Friday Night Lights -- season opener (open spoilers)

Cafe Society
1

Eric has to be back in Dillon by the end of the season, doesn’t he? Maybe sooner? IMDB has the new coach in for 25 episodes. The season doesn’t even have 25 episodes, does it? 22, maybe?

It’s smart of the writers that the new coach isn’t 100% terrible. He let Riggins stop running after he puked, and he was almost sympathetic in his talk with Jason. It’ll be interesting to see how Jason deals with what he said – you can be a symbol or you can be a coach.

Lyla Garrity needs a smack even more than she did in the first season. What does her mother have where her backbone is supposed to be?

Tami crying broke my heart, but I thought it was a little out of character for her not to tell Eric how bad she was feeling. She was stronger than that last season.

How realistic is it that Tyra and Landry dumped the body in the river? Both of those kids have shown strength and good sense. “I saw this guy attacking Tyra and I hit him.” I’d like to see how the writers would handle it if those two were honest about what happened instead of trying to hide it.

It was funny watching Eric try to agree with Buddy when Buddy said he wasn’t being annoying.

The new baby is so cute! But she’s definitely not three months early.

2

Yeah, I listened at least three times, and I’m pretty sure Julie said “three months”.

I like this show, and this episode didn’t disappoint. Dumping the body in the river was a little :dubious: to me. They could easily have claimed self defense, even though the guy was technically walking away.

Lyla going all Jesus Freak is a shame, but she’s still hot! (No, I’m not a perv-- her character might be 17 on the show, but the actress who plays her is something like 27 IRL.)

3

Is this show still on? I thought it got cancelled. I really liked the book and the movie but I lost interst in the TV show after 5 or 6 episodes. It’s too soapy for me. The book and movie were edgy, honest, unsentimental exposes. The TV show is just turgid teen melodrama. The cutesy-poo romance between the coach’s daughter and the saintly quarterback turned me off the show completely.

Also, it irritated me that the show could never get the football scenes right. If it wants to pass itself off as authentic it could at least make an effort to keep the football stuff accurate. Does every game still come down to a dramatic final play? Do they still keep forgetting where the line of scrimmage is from shot to shot?

Also, there’s a new coach? Does that mean the original coach’s family is off the show? Maybe I’d give the show a try again. I couldn’t stand the coach’s wife and daughter. They had nothing to do with the football stuff and I couldn’t see any reason for them to have storylines.

4

It got a 4th quarter reprieve.

Coach Taylor took a job coaching college football and is commuting back and forth. His family stayed in Dillon.

If you thought it was too soapy before, you probably won’t like this season-- my understanding is that it will be less football and more relationship stuff.

I still like the show, though.

5

I thought Tami and her daughter’s story lines were worth the time, especially when the writers contrasted Tami and Julie with Tyra and her mom. The episode where Matt and Julie were going to have sex but fell asleep could have been precious, but it wasn’t.

I hated Lyla and the Jason/Riggins triangle. Lyla continues to be a self-centered little bitch, and she’s a rotten sister.

6

I really liked the show during the first season, and thought that the interaction among the coach, his wife and daughter was interesting, and the football was not. (I think that a lot of people are put off the show by the thought that it’s going to be all about football, so it’s probably a good thing that they’re going to deemphasize it.) But the storyline involving Landry and Tyra’s actions with regard to the rapist seem wrong for the show, so I hope they drop it soon.

7

Since this thread is getting kinda old, I debated starting a new thread here in CS, or even in The Pit. But I decided that this show doesn’t deserve 2 threads.

I missed the episode before this last one, so I might have missed some stuff, but here’s basically what’s going on (in case Dio wants to pick it up again):

Coach Taylor was too busy with work to see his family for 8 months. (I read upthread about the baby being 3 months premature, but I got the impression from the first episode that he hadn’t seen them for 8 months. Maybe I’m wrong.)
Their daughter has turned into a ridiculous bitch. And Tyra can’t be blamed; because she’s been too busy banging ugly-Matt-Damon because she loves him for how he killed her attacker. (It’s a good thing nobody worked at that store.)

Last year they had a ridiculous storyline where all the black players got mad at a coach because he said a relatively innoculous thing about black people being good athletes. This season they’ve reversed it. When prompted by the media to say that he’s carrying the team on his back, Smash basically said “No, I would’t say that. But this is my year, and I’m going to play well”. The other teammates were so incensed at his statement that they sent Matt Cerasen (sp?) to talk to him. Smash told him that this is his senior year, and he’s going to do his best to get a college scholarship. Matt was so mad at his disrespect, that he tackled him from behind IN THE MIDDLE OF A GAME. Apparently the straw that broke the camel’s back was the fact that they ran a play from shotgun formation where the center snapped the ball directly to Smash, who ran it in for a touchdown. I don’t know if Matt knew about the play or not, but it’s stupid either way.

