It’s Christmas time in Texas, and I’m ready to break out the Miss-letoe, which is my clumsy way of saying all the things I’m going to miss about the show.  I’ll try to recap, folks, but there’s gonna be a whole lot of me talking about what I’ll miss about this show.  Feel free to tell me more things in the comments below.  And to mock me for the four times I cried during this episode (which I will detail below).

Just a quick warning: I’m going to jump around a lot.  I don’t think you read these recaps for a coherent plot summary, but if you do … apologies.

State’s coming up for the Lions, but all the press wants to talk about is the super team, and this makes the team and coaches angry (if you’re Tinker), silent (if you’re Hastings), delusional (if you’re Billy), and annoyed (if you’re Coach Taylor).  And just like the idea of the super team is hanging over the State plans, Tami’s job offer is hanging over Eric and Tami’s relationship.  But who’s there to break the tension?  Matt Saracen!

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All right, folks, second-to-last episode.  Let’s all keep a stiff upper lip and get through this, because you know it’s gonna be a cry fest next week.  So the title of this week’s is … wait, “Texas Whatever?”  Whatever??  Listen, I’m not the biggest fan of the state of Texas, but how dare you step on our feelings with such a callous–

Sorry about that.  I’ll contain myself.  And if anybody can understand what I’m feeling about Friday Night Lights going off the air, it’d be the people in this episode.  This one’s all about how we take the next step in our lives.  Tyra (whom we’ll get to, I promise, because how could we not?) talks about Dillon like a drug, one you can only see clearly when you’re away from it, but the present is a drug too.  Everybody thinks they hate change, until the present actually changes and we look back and realize how much better off we are now than we were before.  Well, I can’t say that life is going to be better without FNL in it, but maybe this episode is FNL holding our collective hand and telling us that life’s going to be okay without the people of Dillon.

Sniff.  Okay, let’s get on with the recapping:

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I’m going to start this recap out with a little warning: I don’t have a lot to say about this episode.  I don’t mean it wasn’t a good Friday Night Lights outing.  I don’t mean that not a lot happened either.  So much happened, in fact, that it feels like we’re getting a whole bunch of plot out of the way in order to experience the (sniff) last two episodes of the season series in much more slowed-down detail.  The episode encompasses three to four weeks of time in Dillon, which is a crazy long stretch for this show.

What I’m getting at here is that I don’t want to sit and list everything that happened, because that would be super boring and 50,000 words long, but if this episode is about anything more than plot (and I think it is), it’s about making us realize, after the triumphant ending of last week’s “Don’t Go” episode, that as much as mediocre TV and movies would like us to believe that we go through good times for a while and then we go through bad times, its not true.  We go through them both at the same time.  We don’t get to choose, this is the week where only good things happen to me, and next week will be one where only bad things do.

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In life, unlike The Godfather, oranges aren’t always a bad omen.

As we begin this week’s episode, Buddy & Levi, the East Dillon Principal, are worried about the oranges.  Well, Buddy’s worried and he’s convincing Levi to be worried too.  Why?  Because oranges mean Florida and Florida means Coach Taylor leaving Dillon and heading for a college job in sunny, flat, boring, boring, boring Florida.  (Guess where I grew up and no longer live?)  And Buddy and Levi aren’t the only ones who are worrying.  It seems like everybody in town is concerned about the possibility of Coach Taylor leaving.

There are a lot of echoes of the first season dilemma that Coach faced in this, but in spite of that, and in spite of the title of this episode being “Don’t Go,” I feel like this episode is a lot more about people having to give speeches and worrying they won’t know what to say.  That feels a little too specific, so let’s say that it’s an overall feel of the moment coming, and not being prepared for that moment.

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I live on an island and it’s not at all difficult.  You know why?  Bridges.  Bridges mean I don’t have to rely on just the things that are made here; I get to have my choice of all I want and desire because everybody wants to bring all their stuff to this glamorous little island.  So why am I blathering on about islands when FNL is set in landlocked West Texas?  Because this episode is all about what is like to live on islands with no bridges.  It may seem great being king/queen of all you survey, but without anybody else and the supplies they bring, it’s a terrible idea.

Vince is on his own island.  He’s not the only one, of course; his parents are still there with him.  But the Lions team is not going with them to the island of St. Vince.  East Dillon has lost its first game and in the locker room Vince has determined whose fault it isn’t: Vince’s.  He threw three picks, but it’s not on him.  In these moments, Vince reminds me of an NFL quarterback everyone except me loves, one who always seems to angrily point whenever he throws an incomplete pass, as if he could never do anything wrong.  To quote one of the assistant coaches, Vince has lost the team, and blaming everybody else is not gonna win them back.

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Last week’s episode was all about the prelude to the wipeout, and this week we get to see what happens when that wave actually hits and leaves everybody scrambling, coughing, and furiously dog paddling away.  All right, that’s it for the surfing metaphor (from someone who’s spent roughly zero hours on a surfboard).  This week’s episode is called, “Fracture,” but it’s really about four liars, and how the Lions team begins to break down because of one of them.

