Is 'Friday Night Lights' renewal a done deal?

According to television critic David Bianculli, it is. The source: none other than star Kyle Chandler. Bianculli wrote last week on his blog, TV Worth Watching, that Chandler broke the news in an interview Bianculli recently did with him for the NPR show "Fresh Air With Terry Gross":

Chandler confirmed that a deal to spread costs and continue the series had been struck. All that was left, he said Wednesday, was to "dot the i's and cross the t's." He was scheduled, and planning, to report back to Austin in June, he said, to start filming season three on location.

However, show runner Jason Katims told us not to start celebrating just yet -- he's hopeful, but cautions that the deal has not yet been finalized. (Previous reports indicated that NBC is negotiating with DirectTV to partner on the program, sharing costs and distribution rights.) A spokeswoman for Universal Media Studios, which produces the show, did not immediately return a phone call requesting comment. But it's likely that the last details may well be resolved by Wednesday, when the peacock network holds a news conference in New York to discuss its upcoming season.

In the meantime, die-hard FNL fans were already starting to celebrate. "YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!" was the general tenor of responses in the blogosphere.

-- Matea Gold and Maria Elena Fernandez

(Photo courtesy Michael Muller / NBC / AP)

“Friday Night Lights” show runner Jason Katims and his assistant, Jamie Duneier, are happy to be back in the office. But it will probably be a while before their writing staff joins them.

NBC has not decided if it will produce more episodes of “Friday Night Lights” for the spring. Katims will be attending several meetings this week with the network and Universal Media Studios, which produces it, and is hoping fans won’t have to wait until the fall to learn how the Smash Williams football story ends or if Jason Street is going to be a father.

“The most difficult part of this is that, when the strike ends, I think that everybody here will be celebrating that the strike ended and then the next question is, when are we going to get back to work?” Katims said. “Are we going to get back to work? It’s going to unfold differently for every show.”

Fifteen episodes of the football-centered drama have already aired, and Katims says he can complete five or six more — if given the chance. Always a ratings-challenged, critical darling, “Friday Night Lights” has been performing better since it moved to Fridays. But that doesn’t guarantee it a spot on the fall lineup.

“I’ve heard that serialized shows are less likely to come back this spring," he said. "And, of course, we’re on the eternal bubble, so we have to wait and see what they want to do.”

--Maria Elena Fernandez

And now, Panther fans, we wait.

 Wait to see if “Friday Night Lights” will be one of the shows that goes back into production, now that a tentative agreement has been reached in the Writers Guild of America strike that could allow  TV production to resume by next week.

We wait to see if NBC will renew a series whose passionate following falls far short of making it a hit.

 Wait to see if the producers of "FNL" will get offers to do a third season from a cable network (Hello, NBC-Universal-owned big-tent cable network USA).

 Wait to see if the creators and actors stay or move on.

 Last week at an "FNL" panel discussion at the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, "FNL" exec producer Jason Katims said he’s got a football arc in mind for the end of this season.

 I hope he gets to do it because I’ll tell you this, Panther fans: Last night’s episode of "FNL," the final one completed before the writers strike, felt dangerously close to ho-hum.

OK, let’s just say it—yawnster!

First of all, how can you end one week with an impassioned, pre-game pep talk from your fallen star, Smash Williams, and not begin the next week with the dag-gum game? It’s indicative of what has ailed "FNL" this season, the oft-cited criticism that the show gave up being about the outsized importance of high school football in a small Texas town and became a weekly teen soap occasionally interrupted by activity on the gridiron.

That’s a sweeping generalization, of course, 'cause we need some soap opera. This week, Smash lost his big-time college scholarship, ending up finally at a small school where he'll make an immediate impact. "FNL" has done a good job with his recruiting saga this season, which has effectively deepened his character (as my g'friend pointed out admiringly, he certainly cries a lot for a football player).

The big shocker last night was Street’s one-night stand of a few weeks back, a cute waitress, re-appearing to inform him that she’s pregnant. Impotent on so many levels, Street urges her to go through with the pregnancy.

“This is a miracle,” he tells her. “It’s a blessing from God.”

If I heard it right, the scene included one of the most unusual lines I’ve ever heard on network television, when Street says to her: “Even to get an erection with you, I had to go reflex instead of psychogenic. Which you were great with, by the way.”

Et tu, frank talk on "Grey's Anatomy"?

But we digress. We digress when we should point out that Lyla and Riggins just need to hook up; I’m sick of watching Jesus forced into service as their wing man. He’s got better things to do, kids!

 And while I offer kudos to actor/writer/director Peter Berg for creating the show-based-on-the-movie-based on the book, his guest shot  last night as an old flame of Tami Taylor’s reeked of self-indulgence.

Was he paying homage to J.R. Ewing?  Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones?

Most especially, that kind of scene-chewing robs the show of face time for more deserving characters—i.e. Buddy Garrity, the most unsung character on network TV.

I’m laying on the platitudes here because it’s desperation time, Panther fans, no time to be vamping like there’s no tomorrow. Because there is a tomorrow, and it’s probably coming fast, and when it arrives, that might very well be that.

--Paul Brownfield

(Photo courtesy Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times)

 

Panther fans, I saw the Panthers. They were all dressed up and on display, part of an evening with “Friday Night Lights.”

This was Thursday night at the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in North Hollywood, for a screening of last night’s episode and a panel discussion with the producers and cast (complete with mini red carpet outside).

Riggins was there, and Tyra, and Landry, and Lyla, and Coach Taylor and his wife, and their daughter Julie, but not Smash or Saracen or Street.

Speaking of Street, here's a plot spoiler alert (skip the first paragraph on the jump if you wish):

Would you a buy new car from Jason Street?

I would. But then, I was almost weeping for that character last night, watching him pull on that suit to go sell cars at Buddy Garrity’s dealership. Pity not Street, I know, for his physical condition; it was more the sight of him trying to close customers that stirred the cockles of my heart. For it had come to this: A star quarterback riding high on his abilities reduced to selling glory through the purchase of a Chevy Malibu.

