Despite Coach Eric Taylor’s objections, revenge is a dish best served cold. I’m glad that the Lions got an opportunity to revisit this particular opponent from last season. How the game was played, though, is a story we’re going to see more of moving forward. That, college recruiters coming to town, and enough of a change in Julie’s storyline to move me off of my self imposed silence on the whole affair (ha!) all made this a solid episode of what continues to be the most underrated show on television today, Friday Night Lights.
Do you think when the writing team mapped out the whole recruiting storyline that is obviously in the works, they had known how stories of collegiate recruiting scandals would explode this season? What was just Reggie Bush last year has become Cam Newton, Josh Luchs, and myriad other examples of how the system is broken, with no real idea of how to fix it. I look forward to see how Vince manages the hurricane that his life is about to become.
I’m also curious as to how Eric Taylor is going to reconcile himself to the direction of his team. As much as Billy coaching it up was played for laughs, when you juxtapose that on how the team performed, and the reaction of the coaches during the poker game, this story is far from over. I think calling them dirty is a reach, but this team’s identity is a lot more rough and tumble than any Dillon Panther team we’ve seen play over the seasons.
Friday Night Lights needs more drunk-guy poker games. Despite Coach’s whining about how the game went, his departure was worth it all in the end. When he complained about losing money despite cheating off Coach Spivey, I about fell out of my chair laughing. Little did I know, however, Kyle Chandler was going to bring the comedy gold just seconds later.
I had decided, the minute I saw Julie was in this episode, I was going to be all high and mighty, and not mention it, even so far as to quote Forest Gump: “And that’s all I have to say about that.” Then Allison happened. It is damn hard to say that Julie deserved what happened to her (and all hell will break loose when the rest of the Taylor family learns about it), but simultaneously, you can’t say she’s without guilt, either. What really surprises me is Allison herself, whom you think would have a bit more self-respect than to react the way she did.
Notes & Quotes
Clacked by Ivey West 
on Dec 02, 2010 @ 11:00 EST5EDT
The NCAA is just like FIFA. Sport and money apparently always get the grimy people to the top and nobody is willing to fix it. FNL always trying to have people do “the right thing” is clearly not portraying reality. And that’s what makes it so great, because they show how it should be instead of what’s happening in reality, with Marion Jones on “The Daily Show”, Mark Maguire now a coach, FIFA taking bribes all across their board et cetera et cetera.
The problem just is that is that we all want OUR team to win, no matter what, and are so willing to forget (and fast) just to enjoy our time off of work more. We love our schools, we love our teams, and we don’t really want to hear that FIFA expects the country hosting to pass new laws to give officials immunity, suspend visa laws during the time of the event, bribes in the billions (!) changing hands… the eery thing is that the stuff on the live NFL and NCAA shows each night are just the tip of the iceberg. For every storyon the news there are 99 more we don’t know about. It just sucks. There’s to much money in play and people are greedy.
It’s just sad that a show that really is how the real world should be wasn’t more successful and that it will end after this season. There really should have been more episodes, more seasons. More show. I just don’t get it. It’s as if real life scandals are more interesting than stories about the sport and how it could be. Maybe it’s because I’m a hopeless romantic and people like things to be dirty instead. It’s really too bad.
Glad that Friday Night Lights is still going strong…loved the recent episode “Kingdom” and i’m also so happy that they still use great music, just like the movie did…Ted Leo’s “Where Was My Brain” was the perfect song for the Dillon vs. South King game (that scene is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmcQw2_OIls )