Episode Report Card Drunken Bee: A+ | 4 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT I Knew You When
By Drunken Bee | Season 3 | Episode 1 | Aired on 01.16.2009
Coach's office. Tami walks in in yet another fantastic pencil skirt. She tells Coach that he was right on the Julie thing. Coach thanks her for her apology, and then she says she just didn't want him to be mad at her on opening night. Coach says he could never be mad at his wife, it's just that damn principal. She walks around his desk to give him a hug and then notices his sleek new computer: "Is that a new computer? Didn't y'all just get new computers?" On her way out the door she turns around once more, "How is it so cool in here? It feels like it's 68 degrees!" Coach just mumbles that that's the way he likes to keep it. Tami just sighs and walks out, starting to get how things work, financially, in that school.
Football! We're back on the field, and the Panthers have finally gotten their shit together. Saracen and Riggins are in a groove and the crowd is going crazy. Low angle short of Coach with his headphones around his neck, his hair tousled this way and that. And...what's that? I think his hair is saying something to me? Oh, oh dear! I don't know if I can even tell you what his hair just said, this being a family website and all. I'll leave it to your imagination. Back on the field, Saracen runs for a TD, then Riggins runs for another. Lyla beams in the stands. The Panthers are up 38 to 13, and Coach decides to give some other kids a chance. He sends J.D. McCoy on the field. Oh, no.
First play, J.D. takes a snap and completes a beautiful pass. Looks like the Panther's running offense might be in its last days. Shot of Saracen on the sidelines looking on, his face just slack; the camera then pulls his Grandmother into focus, in the stands just behind him, looking concerned. Second snap, and it all goes down in slow motion: J.D. throws the ball twenty, thirty, forty, I don't fucking know many, yards and it just, as Sammy Meade narrates, "sails into the receiver's hands like an angel." Everyone goes nuts for this touchdown pass (everyone, that is, except Coach, who is clearly conflicted). J.D. comes running off the field with a wide grin on his face, Sammy Meade tells us this is "Jason Street reincarnated" (er, except Jason isn't dead, just paralyzed, just nota bene to the writers), Coach begrudgingly shakes the kid's hands, and then the camera swings around to give us a long shot of the Panther sidelines, all the kids in blue jumping up and down and moving along to the right side of the screen, all of them, except Number 7. Seven just stands there, his body totally expressive so we barely even need that next shot of Matt Saracen's devastated face. But we get it anyway, because this show just glories in its ability to make us weep.