Even Street’s pal Herc called him Willie Loman. Maybe it was all a little over the top, but pathos, Panther fans, doesn’t come much richer on “Friday Night Lights.”

Elsewhere — and at the risk of a harsh segue — Lila’s new Christian boyfriend is so not hot. Or put another way, the dude can’t weather the extreme FNL close-up with the grace and beauty of our fair wastrel Tim Riggins.

Riggins' declaration of love last night to Lila, however, didn’t play, even though he lit candles and made a chicken dish. The whole sequence felt kind of rushed; in football parlance, it was a pass on third and long that fell short.

Because where did it leave Riggins? Once again standing in that cruel Dillon night, brooding like a poster of himself.

Maybe it’s time Riggins and seemingly 27-year-old Tyra got back together. They were reunited in volleyball practice anyway, Tyra conned into joining the team by new coach Tami Taylor. Riggins, for some reason, is the team’s ball boy, and Tyra found her anger mojo by spiking balls at his head.

I can think of worse ideas for foreplay, Panthers fans. Speaking of which, Landry seems to have met his match in the new nerd-i-licious girl in his physics class. What a long strange trip it’s been for our boy Landry this season: He killed Tyra's stalker and got the hottie girl of his dreams in the bargain, then confessed to the deed (of the killing), but was given immunity.

Then he lost Tyra.

It’s amazing Landry’s kept his appetite, much less his sense of humor. And who knows, maybe he’ll have to fill in as an emergency running back for the Panthers, now that Smash has been suspended for the rest of the season for coming to his baby sister’s rescue and hitting that boy in the movie theater.

Here was a storyline that played out well: Smash didn’t do anything wrong, really, except (he thought) issue an apology for the incident that he knew to be false. Then he unburdened himself only to land into more trouble.

Smash was betrayed by his ego, but also by his honesty. A great scene at the end of the episode showed this: Smash and his mother and Coach Taylor sitting in the Williams' living room, the boy bewildered by the news of his suspension, and the adults crestfallen.

By the way, what was that song they were playing?

Paul Brownfield

(Photo courtesy NBC.com)

Panther fans, are you familiar with the term realpolitik?

I’m no poli-sci expert, but realpolitik (and Wikipedia backs me up on this) refers to the art of diplomacy and doing politics based on desired outcomes as opposed to things like ethics and core values.

In world affairs, realpolitik means you sometimes do business with the bad guys, and on “Friday Night Lights,” it meant Smash’s mother stared racism in the face and, instead of getting her back up, backed down in the interest of unhinging her son from the gold-digging white girlfriend hoping to ride his coattails into life as a pro football wife.

Yes, it was a little shocking when the gold-digging girlfriend’s parents invited the Smashes for dinner, only to announce that they didn’t think Dillon was any place for interracial relationships. So much for dessert and coffee.

You expected Mrs. Smash to get indignant, but only Smash did; his mother pursed her lips, softened and quietly agreed that the two kids should break up.

Well-played, Mrs. Smash. You sensed an opportunity to free your son from this too-smooth little tart on his arm and took it; Henry Kissinger himself would approve.

Smash, however, was less sanguine and later used his baby sister to sneak a make-out assignation with his girl at the multiplex, only to have his sister get harassed by one of the white boys in the house.

“You got one of ours, why shouldn’t we get one of yours? Know what I mean?” the white boy taunted Smash in a Dillon suddenly revealed as a small-minded place.

FNL was all about the socio-economic/racial politics of the town Friday night; it was as if the writers woke up from their Riggins-induced fog and realized they’d forgotten their show was also supposed to be about the makeup of this Texas town.

So they overloaded the episode with echoing B-stories about class, race, religion. Good ol’ Buddy Garrity invited his boarder Santiago to have his friends over, only to remove his valuables from his home, worried that Santiago’s ex-homies would steal from him (Buddy later put the stuff back, caving into his softer side).

Saracen’s Guatemalan girlfriend announced she was returning home to her family — because what chance their love in gringo Dillon? — while Lila gave sex-advice to people calling in to a Christian radio show, only to engage in some flirting herself with the show’s host, which ended in a kiss.

I’ve lost track of that whole realpolitik motif, but I think when you kiss the boy counseling God over sex without love you’re straying into dangerous diplomatic waters. Or, to put it another way, where does Kissinger stand on premarital heavy petting?

But I liked this episode of FNL because it felt removed from the claustrophobia of recent weeks, most of which focused on Coach and Tami’s travails as new parents again, while we followed hottie wastrel Riggins’ search for a place to lay his weary head.

I know our boy Riggins is cute, ladies, but really — Dillon is more than a pretty face. Or Tami’s post-partum mania (Tami’s a great character, but they’ve overplayed her hand too).

Friday night, we even got to glimpse the long-lost character Jason Street (QB1 in the house!), and Street’s friend Herc, and assistant coach Mac, while Landry was in a scene with Saracen, learning that his bud was sleeping with “the hot maid,” as Landry called her.

FNL is always at its best when it seems to move easily among its wealth of characters, the natural voyeurism of the hand-held camera work making it feel as if we’re a fly on so many walls. If the ax of cancellation didn’t hang over this show’s head, FNL might even be allowed to relax into the kind of sneaky-smart show about innocence lost that it’s always been.

-- Paul Brownfield

First of all, I’d like to apologize for calling the coach of Larabee a jerk last week. How was I to know his wife is terribly sick?

Still, what he did to Riggins at the end of that game, coming out on the field and tackling him like that — it was not only crazy but dangerous. Particularly at Dillon High, where memories of Jason Street’s devastating spinal injury must still be fresh.

