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Part Two of our "Mac the Greek" storyline wraps itself up with a messy little bow. While Smash, Buddy, and Tami (there's a threesome that makes me see pigs flying) all agree that Mac should get fired for his comments, Coach cannot bring himself to fire the self-professed "simple man" and takes so long hemming and hawing that Mac himself finally proffers his resignation. Which Coach refuses to accept, thus forcing the ambivalent hands of the black players. Smash's mom steps in and teaches her son a lesson about picking his battles, and the black players return to the team and head off to Dunston to play in the whatever-finals game (seriously, I'm sorry, but there's simply too much human interest for me to keep track of where they are in the post-season).
Once the team gets to Dunston, though, they find out they've actually been living in Hippie-Dippie, La-La, Peace and Unity Land over in Dillon because the mofos at Dunston are SCARY racist. After a brawl breaks out, the game is called in favor of the Panthers, who have to exit the stadium to boos and tossed debris. But it doesn't stop there, because then the team bus actually gets pulled over by two scary-ass white sheriffs who are asking that Smash be delivered over to them for "aggravated assault" perpetrated on the football field. Coach goes bizarrely speechless, allowing Mac to pipe up and tell the sheriffs that they need a warrant for that kind of Jim Crow shit. Which they don't have. So Mac sort of makes up for being passively racist for stepping in and preventing the murderous racists for having their way with Smash. God that scene was chilling.
In girl-on-girl land, Tyra continues leading Julie to the keg of teenaged rebellion. When the two stop off at Ole Sis's strip club to pick up some cash, they (along with Matt and Landry) get busted by an undercover cop and sent to the juvie clink. The Taylors, especially Tami, start to lose it with their rapidly more impossible daughter. But at the very end, when Matt gets a moment to pull Julie aside, give her an apology necklace, and officially ask her to be his girlfriend, we know they are good kids. That is, they're good...for now... Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Smash and the other boycotting black football players stand in a group outside, being interviewed by the press. An African-American reporter asks Smash, who is clearly the group's representative, if they are lodging a protest against how black players are treated on the team. Smash says that it isn't really about the treatment but about "the attitude. Look, all we want is equality and respect." The reporter follows up, expositing that there are 16 black players on the team, which accounts for more than twenty-five percent of the team. He leads Smash a little, asking him if they think black players aren't getting enough opportunity to play. Again, Smash has to say, "No, it's not about that." The camera, ranging around, finds Corinna, who looks on her son with some reservation. Smash tries to explain that they are protesting "certain people in charge making assumptions about us based on our color." The reporter asks if they want Mac to be fired for his comments, and Smash says that that "would be a good start."
Cut over to the Panther football offices where another Random Guy in a Blue Shirt takes the name placards of all the players that are boycotting off the line-up bulletin board. Everybody is shaking their heads because the picture that emerges is that they basically don't have a team to put on the field on Friday. But Kyle Chandler's Hair won't stand for this sad sack group of coaches, so it stands up tall, rubs its hands together like it's got a plan. Coach Taylor: "What we're gonna do is we're gonna dip into JV." Wah wah waaah.
Cut to the field where Coach is trying to replace 180 pounds of pure power with 150 pounds of lank hair and acne. The JV kids are messing up all over the place, Coach is yelling in frustration. "Tyler! Tyler! Tyler! Tyler!" He's so incapable of understanding their stupidity on the field that all he can do is repeat himself. He calls Tyler over and sets himself to giving the poor kid a quiz: "What's your name? What's your grandfather's name? What's your mother's maiden name?" The kid answers each question correctly. Mumbling, but correctly. Taylor shouts, "How the hell can you remember all that and not remember the route I asked you to run?" Another play starts getting staged. Timmy Riggins is stepping the fuck up and shouting at these little weasel kids -- "Get yer head outta yer ass!" Matt calls the play, and Riggins get clobbered and freaks out on poor Taylor who was not where he was supposed to be and so not doing the blocking he was supposed to.
Timmy screams at the kid, telling him he doesn't deserve to be on the field, et cetera until Coach calls Tim over and tells him that he needs to be a leader, needs to set the tone, not break the kids down. Tim assures Coach that he can do this and so Coach then calls over the three JV nerdlings and tells Tim that they are now going to be sticking to him "like paint on a car." Wacky hijinks! Will they ensue? Tim walks off, one of the baby geeks tells Tim that "I'm with ya," Tim turns to him and says "Shut up."
Uninspiring Credits. Tami and Coach tensely watch Smash's interview on NBC. We hear Smash tell the reporter that the black players are willing to play on Friday if Mac gets fired in the interim. Coach turns from the TV as his newly sassy daughter Julie walks into the room, chatting on the phone, saying "Yeah, we should totally do that. You did? Your mom is sooo cool." Tami shoots a look at her daughter. Julie hangs up the phone, and Tami asks who she was talking with. It's Tyra, of course, and Tami says that she and Coach have been wanting to talk with her about "this new relationship you've got going." Julie shifts into What-the-Fuck-Ever and is all "first of all....and second of all..." Julie thinks that her mom "doesn't even know Tyra." Julie further brats that she's already been punished for skipping school, so isn't that, like, done, or whatever? Tami has pulled herself up like a mother cat about to eat her own young and retorts that Julie's "guidance counselor" helped her make up a grade, but it's her "mother" talkin' now.
