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Tami's in the center of a number of hot messes -- her sister thinks she's not satisfying Coach, Coach is jealous of Glen (yes, that Glen), and Noah from SVU is continuing to educate her daughter. Tami tells Noah to stay away from Julie with his subversive Garpian literature and Julie goes ballistic. And when Coach tries to pull the same trick on his wife, telling her to stop hanging out with Glen so much, and then her sister asks her how she would have felt if their mother had done something like that to her, Tami (and we) come to a strange and unusual conclusion: sometimes, Tami can be wrong.
Smash continues getting wined and dined by recruiters. After a long weekend of the good life with the thuggish galoots at University U., he finds himself about to seal the deal with a lovely lady when one of his prospective fellow teammates walks in on Smash with his girl. Hijinks ensue.
Matt is still hot for Car-low-ta even though the Gidget-haired Lauren is all up in his business all the time. So he takes Smash's advice and tells Lauren he'd like an "open relationship," causing her to break up with him, leaving him in the clear to hightail it back home and lose his virginity to our favorite sassy Latina domestic.
Tim bonds with his ferret-keeping, tighty-whitie-wearing new roommate by huntin' and drinkin' and unknowingly helping keep his meth lab flush with pseudoephedrine. This last item doesn't sit so well with Tim once he realizes, and so he forces Coach's hand and charms himself back onto the football team. Please raise your hand if you were hoping against hope for a Timmy Riggins meth-head storyline (visions of Ryan Gosling on crack Half Nelson-style, swoon).
And the puzzle of the Tyra/Landry murder storyline gets wrapped in a stinker of an enigma when the murdered dude's brother shows up wanting to meet with his dead brother's victims. What? This of course makes Landry feel worse, thinking about this guy having a family and all, and so at the end of the episode Landry marches into the police station to turn himself in. And I have to take a moment to address the previews for the episode because I believe it marks the low point in somebody's idea of what the hell viewers of Friday Night Lights are interested in. Which happens, actually, to be more about awesome yet somehow simultaneously inappropriate high school English teachers, not whether it was "murder" or "manslaughter." WHO CARES. God, I thought this storyline was going to be over tonight but it looks like we're not out of the obtuse woods yet. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Open on the fourth quarter of a miserable Panther defeat, 37-0. In the stands, Tami's sister Shelly mutters that Tami isn't getting laid tonight. Because Tami is obviously feeling so randy, holding her baby while standing in a sea of stale peanut shells watching a high school football game. Shelly tells her sister that "they" say that "anything less than three times a week and...." Tami snaps that she's "tired, tired," and Shelly switches subjects from Tami's lonely vagina to Julie's underage one: "Look, there's Julie with that cute little English teacher she has a crush on." Tami's eyes go feral as she stares across the stands at Julie standing to Noah. Shelly informs her that Julie said she thought he was cute and open-minded and "cultured, very cultured." Tami doesn't it like it one bit.
In the locker room, the boys get dressed down by Coach. He leaves the room and Smash takes about ten seconds before he opens his locker and delivers a Shakespearean ode to his own beauty, "Now that's a good lookin' man right there, wipe it down, wipe it down." Borrowing, of course, those "wipe it downs" from Shakespeare's famous lost foolscap octavo. The other players get mad at Smash for being so cheery after such a dismal loss but Smash doesn't care. He calls over to Matt, asking what the quarterback is doing that weekend only so he can blab what he is doing: getting recruited by McNeil University, "where your cup is never empty and the girls never say no." Smash declares that it is going to be "like Cabo in my pants."
Cut to Matt making out with Lauren in his car. She tells him that her parents are gone for the night and asks him to come in and stay over. It's kind of like Reykjavik in Matt's pants, though, and he begs off, saying that his grandmother would get worried if he didn't come home. His strategy, Icelandically odd-minded as it is, pays off, as Lauren finds him even more attractive for not fucking her. (She here diverges from Ol' Dirty Bastard who, you may remember, went on record saying that he does have a problem with you not fucking him.)