Sidebar: Where is the Street character? Does actor Scott Porter have a particularly busy film schedule of late? Incidentally, if you happen to be flipping through your HBOs and see that the Drew Barrymore/Hugh Grant rom-com “Music and Lyrics” is on, check out Street as an effete British pop star. 

Anyway: Wouldn’t the sight of a coach blind-siding Riggins have painful echoes of the Street injury for Coach Taylor?  Maybe, but on “Friday Night Lights” loss of family trumps all; as soon as he heard about the Larabee coach’s wife, Coach Taylor apologized and left the man to his private anguish.

That sort of appropriateness is very FNL. TV seasons tend to have a values candidate, and last night’s episode seemed to go out of its way to re-assert the show’s status as our nation’s prime-time after-school special. Julie came correct to her father about getting drunk at that party; Tami came correct to her sister about loving her but wanting her to move out; Smash canoodled with the two-timing promises of recruiters from big-time schools before choosing the right one—TMU, up the road in Austin.

Why is that better than going to Alabama or Michigan? Because TMU is the known world. It’s close to home. And home is where family is. I got misty there, when Smash and his Mom embraced over his decision to remain close to the nest, but how much more layered would this relationship be if Mom had even a smidgeon of the son’s hunger for big-time stardom, or thought Michigan offered a unique  opportunity for her son?

As it is she’s Coach Taylor -- fearsome, morally correct --a nd Smash is Julie, wide-eyed, bushy-tailed.

Elsewhere: Riggins reunited with his brother, but ended his streak of Job-like forbearance by stealing three grand from that loony, ferret-owning drug dealer with whom he’d once stayed. Hmm, wonder if this will end badly.

Riggins is eye candy, no doubt, but I still feel FNL has over-played the Riggins card this season, at the expense of Saracen or Street or Buddy Garrity.

Come to think of it, why isn’t Riggins being recruited?  Isn’t he a pretty gaudy offensive/defensive talent?  Doesn't he make big plays for the state champion Dillon Panthers? Or do the recruiters just intuit he’s destined to remain in Dillon, a gazer-out at the larger world more than a participant?

-- Paul Brownfield

(Photo courtesy NBC)

Welcome back, Panther fans, and happy new year.

Must say I found it very easy to get sucked right back into FNL after the holiday break.

Nothing like a good injection of testosterone to get the Panther blood going again — those jerks from neighboring Larabee High, with their jerk coach, invading Panther-ville after a tornado sweeps through the area and levels the rival school.

No Panthers were affected by the twister, although Julie and Riggins were out shopping, and Riggins cradled Coach’s daughter in his arms while the windows of the store blew out. This yielded the most memorable line of the night, Julie’s friend Lois later asking dreamily: “What does he smell like?”

Riggins is the best-looking wastrel on TV. Lately he’d been staying with Coach, where last night he was touching off major hormonal activity in the Coach household — something bordering on soft porn, with Riggins as the cable guy.

He fixed their cable, you see. But later in the hour, after chivalrously getting a drunk Julie home from a party, Coach saw him tucking her in and thought the worst.

Thus did our Tim once again have to head out into that hard, dark Dillon night. Everyone wants him but who will take care of him?  FNL has been hitting this theme hard this season, maybe too hard at times. Riggins left the Taylors like he leaves every house he’s driven from: In his truck, wearing a martyr’s grin, those eyes crying out for a hug.

Meanwhile, seemingly 27-year-old high school senior Tyra broke up with newly un-guilty Landry, and slightly older Pam Garrity officially ended it with car dealer hubby Buddy. Of the former relationship, I found Tyra’s reasons for breaking up with Landry (in essence, you make me feel too much, too taken care of, I prefer flaky guys I don’t have to need) totally convincing.

Buddy’s plea to his wife (in essence, I love you) was comparatively thin on nuance. It did, however, put Coach Taylor and Buddy in a scene together, the two having a confab of mutual support in the laundromat.

Coach was stressed about the jerk coach with whom he had to share a practice field, while Buddy was laid low by the news that his cheatin’ ways was driving his wife to marry another man.

Of all the various pairings on FNL, Buddy and Coach is my favorite. The smooth-talking fixer and the hard-nosed moralist, both wanting to win so badly on Friday night. It’s a match made in Dillon.

Now go get dag-gum Larabee!

-- Paul Brownfield

And so we arrive at the holiday break for “Friday Night Lights,” in the midst of a sophomore slump.

"FNL" no longer feels special. Is it me or the show? 

Must. Stop. Comparing. This. Season. To. Last.

I was unmoved by the goings-on last night, Panther fans. I was even annoyed at Landry for seeming so badly to want martyrdom, though in the end he decided (I guess) that he was acting in self-defense that night he clubbed Tyra’s attacker to death. The old deception-confession-redemption play seemed to bring to a climax the fateful act of violence that kicked off this season.

I could otherwise recap last night’s episode (in brief, Julie fought more with her mom, Riggins arrived like a wet puppy at Coach Taylor’s house, Street found waitress love, Saracen continued to find home healthcare worker love, Buddy Garrity got the paroled kid Santiago to find football love).

But here’s a few things I’m wishing for "FNL" (or what remains of the show during a writers-strike-marred season) in the new year.

• Fewer scenes of Landry and Tyra staring at each other in fierce close-up.

I mean, really, I think I could sketch every pore of Landry’s face, and I don’t sketch.

• A new haircut for Tyra, who should break up with Landry for God’s sake.

That bob she’s wearing this season isn’t doing her any favors; she looks like a soccer mom without the ball, the minivan or the kids. I get that she’s supposed to have newfound maturity, but did the producers not trust her acting talents? 

• A bed for Riggins at the TV Home for Wayward Cute Boys.

Does he now move in with the Taylors and consummate a fierce -- but age-appropriate for both -- affair with daughter Julie? Would Tami Taylor stand for it? 

• A new boyfriend for Lila.

