Friday Night Lights Watch: Water Under the Bridge?
SPOILER ALERT: Don't read this post until you've watched the latest Friday Night Lights, and checked outside your house for skunks.
NBC Photo: Bill Records
The first thing that worried me about the new episode of FNL was not the controversial Landry-kills-Tyra's-stalker scene (which still sounds like a parody even as I type it, as if I were writing about "the Simpsons episode where Milhouse kills Nelson"). It was the opening scene, with all those slow-mo scenes by the pool and Get It On (Bang a Gong) playing. It was all, "Hot girls! Rock and roll! Don't believe what you've heard, folks--FNL is all good times! Bang a gong, baby!"
But, you know, whatever. I can't begrudge the occasional T&A scene in the service of FNL any more than I could a phony topless car wash to raise money for a fire department. Also, a later episode won me back musically by playing Big Star's September Gurls, a soundtrack choice emotionally perfect for this bittersweet show. What is FNL if not the TV equivalent of Big Star: alternative Southern rock?
Up to those disconcerting last few minutes, a welcome episode of a much-missed show. How perfect that Lyla should find Jesus--in that lovely baptism scene--and that her first project should be Riggins, whom she offers temptation, judgment and redemption in one blemish-free package? How affecting and yet funny the scenes with Buddy Garrity, losing it upon finding his estranged wife taking up with a health-food-store operating vegan, the dramatic equivalent of the kind of supercilious Texas hippie Hank Hill would offer an ass-kicking in King of the Hill? (He is not going to turn my children into communists!")
And though it almost goes without saying that each bit between Coach and Tami is flawless--her raw, brave emotion as she struggles to hold it together, his rock-jawed determination to make the impossible separation work out--I was actually most impressed this week with the scene in which Julie told Eric why she was no longer feeling it for Matt Saracen. It was that rarest of things on a teen drama: a teen girl breaking up with her boyfriend not for any melodramatic reason but simply because she's freaking 16--restless and not ready to settle down and not wanting to become like Mom and Dad. It was just life, which is what FNL specializes in.
Which brings us to death. On the one hand, yeah, I wish they didn't go there. The Tyra-rapist storyline frankly was over the top when they introduced it last season, and I didn't like the idea then of bringing her and Landry together by having him rescue a straight-out-of-Lifetime-Network woman-in-peril. That said, I didn't think the killing, or dumping the body off the bridge, was out of character: it was the sort of thing that someone, particularly a high-school kid, might do in a confusing, terrifying, adrenaline-rush situation with no good resolution and no time to think things through.
Actually, in a way, that's the problem: no one knows what they'd do in a fight-or-flight confrontation like that, so when you put characters in one, it becomes a kind of wild-card situation. It's like asking how you would psychologically, realistically respond if you were abducted by aliens or forced to perform an exorcism; the situation is so outside the realm of ordinary experience that character becomes beside the point.
I've seen the following two episodes, however, and while I don't want to spoil them in advance, I do think that Tyra and Landry's dealing with the aftermath is entirely in character. FNL is, after all, finally much more a character show than a plot show, and it's at least better that it a storyline should become implausible than that the characters themselves should become implausible.
My big worry about the stalker's death, actually, is practical. However it plays out in the long run, it has at least temporarily tarnished the critical and fan buzz on the show--namely, that it was as close as network TV dramas get to flawless. Yeah, yeah, I know, that and 50 cents, etc., but in fact is, that kind of buzz can make the difference in keeping a show that's on the bubble alive. If the storyline continues to have negative fallout, it becomes less embarrassing for NBC to cancel FNL: they can always say, well, the ratings are off and the fans are staring to turn on it, so...
Fortunately, the ratings aren't off, so far: the season 2 debut tied CBS's Moonlight for 1st place in viewers 18 to 49. Let's hope they stay up, though, or what looked like a gimmick to give FNL broader commercial appeal could end up being the worst commercial move the show could have made.
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1
If they DO handle the situation realistically, I can't see things ending well for Landry or Tyra. Which is a shame. Landry's a good character. Why does God let bad plot developments happen to good shows' comic relief.
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2
Great wrap-up, James. Hit every nail on the head. Especially about the Julie-Coach scene: it's nice for ONCE to see a teenage couple breaking up just because they're teenagers and they outgrow the relationship, or just stop feeling the same way for no good reason. Whereas older shows (90210?) would have had Matt hook up with Lyla and start a triangle, FNL handled it perfectly: Julie wasn't all that interested in the Swede, she was just not completely devoted to Matt anymore, and for no reason that she could really articulate. Great writing....
