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Jason Street's still in the hospital, Lyla is still somehow surgically-attached to his (paralyzed) (yes, really) side, Coach Taylor is still furrowing, and Tami breaks out of the gates as one hell of a good wife. Tim Riggins is getting drunker and drunker, and wearing more and more eyeliner, which makes me flush and flush, while Tyra sashays her way onto Smash's couch, somehow nearly losing her pants in the process, and Matt Saracen continues to break everyone's heart until the very end when his eyes get the flint, and he assures Coach Taylor that last week's play was no fluke.
In plot-development land, Lyla looks like she's got a one-way ticket to crazytown, refusing to believe that Street will remain paralyzed, and Coach Taylor hits bottom (doubting himself and Saracen and having difficulty dealing with Street's tragedy) before soaring like an effing eagle (bringing Matt out to the football field at midnight for some dramatically-lit life-coaching).
Also, Landry tells Saracen to work the media, reminding him that "Right now, the bitches can't even get your name right." This detail is not integral to the plot, it's just awesome which is why I had to include it here. Thank you, the end. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Previously on Friday Night Lights: hubris ("We feel fully prepared") and crying ("That's a gigantic hit on Street").
Sunday. The camera drives through town, zipping first past the football field, then the uninspiring 1970s brick church built in the non-denominational style ubiquitous in Texas suburbs, then past those tracks to the squat wooden shack of a church, white paint sloughing off its sides. Inside, the African-Americans of Dillon have gathered to listen to the preacher pray for Jason Street. The congregation sits, close and hot in the un-air-conditioned space, fanning themselves with church bulletins. The preacher's claims to know of "a doctor greater than any doctor" are punctuated by the yowling of an organ and interjections of "Amen!" from the worshippers.
Cut back over to the brick church, literally on the other side of the tracks, where the balance of the white folks we met last week sit inside the dim, cool space, beamed and arched ceiling soaring overhead. The congregation sits quietly, absorbing the pastor's sermon on Jason Street, but not interacting. Shots of the Streets, the Garritys, the Taylors, and then the pastor, who happens to look like a cross between Johnny Cash (black pants, black shirt, black tie) and Ricky Jay. Different setting but same sentiment: prayer and God can make Jason walk again.
Quick cut to Tim Riggins outside, in extreme profile, looking away from the camera, the barrel of the gun he holds slashing across the right corner of the frame. Damn, I just randomly paused here, and this is a nicely composed shot. Especially so because, as the camera pulls back, you realize it's handheld. Tim Riggins is riding in the back of a pick-up truck, his brother Billy driving and yelling back to him through the back window. Billy shouts over the engine that he saw the tackle, and he thinks Street isn't ever going to walk again, let alone play football. Tim listens in silence, scowl on his face, cocks his gun (!), and shoots into the field.
Cut back to Church of the Whiteys, where Lyla Garrity plays the role of Insipid Woman In Training, holding court in the middle of a group of other sixteen-year-old Insipid Women In Training, telling them all that "We know he's going to walk again." The camera cuts around the various groups of people gathering outside the church, murmuring and hugging. Matt Saracen, in an adorably untucked white shirt (like a dressed-up toddler at the end of a family wedding) throws the football around with some kids. Buddy Garrity incites my immediate wrath by being a slightly sweaty overweight older man, with "cool" hair and "cool" sunglasses, standing with his suit jacket open and thrusted back at the waist, his hands on his hips. It's just so very I Am (Contemporary) White Man Hear Me Roar...ugh.
Anyway...Buddy fulfills the prophecy that was written for him by his Oakleys: he watches Matt throw the ball, and sneers to Coach Taylor that even the best-case scenario would have Jason Street out for a month, and so what are his plans for Friday or for the rest of the season?
Camera pans in on his disgusting sweaty gin blossom of a face as he asks, disingenuously, "You think little Matt Saracen can git it done?" Close up on Coach Taylor's gorgeous, finely-tuned, Titian-esque face as he curtly replies, "I guess we're fixin' to find out. That was a nice sermon, wahd'n it?" Awesome. Leaving Buddy behind, he moves toward Matt and motions him over telling him "we gotta lot of work to do son."
Melancholy guitars take us to the credits, which, I'm afraid to say, I find a tiny bit uninspiring. The sequence consists of shots from the pilot episode -- the landscape, representative shots of characters looking optimistic/fatalistic/furrowed/et cetera -- while the name credits glint and flash and dissolve rather subtly on the screen. It's definitely pretty. But I'm not so sure "pretty" is a compliment here (see, for further reference, "pretty, Lyla Garrity").