That holier-than-thou expression she’s forever wearing -- dropping in on episodes as if she’s Joan of Arc of Dillon, or maybe just “The Ghost Whisperer” -- has transformed her into a real bore.

• A new story direction for Street.

What does the character do, other than take impetuous trips to Mexico for miracle cures and wheel onto episodes every now and then?

• Less sighing, more playing.

Have budget constraints made it difficult for the producers to stage games? I think the Panthers won their game Friday night, but the result was not shown. I believe their record this season is 2-5. Or 5-2. Or maybe 3-3. You’d have to ask Coach Taylor, although I'm not certain he knows. News conference, anyone?

-- Paul Brownfield

They still play games, don’t they?

“Friday Night Lights” has been awfully short on football this season. Not so much football scenes as a sense of the season. This week’s episode opened with the Panthers getting trounced 37-0. But don’t ask me why, or what their record is, or how many games they’ve played. Because I don’t know.

Aren’t our boys supposed to be defending their state title? Are they experiencing a championship hangover? Did they lose too many players to graduation? Is it the turmoil of a season stunted by the surprise return of Coach Taylor and the sudden departure of that other guy?

It’s hard not to wonder whether Coach doesn’t long for the college job he left behind in Austin. Because that blue Panther cap-and-shirt ensemble is beginning to evoke not so much head coach of a storied football program as manager of a muffler shop.

That wandering puppy thing with Riggins was getting terribly old, so thank God "Friday Night Lights" had him arrive at a story line at the end of the episode.

I get that Riggins is adrift and hurting oh-so-much inside, awaiting reinstatement to the football team by Coach Taylor. But his brooding love affair with the camera was coming at the expense of the character.

Now he will apparently move in with a guy who doesn't wear a shirt around the house and has ferrets for pets.

Come to think of it, there was lots of movin' in last night. That Santiago kid moved in with booster Buddy Garrity; Tim moved in (temporarily) with Tyra (who's become a bit too officious and goody-goody, if you ask me), before moving in with the ferret guy.

Panther fans, a strike-shortened TV season now threatens our beloved "Friday Night Lights."

Not to be too doom-and-gloom here, but the forecast is troubling: Six episodes of "FNL" have now aired. According to the Show Tracker TV grid, NBC expects 15 of the 22 episodes ordered to be completed, which means we might already be flirting with the halfway point of Season 2. Of equal concern, if not more, is this: If the Writers Guild of America strike effectively curtails the 2007-08 TV season, does "FNL," a little-show-that-could, have any chance of renewal for a third go-around? Might we have to say goodbye to Coach Taylor, Coach's wife, Riggins, Saracen, et al without a proper group hug?

Hear me, Panther faithful, for I am worried. As if to tweak our coming nostalgia, the latest episode of the show hit some first-season grace notes. (Although why no game? Can we please have a game!)

In football, pass interference is called when a defender unlawfully prevents a receiver from attempting to catch the ball. The penalty is a violation of space, in essence. "Friday Night Lights" keeps violating my space -- the ability to enjoy the characters and fabric of a town that were so richly established in Season 1.

Has the show completely lost its way? No. But it definitely feels as if it has detoured.

This week found Lila Garrity showing up down Mexico way, where the paralyzed QB Jason Street is about to undergo a highly iffy miracle-cure surgery, with the brooding hottie fullback Tim Riggins along for the beer. Enter born-again Christian Lila, Street's ex-fiancee, summoned by Riggins, her ex-fling, to talk Street out of the procedure.

Their successful intervention ended in an extremely suggestive three-way of tenderness at a honky-tonk bar, Lila seductively caressing Street, then brushing lips with Riggins, only to declare, "I gotta go pray."

What do we have here, "Y Tu Lila Tambien"?

Let us take a moment to go in praise of casting. In this, "Friday Night Lights" has rarely goofed. Families -- the Taylors, the Garritys, Matt Saracen and his father, Smash Williams and his mother -- actually look like families, and this season the show has exceeded itself in the casting of Landry's policeman father, played by Glenn Morshower.

Morshower not only looks like Jesse Plemmons' Landry but also exudes the rectitude that lies behind his son's goofball-genius persona.

The Landry kid is the character the producers of "FNL" decided to gamble on this season, changing his persona from sidekick to soul searching after he came to the aid of his high school crush, Tyra, killing her stalker.

The two then dumped the body in the river. Their cover-up seemed to get resolved in this week's episode, after Tyra was called to police headquarters to ID the body found in the river as the guy who'd attempted to rape her.

Is it case closed?  Doubtful.

First of all, what's with the goofy, soapy mid-episode recap, sponsored by J.C. Penney?

I realize that embedded advertising is the future in a DVR world. But, please, I don't need to be told what's just happened in the first half-hour of "Friday Night Lights."

The show has me at "hello"! The corporate-sponsored recaps are both no big deal and a microcosm of a sophomore jinx, demeaning a quality show with faux intrigue.

We are moving inevitably, inexorably, gloriously to the episode in which Coach Taylor returns to Dillon to re-take over Panther football.

Right?

It has to work out this way. Coach’s coach (wife Tami) is falling apart. Uber-booster Buddy Garrity is falling apart. Coach’s daughter Julie is turning into a harpy. Riggins is adrift again. And the Panthers haven’t even opened up defense of their state title!

You could practically subtitle this second season "Where's Papa?" For all of Dillon, it seems, is moody and unstable, what with Coach Taylor up in Austin.

A wise friend once told me: "The best job you'll ever have is the one before the one you thought you always wanted." And so it is with Coach Taylor, who isn't so much coaching college ball in Austin as babysitting bling-ridden players.

As that guy on the radio in Dillon would say, Welcome back, Panther fans, to a second season of the one and only "Friday Night Lights."