Matt arrives home to find Car-low-ta scrubbing down the stove with spray bleach and rubber gloves. He approaches her and attempts to ask, sexily, whether she "spilled some spices there." He really missed an opportunity to take that line to the level of sexiness by adding, "you know, like maybe some red hot chili pepper flakes?" Talk about swoon-worthy. Car-low-ta shuts Matt down before he even starts, telling him that they are not even going to think about or talk about "it." She leaves the room and Matt sighs and thinks about the many spices he could have named to symbolize the heat he feels between them.
Credits. Morning. Smash rushes around getting a duffel bag together. His mom makes him pause for a lecture, telling him that she hates the school he's visiting, that he won't learn anything there but how to drink beer and chase women, and that he needs to remember that he is representing their family in everything he does that weekend. Smash nods sincerely and hugs her. And he is sincere, it's just that the party in his pants gets so loud sometimes it's hard for him to think straight.
Tim runs into Tami outside school and begs her to say something to Eric about helping Tim get back on the team. Tami says she'll do what she can but makes no promises.
Cut to a classroom, where Tyra gets pulled out just before a pop quiz to go talk with a female police officer. Cut to the cafeteria where the officer tells Tyra that a guy named Jeff Caldwell, Dead Guy's brother, wants to meet with his dead brother's victims to make amends. What? Tyra looks confused and wonders if other people are meeting with this guy and the officer coerces Tyra by saying that such a meeting often helps victims of violent crimes gain a sense of closure. This is the stupidest thing I've ever seen on television. And I am a Bunim/Murray devotee, so that is saying a lot.
Tami and Glen sit in her office chowing on fast food. Tami thanks Glen with her mouth full of hamburger and tells him that breastfeeding makes her hungry all the time. Glen is lying on her crappy little office loveseat, his feet propped up on the arm, and he exclaims, with an "ew, gross," that it looks like Gracie threw up on her back. Tami is horrified and needs his help getting it off; Glen leans in with a napkin and starts pawing at a spit-up stain on the back of her shoulder, saying that he thinks he might see the Virgin Mary in it. Hee. Coach walks in and immediately demands to know why the door was closed. Tami says she didn't want everyone seeing her eat her burger and fries like a pig and then launches into her husband, urging him to let Tim Riggins back on the team. Glen tilts his head backward and addresses Coach upside down, suggesting that if Tim was back on the team, maybe they wouldn't have lost Friday's game. Eric snaps and asks Glen to leave.
So now it's on between Coach and Tami. Coach closes the door after Glen leaves and tells Tami that the "lost little boy" look she thinks Tim has, well that he's had it since he was little and it's how he gets away with anything. He tells her that Tim didn't just let him down, he let the team down, and that you can't just get on and off the football team like it's a bus, "like it's, uh, uh, some flaky real estate class." The viewer is maybe confused at his random example but Tami doesn't miss a beat, "You makin' fun of my sister now?" Tami interrupts their downward spiral to declare that she needs a night out. Coach pauses and then gets all Lady and the Tramp by suggesting that they go to Don Antonio's and get a couple bottles of wine. While he's making these suggestions, he moves closer and closer to Tami who finally interrupts him to screw up her face and drive him back with a "Honey, I smell like onions!" She tells him she wants her night out to involve playing bunco with other teachers. She needs to be around people, other adults. There's a knock at the door and Coach's rose-petaled-bed fantasies shrivel for good.
Smash arrives at The University of College at Partytown and gets taken around the weight room. Smash is acting like the eager little date rapist the football players were all hoping to recruit. The boys stroke one another's egos (egos I said!) until a huge dude gets off his machine and tells them all to shut up and let him work out. Smash apologizes and tries to shake his hand, but the guy refuses. The other guys excuse him saying it's just Latrell. Smash asks, under his breath, "Latrell Kennedy?" When they confirm, Smash charms them by editorializing with a knowing nod, "Big, dumb, and ugly."