Coach Taylor throws his gloves unhelpfully in the ring as he sort of mutters to the side, facing away from his daughter, "Whatever happened to Lois?" (Lois, the girl who is always the last to know). Julie brats back that first they didn't want her dating Matt Saracen and now they want to pick her friends, "So, uh, why don't you guys just...homeschool me?" Tami puts on a fantastic fake smile and, to the agitation of puppies everywhere, ratchets her voice up a few octaves: "Honey? I don't like your tone. I don't like your sarcasm." Close-up on Julie looking kind of regretful for accelerating so quickly so early in the morning. Tami wants to know what Julie sees in Tyra, given that the latter has been suspended from school three times, one time for drinking on campus.
Just then, Coach turns around to address his daughter, and launches into the greatest, most muddling attempt to address the age-old question of what to do when your baby starts getting bad. It's so good, I'm just going to quote it here for posterity's sake. For, in the future, a father might be busying himself with doing something not-very-useful -- like say perusing a television website -- looking for ways he might make himself even more unhelpful and vestigial to the mother-daughter battles happening in his household. It is for this man, at his short wit's end, that I reproduce here Coach Taylor's words of wisdom:
"You know what it is? When there's one person who's involved with another person, and that first person is a person who gets in trouble, who gets suspended, who doesn't wear enough clothes....that first person starts hanging around with the second person, who happens to be a pretty darn good kid -- very smart, smarter than what I'm seeing right now -- and the second person who's with that first person starts going down the wrong path? That's a bit of a problem."
It's a Who's On First lesson for the low-rise jeans crowd. Throughout Coach's speech, Tami looks on in both horror at and stoic support of her husband's bumbling attempt. Meanwhile, Julie has clearly been crafting her misguided first draft of a college application essay where she talks about how "prejudice" doesn't just affect blacks or latinos, but also nice, white middle-class girls who are just trying to ho themselves up a bit. "Do you realize that this is the definition of prejudice? You guys are prejudging her. And, maybe if you guys weren't so prejudiced, sixteen of your players wouldn't have walked off your team." Oooo, low blow. Coach tells his daughter to watch her mouth, but she just blows out the door with the kind of smirk that simply begs for some wiping off.
At school, Jason explains to Tami that coming back to school was fine and all, but his invitation to try out for the national quad rugby team is, like, a big deal. He tells her that they only give out twenty-five invitations to hundreds of players across the country. He neglects to add that due to an unusual confluence of boredom, bonfires, and pick-up trucks that lead to lots of drunk driving accidents, Dillon is home to a goodly percentage of those players. Tami humors him and says that it "sounds like an amazing thing" but reminds him that he'll be missing a couple of weeks of school right in the middle of finals. Jason is all frozen smile on her, tells her he'll tackle all the work when he gets back and "if worse comes to worse, I'll just take the GED." Tami's face is very "An hour ago, I believed that at least two teenagers in this town weren't total retards. Now I'm not so sure." She asks Jason if maybe he isn't putting all his eggs into the quad rugby basket (like when Lyla overheard her mom saying her daughter was putting all her eggs into Jason's basket, which I don't know if I realized how pervy that sounds the first time around). Jason is refreshingly honest and teenaged as he grins a wide grin: "Yeah! That's pretty much exactly what I'm doin'. I'm puttin' every single one a 'em in."
Landry and Matt walk down the hallway as the bell rings. Landry is reassuring Matt, telling him that "nothing says 'I'm sorry' like a mix CD" but expresses ambivalence over the Bob Dylan Matt has put on there. Bob Dylan? Well, ex-cu-use me, Mr. High Culture Teen Track Listings. For me, in high school, a mix tape was not complete without at least one Drivin' 'n' Cryin' song on it. C'mon. Fly Me Courageous? Anyone? Anyone? They scurry into the cafeteria and walk up to Tyra. Matt stutter-asks if she knows where Julie is. Tyra takes one look at the boys and asks, "That's not what I think it is, is it?" and then tells Matt that he'd better not think he can trade a night in a hot tub with a bunch of rally girls for a five-cent CD with a bunch of sappy songs on it. Landry is the first to abandon ship, and as his friend turns to him he says, "I told you that wasn't gonna work." Heh. Landry sits down to Tyra to "formally introduce" himself. Tyra could not care less. She suggests that they both "go back to your little lab...cook somethin' else up." Yes, I believe that would be the definition of Weird Science. Matt and Landry in a lab. Tyra gives Matt a hint: "Spend some money." Matt gazes, slackjawed. Landry, deluded, tells Tyra that he won't let her down. Tyra, because we're all playing true to type in this scene, is pretty much at absolute zero in terms of caring whether these two live or die.