Commercials, at least half of them starring Peyton Manning, which is appropriate after the preceding church scenes, since he is football's patron saint of lofty expectations being dashed in an eye-blink. Interior shot of hospital hallway, Lyla walking purposefully, her purposefulness both at odds with and complemented by her silly cheerleading costume and the fact that she is trailing a couple of metallic "Get Well" balloons behind her. A nurse greets her by name (she's been there a lot already) as she bounces up and down, her ponytail swishing sublimely this way and that. Inside Street's room, Lyla is all hushed sweetness in the face of Street (no longer in a halo, luckily enough for the actor Scott Porter), lying at a 75-degree angle in bed, head and neck immobilized by a large brace. Lyla launches right into her "no paralysis" cheer routine, asking Jason if he's heard of "Nathan Foreman." He mouth-breathes a "No," but before continuing her well-choreographed rhetorical moves, Lyla lets out a sharp "'Scuse me! Could you come help me?" to someone she caught walking down the hallway. A man in a white lab coat walks in, and Lyla instructs him to help her to unfurl a banner, asking if he's ever heard of Nathan Foreman. No, he hasn't, so Lyla continues saying she found his story on the internet, that he "had a terrible accident" -- and when she says this, she scrunches up her forehead in the MOST simpering manner and pronounces "tewwible" as if she were speaking to a three-year-old -- but now plays varsity basketball in college. When she expresses surprise that the doctor hasn't heard of this case, he demurs, "Uh, I'm oncology," the irony of which -- other people's problems, other people's slow deaths -- Lyla can't register. I even half expect Lyla to start clapping and cheer-spelling O-N-C-O-L-O-G-I-S-T in an obliviously random show of support.
So, Matt is basically throwing the football like a boob and the coaches are yelling at him. He's waiting way too long to release the ball, and he's throwing interceptions directly at linebackers he says he doesn't see, even though, as the assistant coach screams in his face, "He's bigger'n my front door!" Through all this Coach Taylor has his Man Sunglasses on again, and lordy lordy, is it really happening? So, now I'm saying I actually like a man in Oakleys (or whatever you call 'em)? Okay, so now I'm, what? A Hee-Hawing, cross-dressing, Applebee's-going mix-up? Mmmm, Applebee's. No, totally kidding. Chili's is way better.
Coach Taylor is rapid-firing plays at Matt, all "something something get the gun, got that" and Matt -- what do they say in Texas, "Bless his heart?" -- reaches back to last week and murmurs, "Okay I gotta work on readin' the coverage," before Taylor interrupts him and tells him to "Hit 'em on the breaks! Hit 'em! On! The breaks!" Hut! Matt fumbles the snap and Coach calls him back over. Kyle Chandler is doing some awesome jaw-clenching in this scene, like he called up my mom and got some coaching on how to deliver lines when you are so fed up with the kid you're talking to, you're lucky you aren't levitating above the earth on the wings of your anger. He tells Saracen that he needs to work harder, that he needs to learn the plays, that he needs to know them so well that his children will know them in their DNA. Cut to a wide-angle shot of Kyle Chandler in man-shorts (hee!) (sorry, something about men in shorts, wearing sneakers and socks makes me titter) (hee!) (sorry, the word "titter" makes me titter, too) and Matt against the spectacular green field and blue sky.
Later that evening -- still light out, the days still long in (presumably) August -- Coach Taylor sits in a recliner, drained and sweaty. This seems to me to be a totally different family room set for the Taylor clan. Tami calls out from outside the frame, "Okay, I'm goin'!" and then we widen the shot to see Tami looking damn hot in a frilly teal top and snug jeans. Julie's on the couch in braids and tries once more to advise her mother against going to the book club meeting, "They're going to turn you into a pod." Tami knows it's going to suck but says she'll just go once, show them her "literary prowess" -- and on saying this makes really cute strongman arms -- and then slips a book in her big-ass leather purse. Then, the one-second pause allows me to see that her book is titled "Letters to Cornelius," which leads me on a crazy-making Google journey where I find out that this obviously fabricated book is a reference to either Pliny the Younger or Albert Einstein, and now I need to lie down because, though I may be working on my doctorate, shit if I can make heads or tails of that prop's bizarro reference. ["Sounds like a dig at Mitch Albom, but I couldn't swear to that." -- Sars]
Taylor calls his wife over in a hoarse voice (nice detail; one would be hoarse from spending all afternoon screaming like the drill sergeant in Full Metal Jacket), she tucks her luscious hair behind her ear and then just leans her forehead on his before giving him a really smacky kiss: "I love you." He responds, "I love you, too, babe." They're kind of hot in this sort of awesome way, i.e., not "hot" like the Leerys. Taylor stays behind, obsessively watching football tapes, and we cut to...
... Tim, alone in the locker room, obsessively watching a football tape, only for Tim, it is one particular moment during one particular game that he replays over and over. The camera drifts around him, as he sits in the dark in front of the massive screen, pausing and rewinding, his face at first a blank, and then a quick twitch of the nose and mouth as he unsuccessfully tries to hold back tears.
At the book club, the ladies toast to "the girls," the crystal clink of glasses tapped together echoing the cold, bright sounds these women make -- their metal jewelry, their heartless words, their machine-made sentiment. They all thank Tami for coming over. Tami fusses with her hair (she is, to be honest, tanned within an inch of her life) and says that she loved the book. This sends the women into contortions of laughter, hyena laughter which quickly turns to hyena eyes as they lean forward, realizing what prey they have in their midst. Nasty Real Estate Lady seems to be working on a blitz of another sort, one that doesn't involve her lonely pants, as the camera gives us a tight pan in on her hungry face. "Let's talk about what's really important," and the feeding frenzy begins: layers of voices mumble and suggest in sweet, feminine tones. Tami stutters and looks from one to the other as they stumble over one another to get a son more play, or suggest that the counters Taylor runs aren't working.
