job of shying away from despite the often melodramatic subject matter. Of course like every episode of this show there was as much good as there was bad. More after the jump…
Let’s start with the bad. Landy, one-time funnyman and social outcast is now, seemingly out of nowhere, a superstar footballer, murderer and sometime beau of Tyra who is soooooo goodlooking I can understand his dad’s curiosity with how this relationship even formulated (though might not handle matters the way he decided to handle them). I think these inconsistencies are really the heart of the problems. It isn’t so much the murder, though that’s certainly at play, and it isn’t the recent interest (and excellence) in football, but the whole package of character misguidedness drawn up by the writing staff since the show returned (actually let me take that back, he was classic Landry for 5/6ths of the season premiere). Now I just don’t know what to think, with his sports-movie-cliche-rah-rah-speech in the locker-room being the final straw. The only good Landry’s character brought to the series in Friday’s episode was the ability to have the coach consistently refer to him as “Lance.”
Now then, speaking of the coach, his pursuit of “the green light” from Tami was a joy to watch. Add to this Mac’s not-so-subtle description of how he worked through similar problems with his wife and the resulting look of horror on Eric’s face made this one of the best married-life subplots the series has done.
Other good: I thought Seracen has some worthy material this week. I loved that he snapped at the coach for abandoning the team during a chili-eating make-up session (not to be confused with the dirtier/sexier chili-eating make-out session undoubtedly present in an alternate universe of this show where), and especially loved his questioning of Tami at the ice-cream shop about if he should go see the Decemberists with Julie — who he later rejected (and rightly so in my opinion). Matt has become the rock in this series as everything else spins out of control. Here’s hoping the live-in nurse doesn’t go and much all of this up.
As for the Mexico trip. Well… kind of a mixed bag. I loved the intervention on the boat and the resulting suicide attempt by Jason (especially since it finally snapped him out of his delusional state and made him fight to stay alive). I hated the idea of this entire subplot when it started, but now I think I’d give it a somewhat reserved thumbs up. Of course then we get to the three-way stuff (or at least split two-way). I can buy this, kinda. The problem as I see it is not that this wouldn’t happen, but that Lyla’s character is all over the map and thus I don’t understand what motivates her. The newly religious aspect was never particularly convincing and the somewhat randy cheerleader from last season always felt a little forced. I liked the scene this week because it was vague (and kind of sexy) but I would have probably liked it a bit more had we spent some more time with the character before getting to this point. (Though one would also feel compelled to add that Minka Kelly is the weakest link in terms of acting chops on the cast. Even Taylor Kitsch as Riggins has shot past her in talent.)
When this episode first started I decided I was going to treat it as a fresh start — a new go at the season premiere given all of the plot-undoing that transpired last week. This worked for awhile, but sadly a lot of the silliness that has seeped into the series this past month kept the show from breaking away. Hopefully this doesn’t hinder the rest of the season.
Tags: Friday Night Lights, NBC
November 4th, 2007 at 4:43 pm
I have to disagree with you on Landry. I don’t think he’s become Mr. Superstar. He was in the game for two plays. One of which he didn’t make the catch and the ball thrown to him was intercepted (with Landry making the tackle and forcing the fumble). In the second play he didn’t catch the ball in the end zone (of course there was a penalty on the play as well). So the only thing he’s done on the field is not catch two passes and tackle a guy. Not really superstar, IMO. They were celebrating him like a superstar afterward, yes, but unjustly so.