@Floyd - As for Tyra/Landry, I can still see this working out well (if not perfectly) for Tyra/Landry. Remember, there is a police report on this guy that Tyra filed, and while the guy was walking away, the killing was (arguably) in self-defense - the stalker was clearly after Tyra and wouldn't stop, he had just beaten Landry...in other words, even if Landry faced charges, he would have a pretty good defense. And what an interesting place to explore, too - juvenile (or just normal) criminal justice in a small, football-starved Texas town.
Coach and Tami, though: wow. If the worst happened and FNL got cancelled, I'm pretty sure Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton will be out of work for all of 5 seconds before another high-quality show picks them up.
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3
OK, I admit it (just like 30 Rock), this is not a show I ever watched until this episode. So what is the history between the Coach and Tami that makes his trip so traumatic for her? I ask this after putting my wife on the plane for Chicago for another week out of 18 months on a job assignment.
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4
@Keith - it's not the trip so much, as it is the permanent distance between them. Coach has a job in Austin as quarterback coach for TMU; at the end of last season, she decided (as Dillon's guidance counselor) to stay behind in Dillon because A) their daughter Julie wanted to stay and finish out high school in the first town she's really loved being in after the family moved around a lot for her dad's coaching job, b) Tami was pregnant, and c) Tami felt after a year of working with the kids in Dillon at the high school as a guidance counselor that she needed to be there to help them.
If you had seen (or in the future do see - trust me, you'll thank me) last year's season, you'd realize exactly how close Coach and Tami are. Their relationship is built on helping and guiding each other through problems, and facing the world together. They fight and bicker, quarrel, debate, make sarcastic comments at each other, and in general are like most long-time married couples - but at NO point do you ever doubt that they love each other and always want to help each other through all obstacles together. Only by knowing how close they are (in a real, true love and couplehood sense) do you realize how devastating it is to Tami (and, arguably, to Coach too) to be separated - they've been together so long that it's hard to face the problems of the world alone, or at least separated by the plane trip from Austin to Dillon.
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5
Thanks Chad. I have about 15 other shows for you to explain.
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6
Well, it was my first episode since the pilot, so I don't have any comments, really (and especially not about people or the show being in-character), but the good news is that I will catch up on last season: NBC.com still has all the episodes up on their site!
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7
Re: the opening scene with T. Rex - I had no problem with it. Let them strut a little bit, I say, and I don't think a 'fun' montage is especially out of character for the show.
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8
I can join in the disapproval of the general Tyra/Landry plotline, but I have to report that when that lead pipe came down on that head, I was thrilled for a moment, for two reasons (which may just be two levels of the same reason): one, the atavistic joy of seeing a very bad person get violently smacked; and two, because at that moment I knew that I would no longer have to watch Tyra getting stalked and/or raped, a plotline that I found a lot more upsetting than the aesthetic complaints that the characters are not being well-served, or the delicate nature of of the show undermined.
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9
They also worked a Wilco song in there, didn't they?
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10
@DonBoy - GREAT point. I'm happy that we don't have the continued Tyra stalking/attempted rape storyline going on - at least, not the melodramatic, "he's behind you!" aspect of the story. We're certainly going to hear more about it (especially if there is any trial, etc.), but more in the sense of "why didn't the cops pursue this guy more?" or "Does Dillon police care about violence against women?," etc.
In that sense, since Landry's dad is a cop, this could bring some very interesting domestic pressure to Landry's life - his dad, forced to attack the police force he's a member of in order to protect his son?
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11
I am an avid FNL watcher and that "bad thing" at the end made me think - oh no, the big dudes at NBC want to step up the crap so this show will rank up there with crappy shows which win Emmys (Sopranos and anything on HBO excluded). Kill a guy, dump him and hey...we're No. 1! even though the show has just been relegated to Cavemenesque dialogue. It's obvious the writers are being coerced to putting in salacious situations to boost ratings. They need to keep their 2006/07 status quo plotlines and character developments, otherwise it will go the way of the skewed Heroes, which now has more subplots than I can or want to track.
- poniewozik Loved the season. Mrs Tuned In wd have put u on the main list RT @boredtodeath Thank u for incl us in Time's Top 10. We'll take hon mention. - 6 hours ago
- poniewozik @carr2n Virgin is the best, LAX-JFK - 6 hours ago
- poniewozik Did NPR interview abt multiscreen multitasking. After, automatically reached for iPhone in pocket. Like don draper wd have for cigarettes. - 7 hours ago
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