Fade in: End of summer, and Panther footballers, state champs, are frolicking in the town pool with rally girls. Brainy nerd Landry's still mooning for party-girl-turned-chaste-homebody Tyra; he even goes out for the football team to impress her. Coach Taylor is coaching college ball in Austin, while Coach's coach (his wife, Tami) is about to burst with their second child. First child Julie is a lifeguard; her beau, the shy, word-swallowing quarterback Matt Saracen, watches her flirt with a fellow lifeguard.

He's an older dude ironically dubbed "The Swede." "In some situations," Landry says, as Saracen regards the Swede situation with a wounded look, "you need to ask yourself, WWRD — what would Riggins do?"

'Friday Night Lights' in timeout until fall?

“Friday Night Lights” show runner Jason Katims and his assistant, Jamie Duneier, are happy to be back in the office. But it will probably be a while before their writing staff joins them.

NBC has not decided if it will produce more episodes of “Friday Night Lights” for the spring. Katims will be attending several meetings this week with the network and Universal Media Studios, which produces it, and is hoping fans won’t have to wait until the fall to learn how the Smash Williams football story ends or if Jason Street is going to be a father.

“The most difficult part of this is that, when the strike ends, I think that everybody here will be celebrating that the strike ended and then the next question is, when are we going to get back to work?” Katims said. “Are we going to get back to work? It’s going to unfold differently for every show.”

Fifteen episodes of the football-centered drama have already aired, and Katims says he can complete five or six more — if given the chance. Always a ratings-challenged, critical darling, “Friday Night Lights” has been performing better since it moved to Fridays. But that doesn’t guarantee it a spot on the fall lineup.

“I’ve heard that serialized shows are less likely to come back this spring," he said. "And, of course, we’re on the eternal bubble, so we have to wait and see what they want to do.”

--Maria Elena Fernandez

And now, Panther fans, we wait.

 Wait to see if “Friday Night Lights” will be one of the shows that goes back into production, now that a tentative agreement has been reached in the Writers Guild of America strike that could allow  TV production to resume by next week.

We wait to see if NBC will renew a series whose passionate following falls far short of making it a hit.

 Wait to see if the producers of "FNL" will get offers to do a third season from a cable network (Hello, NBC-Universal-owned big-tent cable network USA).

 Wait to see if the creators and actors stay or move on.

 Last week at an "FNL" panel discussion at the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, "FNL" exec producer Jason Katims said he’s got a football arc in mind for the end of this season.

 I hope he gets to do it because I’ll tell you this, Panther fans: Last night’s episode of "FNL," the final one completed before the writers strike, felt dangerously close to ho-hum.

OK, let’s just say it—yawnster!

First of all, how can you end one week with an impassioned, pre-game pep talk from your fallen star, Smash Williams, and not begin the next week with the dag-gum game? It’s indicative of what has ailed "FNL" this season, the oft-cited criticism that the show gave up being about the outsized importance of high school football in a small Texas town and became a weekly teen soap occasionally interrupted by activity on the gridiron.

That’s a sweeping generalization, of course, 'cause we need some soap opera. This week, Smash lost his big-time college scholarship, ending up finally at a small school where he'll make an immediate impact. "FNL" has done a good job with his recruiting saga this season, which has effectively deepened his character (as my g'friend pointed out admiringly, he certainly cries a lot for a football player).

The big shocker last night was Street’s one-night stand of a few weeks back, a cute waitress, re-appearing to inform him that she’s pregnant. Impotent on so many levels, Street urges her to go through with the pregnancy.

“This is a miracle,” he tells her. “It’s a blessing from God.”

If I heard it right, the scene included one of the most unusual lines I’ve ever heard on network television, when Street says to her: “Even to get an erection with you, I had to go reflex instead of psychogenic. Which you were great with, by the way.”

Et tu, frank talk on "Grey's Anatomy"?

But we digress. We digress when we should point out that Lyla and Riggins just need to hook up; I’m sick of watching Jesus forced into service as their wing man. He’s got better things to do, kids!

 And while I offer kudos to actor/writer/director Peter Berg for creating the show-based-on-the-movie-based on the book, his guest shot  last night as an old flame of Tami Taylor’s reeked of self-indulgence.

Was he paying homage to J.R. Ewing?  Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones?

Most especially, that kind of scene-chewing robs the show of face time for more deserving characters—i.e. Buddy Garrity, the most unsung character on network TV.

I’m laying on the platitudes here because it’s desperation time, Panther fans, no time to be vamping like there’s no tomorrow. Because there is a tomorrow, and it’s probably coming fast, and when it arrives, that might very well be that.

--Paul Brownfield

(Photo courtesy Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times)

 

Panther fans, I saw the Panthers. They were all dressed up and on display, part of an evening with “Friday Night Lights.”

This was Thursday night at the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in North Hollywood, for a screening of last night’s episode and a panel discussion with the producers and cast (complete with mini red carpet outside).

Riggins was there, and Tyra, and Landry, and Lyla, and Coach Taylor and his wife, and their daughter Julie, but not Smash or Saracen or Street.

Speaking of Street, here's a plot spoiler alert (skip the first paragraph on the jump if you wish):

Would you a buy new car from Jason Street?

I would. But then, I was almost weeping for that character last night, watching him pull on that suit to go sell cars at Buddy Garrity’s dealership. Pity not Street, I know, for his physical condition; it was more the sight of him trying to close customers that stirred the cockles of my heart. For it had come to this: A star quarterback riding high on his abilities reduced to selling glory through the purchase of a Chevy Malibu.

Even Street’s pal Herc called him Willie Loman. Maybe it was all a little over the top, but pathos, Panther fans, doesn’t come much richer on “Friday Night Lights.”

Elsewhere — and at the risk of a harsh segue — Lila’s new Christian boyfriend is so not hot. Or put another way, the dude can’t weather the extreme FNL close-up with the grace and beauty of our fair wastrel Tim Riggins.

Riggins' declaration of love last night to Lila, however, didn’t play, even though he lit candles and made a chicken dish. The whole sequence felt kind of rushed; in football parlance, it was a pass on third and long that fell short.