Tim feeds a man's ferrets, which seems as urgent a description of America's lost rural youth as any. The man appears in the doorway, a hulking figure wearing nothing but tightie-whities, and I am immediately launched onto the internet by the sheer force of this actor's terrible charisma. Turns out Ferret Guy is played by Dallas actor and comedian Joey Ogelsby, who caused a stir last January by creating a character named Donnie Davies, an "ex-gay" pastor who had his fifteen-minutes of fame with the "is this for real?" spot-on evangelical tone-deafness of his song "God Hates Fags." So here he is, in his tightie-whities telling Tim Riggins that he has an old soul, a conclusion he's come to because his ferrets have never let anyone else feed them by hand. He shimmies his heft through the cramped apartment to go fix Tim a smoothie and listen to the younger boy's woes. Deadpan, Ferret Guy grabs a bottle of whisky and pours a good measure in with the mixed berries. Meanwhile, Tim tells his odd new friend how much he misses football, all the adrenaline. Ferret Guy tells Tim that he hasn't lived enough yet, that there's a lot more to life than football. For example, whisky-spiked smoothies (and I am not being sarcastic in my underscoring of such experiences). Ferret Guy declares that they are going hunting tomorrow. "You need to kill yourself some dinner, dude."
School (where Tim is apparently not). Noah runs into Julie in the hallway. She is breathless, no doubt because it's like a creative writing workshop in her pants, returning the book Noah lent her, The World According to Garp. Which, thankfully, I've never read. John Irving is like the Pottery Barn of American literature. ["I have read it, and 'like a creative writing workshop in your pants' is actually a pretty good description of it." -- Joe R] Julie wonders aloud whether Irving is a genius or what; she doesn't know how anyone can write that well. Noah is like a middling cultural capital's own personal Amazon.com when he replies that if Julie liked this book, she'll "love A Prayer for Owen Meany," and then -- then! -- Julie returns the José Gonzalez CD that he lent her. It's a regular Borders employee lunch break up in there! Meanwhile, Tami watches all this go down from a distance. I need to pause before we get into Tami's meltdown to note how pitch-perfect this English teacher plot is. I don't think another show would be as direct in addressing the undeniable libidinal energy in this particular relationship, the intellectual crush, which to turn into anything useful for the kid I think has to be at least a bit sexual in nature. When else in your life will you get so turned on by John Irving? Hope to God never, but also hope to God at least a little when you are sixteen. And the crush is never really about the literature, or even about the person that opens your eyes but instead about your imagination of a different way of living. When you grow up, you realize that that English teacher was a sad man with sad desires who always ate his dinner alone in front of the TV. But for a little while, you imagine him going home, dropping the needle on a Miles Davis record, pouring a glass of wine and sitting down to read a novel. That's a powerful imagined world for any kid; it's a world I imagine for myself and fail to live up to every day still.
Tami can't see any of this, and probably that's a good thing. She grabs Noah and asks why he gave her daughter that book. Noah stutters that he did because it's, uh, funny? Tami finds an empty classroom and draws him in. She faces him directly and tells him that the book is pretty sexual to be recommending to students. Noah tries to hold his own for just a second, telling her that he's an English teacher and he is allowed to recommend reading to his students. Tami tells him she finds him inappropriate, and condescending, and she doesn't like him giving salacious reading to her daughter. Then she's on a roll. She continues, "I don't like you having lunch together behind closed doors, I don't like you touching each other when you talk." Noah starts panicking, and Tami steamrolls him telling him that she could have him fired and have her husband come over and beat the crap out of him. Quick cut and we see that a few students outside the door are overhearing all of this. Noah, wisely, clams up and just says, "Wow." When Tami asks if he has anything to say he says no and leaves, realizing you can't reason with an enraged animal, which is what Tami is at the moment.