In the diner, Smash sits in a booth with a girl on either side of him, doing a weird Jamie Foxx as Ray impression. For some reason, Smash has no hip-hop sound field in this scene. Maybe he left it at home. One of the girls is supposed to have his math homework for him, which she doesn't, so the other one offers to go get it. He grins. I can't wait for when they actually show the inside of the high school one of these days.
Meanwhile, a group of random girls sits together crying over Street while Tyra, sitting in a booth with Riggs, looks on in disgust. The random girl cries, "I can't believe it! Just last week we were right here. Jason Street was sitting right over there!" The girl's acting is over the top and it comes off kind of ridiculous, but I guess I can take a moment to be happy for the extra who got a bit of extra dough for squeezing some drops in her eyes and fake-crying. The camera refocuses on Tyra, who asks Riggs, "Could they be more annoying?" I don't know, Matthew Perry, could they? Riggs sits looking out the window, except it is night so he's sort of just gazing at his own reflection in the window. Which I would, too, if I looked that damn good in a freaking Hanes V-Neck. I pause to consider going on eBay to see if someone on the crew got a hold of that Hanes t-shirt after filming and has put it up for sale. Tyra snaps at the girls to "Seriously stop crying," telling them they don't even know Jason Street. Tim just keeps gazing, eating his onion rings. The camera frames Tyra against a bright light behind her, which keeps flashing out behind her moving head as she asks him, "So, just how drunk are you, anyway?" It's clear that Tim is somewhere between "off his tit" and "piss fell down." Wait, that's if he were British. In Texas, I guess, he's just borracho.
We hear Smash holding court in his booth about somebody having to take control now that Street is out, and declaring that, big surprise, he is that somebody. Tim is overhearing this, and it's all cutting through the beer and onion ring haze he's in, which must mean that the sentiment is pretty damn cutting, because I know that for me, personally, when I have beer and onion rings, my house could burn down around me and I wouldn't be able to take my attention off how those luscious spirals gleam with oil and deliciousness.
At the counter, Matt is sitting with Landry when a long-haired blonde approaches him. "Hey Matt!" she says brightly, "so I'm yours!" He stares at her blankly; she explains. Now that he's first string, he gets a rally girl. He tells her what he likes, and she provides it. "So, what do you like, Matt?" she asks with a wicked flourish. Matt continues to act like a deer in headlights (or, as I recently learned they say in Spain, "Like a bull watching the train go by"). She is quite the little hospitable hostess, and suggests that they start off with her "mean chocolate coconut cake" and then go from there. As she leaves, Landry is like, dude-I-am-sooo-psyched. He wants to pause and "consider the implications of this." Matt stutters and sputters and tells Landry he can't think about girls right now. Landry tells him to seize the opportunity; that when Street comes back in five weeks, he'll go back to being a nobody. He suggests that this is what "you and me got right now." Matt wonders, "You and me? What do you have to do with it?" and then tells Landry it wouldn't be right to get all excited over all the QB1 hoopla with Street just "layin' there in the hospital." Heh. I love his ineloquent description of Street "just layin' there."
Back at the pep rally being held in Smash's fast food booth (not to be confused with the pep rally being held in his pants, or the pep rally being held in Riggs's make-up case), Smash has gotten a crowd of hangers-on to call and response with him, asking them if they think he leads the team -- "Yeah!" -- then telling them to just "get behind Smash and we won't miss a beat, baby!" Meanwhile, Tim Riggins has hulked out of his booth and lurched over to Smash's booth, despite Tyra's protestations. Smash pauses to say what's up, and then Tim commands Smash to get up because he's sitting in Street's booth. Smash tells him to give it up and then says, "Why don't you go home and sleep it off, man." Oooh, burn. Tim pauses, and his sheer presence seems to reply, "Why don't you gaze upon me in awe?" The camera shows Matt at the counter and Tyra in her booth sort of cringing when Smash makes the drunk remark. Tim stays silent for an intense minute and then says, "You're right," surprising the hell out of Smash. "You guys enjoy the rest of your evening, okay?" He turns to leave. But first, let me observe that the boy has the most beautiful lips, just like Clara Bow. I can't tell, when I'm looking at him, if I'm a lusty woman, a gay man, or an art historian. As Tim walks away -- and I'm sort of undecided whether he really was being sincere in his attempt to rise above the probable fight -- Smash calls after him, "Hey, smile, Riggs. God don't like ugly," which, come on, man, you already got one over on him already. Tim turns on a dime and wings a glass right above Smash's head, which shatters and freaks everybody out. Tyra scrambles to leave with Tim, while Smash's personal pep rally holds him back from going after Tim. Tim just walks out with a lovely gleam in his eye. He really does just like to hurt people.