The first liar is Vince, and he tells maybe the sketchiest (the word everybody used when I was in college) lie of them all.  Coach Taylor wants to know why Vince missed practice, and Vince solemnly explains that his mother is having troubles again, and we all have to totally forgive him, because we know how bad his mother was, and isn’t Vince a saint for taking care of his poor mom.  Except: LIE! Read the rest of this entry »

What, you’re asking yourself, does “Wipeout” have to do with the “Perfect Record” episode of Friday night Lights?  All in good time, my loyal readers (both of you).  Just settle in for a long treatise on the relation between that song by the Surfaris and the East Dillon Lions and their impending–

All right, fine.  I’m calling this recap “Wipeout,” because whenever that Lionhater.com website came up in the episode, the laugh before “Busted” always sounded like the laugh before “Wipeout” in the song of the same name.  There’s no big metaphor, just that little audio clue.

Or maybe there is a metaphor after all.  The song is about surfing, right?  (the name “Surfaris” sort of suggests that)  Maybe we should see this episode, which on first glance is full of triumph, as the moment when the wave is beginning to overshadow a surfer and then crash into him, taking him off his winning perch.  Let me explain.

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This episode of Friday Night Lights is called “Swerve”?  As in “get your swerve on”?  That sounds great!  Finally, an episode of FNL that is all about sex.  We’re going to have sixty straight minutes of hard-core fuc–

Oh, it turns out that that’s not the swerve they meant at all (plus it would be more like 44 minutes, broken up by commercials).  Sorry, Ruckbuddies and Tamiknockers (After typing that, I’m so ashamed of my education right now), but this is not going to turn out as expected.  I guess opening the episode in church is a quick tip off.

Something else that isn’t what I expected?  The Julie plot line.  It’s finally kicked into gear big time.  Or maybe we were all expecting that there had to be some fallout eventually, right?  Either way, Julie’s back at home and tearing shit up, Texas-style.  And by that, I mean she’s choosing not to return to college and makes a good excuse for herself by running her car into a brick mailbox.  Sorry, 5704 Something Road, Julie Taylor’s full of fear and self-loathing.  And sorry, neighborhood dog for getting blamed for a crime you didn’t commit.  One day you’ll have your own series where you hunt for a three-legged dog that killed your bitch.  We’ll call it The Dogitive.

Julie confesses the T.A. affair (the T&A affair?) to Tami and tells her mom that she can’t go back to school.  Oh Julie, Tami gave you the best sex talk a parent’s ever given; how could you disappoint her like that?  But Julie decides to face up to her problems like an adult and take responsibility for herself.  Oh wait, she totally doesn’t.  Her terrible decisions are haunting her, but instead of actually facing the results of those bad choices, she’s going to try and stay in her familial cocoon as long as possible.

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No, “Hazing & Branding” is not just the name of my new cop show on TNT this summer (you’ve got to admit, it’s not as dumb a name as “Rizzoli & Isles”). Hazing and branding are the two big themes of this week’s episode, and as far as episodes go FNL fans, this was it. This was, for me, the best episode of the season, the one I’ve been waiting for (to end a sentence with a preposition). This is where all the different plot threads (save one) come together and put us on a path with the Lions to State.

Buddy Jr., the newest member of the East Dillon Lions (who seem to add a new player every week), is going through the hazing process, and it couldn’t come at a worse time, what with the Lions heading out to Kingdom, Texas. (Kingdom, Texas, by the way, is the name of my new supernatural/mystery series on ABC this fall. “Weird things always happened in Kingdom, but with the arrival of a stranger, all hell is going to break loose. This fall, Kingdom come, whose will be done?” Should I not use this outlet to promo all my new tv projects?) Anyway, it’s a road trip, which means Buddy Jr. has to carry the bags and take the abuse of his teammates. Buddy Sr. helpfully explains that hazing isn’t as bad as it used to be and it’s just a way to let them bond as a team.
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This week’s episode may be called “Keep Looking,” but it’s definitely all about the Macho-Cheesmo.  That’s Vince’s mangling of Jess’ favored term “machismo,” but I like to think that Friday Night Lights has invented a whole new term.  Macho-Cheesmo is when you take something that would be a cheesy situation on a lesser TV show, you put some great actors in it, you spice it up with some strong dialogue, you run it all through the FNL-a-tron, and boom, you’ve got a Macho-Cheesmo situation.  Better than cheesy, and something you want to keep coming back to over and over again.

And who is the king of Macho-Cheesmo?  Well, this week Macho-Cheesmo has no king, just a queen: Queen Mindy Collette Riggins, the baddest Macho-Cheesmo in all of Dillon and surrounding areas.  Mindy, with her stripper past (and future, it seems), Mindy, with her furious work-out routines, Mindy, with her marriage to, of all people, Billy Riggins?  Yes, Mindy.

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