The boys leave (Landry is wearing cargo pants tucked into combat boots, btw). Julie rushes up to Tyra and asks what they were talking about. Tyra brushes her off and asks if she wants to go to a movie tomorrow night. Julie, distracted, says sure, but she's clearly longing for an invitation to the Dork Lab.
Tim's in the cafeteria line with the crowd that's too dorky even for Dork Lab (seriously, if Dillon has nerdlings this extreme on its football team, I'd really hate to get a peek at the Model UN crowd). Tim shoots a playrunning question at Stager, who is played, Yahoo tells me, by one of the child actors from The Patriot, who is currently in the midst of a full-on Secondhand Lions-era Haley Joel awkward stage. Stager, all lank hair and acne, pauses and tells Tim that he knows the answer to his question, but Tim pauses before the pudding cups and turns to Stager saying "Too late. Play's over. You waited too long to make a decision, and we lost the game. We're not going to State, and the whole town of Dillon hates you. You're never gonna laid your entire life. Fact. How's that feel right now?" Oh, Timmy, I wish you'd ease up on the kid a bit and teach him about proper concealer use instead of this verbal abuse. The kid down the line -- nerdy in a very Danny Strong sort of way -- offers "Man, you crack down your blocks you look for the quick toss...!" which causes Tim no small annoyance, not least because he's wrong. Tim tells the kid that if he wanted Nerd 2 to talk he would have spoken to him. Tim demands that Nerd 2 put down his lunch, and then as an afterthought, tells Nerd 3, he of the Two-a-Days hair, to put his down as well. The kids mope down the line in obedience.
Coming around the corner into the lunchroom, Tim tells the three to look at the table of African-American players. He tells them they're looking at a quitter. The four glare at the table as they walk by. We cut to Smash trying to quell dissension in his ranks. The black kids are worried about their positions getting taken over by the Nerd Herd and worrying over losing their chance at scholarships. Smash tells everyone to stay cool and reminds them that this is coming down to "who blinks first."
A meeting in Coach's office is wrapping up. Mac comes in and is agitated to have not been included. Coach says it was a defensive meeting and Mac points out that Coach Crowley isn't defense. Coach points out that Crowley brought the pork rinds. Your honor, I rest my case! Mac is still unconvinced that secret things aren't happening, but Coach isn't really having it. He tells his underling that he will hold meetings whenever he wants. Mac is getting exercised and wants to know what's going on behind his back. Coach raises his voice and tells him that he thinks it "was just about the stupidest thing you coulda done goin' around all 'blacks this,' 'whites that'." Mac yells that he apologized, and Coach tells him that the only thing wrong with his apology was that it was clearly bullshit. Mac looks a bit stunned and dead in the eyes but still continues to hold his stupid ground, saying that he's not scared if people are calling him a racist. Coach slams his hand on the table and tells Mac he should be scared because his termination is sitting on Coach's desk right now. Mac goes silent for a moment before storming out of the room.
Across town, a perfect establishing shot of a jenky old sign for a shop called "Gold Creations" against a background of criss-crossing electric wires. For the love of God, Friday Night Lights, never stop shooting on location. Inside, Matt and Landry banter over who was at fault in the great Cheap-o Mix Tape Gate while the nicest old lady salesperson looks on with one of those out-of-it grandmotherly grins. In my mind, I have this whole scenario where the FNL gang was out and about shooting real guerilla style and came upon this shop where this lady was the proprietress and got in and out real quick, giving the old lady the best day of her life, at least the best day since 1948 when, because she was a secretary working at a Texaco field office in Odessa and widely known to have the shapeliest legs in town, she got flown to New York City to appear on the Milton Berle-hosted Texaco Star Theater, where she wore sequins and spangles and sparkly high-heeled shoes and played the "straight man" to Milton Berle's boozy drag queen for a whole minute on television. Because sometimes what is in your head is so delightful, I will neglect to research whether or not the lady in "Gold Creations" is a real actress, or my lovely, fictional Bess.
So Landry lets something slip about he and Tyra and Matt realizes that Landry has some sort of delusion about getting together with Our Lady of Wrath. Landry tells Matt that stranger things have happened, and Matt replies that "no, stranger things have NOT happened." All the while, Little Old Bess is in the background with her little old smile just killing me dead in my seat. She asks if she can help them, and Landry tells her that Matt messed up. Bess wants to know "how bad didja mess up? Diamond bad? Or gold bad?" Landry stutters, "Di-diamond? How bout this one?" and points to a marquis-diamond ring -- a FREAKING engagement ring, sometimes Landry is just so damn out of it -- and Bess takes it out of the case. Just as Matt mutters that he only has fifty dollars, Bess tells them that the ring is $995. Landry switches gears like Jeff Gordon and tells Matt to forget about diamonds, "Think about the Africans." Bess shows them some pendants, and Matt picks a heart-shaped amethyst. She confirms for him that amethyst is February's birthstone, and she remarks that now "she'll know you remembered her birthday." He asks about the price, she says it is a hundred dollars, but conveniently enough, is half-price today, making it exactly the amount he has in his pockets. Oh, Bess! You've surely lived a life of joy.
