Episode Report Card Drunken Bee: B+ | 1 USERS: B YOU GRADE IT Giddy Up
By Drunken Bee | Season 2 | Episode 3 | Aired on 10.18.2007
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Wooo, football's back! The depressing simmer of last week comes to a big, awesome, rolling boil as everyone just stops looking glum and starts kicking ass. Matt Saracen steps up to Smash, who has been soaking up the spotlight pointed in his direction ever since Coach McGregor started emphasizing the running game. Smash tells Matt to suck it up and let him have the attention during this, his final year, but losing Julie and losing face on the field is too much at once for Matt. After Smash gets called on to make the game-winning play, Matt just up and decks him on the field in the midst of the celebration. Even given the Panther win, the damage McGregor is doing the team is more than obvious, as at the end of the game all our key players -- Smash, Matt, Jason, and Tim -- are alienated from and angry at one another. Buddy Garrity takes advantage of this turn of events by beginning to orchestrate Coach Taylor's return to Dillon. He first frames it as being about the team, but when that doesn't work, he points out to Eric that his family is falling apart without him. This is a truth we get to see firsthand in an insanely awesome sequence that began building the minute Julie bitchily instructed her mother to leave her alone by informing her that "her" baby was crying in the other room and that culminates with Tami literally dragging Julie out of a makeout session in The Swede's van at three in the morning and slapping Julie straight across the face. Possibly needing a slap across the face are Tyra and Landry, who keep their murder-fueled romance percolating, even going so far as to start indulging in some gallows humor. Okay, you crazy kids! Tim -- drunk, dehydrated, and a little bored -- decides to accept Lyla's invitation to attend a service at her megachurch (which resembles nothing so much as an ADD gamer's convention to me). Tim looks like he might be moved by the preacher's words, but that could also just be the beer burps he's got. Either way, he shows up in Lyla's bedroom afterward to confess that he thinks he felt God's presence in him, and Lyla falls for it until he leans in for a very unchaste kiss. Anyhow, Tim Riggins need only run his hands down his stomach if he wants to feel God, youknowI'msayin? Having struck out with his "I feel God in my pants tonight" line, Tim decides to go with a pissed off and alienated Jason Street to Mexico for his experimental Hollywood Upstairs Medical College surgery. So to recap the recaplet: Tyra's effing Landry, Tami's slapping Julie, Eric's coming home, Timmy's shirtless once again and heading to Mexico. Oh, show. You know I never doubted you. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Landry gazes at Tyra sleeping in his bed in the early morning light when the alarm clock goes off, the ever-arousing sound of Slammin' Sammy Mead jolting both of them awake. Tyra looks at Landry with a furrowed brow and just mutters "Landry?" Landry responds by saying he's sure whatever she wants to say will certainly be "practical" and that it will ruin what was the most perfect night of his life. Tyra tells him that "this" can't happen again and that she'll see him "in school. I'll see you in school." Then she climbs out his window. Classy. Noting the classiness is Landry's dad, who is around the side of the house taking out the trash. And one hopes that is not supposed to be some sort of pathetic fallacy.
Across town, Tim Riggins gets out of bed wearing nothing but his bare chest and a pair of shorts that certainly have pie weights hung from the bottom they're hanging down so low. Mmmmmmm. I mean, for the pie of course. "Mmmmmm, pie" is what I mean. Tim gets a peek out of his window and sees his brother kissing a be-robed Jackie goodbye after a long night of, uh, pie eating?
The Taylors lay in bed with Baby Grace between them. Eric tells his wife he has to get going, and she says "Well, that sucks."
Eric stops to pick up breakfast for the road. The radio plays, and we hear the local commentators talking about Coach Taylor as "he who shall not be named" and "Judas." A woman hands Coach his to-go order and apologizes for the radio. He just shakes it off and heads out to his car. Where Matt Saracen catches up to him in order to "apologize." Coach wants to know what he's saying sorry for, and Matt explains that it's because he and Julie broke up. Coach tells Matt he didn't know that they broke up -- which just adds insult to injury for Matt; he's not even important enough for the news to have reached parental ears? -- and he stutters, trying to make excuses that Julie probably just doesn't want to bother Coach while he's down in Austin. Eric looks perplexed as Matt walks away.
At practice, New Coke McGregor is giving Tim a hard time again, making him run back and forth in front of the other players while holding a truck tire over his head. He shouts a variety of things at Riggins -- "candy ass" "whiskey breath" "dirty-haired attitude" -- and then tells him to praise the game of football. The rest of the team looks on in complete fear of Coach "Alberto Gonzalez" McGregor until their attention is diverted by Tim Riggins keeling over on the field. The assistant coaches start calling for a trainer but McGregor keeps yelling at Riggins to get up. Cut to the paramedics loading Riggins onto an ambulance.