Commercials. Tuesday. Er, I think I missed Monday, sorry. Tami's on the phone at home, watering an enormous aloe plant and promising to help out to support some cause or another. Julie looks on and smirks. We follow Tami walking out the sliding glass door and see Coach Taylor outside, frustratedly trying to fix an air-conditioning unit. Ah, this is what's with all the sweating inside. Somehow, Tami's "helping" has turned into her agreeing to make 200 Rice Krispie treats, "And yes, I also prefer them with the M&Ms in." I want to be scornful, but I can't think of one cause that couldn't be bettered by 200 Rice Krispie treats. Tami's chest is quite buoyant. She trills out a southern, "Byyyeee!" as she hangs up the phone. The second she hangs up, the timbre of her voice plummets as she tells her husband, "I swear...I went to that book club meeting last night, I'm on twelve committees now." Julie calls out a "told you" from the couch. Does this girl do anything other than read? I think this is taking "bookishness" to an extreme. Or maybe her contract has something in it that precludes her standing up.
Coach Taylor is a big ball of sweaty furrowing as he tells his wife she was right, "AC's broken." She calmly asks, "Sugar? I think it's time I get a job. I mean, we talked about it, right?" He asks her if she wants to do it now, and she says yes. He runs his hands through his magnificent head of hair, takes a sip of water, and she tells him it's "nothing you need to worry about." Wow, where men are men, women are women, and women are men, too, don't worry your little head about it. Oh, I jest. I think Tami Taylor is one hell of a woman; sure, she isn't out to explode gender stereotypes, but sometimes simply being awesome at what you are is enough.
Alert! Alert! Applebee's drive-by! There's been some media murmuring about this "product placement" -- and the consensus has been that it's seamless -- and I agree, but I can't even see the point of murmuring about it, because what television show set in suburban or rural America can-NOT have its characters eating in chain restaurants? Perhaps a sad truth, but one certainly mitigated by unlimited breadsticks. Anyway, the awesome thing about this Crapplebee's is that this is apparently where the Lady Mayor holds her business lunches. Coach Taylor sits at a long table full of boosters and listens to Lady Mayor take a hunk of this scene and gnaw through it, secure in the knowledge that she used Polident that morning.
Lady Mayor winds up her treatise on their ground game by opening up the floor to Saracen-bashing, which the table takes to readily. Another guy brings up that Matt closed his eyes when he threw that pass last week. From the end of the table, Buddy Garrity sweats and good-ol'-boys all over the place, telling the table to ease off the football wisdom and "let Eric finish his riblets." Oh, lord. Riblets. Spoon, mouth, gag. Taylor wipes his mouth (he's wearing his hat at the table, BTW), and tells the table that he listens to all their advice, and thanks them for the lunch: "Fantastic meal, fantastic meal." In this scene, Taylor draws upon what are obviously vast reserves of patience and restraint.
Back out at practice, Matt throws yet another interception. The assistant coach suggests to Taylor that they focus on their ground game, because if Matt has too much to think about, he'll fall apart. Taylor thanks him for the advice and then says, "I'll run practice today." Buddy Garrity looks on, shot in profile. Man, has he got one Gonzo-y nose. play, Matt hands off to Smash, who gets creamed. Smash gets up, mouthing off at Riggs about not blocking well enough. Riggs gets in his face, pointing a finger into his helmet, yelling that Smash's not running fast enough, that he needs to get behind his blocks. They start screaming at each other unintelligibly and then shoving. I love this scene because it's quite a lame little shout-fight, but the assistant coach gets in between them at one moment and his clipboard and papers go flying. His clipboard and papers! TOTAL CHAOS! Not the clipboard and papers! They finally get Smash and Riggs separated, Smash yelling something about "South Side Dillon represent!" Meanwhile, Buddy Garrity and company start filing out of the bleachers in disgust. Coach Taylor looks up at them and sighs.
Back at the diner, Tyra is walking out as Smash walks in. Tyra is all clangy earrings and boobs. There I said it. She is ALL boobs. I love it. Smash tells her her boyfriend is a piece of work. She tells him he's not her boyfriend at the moment and then sort of sashays her hot ass across the parking lot.
Over in the projects, a large black woman in nurse's scrubs carries a bag of groceries toward her apartment, followed by two daughters. She yells at one to get the rest of the groceries, she knows she isn't supposed to stress her back. The line comes off too much like it's cut-and-pasted from The Big Book of Black Stereotypes. The young girl complains that "Brian never has to do anything!" and as the mother approaches the door, she yells toward the apartment at Brian to "turn that junk down!", meaning the hip-hop issuing pretty loudly from inside. She opens the door and GASP! close shot of Tyra and Smash doing some serious making out, Tyra's mouth all "yeah, baby" as he works on her neck. SmashMomma doesn't miss a beat: "You lost your mind?" and the two scramble up. Smash is shirtless, Tyra's miraculously got all her clothes on. Tyra, as she's straightening herself -- and this is sort of brilliantly disgusting -- picks something off her tongue (a hair? couch lint?). It's a gesture that just NAILS the abjectness of a hook-up like this one. Tyra glances at SmashMomma: "You must be Mrs. Williams." Wow, is she irreverent. SmashMomma is like "mmm hhmm" and then turns to Smash: "Messin' with white girls. After gettin' in a fight at practice!" Smash just rubs his forehead while his mom takes Tyra outside.