Buddy Garrity walks through the assistant coach's office. He greets Mac and tells him that whatever happens, it'll work out. Then he proceeds to Coach's office and closes the door. Coach is watching game tapes, and Buddy sounds mournful as he starts asking Coach what the hell they are going to do with a team without any decent offense or defense. Coach turns to Buddy and tightlips, "I thought you said you had some constructive advice." Buddy tells Coach they won't win without Smash and the other guys, and then informs Coach that the Booster Club took a vote, and Mac has got to go. Coach lowers his voice and reminds Buddy that he's been friends with Mac for twenty years, that the team wouldn't be where it is without Mac, that "Mac MacGill is Panther Football." Buddy tries to approximate anguish, but only succeeds in getting to Applebee's Ran Out of Riblets as he tells Coach how distraught he is over the decision. Buddy says that he knows Mac isn't racist -- as if Buddy would be able to tell -- that it's all "just media crap." He again instructs Coach to get rid of him and they'll fix it later. Mac watches Buddy storm out of Coach's office, and then we close in on Coach, reclined into the corner of his office couch, Kyle Chandler's Hair raising its fists to the heavens and pleading, "Why hast thou forsaken me?! Why?!"
The camera follows Coach through the hallways and into his wife's office, where a girl mouthbreathes something to Tami about being good at math. Tami is surprised at her husband busting in on her private conversation. He declares the he has "a guidance counselor emergency." Tami indicates that she's in a meeting, but he just repeats himself until the girl asks if he really wants her to leave. Yes, and yes. She shuts the door, and Coach immediately tells his wife that "everything hangs in the balance" on the answer to his question. He asks to talk to "the guidance counselor, not my wife." She obliges, telling her husband to sit down and clearly comporting herself as counselor. Coach explains that everyone is telling him to fire Mac, but he doesn't want to fire Mac. Tami asks what the question is. Coach is frustrated, but says the question is whether he should fire Mac MacGill. Tami asks what he said, and he lets his frustration out. But, as any good guidance counselor should, she suggests they review the events.
Coach reviews: Mac said that players like Smash -- Tami interjects "the black players" -- are naturally good at running the ball. Tami raises her finger and wonders if there wasn't another phrase in there. Coach elaborates on the "junkyard dog" comment. He continues, explaining that then Mac said players like Matt Saracen -- Tami interjects, "the white players" -- don't have the physicality. Pause. Tami: "Uh, huh...?" and then Coach finishes, saying, alright, then he said that white players are better creative thinkers making them better suited to lead. Coach frustratedly admits what a stupid thing it was for Mac to say. Tami is now ready to give him her official advice, and she does so with a quite cute flourish of her pointer finger: "As a guidance counselor, I have to say that that was a fireable offense. What he said." Coach pauses and then asks to talk to his wife, who cares about him and the team. Tami the Wife reminds Coach that his team is way more important to him than Mac MacGill. Still unsatisfied, Coach asks if there's anyone else he can talk to. Tami tells him he can talk to his friend. Tami the Friend tells Coach that the only thing that matters here is that he has to make a decision, and by not firing Mac he's condoning what he said. Coach goes into his "he's not a racist" contortions again, but Tami breaks it down for him saying that whatever he is, what Mac said is not for a coach to say, no less "for a government employee" to say. Coach gets up to leave and tells Tami that "the three of you scare me" before heading off screen and barking at the poor mouthbreathing girl that she can go back into Tami's office now.
At the Williams's house. Smash is outside lifting weights while Waverly keeps him company. Corinna is inside eavesdropping on their conversation through an open window. Smash is venting about being stuck between Riggins and the white boys hating him and all the black boys looking to him to save their asses. He wonders whether he should have ever walked off in the first place. Waverly blah blah blahs about him maintaining his dignity and blahblahblah, and sometime between this week and last week, I've totally changed my mind about Waverly in this story line. And the reason? Because she is BORING. I am a patient woman. You can have an episode where you are cute in your teenaged righteousness. But if you haven't by the episode been caught doing something exciting (and, c'mon, teens, it isn't hard to do: drinking, smoking, stealing, having sex, take your pick) then, sorry, but you get the snooze button 'til the episode. Smash calls Waverly Angela Davis -- showing that he is either not as ill-educated as we assume, or the writers just couldn't resist a good Frankfurt School reference, as she goes on and on about all the things he can do with his life.
Nighttime. Mac shows up at the Taylor front door. Tami answers the door while simultaneously answering our question about whether she'd look hot in ratty sweats. Cut to Very Special White Man Monologue as Mac tells Coach about his racist daddy. The MacDaddy loved bass fishing and Razorback football. Mac remembers that when "those poor girls tried to integrate Central down in Little Rock," the only thing that stopped the MacDaddy from going down there "with his Kiwanis boys" and "doing God knows what" was Mac's mom. Coach crosses his arms and platitudes, "Well, those were different times." Even Chandler's hair calls bullshit on that bullshit. Different times? The times when "doing God knows what" to TEENAGERS trying to GET AN EDUCATION was, like, just a hair's breadth away from an evenin' at the soda counter? Anyhow, Mac continues, saying that he never agreed with the MacDaddy but that he reckons if you're around that sort of thing long enough it sort of works its way into you.