Tyra and Landry are now in an empty classroom, Tyra is freaking out over agreeing to see Dead Guy's brother. She wonders what kind of freak wants to meet his brother's rape victims. Uh, exactly. She wonders what he wants. And the correct answer is: to shoehorn himself into this episode and guilt Landry into turning himself in. Tyra lames around about how scared she is, and so Landry offers to go for her. Can we take a minute and pour some out for the awesome Tyra of the last episode?
Julie wanders into the cafeteria and sits down with Lois. Lois remarks that she hasn't seen Julie for lunch in a while and Julie explains that she was supposed to eat with Noah but couldn't find him. Lois is like, uh, you haven't heard? And then she tells Julie that Tami "got into it" with Noah, pretty much calling him a pedophile. Cut to Julie haul-assing it down the hall to her mom's office. She busts in and shouts, "HOW DARE YOU?" and then tells her mom that she has no right, "with everyone else out there having sex with each other?" Oh, the righteousness of her anger! Tami is totally unprepared with any kind of reasonable explanation for her actions. Julie is sobbing over having the one person who listens to her taken away from her. Aimee Teagarden is doing some fantastic blubbering, screaming at her mom that not as a mother, not as a guidance counselor, not even as a human being, should she have done what she did. Tami is left weakly calling after her daughter.
Tim and Ferret Guy are in a blind, hunting. Ferret Guy is going on and on, loudly, about how people are hypocrites for not killing their own meat more often. They drink and discuss how it doesn't get any better than this. ["You're right, Drunken Bee, they should be drinking Old Milwaukee!" -- Joe R] Ferret Guy shouts loud enough for the deer in the county to hear, that "this is one-on-one, man versus nature." And then he tosses his beer bottle onto the ground. Okay, maybe a little broad, but I'm still amused enough. Ferret Guy blows a duck call and then grabs a pair of binoculars and takes a swig. From the binoculars, which is a flask. Then he starts clanging together some antlers and Taylor Kitsch just starts laughing. It seems like it was a fun scene to shoot, if not completely in line, tonally, with the show.
Smash is brought to a sleek club and sat right down in a VIP section in the middle of some lovely ladies. I can almost hear the mariachi music coming from inside his pants.
At the Saracen household, Matt's got his pants on mute as he watches Car-low-ta do Grandma's hair. Grandma goes on about wanting to look like Angie Dickinson when the phone rings. It's Smash, and he's calling Matt to taunt him with ass from afar. Matt hangs up and goes back to being taunted by the ass right in front of his face.
Landry walks into -- get this-- the Alamo Freeze to meet with Brother Rapist from the Order of Plot Contrivances. What a great choice, to meet with your brother's assault victim inside a similar establishment as where he perpetrated the assault. God. Landry explains that Tyra decided against coming and then they get on with the making Landry feel guilty. Landry goes on about how irredeemable Dead Guy was, but his brother interrupts his fantasy of consequence-less murder by mentioning the drunk mom backstory, wah, wah, wah.
Coach whines about what good Tami's sister is if she isn't available to babysit the baby while Tami gets ready for bunco night. He doesn't feel like babysitting that night. Tami points out that it isn't babysitting when it's your own child. Coach follows her around the house, peckishly asking why she's putting perfume on for bunco night. She says it's to mask the smell of spit-up, but we all know it's to mask the smell of Mr. Kowalski's coffee breath. She rushes out the door, leaving Coach looking confused about how to go on living without her to tell him how.
Tim and Ferret Guy cruise around in his truck, keepin' on keepin' on. Ferret Guy expounds on how Roadhouse is the best action movie of the eighties, maybe the best movie of all time. He sets Tim up nicely, saying that the movie has all the key ingredients. Tim fills in the blanks, "town in need, man searching for his soul" and Ferret Guy takes over like a regular Mo Rocca, "hot sex, fisticuffs." Now Tim: "Two words..." and then Ferret Guy: "Patrick..." and Tim: "...Swayze." Okay, maybe this rapport is too clever by half, but they get Best Week Ever in Dillon, right? They pull up in front of a store, and Ferret Guy instructs Tim to go in and get a bunch of cold medicine for him. Tim asks blankly what he needs with cold medicine at midnight, and now I'm questioning my assertion about Dillon's access to basic cable programming because HELLO!! Cold medicine? RED ALERT! RED ALERT! Meth epidemic! True Life Story!
