'Friday Night Lights:' The Last Season Thus Far

This final season of Friday Night Lights has not disappointed.

It’s had a little bit of everything in its first six episodes.

Family drama: College freshman Julie Taylor had an affair with a married teaching assistant then fled home after the guy’s wife confronted her and called her a slut. Becky Sproles fled to Billy and Mindy Riggins’ house after her father’s wife is nasty to her. Vince Howard’s formerly bad dude dad was released from prison and, though Vince originally didn’t want him around for fear he’d get his mother hooked on drugs again, Vince started to warm up to him.

Football drama: The East Dillon Lions football team is doing well this year thanks to Coach Eric Taylor, and some inspiration from Billy Riggins, leading Eric to be put on the cover of a national football magazine under the title “Coach Kingmaker.” Luke Cafferty is starting to worry that he won’t be able to play college football or might not even go to college, while Vince is being courted by some big name colleges. Buddy Garrity Jr. straightened himself out – after drinking, doing drugs, lying, stealing – after his dad persuaded him to join the East Dillon football team.

Teen romance drama: Jess Meriweather and Vince make for a cute couple and their relationship is tested when Jess joins the football staff. Luke keeps flirting with Becky, clearly interested.

Career intrigue: Tami Taylor, fresh from the abortion controversy that led to her leaving her post as Dillon High School principal, has had difficulties fitting in at East Dillon as she tried to breathe new life into the guidance department and reach out to troubled students. Mindy, having lost her baby weight, returned to working at the Landing Strip but was given cruddy hours.

Random teen stupidness: A high school girl got drunk and boys at the party were flopping her around in front of a video camera; a video of it was posted on YouTube. Members of the East Dillon Lions football team branded themselves as an idiotic team building move.

I can promise you, even more meaty, moving drama is ahead in the final seven episodes as I've already seen them. I’m gonna miss this show mightily, the Taylors especially.

'Friday Night Lights:' Coach Taylor Lies to His Wife

One of the things I really admire about Coach Eric Taylor’s character on Friday Night Lights is the fact that he’s been a really good, down-to-earth husband. Certainly he's not been perfect, and Tami Taylor’s certainly not a perfect wife, but Eric’s been a supportive husband and father throughout the series, a role model of sorts, albeit one who doesn't like to talk much.

However the latest episode, “In the Skin of a Lion” hints at larger problems that may challenge the Taylors’ marriage this season with Eric coaching the East Dillon High School football team, and Tami serving as principal at the West Dillon High School, both of whom have targets on their backs, Tami more so than Eric at this point.

In a recent episode, Tami was put smack-dab in the middle of local politics when she learned that Eric kind-of-knew-but-didn’t-really-want-any-details about a mailbox the West Dillon Panthers had been using for years as a sham address for players who lived in other school districts but who’d claim they lived in West Dillon territory in order to play Panther football. The address was for a mailbox in front of an empty lot in West Dillon. The Panters had been using it for a star player, Luke Cafferty who lived in East Dillon territory.

At first, Tami asked Eric whether he knew about this when he was the West Dillon coach, as she was the one who had to pull Luke Cafferty off the Panthers because one of Eric's friends -- the one who erected the mailbox in the first place -- told Eric that Luke was supposed to be on his football team. When confronted by his wife, Eric argued and tried to turn it around on Tami as though she were the one making trouble. Although she sagely and gaemly played politics with the West Dillion football boosters, who threatened to tarnish Eric's previous state championship, the entire situation left her feeling vulnerable, particularly when she was booed by the student body.

During the latest episode, it was Eric who found himself in a jam. Sure, that big fire he lit in the center of the football field and into which Eric had encouraged his players to pitch their jerseys proved inspirational to fledgling team, symbolic of their fresh start. But there was one small catch. It left them without uniforms. And without more financial support from the cash-strapped high school – which barely has enough cash for academics – Eric had to turn to other means.

He staged that fundraiser where he had the players push a car through town and collect money from residents. While I thought it was sweet that Eric gave Tim Riggins some cash to spread around to the crowd to give to the players so they’d feel supported by their community, I wondered if Tami knew about it.

