TV Weekend: Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Etc.

How much do I love FNL? I'm no longer going out on Friday nights, or at least not going out until FNL is over.

I've avoided the online previews of the first episode, so I have no idea what the Bad Thing is, but if I know the FNL writers, they'll find a way to make it work in the end.

Clear eyes, full hearts, indeed....oh, and Lyla Garrity.

I'm almost curious to watch just because of this "Bad Thing". I smell a marketing gimmick... bravo.

Hey, I'm not attempting to usurp the goodness that is FNL (at least according to you folks) but I just learned that Kevin Smith will be directing the first episode of Heroes Origins.

I know what the Bad Thing is -- because NBC gives it away in their (radio) promos for the episode! Not the specifics, but the nature of it, and combined with other promotional chatter they've put out there, I know exactly what It is and who is involved. And I agree, it's uncharacteristic -- but I would much prefer not to have gone into the episode with the bias of knowing (and having judged) what was to come. The media has been good about being vague on the Development; how shameful that NBC couldn't do the same. (And yes, the show needs ratings, but if you weren't already watching it, or planning to watch it because of the good things you've heard, you weren't going to tune in just because something happens in the episode that happens weekly in a dozen other NBC shows).

After what they gave us last season, I'm trusting the writers to give us some of the most powerful TV out there. If it means polarizing people on certain scenes it'll be all the better because then people will talk about and watch the show thereby keeping it on longer.

I'm anxious to see where the show goes this year. Last year it was all headed towards a happy ending with a victory in state (granted this ending was in jeopardy several times). I don't see the writers repeating that ending so it'll be very interesting to see where they take us and what becomes the climax of season two.

I watched the pilot last year and wasn't interested enough to continue watching (which I hesitate to admit in the presence of FNL-loving people, knowing how I responded to people not loving Buffy with an emotion similar to "IDIOT! YOU CANNOT COMPREHEND ITS BRILLIANCE!"), but after so much praise, I'm going to check it out again tonight.

@Allison - all of us Dillon Panther fans are more than willing to overlook your choice to not continue watching last year, in gratitude for your decision to tune in tonight and help its ratings (and, hopefully, increase its chance of surviving to play out the season at least...)

But I will recommend you go back and watch season 1....simply phenomenal. It gets WAY better after the pilot....WAY better (the episode about Coach's daughter thinking about losing her virginity alone deserved an Emmy for Connie Britton).

@chaddogg: Good to hear it gets better. If I decide to watch the second season, I'll certainly go back and watch the first, as well, but I'm holding back until I figure out if I'm just one of those people who doesn't get it.

(SPOILER: Don't read this before you watch the second season premiere. Although, come to think of it: Don't watch the second season premiere. Seriously. Just pretend the show got cancelled afer one season.)

Oh sweet Jesus. I just watched the premiere. The only thing that would have made it worse is if Landry had disposed of the corpse by feeding it to a shark. Which he then jumped.

I've been a rabid "FNL" fan from day one -- I've told everyone I could to watch it, to buy the DVDs, and so forth. But I think I'm done. In one scene, they managed to break the show. It's as if NBC had renewed "Freaks and Geeks" and, in the first episode back, revealed that Linda Cardellini's character was also an assassin for the CIA.

Agreed - The Bad Thing is A Very Bad Thing

The New York Times review of the episode reminded us we are watching "a melodrama" but this "plot twist" is the kind of nonsense you would expect on a daytime soap.

Maybe we will have the plot twists tied up in "a very special episode" where it turns out to have been a dream.

The Bad Thing is a rather un-FNL-like departure in plot, but i think it fits in with the FNL-like exploration of small-town life (which doesn't quite excuse the plot deviation, I should add). Dillon is portrayed as a town where everybody knows everybody. We've seen the Garrity family hiding from gossip, Tyra finding escape in a one-night-stand with a non-local, Coach Taylor nodding to a cook behind the counter of a diner and listing off the cook's former football stats to Smash. But with the stalker storyline, it raises the question: who is this guy, and can such anonymity exist in a place like Dillon? Can someone in a small town disappear (e.g. dumped in a river) and not get noticed? And this leads to further questions, like, Who gets remembered and who gets forgotten? Who gets gossiped about and who becomes a nobody? It remains to be seen how this storyline develops, but i think that's what the writers might be exploring here.

So I don't exactly welcome the Bad Thing, but I do welcome the thematic discussion it has in mind. I think FNL is one of the few shows that has the ambition and scope of a Great American Novel entry. I bring this up because I was reminded of Philip Roth's American Pastoral, which perhaps the writers were referencing in this episode by having a minor character being nicknamed “The Swede” -- the protagonist's nickname in the novel. The first half of American Pastoral is indeed about a small town lionizing a sports hero, pinning their hopes on him, living vicariously through his glories, and seeking much-needed distraction from a war -- sounds like FNL to me. The second half is how the grown-up athlete reconciles his former life with his present one after his family is torn apart by something pretty extreme (the novel's own Bad Thing), and this episode was sort of about Coach Taylor wondering what the hell happened to his family (the near-incestuous intimacy between father and daughter is present in both: Julie seeing a version of her dad in Matt in FNL; the ambiguously innocent kiss on the lips in AP). All this to say that the show is rich enough to overcome and make the best out of the rather unfortunate Bad Thing.

also: Lila Garrity's progression from prettier-than-thou to holier-than-thou is great turn.