Because where did it leave Riggins? Once again standing in that cruel Dillon night, brooding like a poster of himself.

Maybe it’s time Riggins and seemingly 27-year-old Tyra got back together. They were reunited in volleyball practice anyway, Tyra conned into joining the team by new coach Tami Taylor. Riggins, for some reason, is the team’s ball boy, and Tyra found her anger mojo by spiking balls at his head.

I can think of worse ideas for foreplay, Panthers fans. Speaking of which, Landry seems to have met his match in the new nerd-i-licious girl in his physics class. What a long strange trip it’s been for our boy Landry this season: He killed Tyra's stalker and got the hottie girl of his dreams in the bargain, then confessed to the deed (of the killing), but was given immunity.

Then he lost Tyra.

It’s amazing Landry’s kept his appetite, much less his sense of humor. And who knows, maybe he’ll have to fill in as an emergency running back for the Panthers, now that Smash has been suspended for the rest of the season for coming to his baby sister’s rescue and hitting that boy in the movie theater.

Here was a storyline that played out well: Smash didn’t do anything wrong, really, except (he thought) issue an apology for the incident that he knew to be false. Then he unburdened himself only to land into more trouble.

Smash was betrayed by his ego, but also by his honesty. A great scene at the end of the episode showed this: Smash and his mother and Coach Taylor sitting in the Williams' living room, the boy bewildered by the news of his suspension, and the adults crestfallen.

By the way, what was that song they were playing?

Paul Brownfield

(Photo courtesy NBC.com)

Panther fans, are you familiar with the term realpolitik?

I’m no poli-sci expert, but realpolitik (and Wikipedia backs me up on this) refers to the art of diplomacy and doing politics based on desired outcomes as opposed to things like ethics and core values.

In world affairs, realpolitik means you sometimes do business with the bad guys, and on “Friday Night Lights,” it meant Smash’s mother stared racism in the face and, instead of getting her back up, backed down in the interest of unhinging her son from the gold-digging white girlfriend hoping to ride his coattails into life as a pro football wife.

Yes, it was a little shocking when the gold-digging girlfriend’s parents invited the Smashes for dinner, only to announce that they didn’t think Dillon was any place for interracial relationships. So much for dessert and coffee.

You expected Mrs. Smash to get indignant, but only Smash did; his mother pursed her lips, softened and quietly agreed that the two kids should break up.

Well-played, Mrs. Smash. You sensed an opportunity to free your son from this too-smooth little tart on his arm and took it; Henry Kissinger himself would approve.

Smash, however, was less sanguine and later used his baby sister to sneak a make-out assignation with his girl at the multiplex, only to have his sister get harassed by one of the white boys in the house.

“You got one of ours, why shouldn’t we get one of yours? Know what I mean?” the white boy taunted Smash in a Dillon suddenly revealed as a small-minded place.

FNL was all about the socio-economic/racial politics of the town Friday night; it was as if the writers woke up from their Riggins-induced fog and realized they’d forgotten their show was also supposed to be about the makeup of this Texas town.

So they overloaded the episode with echoing B-stories about class, race, religion. Good ol’ Buddy Garrity invited his boarder Santiago to have his friends over, only to remove his valuables from his home, worried that Santiago’s ex-homies would steal from him (Buddy later put the stuff back, caving into his softer side).

Saracen’s Guatemalan girlfriend announced she was returning home to her family — because what chance their love in gringo Dillon? — while Lila gave sex-advice to people calling in to a Christian radio show, only to engage in some flirting herself with the show’s host, which ended in a kiss.

I’ve lost track of that whole realpolitik motif, but I think when you kiss the boy counseling God over sex without love you’re straying into dangerous diplomatic waters. Or, to put it another way, where does Kissinger stand on premarital heavy petting?

But I liked this episode of FNL because it felt removed from the claustrophobia of recent weeks, most of which focused on Coach and Tami’s travails as new parents again, while we followed hottie wastrel Riggins’ search for a place to lay his weary head.

I know our boy Riggins is cute, ladies, but really — Dillon is more than a pretty face. Or Tami’s post-partum mania (Tami’s a great character, but they’ve overplayed her hand too).

Friday night, we even got to glimpse the long-lost character Jason Street (QB1 in the house!), and Street’s friend Herc, and assistant coach Mac, while Landry was in a scene with Saracen, learning that his bud was sleeping with “the hot maid,” as Landry called her.

FNL is always at its best when it seems to move easily among its wealth of characters, the natural voyeurism of the hand-held camera work making it feel as if we’re a fly on so many walls. If the ax of cancellation didn’t hang over this show’s head, FNL might even be allowed to relax into the kind of sneaky-smart show about innocence lost that it’s always been.

-- Paul Brownfield

First of all, I’d like to apologize for calling the coach of Larabee a jerk last week. How was I to know his wife is terribly sick?

Still, what he did to Riggins at the end of that game, coming out on the field and tackling him like that — it was not only crazy but dangerous. Particularly at Dillon High, where memories of Jason Street’s devastating spinal injury must still be fresh.

Sidebar: Where is the Street character? Does actor Scott Porter have a particularly busy film schedule of late? Incidentally, if you happen to be flipping through your HBOs and see that the Drew Barrymore/Hugh Grant rom-com “Music and Lyrics” is on, check out Street as an effete British pop star. 

Anyway: Wouldn’t the sight of a coach blind-siding Riggins have painful echoes of the Street injury for Coach Taylor?  Maybe, but on “Friday Night Lights” loss of family trumps all; as soon as he heard about the Larabee coach’s wife, Coach Taylor apologized and left the man to his private anguish.

That sort of appropriateness is very FNL. TV seasons tend to have a values candidate, and last night’s episode seemed to go out of its way to re-assert the show’s status as our nation’s prime-time after-school special. Julie came correct to her father about getting drunk at that party; Tami came correct to her sister about loving her but wanting her to move out; Smash canoodled with the two-timing promises of recruiters from big-time schools before choosing the right one—TMU, up the road in Austin.

