Friday Night Lights, Season 2

Valid point. Oh, and I forgot they also visited the minor/adult angle with Julie/Swede and last season's Tyra/visiting businessman episodes, and looks like there going there with the new Riggins/stripper thing too. That's at least six relationships where they've played that card in the last year. Why don't these kids ever just nail some rally girls their own age?

 

I really don't understand how they haven't used the "Player impregnates 2-8 rally girls" plotline yet.

 

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say the journo teacher is gay.

 

We've had plenty of grumbling about the football realism: how about a little on the journalism realism... How does a veggie-sandwich-eating guy with a master's from Columbia and a good metro gig (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel) wind up teaching high school English in west Texas? Unless, of course, he got run out of Wisconsin on a statutory rape charge or something. Maybe they'll explain.
And the scene where he gave her a copy of the New York Times. Awesome, it was like she'd never seen one before. Of course, maybe she hadn't.
Also, why do they use the names of real newspapers but not real colleges? (I remember on the West Wing, it was the opposite: Bartlett went to Notre Dame and Josh to Princeton, but the papers always had made-up names like the Indianapolis Times-Dispatch or something)

Good episode, generally. Was good to see a little Smash, he's been under-used this season. Still, I feel like it's just not as sharp as it was last year; a little more predictable high-school-soap-opera-y.

 

Not me.

 

Probably because "Miami South" is going to be depicted to be sleazy. An even better example of fake names is when TV shows use some type of "new perscription drug" in their story line with a fake name, only to find out in post-production there is a drug by that name and they have to dub it every time its mentioned. They also had to do that in the Schwarzenegger movie with Vanessa Williams and James Caan.

 

Just got caught up on this one. One of the better episodes of the season. The Panther-rama crap was stupid, but not bad enough to take away from the episode. The stuff with the Smash recruiting was good, as was the stuff with his mother. The girl with Smash needs to become a regular...wow. I like the Santiago stuff and the Matt-Julie situation as well.

The problems: just when the Matt-Julie storyline seems completely realistic, her regretting moving on from him and the way she felt to see him move on, they go and move to the adult storylines. I think it would have been much better to deal with Matt and the rally girl, than Matt and the home nurse. Julie and the teacher seems too predictable, so like others, I'm assuming it's not going to go the way it looks.

I'm not sure what's going on with Riggins. I like the actor and the character, but it seems like the writers forget any progression he makes and he always starts back at square one each episode. Loved when coach told his wife in the office not to "yell-whisper" at him, because she always does that.

Previews don't look good for Landry. I still can't get past how unnecessary that storyline is.

 

Exactly. The did say Georgia Tech and letters from USC and Texas were shown, I believe. As Dan said, they just couldn't use real ones with the sleazy school.

 

Leave Julie for Saracen ... he's gotta pop that cherry.

Or don't. One less to fight for Minka Kelly.

Edit: Or Connie Britton.

 

It's a very good show, but it's not half as good as it was last season...

That said, it's still one of the better shows on TV...

The Landry stuff is the jump the shark moment... It's so unnecessary...

I also think they should have dragged out the coaching situation for at least the whole season...

 

My biggest problem with the show (and this goes back to last season too) is that too often characters progress in one episode and then it's as if that never happened. It's too much like each episode is an individual entity and there isn't enough carry-over. I already pointed out this out with Riggins. But how about Julie. Wouldn't she have learned anything about falling for older guys after her experience with the Swede? It's understandable that she's upset about Saracen's new girl, but why would she run to the same type of guy that had just worked out so badly? Wouldn't it have made more sense for her to find her rebound guy in her own age group?

 

I think people are getting too far ahead of the Julie storyline. I doubt they're "going there." If anything, I think she values the teacher and writing for the paper because its her own thing. (I'm probably paraphrasing the upcoming speech to her mom). She's not the coach's daughter, she's not the quarterback's girlfriend, she's being her own person and the journalism teacher (who I'm still saying will turn out to be gay) recognizes that.