Matt continues wandering around his house staring at Car-low-ta. I guess that's one way to seal the deal. The Jordan Catalano Way, we could call it. She tries to walk away but he grabs her hand and pronounces her name in that weird Spanish 101 way he has. He leans in and kisses her. She pulls away. He goes for it again and so does she. But a knock at the door ruins the moment. Lauren bounces in with cookies and her weird, back-combed Gidget hair. She greets Carlotta insipidly, and then suggests that she and Matt watch TV.
Tami comes in quietly. Coach tells her that Grace cried all night and projectile pooped across the room. Tami must be blind because she doesn't see all the red flags Coach's hair is waving about. She continues on, saying that Glenn won a hundred dollars and they went out for a beer afterward. Coach smiles tightly and asks sarcastically, "Hmm, you and Glen have a good time?" Tami looks fake surprised and asks her husband if he's jealous of Glen. She is playing dumb games here, because she knows his feelings, and anyone who wasn't willfully ignoring their partner's body language would know exactly what Coach is thinking here. And he lets her have it. He tells her that he doesn't like her "yukkin' it up" with Glen. Tami looks at her husband pityingly. He tells her that he doesn't like coming into her office and seeing Glen laying around, not even making an effort to sit up when Coach comes in. He thinks it's disrespectful to him and to the family. Tami is pissed and asks whether he thinks it's disrespectful to God. Coach tells her that it "undermines us." Tami continues to find what he's saying ridiculous. And it is ridiculous. But people feel ridiculous things all the time and Tami isn't even trying to listen. This is the first Taylor fight where they are both equally wrong. When Coach tells her he has just one more thing to say and that is that she needs to pay more attention to her family Tami's mouth drops open and asks him how he dare say that to her. Then she instructs him to sleep on the couch, so she can get a good night's sleep and pay more attention to her family that night. She walks off and, watching Coach watching, I'm left with this uncomfortable feeling, like when you are in the middle of a fight with your significant other and you know it is building and building into something really big and you look behind you to see if there is some way to get back to how it was before but there isn't, the road or path or whatever is just gone and you are stuck where you are, going forward. Now that is a real fight.
Matt knocks on Car-low-ta's door and tries to apologize for Lauren coming over. She tells him to just go to bed.
Smash, flanked by a number of convictions-in-waiting, walks around a seriously insane frat party. At one point a pair of bare female legs being held up during a keg stand block our view of the main action. Smash tells Wife Beater, Manslaughter, and Bestiality that they can call off the dogs, he's going to sign with them. They reward him by letting him pick out whoever he wants. He zeroes in on a beauty in a bikini and we cut to them in the dorm room gettin' nekkid. Some knocking at the door that Smash tries to wave off but then this lovely lady barks out that Latrell better take his drunk ass home. Smash is like La-who? and then the hijinks ensure, Latrell Kennedy busting in the door and chasing Smash, in just socks and boxer shorts all over the dorm, out the door, over the fence. Latrell calls after him that he'd better find another school to go to. And if you were to tell me that this was all just a cynical ploy to get Smash in his boxer shorts I would say: thank you.
Early morning, Smash sits with his head in his hands under a highway exchange. Matt drives up so apparently Smash found a payphone and called collect, much to Carrot Top's anachronistic joy. Matt can barely contain himself, asking Smash how it all was, whether it was really like Cabo in his pants. Cut to the boys driving down the highway, chomping on some fries, Smash laughing at himself saying he's never run so fast in his life. Matt laughs and then asks Smash if he knows a good way to break up with somebody. Smash claims to have never broken up with someone, and when Matt tries to call him on that lie, he explains that what he does is just tell the girl he wants an open relationship, and then the girl reliably gets so pissed that she breaks up with him and he comes out smelling like roses. So, I guess this is how Waverly got disposed of? This or maybe she's in the trunk of a car somewhere?