Why is that better than going to Alabama or Michigan? Because TMU is the known world. It’s close to home. And home is where family is. I got misty there, when Smash and his Mom embraced over his decision to remain close to the nest, but how much more layered would this relationship be if Mom had even a smidgeon of the son’s hunger for big-time stardom, or thought Michigan offered a unique  opportunity for her son?

As it is she’s Coach Taylor -- fearsome, morally correct --a nd Smash is Julie, wide-eyed, bushy-tailed.

Elsewhere: Riggins reunited with his brother, but ended his streak of Job-like forbearance by stealing three grand from that loony, ferret-owning drug dealer with whom he’d once stayed. Hmm, wonder if this will end badly.

Riggins is eye candy, no doubt, but I still feel FNL has over-played the Riggins card this season, at the expense of Saracen or Street or Buddy Garrity.

Come to think of it, why isn’t Riggins being recruited?  Isn’t he a pretty gaudy offensive/defensive talent?  Doesn't he make big plays for the state champion Dillon Panthers? Or do the recruiters just intuit he’s destined to remain in Dillon, a gazer-out at the larger world more than a participant?

-- Paul Brownfield

(Photo courtesy NBC)

Welcome back, Panther fans, and happy new year.

Must say I found it very easy to get sucked right back into FNL after the holiday break.

Nothing like a good injection of testosterone to get the Panther blood going again — those jerks from neighboring Larabee High, with their jerk coach, invading Panther-ville after a tornado sweeps through the area and levels the rival school.

No Panthers were affected by the twister, although Julie and Riggins were out shopping, and Riggins cradled Coach’s daughter in his arms while the windows of the store blew out. This yielded the most memorable line of the night, Julie’s friend Lois later asking dreamily: “What does he smell like?”

Riggins is the best-looking wastrel on TV. Lately he’d been staying with Coach, where last night he was touching off major hormonal activity in the Coach household — something bordering on soft porn, with Riggins as the cable guy.

He fixed their cable, you see. But later in the hour, after chivalrously getting a drunk Julie home from a party, Coach saw him tucking her in and thought the worst.

Thus did our Tim once again have to head out into that hard, dark Dillon night. Everyone wants him but who will take care of him?  FNL has been hitting this theme hard this season, maybe too hard at times. Riggins left the Taylors like he leaves every house he’s driven from: In his truck, wearing a martyr’s grin, those eyes crying out for a hug.

Meanwhile, seemingly 27-year-old high school senior Tyra broke up with newly un-guilty Landry, and slightly older Pam Garrity officially ended it with car dealer hubby Buddy. Of the former relationship, I found Tyra’s reasons for breaking up with Landry (in essence, you make me feel too much, too taken care of, I prefer flaky guys I don’t have to need) totally convincing.

Buddy’s plea to his wife (in essence, I love you) was comparatively thin on nuance. It did, however, put Coach Taylor and Buddy in a scene together, the two having a confab of mutual support in the laundromat.

Coach was stressed about the jerk coach with whom he had to share a practice field, while Buddy was laid low by the news that his cheatin’ ways was driving his wife to marry another man.

Of all the various pairings on FNL, Buddy and Coach is my favorite. The smooth-talking fixer and the hard-nosed moralist, both wanting to win so badly on Friday night. It’s a match made in Dillon.

Now go get dag-gum Larabee!

-- Paul Brownfield

And so we arrive at the holiday break for “Friday Night Lights,” in the midst of a sophomore slump.

"FNL" no longer feels special. Is it me or the show? 

Must. Stop. Comparing. This. Season. To. Last.

I was unmoved by the goings-on last night, Panther fans. I was even annoyed at Landry for seeming so badly to want martyrdom, though in the end he decided (I guess) that he was acting in self-defense that night he clubbed Tyra’s attacker to death. The old deception-confession-redemption play seemed to bring to a climax the fateful act of violence that kicked off this season.

I could otherwise recap last night’s episode (in brief, Julie fought more with her mom, Riggins arrived like a wet puppy at Coach Taylor’s house, Street found waitress love, Saracen continued to find home healthcare worker love, Buddy Garrity got the paroled kid Santiago to find football love).

But here’s a few things I’m wishing for "FNL" (or what remains of the show during a writers-strike-marred season) in the new year.

• Fewer scenes of Landry and Tyra staring at each other in fierce close-up.

I mean, really, I think I could sketch every pore of Landry’s face, and I don’t sketch.

• A new haircut for Tyra, who should break up with Landry for God’s sake.

That bob she’s wearing this season isn’t doing her any favors; she looks like a soccer mom without the ball, the minivan or the kids. I get that she’s supposed to have newfound maturity, but did the producers not trust her acting talents? 

• A bed for Riggins at the TV Home for Wayward Cute Boys.

Does he now move in with the Taylors and consummate a fierce -- but age-appropriate for both -- affair with daughter Julie? Would Tami Taylor stand for it? 

• A new boyfriend for Lila.

That holier-than-thou expression she’s forever wearing -- dropping in on episodes as if she’s Joan of Arc of Dillon, or maybe just “The Ghost Whisperer” -- has transformed her into a real bore.

• A new story direction for Street.

What does the character do, other than take impetuous trips to Mexico for miracle cures and wheel onto episodes every now and then?

• Less sighing, more playing.

Have budget constraints made it difficult for the producers to stage games? I think the Panthers won their game Friday night, but the result was not shown. I believe their record this season is 2-5. Or 5-2. Or maybe 3-3. You’d have to ask Coach Taylor, although I'm not certain he knows. News conference, anyone?

-- Paul Brownfield

They still play games, don’t they?

“Friday Night Lights” has been awfully short on football this season. Not so much football scenes as a sense of the season. This week’s episode opened with the Panthers getting trounced 37-0. But don’t ask me why, or what their record is, or how many games they’ve played. Because I don’t know.