BTW, Were there ANY seniors on the team last year? Other than Jason, who still refuses to listen to his caustic-but-well-meaning-and-experienced friend? Jason is going to Mexico to get his legs fixed. Stem cells, doncha know? He’s going to pay for the surgery with all the money that he’s going to get from a Nigerian that just e-mailed him. He just dumped his former best friend Riggins, which prompted Riggins to join him on his journey.

Riggins, by the way, seems to have forgotten that the best game of his life came after setting the bottle aside for a few days before a game. Because he’s back to going to practice hungover every day.

Riggins’ brothers is banging Riggins’ single-mom, next-door-neighbor ex-girlfriend. This girl didn’t have to go far to find a man.

Lyla found Jesus is a big, big way.

I think that should get everybody caught up. Let me know if I missed anything.

8

I didn’t bother to watch last Friday’s episode, but from what I read at TWOP, you got everything right. You left out the part where Tami slaps Julie, after Julie does an emo-dump on what’s wrong with their family.

I’m really disappointed in what’s going on so far this season. Do they have new writers or something?

9

I thought that Coach Taylor was now the head football coach at TMU. If so, who was the coach he was reporting to? And I agree that this season isn’t as good as the first one.

10

I think he’s just an assistant coach. They sure aren’t treating him like a head coach. Do high school coaches – even one who wins a state championship – move right to a head coach job at college?

11

I thought he was head coach too (based on what they said last season), but you are right, he is clearly some low-level assistant. He’s not even coaching half the time, from what I can see, but just dealing with player problems. I don’t think this is quite what he anticipated.

12

I believe he is just the quarterbacks coach, which is below offensive coordinator, which is below head coach. I also though that it was a small college, which, it seems to me, would almost be a demotion from head coach at a championship winning highschool.

But maybe it’s not a small college, but a large, fictional one.

13

They say it’s in Austin, and the one player he is dealing with has a huge SUV and a lot of bling, so I think it’s safe to assume it’s a big-time school.

I love this show, but the storyline with Tyra/whathisname is way over the top, plus it makes no sense.

14

No, he’s the quarterback coach, I believe, in a nice parallel with the Street situation. That’s what it was set up for last season, too. Texas Methodist University, incidentally.

I think I would have been happier with just the one season, because, yeah, for some reason seeing them all back at school is kind of jarring (Saracen was a sophomore?!), but I like the show a lot.

Saracen jumped Smash because Smash was giving him a hard time as they were walking off the field. It’s been building up between the two of them for awhile, so it wasn’t a surprise. It was drama queen, yeah, but it wasn’t a surprise.

Lyla’s conversion is great because it’s making Riggins rethink things. I just can’t imagine what Riggins’ brother is doing with the next door neighbor, though. “My 17 year old brother was sleeping with this woman last year, now I want a piece of that!”

AS for the three months comment…hmmm…well, Tami knew she was pregnant before the state championship, which is late December, so three months early would be in mid June at the latest…that doesn’t seem right.

15

I got the impression that it’s a big Division I powerhouse school.

And I fervently hope they drop the dead body plot. Landry was an interesting character, but not when he’s freaked out about the dead guy.

16

I think it was well established that Saracen was a sophomore and Smash was a junior. But you would think that most of the rest of them would have been seniors. It seems that they didn’t want to lose too many characters, so any that weren’t established as seniors (what where Riggins and Street, BTW? Street could have been a senior, but he and Riggins grew up together, I though) were brought back.

I guess in a year or 2 they’ll do like “Saved By The Bell” and all be in college together.

17

Street was real close to graduating, either because he was a senior or because he took extra classes…can’t remember. Did they really say Saracen was a sophomore in the first season? I just can’t imagine a team winning in Texas with an first-year sophomore player like that.

Riggens, Street, Smash, Lyla, and Tyra look like kids at my school…I can buy them as seniors (maaaaaaaybe juniors). Saracen did not look like a sophomore to me. Weird.

18

Absolutely. The first thing about this show that I found unbelievable was that their backup quarterback was a sophomore who apparently had never taken a snap. Like nobody a year behind Street wanted to wait until their senior year to start.

19

Yep. You sorta had to read between the lines, or write between the lines, and think that Coach Taylor saw something special in Saracen. I don’t recall if he ever explained why a sophomore would be the backup QB.

It’s definitely weird that none of the Panther star players were seniors. Except for Jason.

20

I found every scene with Mrs. Taylor in it to be hilarious. The rest of the show had it’s usual illogical subplots (ie. the town cheering for Landry after the game for causing a fumble and missing a catch.)