They get outside in the glaring and incredibly hot-seeming late afternoon light, and SmashMomma asks Tyra if she's trying to get back at Tim Riggins. Tyra smart-mouths, "You a shrink?" and SmashMomma tells her she'd best be nice: "I work at Planned Parenthood, you probably haven't seen the last of me." Tyra doesn't take this real well: "Hey, I know how to use protection, I'm not some piece of trash." SmashMomma, "Oh, yeah, you a class act all the way." And I am just transcribing the dialogue from this scene because it ROCKS. Tyra asks her what that's supposed to mean, as she sort of presumptuously opens the door to get into SmashMomma's sedan, like she'll get a ride home. SmashMomma replies, "It means you're safe to walk from here." Right on. God, so much crazy shit rolled up in that comment -- SmashMomma realizing that part of what this white girl is after is danger, danger that she thinks comes along with black skin and limited income.
We cut from our seminar on gender, race, and class over to our seminar in CRYING. Street, upper lip pulled back over his teeth because of the angle at which he lies, tries desperately to pick up a pencil on the table to him. He can lift his arm a bit, but has very little control over the finer motor control you need to grasp something, and the pencil goes clattering to the floor. Coach Taylor comes in, and before we get to the crying, can we discuss Kyle Chandler's hair? How do they get his hair to so perfectly resemble hair that's lived through a hard day? I swear, in every scene, his hair is emoting, vying for an Emmy. When he's frustrated with the A/C, his hair is all, "I could NOT care less, man," when he's at the car dealership opening, his hair is all "Ciao!!" and here, his hair is all looking like your eyes feel after you have a good cry. I fear I am letting you all a little too far into my psyche. Let's proceed.
The camera pulls back a bit to show the two men greet one another awkwardly. Jason weakly jokes, when asked how he feels, that he doesn't really feel too much. That is some serious gallows humor. Coach Taylor gives him a football that all the guys signed. Jason jokes about when Riggins learned how to sign his name. Taylor pauses, rubs his eyes, Explosions in the Sky starts up on the soundtrack, and I AM SUCH AN EASY TARGET! What if this is just a Pavlovian experiment where they are trying to inculcate the masses to cry on command when presented a certain combination of factors, these being: Kyle Chandler, Texas landscapes, the prospect of wasted youth, and instrumental indie rock. They'll say it somehow helps fight terrorism, but really we know it's just to get us to buy more shit.
Coach Taylor assures Jason that he will always have a spot on the team, however long it takes. Street asks after Saracen; Coach Taylor's eyes sparkle like fanciful unicorns and he teases, "He's throwing like a girl, but he's doing fine." Street continues, explaining Matt to Coach Taylor, telling him that he's creative, he listens to Dylan and draws pictures: "He's a good kid. I think if you free him up on that field, he'll make some things happen for you." Taylor looks down at Street lovingly, obviously stunned that even in this moment, Street is thinking of and trying to please others, and says, "You're a good man. You're a good man."
Bawling.
Coach Taylor continues, "You're what makes guys like me want to coach." Street then, nearly inconceivably, apologizes for letting him and the team down, and Taylor responds with fire in his voice, like he has something to say that he is afraid he will not or just perhaps can-not communicate to this poor kid, "You did not let me down. You did not let me down." Street has a single tear rolling out of eye. Meanwhile, I have about twenty thousand. Commercials, thank the lord.
Wednesday. Landry and Saracen leave the latter's house, Landry in full-on free-association mode, talking about how "they" keep comparing Matt to Street, which is like comparing Landry's music to the Red Hot Chili Peppers, he's not any better or any worse, he's his own thing. Matt interjects, "You're definitely a whole lot worse." Hmm...I thought that nothing could possibly be worse than "Sir Psycho Sexy," but maybe that's just me ("that is meee!"). Landry continues rambling, coining my favorite line of the episode when telling Matt to work the media: "I mean, right now the bitches can't even get your name right." He then comes up with yet another gem, telling Matt that when the cameras roll, "just start spewing stuff out." I have to wonder if Landry has long been the media consultant to select hotel heiresses.
Cut immediately to Matt being interviewed and it is just a hot mess. He leads with the unintelligible statement that "Not everyone can be the Red Hot Chili Peppers," followed with a rambling statement about what a great guy Jason Street is, followed by an inability to answer the question, "Who are you?" by stuttering "Exactly! Who am I. Who am I?" Not exactly leader material here yet. At this point he's making less sense than T.O.'s "overdose."