Tami peeks in Julie's room and finds Shelly deep in whispered communion with the upset teen. Shelly joins Tami in the kitchen; Julie walks out and thanks her aunt and ignores her mother. Julie leaves, and Shelly tells Tami that Julie is really upset. Tami snaps that she doesn't need a mediator, and then Shelly tries to make Tami see that for once she is in the wrong here. Tami points out that Shelly only knows Julie's side of the story and then drags Shelly's barren uterus into it: "Frankly, you're not a mother, so..." Shelly gets up, pissed at Tami's tired line, and then tries another approach. She asks Tami how she would have felt if their mom had done that to her. This finally gets through to Tami and she answers, "Mortified."
Lyla's youth group prays over breakfast at the Alamo Freeze. Landry sits off to the side listening. Lyla catches his eye and goes over to him. Landry asks Lyla if she's a good Christian or a bad Christian. She says she tries to be good, and Landry says he does, too, but it's hard to tell. Lyla says nobody is perfect, Landry clears his throat and tells Lyla that he has a secret he's keeping that is starting to eat away at him and he doesn't know what to do. Lyla tells him that she thinks telling the truth is a way of surrendering to God. Landry doesn't know what would happen if he did and Lyla tells him that's why they call it faith. Landry asks, "Just tell the truth, huh?" and she confirms as much, holding his hand.
Matt and Smash walk toward Lauren outside school, and Smash tells his wingman to stay strong. Matt asks Lauren if they can talk for a minute and then --right there in the middle of the crowds of kids milling about -- says that maybe they should have an open relationship. She reacts as predicted, tells him not to touch her and to stay away from her. Smash approaches, smiling, and Matt wonders what happened to smelling like roses. Smash confirms that that part doesn't always work and the two walk off together like the obtuse males that they are.
Timmy sits outside that morning, drinking a beer and wondering what's in that trailer out back of Ferret Guy's house. He opens the door and walks in, looking surprised at all the tubes and acetone and cough tablets that go into making meth, items that we all should recognize because of MTV's tireless work on meth's behalf. Tim is horrified, and when Ferret Guy comes in and tells him that he's glad Tim is a cool dude, otherwise he'd have to kill him, Tim just brushes past without saying anything.
Football practice. Tim shows up in uniform. Oh you are kidding me. Tim Riggins returns to the football team as part of a Just Say No To Meth campaign? I love it. I'm so easy (call me, Taylor, I'm not being metaphorical there). Coach tells Tim to get off his field and they go back and forth, a stubborn man and his even more stubborn charge. Tim almost folds under Coach's pressure, but instead decides to make this into his own personal Robin Williams moment. He starts going from team member to team member, to apologize for his assy behavior. Things we learn from this: he calls The Galoot "Firecrotch," and he appears to be working on some Jeff Foxworthy stand-up material ("If you can find it in your hearts to forgive me, let me make it up to you in the showers"). He apologizes to the whole team and Coach lets him join practice.
Tami sits at home, brow furrowed. Coach comes home and they make amends. Tami tells her husband that she can't not have a friend at school that she spends time with. Coach acknowledges that it isn't about Glen, it's just that he feels like he's the one she's supposed to be yukking it up with. "I miss you." Then he says the most romantic thing as he hugs her close: "I like you."
Matt comes home and works some serious mojo on Car-low-ta. He tells her that he broke up with the seemingly perfect and hot Lauren because of her, his family's employee. Then he goes in his room and closes the door. Car-low-ta comes in and jumps his bones. Matthew Saracen, you should think about bottling that magical shit of yours.
Music montage of Landry walking down a lonely hallway and into the police station. "I did it" he says. "I killed him." And usually I'm a fan of the slow, windy drive, but God, we could have gotten here so much faster.