Then the bill for the new jerseys came due. And Eric had to write a hefty check, a personal check, from his and Tami’s account in oreder to get the gear in time for their game. When Tami asked Eric about it, he lied and said the check was for $45 for dry cleaning. Near the end of the episode, he came home after one too many beers and told Tami the truth, that he’d written a $3,000 check and hoped to raise the money and replace it. "We don’t have $3,000 in our checking account!” Tami shouted.

I expect that this dust-up – combined with a Panther football booster boasting that Joe McCoy will “figure out a way to get that bitch out of there” (meaning Tami as principal) – won’t be the last big tests for the Taylor marriage this season.

'Friday Night Lights:' What Happened After the Forfeit

Have I said how much I love Friday Night Lights?

The second episode of the fourth season, “After the Fall,” was a beautiful bookend to the premiere, where Coach Taylor’s brand new, ragtag, no-resources East Dillon Lions football team had to be rebuilt yet again, less than a month after he’d cobbled it together in the first place, all because he’d made the gutsy move to forfeit their first game when they were down 45-0 at the half and the team was physically in shambles.

Eric Taylor spent the bulk of this episode going around town and apologizing to everybody for making a call he knew in his heart was the right one and trying to coax the team members to show up to the field. After facing off against a defiant, delightfully awkward Landry in the cafeteria and a stone faced Vince on the basketball court, Eric was surprised to later find Vince in his office and appealed to Vince to help pull the rest of the team back together and meet with the coaches for a special Saturday night practice. All the players actually showed up -- imagine the drama we would've seen had they NOT -- and they all purged the demons from the first game in a fire in the middle of the football field, encouraged by Coach Taylor to start anew by pitching their ripped football jerseys into the flames, an idea spawned by a strange guy Eric ran into at a gas station, but one which left the team without jerseys. But that's another story for another episode.

The other big story of the episode was the revelation that a star running back for the Panthers didn’t really live in West Dillon territory and that he should be attending East Dillon and playing for Coach Taylor's Lions team. This news had to be delivered by West Dillon Principal Tami Taylor to Luke Cafferty, after which she was “jokingly” threatened with lynching by Joe McCoy, who also threatened to harm Coach Taylor's reputation, and then Tami found herself nastily jeered at a high school pep rally by the student body while Joe McCoy laughed. Being placed in the middle of this controversy, between her husband and her school, is a sticky place for Principal Taylor will almost certainly cause tension in the Taylor household.

And how very depressing is it to watch the story of Tim Riggins, or "the guy who used to be Tim Riggins,” who used to be a star, a VIP in Dillon, but who’s now just a garden variety college drop-out (attended college classes only briefly) has-been who was rendered homeless and sleeping in his truck? This is one aspect of the Texas high school football star saga that I’d always hoped this show would address, the fact that, in this fictional town (and many real towns), one’s high school football career is, all too frequently, the pinnacle of these young men's lives. Everything else is downhill and the rest of life seems like a disappointment by comparison.

What do you think of this season thus far?

'Friday Night Lights' Returned with Gutsy Premiere

*Warning: Spoilers ahead from the season four premiere of Friday Night Lights.*

How amazingly gutsy.

Losing 47-0, at halftime, his team -- possessing little-to-no experience, precious few resources and no confidence -- sits in the locker room. The grossly undermanned team of less than two dozen teenage high school football players is bloody, broken, physically unable to continue. Their huge-hearted coach -- who had taken his former high school team to win the State Championship, who was humiliated in last year's season finale by being fired and re-assigned to another high school in town, one with no money and no football team – decided, on their behalf, to forfeit the game. They weren’t going to win and going ahead and playing the game would’ve just savaged those kids’ bodies. And for this crucial decision, Coach Eric Taylor, will pay a price.

This season of Friday Night Lights is taking wonderful creative risks this year by having Eric work for East Dillon and his wife Tami Taylor run the more affluent school in West Dillon. My pop culture column this week on Mommy Tracked is all about really fantastic this fourth season is shaping up to be. (I’m about halfway through watching review copies of the fourth season.)

I was a big fan of the 1990 book, Friday Night Lights by Buzz Bissinger on which the show is based. The non-fiction book examined not just the mania that is Texas high school football, but issues of class, socio-economic differences, race and gender, as well as valuing sports more than academics in an economically depressed community. It was tough to read sometimes but much of it has stuck with me all these years later.