"Big G, Little O, Go! Go!" is what the cheerleaders practice. It might also be rendered, "Big Boobs, Little Shorts, Go! Go!" Tim Riggins walks by them and Lyla runs over to talk to him, asking how he's dealing with everything. Lyla has a bit of the skinny sternum problem, but I'm not going to get into "she's too skinny" talk (because, really, can you ever be too skinny? [OH MY GOD I JEST!]). Here, instead, I'll focus on her inability to pronounce "Rs" correctly. I think I am trying to distract myself from the world-splitting prospect of watching Lyla and Tim talk to one another. Do not taint my personal Adonis with your plump lips (that prevent you from pronouncing consonants correctly), woman! Lyla tells Tim that she knows he doesn't talk about his feelings, but she's there if he needs to talk. His response? "Cool." She then sort of tries to manipulate him into going to the hospital, inviting him to accompany her, with a cute shrug of the shoulder (man, this girl has got the How To Get What You Want By Inhabiting a Certain Stereotype of a Woman Ten-Point Plan for Success down). When he doesn't respond, she gently tells him that if he doesn't go soon, Street is going to start taking it personal.
Cut over to the Room of Tremendously Abrupt But Certainly Expected News, where the doctor explains that the injury was low enough on Street's spinal cord that he will regain the use of his arms and hands. His mother and father do not look comforted. When Street asks about his legs, his mother reacts instinctively, "We'll just keep praying and once you start therapy..." but Street wants to hear about science, not prayer, from the doctor, and requests that the doctor tell him the truth.
Cut on over to Crapplebee's. Tami sits in a booth, waiting and fending off "Hi"s shouted from across the restaurant. Taylor finally gets there and apologizes for being late. She tells him it's fine, she just made a few dates with a hog farmer from Rio Tinto while she waited. He's all, oh, real funny, and then asks where his daughter is. I love this family. Something about how he just asked about "my daughter." Tami reminds him that she's already reminded him twenty times that Julie had dance rehearsal, and then tells him to take his hat off. When he does, she speaks for all of us and tells him he looks "so cute." Then she does good news/bad news. Bad news: the AC is broken and will cost $3,000 to fix. Coach furrows. Good news: she can help pay for the new unit because she got a new job. The shots are framed really tight on her, helping to indicate that she probably knows her good news will annoy her husband. He asks where the job is, and she sort of stutters, "Um, er, uh, at the school!" and he wants to know which one. He's taken aback: "At my high school?" She's quick to reply, "I wasn't aware you had bought it, but, yeah, new guidance counselor at the high school." Good news has turned bad. He stops looking at her and mumbles about how guidance counselors can be a nuisance and that they'll have interaction at school and they should've talked about it first. She's mumbling right over him, about how she wants to interact, and how she's taken the job. Just as things get kind of heated, his cell rings, he answers, and then whispers to Tami, "It's the hospital calling about Jason." She watches him intently just as we watch him intently as he just says, "Hi. Yeah. Uh, yup," and then goes stone still and quiet.
Commercials. Thursday. The boys are gathered in the locker room, chattering. Coach Taylor walks up to the front of the room, clears his throat, and then rips the band-aid off quickly: "Um, Jason's paralyzed." Cut immediately to Tim, who closes his eyes (gorgeously), and then Matt, who's stunned, as Coach explains that he'll regain use of his arms and hands, but not his legs. Coach Taylor tells the boys that if they need to talk to him, he is there. Tim Riggins gets up and leaves the room. The camera just sort of ranges around the room to coaches and players, all sitting in silence. Coach Taylor tells them that they'll pick it up tomorrow.
Cut to yet another fast-food establishment. Matt Saracen, in a ridiculous little paper server's cap, works the cash register while Landry quizzes him on incredibly complicated plays -- all "eagle ten toenail four purple monkey dishwasher." Matt's rushing around fussing with fries and soda cups and getting frustrated when he gets any detail wrong on a play. Landry tells him to calm down, reminding him that he's "only got 250 or so variations to go after this," and Matt seems to just get the wind knocked out of him at that prospect just as the big malook at the counter asks, "You gonna give me my fries anytime?" Matt's about to crack.
Cut to Street's hospital room. Lyla is curled up to him, head on his shoulder, while they watch a movie on a portable DVD player. Street quietly says to Lyla that they need to talk about this. Lyla immediately says that "it's not impossible" -- unable to even specify what "it" is. Street is, somehow, doing okay so far at dealing with the hand fate has dealt him (though I hope we see him doing some major scenery-chewing wailing and gnashing as the weeks progress). Lyla insists, to a profoundly disturbing extent, that he WILL walk again, that they don't need to listen to the doctors because they don't know who he is. "You are Jason Street, and I am Lyla Garrity, and everything is gonna work out just the way we planned it." Jesus, girly, way to pile some more on Street; now he has to feel sorry for letting YOU down, for ejecting you from your own McMansion dreams. Lyla grabs Street's hand, closes her eyes like a little girl trying to ignore the monsters in her closet, and starts praying, asking God to help them "pull through this test." She isn't getting that "the test" is not something you "pull through," it's not an overnight stop on the Carnival Cruise Line Holy Cruise To the American Dream.