Coach exposits that he all he knows is that Mac "is the one who integrated this team." Surprising. Not because Mac did so -- after all his racism is not at all out of line with wanting black players on his team -- but because nobody mentioned this on screen yet. Oh well. Mac tells Coach that he's just a simple man. He loves his girls, working in the yard, playing bridge whenever he can. Huh. Sounds a little less "simple" and a little more "pastel Miami." He finally accepts responsibility for messing up and then acknowledges part of the problem is the problem he has with Coach -- a guy ten years younger than he is (TEN years? Coach Taylor has certainly then made some sort of deal with the devil to be looking so good and only TEN years younger than Humpty Dumpty there) -- being his superior. He says that he loves the kids and knows they have a good shot at State. He hands Coach a piece of paper and tells him it's his resignation. Coach protests, but Mac just gets up and leaves.
day. Morning. Tami tells her husband that it'll be a little bit easier now that Mac has handed in his resignation. Coach is intense and says he knows "what's easy and what's right." He ticks off his own mental lists of the two, telling Tami that Mac is willing to give up his ego and half his pension even though he's devoted twenty years of his life to the program. Then he asks his wife, "But I still have to do what's right. Right?" She nods in agreement and we are left thinking that Mac is gonesville. But the funny thing about a character like Coach, with his schizophrenic head/hair combination, is that you never know what he's gonna do!
We follow Coach striding purposefully into a room full of reporters. They all shout and holler until he tells them that he'll talk when they stop. He says that it's a shame they're there when they should be thinking about the game tomorrow. "Which is exactly what we're gonna do cuz Mac MacGill is staying on as the offensive coordinator of the Dillon Panthers."
In the hallway, Tim catches up with Smash and asks whether "this is it, huh?" Tim can't believe that Smash isn't going to play, but Smash is standing his ground. Tim tries one last-ditch effort and tells Smash that if he needs to hear it, he'll say it: "We need you. We need our leader." Smash tells Tim to look in the mirror if he wants to see a leader. Tim blushes and demurs. Smash delivers a zinger, "Didn't you hear what Mac MacGill said? You white. You were born a leader."
Over at the house of I Went to Rehab and All I Got Was This Lousy Quad Rugby Storyline, Jason is packing for his trip to Austin with Lyla's help. He's is wearing his black hoodie up, in a sad attempt to get something up in his bedroom. Oooo. Low blow. He's all smiles, Lyla looks sad. He reminds her that it's only two weeks. She wants him to remind her why she can't drive him. The reasons are apparently because a) it's a long drive and b) he doesn't want her driving at night. Well, what's gonna happen, Legless, when the BABY is crying at night and she needs to DRIVE it around the block? Cut outside, where Herc is revving the engine as Jason and Lyla smooch through the window. Jason tells Lyla that he'll call everyday, and then Herc just pretty much puts the truck in reverse, breaking their awkward embrace. Herc says they need to "make like Tom and Cruise" which is just lame, and then declares that he has "several disreputable women waiting for me in Austin" which is, well, just realistic. Jason mouths that he loves her to Lyla, and the QuadMobile screeches away to the sounds of Herc's overactive "Wooo!" gland. Must be one of those little-known side effects of paralysis.
Speaking of glands. Tyra drives Julie presumably to the movie theater. Julie looks sour. Tyra asks if its okay if they stop at the Women With Low Self Esteem Palace before the movie because Ole Sis owes her cash. Now, if you were Tyra, wouldn't you demand to accompany your whore-y sister to the bank and watch her get clean dollar bills to give you rather than take whatever soiled cash she's got tucked in her g-string? Julie tries to play it tough and tells Tyra that "Yeah, sure, that's cool" but then looks out the car window with major trepidation.
Cut inside The Landing Strip, which is pretty funnily inoffensive what with this being network prime time and all. I guess I watch too much HBO, where strip clubs are pretty much required settings. I can't wait to get a peek inside the Mormon ones once Big Love comes back from hiatus. A brash lady wearing what could very well be one of the figure skating outfits Uncle Nick designed for Sasha Cohen on Project Runway brushes past Julie and honks, "I swear that son of a bitch grabs my ass one more time, I swear I'm gonna kick him in the head." Julie looks like she's standing in the middle of a pool of gonorrhea; she glances down and sees a necklace or some kind of chain draped over the back of the chair Tyra is sitting in. She reaches out and pinches the syphilis-coated chain between two fingernails and flicks it off to the side. Heh.