The TV show, inspired by the book, has always been good (with the exception of that Tyra-Landry murder business a while back), and I’ve always recommended that people watch it, even if they hate football. But this season it seems closer to the original source material than it ever has, and harder to watch on occasion, which is a very good thing. Maybe they'll finally get a well-deserved Emmy afterall . . .

This coming Friday’s episode, “After the Fall,” has Coach Taylor repenting for his decision to forfeit the game, plus, it hurls one big, giant mess into Principal Taylor’s lap, one that’s gonna cause a heap ‘o problems for her. Here’s NBC’s preview:



Image credit: NBC.

It's Coming. In Five Days. 'Friday Night Lights.'

It's been a long wait since we last saw Coach Eric Taylor get the boot from his post as the head coach of the Dillon High School football team and be exiled to the East Dillon High School football team on Friday Night Lights. And finally, we'll find out how this is going to play out when the series returns for its fourth season this Friday.

In addition to the tricky family dynamics -- with Tami Taylor running Dillon High School as its principal while her husband struggles with an underfunded program at the rival school -- the football program storyline promises to become a classic underdog saga. Judging by the two preview clips below, Coach Taylor has got a hugely long and bumpy road ahead of him. In the first clip, he surveys the facilities and finds a raccoon locked up the football lockers. In the second, he's lining the dust-bowl of a field by himself. Quite a stark contrast from his Dillion days.





Are you looking forward to Friday Night Lights returning this Friday?

'Friday Night Lights' Finale: Whaddya Think?

*Warning, spoilers from the Friday Night Lights finale ahead*

EAST Dillon High? The former, dust-binned high school with the dilapidated field? The one whose future football team's roster has already been looted by its crosstown rival West Dillon Panthers boosters and compliant crooked local officials?

Kyle Chandler -- who plays Coach Eric Taylor, who used to be the West Dillon Panthers football coach who took his team to the state finals more than once -- told Vanity Fair that he thinks the Friday Night Lights season three finale sets "up a whole new slew of characters that could come into the show. The show can re-invent itself. When I read the last episode, I saw a phoenix coming out of the ashes."

And while Chandler is right when he says that the ending provides FNL with a wide open field of opportunity, with new players, new administrators, new parents, new stories, etc. I feel as if we skipped a step, as if I missed an episode explaining what went on between the Dillon Panthers' loss at the state final and Coach Taylor getting the boot to coach the East Dillon Lions. There was a disconnect, at least for me.

For example, it's entirely plausible that Joe McCoy would still, five months later, be barely able to conceal his simmering rage and hatred toward Coach Taylor after the coach and his wife Tami, the high school principal, contacted child protective services after witnessing Joe McCoy battering his wonderkid quarterback son J.D. in the Applebee's parking lot. What I don't buy is that all the Panthers boosters would hop on board the rich hothead's crazy train and dispose of Coach Taylor. McCoy notwithstanding, the only beef people seemed to have was that Taylor was indecisive when he was juggling quarterbacks before finally settling on J.D. But that can't be the entire reason for shipping him to East Dillon, that and losing the state final after staging a gutsy come-back against an incredibly tough opponent, can it? I would've liked to have seen the deliberation, the debate, the reasons before I'm ready to buy into this next phase of the show.

While discussing the finale with another FNL fan, he suggested that Buddy Garrity might've been in on the whole thing, although I don't think Garrity's capable of pulling off such expert subterfuge. However the fan did agree that this demotion seemed abrupt and not well explained.

Yes, next year will be an opportunity for FNL to go in a completely new direction and, as Chandler said, rise from the ashes of this season. I just wish the viewers had been witness to something more than Coach Taylor's clipped statement to a board and Tami Taylor showing up to a wedding to tell him he's going to be running a team which has already lost promising players courtesy of a district line drawn in such a nonsensical zig-zaggy fashion by Panther boosters that it would make Massachusetts and Chicago pols proud.

So, FNL fans, what do you think of this East Dillon High turn of events? Do you think it came out of nowhere?

Image credit: NBC.