Coach Taylor sits in his office in the dark, going over plays. Tami walks in with a six-pack and her boobs, and everything is going to be okay DO YOU HEAR ME EMOTIONAL INSTRUMENTAL INDIE ROCK? YOU CANNOT MAKE ME CRY WHEN THERE ARE BOOBS AND BEER! Tami teases her husband, "Field's empty, let's go make out." I'd love to know about their history, they seem to have a high-school-sweethearts story. Coach Taylor tells his wife that Matt is not ready for this, and confesses that right now he doesn't have any idea whether they can even win a game. Tami puts on her "can do" face and says, "Yup. Well...I know what you're gonna do," and then launches in to the best marital pep talk I've ever heard. Or at least a lot more official-seeming than the marital pep talks usually heard around my house, which tend to sound more like, "Oh, you feel overwhelmed and unfulfilled at your job? Me too! Let's eat some Cheetos." Tami tells her husband that she knows he will "mold Matt Saracen" like he did with Jason and like he did with "Jeff Perrell back in Macedonia" who "didn't even know the difference between a skinny post and an out-and-up." Well, I have a hard time swallowing that. Taylor protests that he had a year to work with Jeff Perrell, that here "I got no time. I got no time." Then Taylor reaches pretty deep and confesses something pretty difficult, saying that if he loses a few games, he'll be out of a job: "What they say, it's right. Jason Street was my meal ticket. He's the only reason I got this job. God bless that boy, but I am screwed." Coach furrows and sighs, hitting pretty low, when Tami tells him, in tight focus, and with the most beatific face, "There is not a person in the world who could do this but you. This is what you do, I've seen you do it with my own eyes." Pause. Eyes of Love. "I believe in you. I believe in you with every cell in my being." Yowza. I hope Coach Taylor feels a little bad about the Crapplebee's interlude now.
Panther radio (perhaps a bit overused here? Can't anyone listen to lite FM at least?). Coach Taylor pulls up (after nearly driving past) in front of Matt Saracen's house. Matt peers out the window of the tiny, tiny little living room with the linoleum floor and bad upholstery. He starts freaking out, telling his grandmother -- over the blare of the television -- that she needs to go in her room for a bit. Grandma either doesn't hear him or ignores him. A knock at the door, and she asks who it is. Matt's quickly putting his shoes on, and I honestly can not get over how perfectly art-directed this house is -- ugly fluorescent light, cheap front door, haphazard furniture. When Coach Taylor identifies himself from the outside, Grandma -- her hair a mess -- looks determined and excited and confused. She shuffles in to the kitchen, mumbling, "Coach Taylor's here?!" In the kitchen she grabs a plate, and the plate is the Pfaltzgraff's Village pattern, which is just so common and American. This house paints a world, a community, a history, an emotional reality with a few delicate brushstrokes -- the linoleum floor, the velour robe, the Pfaltzgraff crockery.
Matt opens the front door just a crack and tries to get Coach to just let him come outside. Taylor tells him he'd like to come inside. Matt glances back toward his grandmother in the dim and dingy kitchen, taking the plastic cover off a store-bought cake, her hair perfectly unwashed and mussed in the back where it meets the chair she sits in for hours a day. As Coach Taylor walks in, the camera looks around the shabby room, lingering on a photo of a soldier in fatigues in the desert, holding up a sign that says, "Go Panthers Go!" The camera keeps ranging around the tiny space as if from Coach Taylor's perspective -- a small bedroom right off the main room, sketch books full of pencil drawings, an emotional profile portrait of a man right to a sillily-sketched monster with the caption "Go Panthers!" Matt is absolutely uneasy, as he stands in front of Coach Taylor in his grease-stained work shirt. Grandma comes shuffling in, insisting that the Coach sit down and enjoy some cake. Coach Taylor is so incredibly charismatic and gracious in this scene -- he obviously understands Matt's unease, but he takes the time to look his grandmother in the eyes and tell her that she should be proud of Matt before smoothly suggesting that he and Matt go talk over Friday's game for an hour or so. Grandma breaks into a wide smile, but insists to Coach that he come back. Grandma tells Coach Taylor that when he comes back she'll get him some milk or hot chocolate or anything he could want, and then lowers her voice to Matt as he leaves: "Now you listen to him. You listen to him. Move your feet." She has equal parts joy and desperation in her face as Matt leaves, then once they're gone, sits down in her rocking chair and chuckles to herself, "Coach Taylor!"
In the car, Pavlovian Guitars of Sobbing start up as Coach Taylor eats the piece of cake Matt's grandmother gave him in two bites. Something about this detail draws a line between a feminine world of nicety and graciousness (Taylor in the Saracen home) and the masculine world of getting shit done (Taylor on the field) as we transition to the latter.