Julie's phone starts ringing. She checks and sees that it's Landry, which means that it's Matt, who has called three times that night already. Tyra tells her to wait until the fifth call, but Julie is not a Rules Girl, and just comes out and says it: "Tyra! I do like him." She answers the call and we cut to Matt in a car with Landry (gotta love these teens in cars; I'm rarely ever in a car these days, but it seems like I spent about four years nonstop in one back in the day). Matt scrambles when he realizes that Julie's actually picked up the phone. He says that he really needs to talk to her. Just then Sasha Cohen yells something about baby oil across the room, and Matt overhears it. Julie stutters that she's at "The Landing Strip. You know, the, uh, strip club." I love her ineffectual playing-it-cool moves. Landry can hear Julie through the cell phone and so he gets in on the action, "What'd she say? She say 'Landing Strip'?" Matt asks if he can stop by because he really needs to talk to her; meanwhile Landry appears to be stuttering to himself in joy and depravity.
Smash is in his room staring into space when his mom comes in and basically tells him that "this Mac MacGill thing? It's over, it's done, you hear me?" Smash tells her that he has to stand firm and be his teammates' leader. But Corinna has apparently been brushing up on her pragmatist thought, and she tightlips at her son: "You quittin' football to make a point about racism in a small Texas town? That ain't the Million Man March." She reminds her son that he's a teenager and that it isn't his duty to "teach a lesson to a buncha fools." She tells him that if he wants to get back at the Mac MacGills of the world, he needs to play like the star that he is, get recruited by a big time school, and get his degree. I'm glad to hear her not mincing words about Mac MacGill's racism (unlike some people have been, Eric), but not so happy to hear her sliding right back into the "football is your only ticket" that was part of the reason Smash got into steroids in the first place. But in any case, as she tells him to get himself dinner and then get into bed to rest for the game tomorrow, you can see the useless burden lift from Smash's shoulders, and that is nice. He wonders about everyone else who's planning on boycotting. She tells him that he's a leader and they will follow.
The Landing Strip. Landry is talking out his ass as they walk in, telling Matt that they need to act like they've been to a ton of strip clubs before, "Like her? Naked lady? No big deal." Matt just wants to get in and get out. Yeah, that's what all the nice boys say at The Landing Strip. Landry reminds Matt to "look 'em in the face, not in the rack" but trails off when he runs into Tyra in the back room. Landry is wearing his Crucifictorius t-shirt which I maintain SHALL BE MINE one day. Me and Landry share one thing in common: our delusional natures. Landry offers to buy Tyra a strawberry daiquiri, but she barely registers the fly buzzing in her ear. Finally, Ole Sis comes into the scene, one bikini'd boob hanging out of her stripper robe. Tyra tells her it took her long enough, "Why'd every song have to be a ballad?" Awesome. Ole Sis has a penchant for melodramatic stripping. My money's on "WantedDead or Alive," how about you?
Ole Sis notices that the dressing room of the strip club has turned into a student council meeting and reprimands her sister. Meanwhile, Landry is officially off the rails, as he asks Matt if he's got some singles he could lend him. Both Matt and Julie are totally confused, and Landry explains that it's "for tips, Matt, these women were out here working hard, Matt, what were you born in a barn, Matt?" The camera ranges around and catches the hard-workin' women nodding in agreement with Landry. Matt hands Landry a wad of singles and tells him to just get out of there. Landry asks if anyone wants any nachos. Maybe not nachos, Landry. My personal strip club favorite has always been the all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet.
Out on the floor, Landry is like a, well, like a teenaged boy in a strip club. Cut back to Matt stuttering at Julie that he has lots of stuff he wants to talk to her about. Julie is in complete and total RED ALERT mode and not really able to play games with him, and she responds she wants to talk, too. Matt stutters his sur-sur-prise and starts launching into his talk right then until Julie asks if it can wait, "it's just kind of gross and depressing in here." Awesome girl. Able to be bad but also keep her wits about being bad. Tyra comes up and says she's ready to -- "Uh, uh? Where's the other one?" Wah wah waaaah.
Landry continues getting caught with his hand in the, uh, his hand in a stripper's bra. A stripper gets all up in his face while a bald, mustachioed man comes up and asks Landry if he's seen him in there before. Landry can't even form words with his mouth, so the bald man just goes ahead and flashes the one thing Landry probably doesn't care to see flashed: his badge. Double, triple, quadruple wah wah waaah!
An officer buzzes himself into the juvie holding cell where the Awesome Foursome are sitting rather moribundly. He calls out Tyra, Matt, and Landry's names, saying their parents are there to pick them up. Matt is incredulous: "my Gramma's here?!" Turns out Landry's parents are signing for him, too. But since Julie can't leave yet, Matt says he'll just stay and wait. The officer tells him it's not an option, and everyone files out, leaving little Julie sitting in there looking sad and traumatized.
Tami and Coach sit in their car outside the police station. Coach asks how long they're going to wait out there, and Tami responds immediately and with parental death-ray eyes, "Lil' bit longer." Coach says all the other parents have picked up their "perps" and asks why can't they do the same? Tami, who is clearly a GENIUS, spits, "because I would like our perp to sit in there a little bit longer so she can think about what she's doing sitting in there." Holy File That One Away, Too.
