With the new TV season in full swing, DVD Flashback Friday has become a semi-regular post since I can’t get through as many shows on DVD and still watch all the new stuff. Plus I have to, like, work and spend time with friends and stuff. It’s a hard life, being an amateur television critic. But I’ve still been watching plenty of supplementary television, and my newest addiction is Friday Night Lights. You can read my review of season one here , where I tell you why Friday Night Lights is not just a show about football.
Friday Night Lights is one of those shows that you have to see to understand how good it is. If I just tell you it’s a show about a high school football coach, his family, the players on the team and their lives in a small Texas town, you probably wouldn’t be convinced. But the show is so good, and the characters are so realistic. I talk about them like I know them because they are so much like people everyone knows.
After watching season one, I was told that season two was a bit of a low point in the series. My sister put it best when, in an email, she said this:
“There is An Incident early on in Season 2, but the FNL-lovingworld has made a pact to ignore it. The series recovers. Don’t freak out when you get to it. That is all I will say.”
So now I’m going to talk about The Incident, so here is your official spoiler alert.
OK, the thing is, Landry kills a guy. In the first episode. I’m not going to lie, it was a little out there. But you know what? It was OK. I didn’t hate it. I mean, it’s not like he sought out Tyra’s attacker with the intent of killing him. The guy was stalking Tyra and attacked her again, and Landry intervened. It was accidental. I could deal. Maybe because Tyra is one of my favorite characters, so I love Landry by association, and I’ll get behind any plot involving them.
Tyra is one of my favorite characters, and the other is Mrs. Coach, so you can probably imagine that I’m a big fan of their relationship. Tami and Tyra have a great chemistry, and I love that Tami inspires Tyra to achieve things even though her own mother is so discouraging. That’s why I love Tyra. She’s got moxie.
I was a little worried that the introduction of a baby would screw up the Taylor family dynamic, but instead I thought it worked. Little Gracie Bell helped bring Coach back from TMU, was a catalyst for Julie’s increasingly bratty behavior, and provided an excuse for Tami’s sister, played very well by Jessalyn Gilsig, to move in. Plus, that baby is so adorable with her giant head and her funny faces.
The second season saw a lot of changes for the kids this season too. Jason moved on with his life and in with Herc, and got some surprising news at the end of the season – he knocked a girl up. I haven’t gotten far enough into season three to know where this goes, but it sure was a twist. Lyla spent season two as a born again Christian, which I actually liked. It made her more interesting. Riggins was all over the place, and I particularly liked the episode when he was staying at Coach’s house and ended up protecting Julie from a bad situation. Like everyone else, I love that Tim’s a good guy, somewhere deep inside. I also especially liked what the show did with Smash’s character this season. The pressure of college recruiting and the racial issues he had to deal with were a highlight of the season, and Mama Smash is probably one of my favorite secondary characters on the show. Matt Saracen had a rough season – he was fighting with Smash, got dumped by Julie and then left by his new girlfriend (who also happened to be his grandmother’s in-hoe caregiver) and started partying with Riggins. But poor Matty just has so much on his plate that I can’t help but root for him.
All in all, I really enjoyed season two. I watched all fifteen episodes over the Thanksgiving weekend, and I’ve already started in on season three. With any luck, I’ll have finished seasons three and four in time for the fifth (and final) season to begin at the end of the month.