Beautiful, long shot of the football field at night, the field almost turquoise in the bluish light. Taylor and Matt walk to the middle of the silent field, crickets chirping over the Pavlovian Guitars. Coach Taylor asks Matt if having his dad in Iraq is hard. Matt demurs. Coach Taylor shares that his father was on him "day in and day out, still thinks I should have made the NFL." Handheld camera on Matt looking, as he always does, like that proverbial deer. Coach Taylor sort of paces in front of him, wondering aloud how Matt "does it." He takes a moment to lay Matt's life in front of the confused kid -- his time commitments, studies, "all that and being man of the house, too." The camera steadies a bit as Coach Taylor stops and looks directly at Matt: "I know you didn't want me to step foot in your house tonight." Matt looks to the side in further shame. "But I'll tell you something else. You should be proud." Crying. Crying over deep human truths. Crying because I AM BEING TESTED TO MY VERY SOUL.
Coach Taylor tells Matt that "all this" -- the enormous stadium -- is his for the taking if he wants it badly enough. Well, I think witnessing Jason Street's totally random injury has already disabused Matt Saracen of the notion that hard work = success, but whatever. Taylor tells Matt that he can't be distracted, not by the fans, the band, the cheerleaders "with their pretty young shapely legs bouncing up and down." Erm, okay. He tells Matt that he has to do his job, and then motions up toward the press box, where a man hits a switch and the stadium fills with recorded sports fan cacophony. Taylor yells to Matt that his team is going to have to be heard over all this noise, tosses him the ball and tells him to call "22 rocket on hit." Then Coach Taylor and Matt engage in your standard "Do you want this?" "Yes!" "I can't hear you!" "YES!" "I CAN'T HEAR YOU!!!" moment of Realizing Potential Through Screaming. The only thing I don't understand about this particular therapy is -- given the frequency with which I scream my way through a bar or party -- why I have not yet realized my own potential.
The scene winds up as Coach Taylor screams at Matt, "How much do you want this?" repeatedly, with Matt screaming back in desperation, "I want it, Coach, I want it!" and we cut back to the long shot of the field, Matt and Coach Taylor tiny dots in a mean, mean world. Sigh. This is quite a Melvillian world. Maybe in a few weeks Saracen will realize that, in fact, "I prefer not to."
Commercials. Friday. With just two minutes to go, we open on Coach Taylor sitting across from Nasty Sweaty Buddy Garrity at his car dealership. I'm not exactly sure why we need to see this scene again; I think we've established that the boosters are horrible, that Coach Taylor keeps them at bay by being vague, and that Nasty Sweaty Buddy Garrity is indeed both nasty and sweaty. This scene establishes these facts again, but does little else besides. Buddy reminds Coach that he has to do more than just "give it our best" and that if the team loses tonight, the town will simply fall apart. Kyle Chandler does this awesome thing where he sort of crookedly bites his lips, tilts his head to the side while rubbing the back of his neck, and good-ol'-boys back at Garrity, "Naw, we don't want that." Buddy stands up to shake hands and say goodbye, and the camera shoots him from below, two huge stuffed deer looming above him, the prey he's successfully felled symbols of what could happen to Taylor if he's not careful.
Cue music -- a cover of Daniel Johnston's (love!) "Devil Town" -- and we start a really beautiful montage in the key of the one set to Tears for Fears in Donnie Darko which, like that montage, manages to make the most mundane aspects of high school appear sublime through the magic of slow motion. The rally girl brings Matt his chocolate cake, which he accepts with complete confusion and a goofy grin; football players all over the school eat the cookies the girls have made them; Tim's rally girl brings him a crumpled paper bag, clearly containing a six-pack, and he thanks her by pressing her against the lockers and planting a huge kiss on her lips; beautiful light plays across Tim and his rally girl and the lockers, he walks away with a charming grin on his face and she watches him go in amazement; Lyla walks through the hospital, that ponytail swinging, to bring Street a big cookie; the camera drives through the closed-up town, the boys in their locker room suit up, the cheerleaders are in the cafeteria warming up their pretty legs and putting on mascara, the sun sets, the boys in the locker room sit closed up inside their own minds, anxious and expectant, feet bouncing with nerves, and outside the Friday Night Lights flash on against the enormous sky, and we cut back inside to the locker room where Coach Taylor has a few words.
He tells them that it is natural to be scared and pissed off after suffering the loss they have. He says that football lets them channel that energy. While Coach speechifies, we flash forward a bit to the team taking the field, Taylor stalking the sidelines in those luscious headphones, and then back into the locker room where Coach prays for his players to have "a safe game, a successful game" and then back out to the field where the cheerleaders cheer, the fans chant. Like it's all part of one big thing, the kids go from shouting "Amen!" to shouting "Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose!" and then run out of the locker room, pumping their helmets in the air. Pulling up the rear is Matt Saracen, who looks pensive and, well, to tell the truth, like he's about to shit himself. Coach Taylor takes a moment for one last pep talk and asks him, "Let me ask you one question. Last Friday when you threw that winning pass, were your eyes closed?" Turns out this is the exact right question to ask, as the camera swings around behind Coach Taylor's shoulder and catches Matt's eyes turn to flint as he realizes he can do this: "No sir. My eyes were open. My eyes were wide open." Out on the field, chaos and cacophony, blue and gold, as the cheerleaders screech, the drum line drums, the fans holler in slow motion, the kicker kicks the ball into the black sky, and...fade to black.