Cut to the Taylors returning home. Julie brats that whenever they want to say something, they can go right ahead. Tami is boiling and tells her daughter that the first thing she'll say is that she's grounded. Julie: "Okay, whatever." Tami: "Whatever?!" Coach: "Uuuuhhhh." Kyle Chandler's hair: "I am -- quite literally! -- above all this, sir." Tami starts screeching a bit, demanding to know what the hell Julie was doing in a strip club. Julie shrugs that they were waiting for Tyra's sister Mindy. Tami scoffs, "Tyra, of course it was Tyra." Julie, like, can't believe her mom is, like, "so judgmental." Tami doesn't give a flying fuck and says, "I am judgmental. I am judgmental about a woman who takes her clothes off for a living." Julie tries to explain that they weren't "hanging out" there, but Tami again doesn't really see the point of the distinction. She turns to her husband -- and she is in full-on howler monkey screech right now -- and asks if he has anything to say. He quietly tells Julie that it's okay that she's safe. HA! Julie then chooses this moment to tell her mom that she's "too busy looking down your nose from your ivory tower" -- and this is quite literally the best parent-child fight ever filmed. Everyone is coming off like an insane freak, which, really, isn't that what family is all about? At the mention of this nonsensical "ivory tower" -- the inappropriateness and naiveté of Julie's argumentative stance is just so, so familiar -- Tami somehow goes above and beyond howler monkey, all the way back to growling mama bear as she sings out like Aretha Franklin, "You wanna know what it looks like from my 'ivory tower,' girl, it looks like you are NOT hangin' out with TYra COllete anymore." A few more whatevers from Julie and a "nice input" from Tami to Eric and everyone storms off alone.
day, a crowd is seeing the football team onto the bus. Tami hugs her husband and then something catches her eye. Explosions in the Sky's "Six Days at the Bottom of the Ocean" in the background as Coach turns around to see all the African-American players approaching the bus in their letter jackets, carrying their gear. Smash approaches Coach and asks if there's room on the bus. Coach pauses, with tough lips, and just nods his head yes. The music is mixed louder as the scene progresses, and a lot of this is filmed with a slightly fisheye perspective. Mac comes up to Smash as the kid is about to board the bus and says, "Listen, son -- " but Smash cuts him off and tells him that him being there doesn't change a thing, "I know who you are." As everyone boards the bus, the music crescendos, a camera swirls around Coach Taylor just before he gets on, then a shot of the overly crowded bus -- with, uh, the black kids in the back of the bus, WTF? Random Assistant Coach Black Man shooting lasers into Mac's neck. And I just want to point out the artfulness of this scene. Because in this scene, nothing surprising happens, in fact pretty much what does happen is all pretty worn -- the man in charge Does the Right Thing; the young upstart Swallows His Pride Just That Little Bit. And all the camera work giving us this worn material is all pretty chintzy, too -- the The Right Stuff slow motion boys-in-a-group-walking shot, the swirling camera to represent a swirling mind, the shaky hand-held shot of a crowd from the p.o.v. of one person a window in a lonely world. But all of it together, with the music mixed so loudly, gives at least this viewer the pitter-pats. It's a nice testament to how you don't have to reinvent the wheel when you're telling a story; aesthetic shorthand oftentimes really works.
Okay, moving on, now. At the game with the Dunston Valley Cardinals. The announcers exposit that the Cardinals are known for playing a bit dirty. On the field, some trash talk between a Cardinal and Smash, but nothing out of the ordinary. The game starts, and some stuff happens. Matt calls some plays, and some more stuff happens. Smash gets a good run, but then takes a big hit which almost immediately turns into a fight which gets broken up pretty quickly. More football stuff, more ball-running by Smash, this time to the end zone. Lots of hooting and hollering and Smash trash talking: "Put up or shut up, baby!"
Cardinals have the ball, and Dillon gets one good hit. Cut to the bench, where Mac is pep talking his offense, telling Matt to just keep getting the ball to Smash, "He can run it!" On the field, the Cardinals run it into the end zone to tie it up. Dillon's back on offense. Dillon takes a dirty hit from behind, but the refs don't call it. Coach is pissed. Another snap, Smash runs the ball but gets taken down with a blatant facemask. Which the refs don't call again. Coach is freaking out, the announcers are tsk-tsking over the bad calls, and the crowd is booing. Coach calls Smash over to the sidelines and tells him that he sees what's going on and that it's up to Smash to not let them get in his head.
A bit of a time lapse. Back on the field, it's now early in the fourth quarter, the scoreboard says its 34 to 24, Dillon, but the announcers say that Dillon is up by four. Whatever. Matt hands off to Smash, again, who runs it into the end zone, fist pumping from about the final yard or so. He's fully slowed down and the play is over when Cardinal Number 1 comes out of nowhere and tackles the shit out of him. The announcers exclaim over the late hit, Smash gets up and tries to walk away, but the asshole follows him along, asking Smash if he liked that hit, "Huh? Huh? I'll break you in half. You hear that you lazy-ass tar baby? You hear me, Sambo?" Gee, I wonder what this guy's trying to insinuate? ["That's he's a racist from the '40s? 'Sambo'?" -- Joe R] Riggins, from his reaction shots, is hearing this go down. As Smash continues to try to ignore this hateful shithead, Riggins just rushes the kid and takes him down. The whole field erupts, both teams running onto the field. A shot of Coach Taylor hauling ass out there, and it's just really attractively manly how he goes out there to try to keep these kids from killing each other. Shots of people in the stands distraught over this bad sportsmanship, long shot of the huge brawl on the field.
Cut to the Panthers in some jenky-ass wood-paneled locker room, heads hung in silence. Outside, scary-loud "booos" echo. Coach Taylor and the Cardinal coach pace in silence on the walkway underneath the stadium. Insane Cardinals fans boo and throw shit over the side of the stands. A handsome man walks up to them briskly and introduces himself as from the athletic board. He declares that it's too crazy out there and he's calling the game, "Dillon wins." Coach Taylor is off like a shot to his boys, despite the Cardinal coach's crazytown shouting that they are going to play this game because it's their field. Taylor extricates himself from the bullying coach, who goes on to get up in the face of Mr. "Call Me" Handsome Athletic Board man.
Inside the Dillon locker room, Coach slams the door and shouts, "This is not who we are, this is not what we represent. I don't teach that crap." Riggins asks if they're out of the playoffs, and Taylor explains that ILL considers three full quarters a full game, and since they were ahead at the end of that, they've gotten the win. Some of the kids do silent fist pumps, but Coach screams at them that they are not to celebrate. He shouts that they need to wipe the smiles off their faces, get their gear, and get on the bus without changing. "We're gettin' the hell outta here right now."
Outside, the Panthers walk the sidewalk between their locker room and the bus, Cardinal fans pressed up against a chain fence pelt them with debris and boos. It's pretty frightening. The kids get on, looking scared. Cut to the bus ride where nearly everybody is dozing off in their seats. That is, until police sirens wake them and force the bus to pull over.
Coach Taylor tells the kids to stay calm and goes out to see what the problem is. Mac follows him out. The kids crane their necks to see what's going on outside. Two sheriffs strut up with their flashlights and stupid hats and tell Coach and Mac that they need Smash Williams, as there are "witnesses" saying that he threw the first punch and that they need to bring him in for questioning on an aggravated assault claim. Bullshit. Taylor is disbelieving that they are trying to blame one of his players for what happened on the field. The sheriff is surprisingly straightforward when he says this doesn't have anything to do with football. Right, it has to do with MURDEROUS THUGGERY. Inside the bus, Smash has his head in his hands. This is a really terrible scene. I hate it. In case you didn't GET. IT., Murderous Thug informs Coach that if he doesn't get Smash for them, "we will go in there and drag him out ourselves." Key word being "drag" I guess. Coach is bizarrely tongue-tied, and so Mac has another Very Special Moment. He informs the Murderous Thugs that they need a warrant to get on the bus. One of the Murderous Thugs says that he can go get a warrant, which is probably one of the worst bluffs in the history of law enforcement bluffs, and Mac calls him on it. "That's fine. We got all night." The Deadwood music starts up as the Murderous Thugs decide to move on to another bus full of innocent young boys to terrorize. But not before saying, "We'll get you year, Coach." They get back on the bus, and it moves on down the lonely road back into Dillon where they are met by a cheering crowd. Coach gets off without fanfare, muttering to Mac that he'll see him at 10AM for game film.
Smash gets off the bus and catches Mac to ask him what happened with the cops. Mac says, "They made a mistake, son, just like I did." Smash nods and looks confused before finding his mom in the crowd and hugging her. I'd be confused, too, if that were the resolution to my Racism in High School Sports story line. Because not only did they pull one hell of a bait and switch here -- where verbal and assumptive racism gets subsumed under the spectre of racial violence, as if the only racism that matters is the kind that results in dead or beaten bodies -- but they also allowed a white character to be redeemed by drawing a parallel between his "mistake" and those two police officers' chilling abuse of white power and privilege? I mean, does Mac really think the two "mistakes" are equal? He really is simpler than we could have imagined, then.
In La Dee Da I'm White and Cute Land, Matt seeks out Julie, who has been waiting for the bus with her mom, and is wrapped up in a cozy plaid blanket. She tells him that she was worried about him on the field, and then Matt utters quite possibly the most endearing words ever: "Aw, you don't need to worry about me. In a fight, I kinda just stand in the back and yell stuff." Now THAT'S the kind of boy you marry. Julie smiles because she looooves him. He hands her the necklace (that he has apparently been keeping in the back pocket of his lycra football knickers?) and she is touched, especially because it's her birthstone. Matt suppresses a smile of pride and then says, "Look, we've been kinda goin' out for a while , but we never really made it official...Will you be my girlfriend?" Julie smiles and then leans in and kisses him, and we see that he's got some kind of gross jock burn on his neck, but we don't care because beyond Julie's smooching head we can tell that Matt is wearing an adorable smile, and we all shout together, "Racism who? Matt and Julie TGETHR 4EVA!!!!!111!!!!!"