Aren’t our boys supposed to be defending their state title? Are they experiencing a championship hangover? Did they lose too many players to graduation? Is it the turmoil of a season stunted by the surprise return of Coach Taylor and the sudden departure of that other guy?

It’s hard not to wonder whether Coach doesn’t long for the college job he left behind in Austin. Because that blue Panther cap-and-shirt ensemble is beginning to evoke not so much head coach of a storied football program as manager of a muffler shop.

That wandering puppy thing with Riggins was getting terribly old, so thank God "Friday Night Lights" had him arrive at a story line at the end of the episode.

I get that Riggins is adrift and hurting oh-so-much inside, awaiting reinstatement to the football team by Coach Taylor. But his brooding love affair with the camera was coming at the expense of the character.

Now he will apparently move in with a guy who doesn't wear a shirt around the house and has ferrets for pets.

Come to think of it, there was lots of movin' in last night. That Santiago kid moved in with booster Buddy Garrity; Tim moved in (temporarily) with Tyra (who's become a bit too officious and goody-goody, if you ask me), before moving in with the ferret guy.

Panther fans, a strike-shortened TV season now threatens our beloved "Friday Night Lights."

Not to be too doom-and-gloom here, but the forecast is troubling: Six episodes of "FNL" have now aired. According to the Show Tracker TV grid, NBC expects 15 of the 22 episodes ordered to be completed, which means we might already be flirting with the halfway point of Season 2. Of equal concern, if not more, is this: If the Writers Guild of America strike effectively curtails the 2007-08 TV season, does "FNL," a little-show-that-could, have any chance of renewal for a third go-around? Might we have to say goodbye to Coach Taylor, Coach's wife, Riggins, Saracen, et al without a proper group hug?

Hear me, Panther faithful, for I am worried. As if to tweak our coming nostalgia, the latest episode of the show hit some first-season grace notes. (Although why no game? Can we please have a game!)

In football, pass interference is called when a defender unlawfully prevents a receiver from attempting to catch the ball. The penalty is a violation of space, in essence. "Friday Night Lights" keeps violating my space -- the ability to enjoy the characters and fabric of a town that were so richly established in Season 1.

Has the show completely lost its way? No. But it definitely feels as if it has detoured.

This week found Lila Garrity showing up down Mexico way, where the paralyzed QB Jason Street is about to undergo a highly iffy miracle-cure surgery, with the brooding hottie fullback Tim Riggins along for the beer. Enter born-again Christian Lila, Street's ex-fiancee, summoned by Riggins, her ex-fling, to talk Street out of the procedure.

Their successful intervention ended in an extremely suggestive three-way of tenderness at a honky-tonk bar, Lila seductively caressing Street, then brushing lips with Riggins, only to declare, "I gotta go pray."

What do we have here, "Y Tu Lila Tambien"?

Let us take a moment to go in praise of casting. In this, "Friday Night Lights" has rarely goofed. Families -- the Taylors, the Garritys, Matt Saracen and his father, Smash Williams and his mother -- actually look like families, and this season the show has exceeded itself in the casting of Landry's policeman father, played by Glenn Morshower.

Morshower not only looks like Jesse Plemmons' Landry but also exudes the rectitude that lies behind his son's goofball-genius persona.

The Landry kid is the character the producers of "FNL" decided to gamble on this season, changing his persona from sidekick to soul searching after he came to the aid of his high school crush, Tyra, killing her stalker.

The two then dumped the body in the river. Their cover-up seemed to get resolved in this week's episode, after Tyra was called to police headquarters to ID the body found in the river as the guy who'd attempted to rape her.

Is it case closed?  Doubtful.

First of all, what's with the goofy, soapy mid-episode recap, sponsored by J.C. Penney?

I realize that embedded advertising is the future in a DVR world. But, please, I don't need to be told what's just happened in the first half-hour of "Friday Night Lights."

The show has me at "hello"! The corporate-sponsored recaps are both no big deal and a microcosm of a sophomore jinx, demeaning a quality show with faux intrigue.

We are moving inevitably, inexorably, gloriously to the episode in which Coach Taylor returns to Dillon to re-take over Panther football.

Right?

It has to work out this way. Coach’s coach (wife Tami) is falling apart. Uber-booster Buddy Garrity is falling apart. Coach’s daughter Julie is turning into a harpy. Riggins is adrift again. And the Panthers haven’t even opened up defense of their state title!

You could practically subtitle this second season "Where's Papa?" For all of Dillon, it seems, is moody and unstable, what with Coach Taylor up in Austin.

A wise friend once told me: "The best job you'll ever have is the one before the one you thought you always wanted." And so it is with Coach Taylor, who isn't so much coaching college ball in Austin as babysitting bling-ridden players.

As that guy on the radio in Dillon would say, Welcome back, Panther fans, to a second season of the one and only "Friday Night Lights."

Fade in: End of summer, and Panther footballers, state champs, are frolicking in the town pool with rally girls. Brainy nerd Landry's still mooning for party-girl-turned-chaste-homebody Tyra; he even goes out for the football team to impress her. Coach Taylor is coaching college ball in Austin, while Coach's coach (his wife, Tami) is about to burst with their second child. First child Julie is a lifeguard; her beau, the shy, word-swallowing quarterback Matt Saracen, watches her flirt with a fellow lifeguard.

He's an older dude ironically dubbed "The Swede." "In some situations," Landry says, as Saracen regards the Swede situation with a wounded look, "you need to ask yourself, WWRD — what would Riggins do?"

'FNL': Is there a tomorrow?

And now, Panther fans, we wait.

 Wait to see if “Friday Night Lights” will be one of the shows that goes back into production, now that a tentative agreement has been reached in the Writers Guild of America strike that could allow  TV production to resume by next week.

We wait to see if NBC will renew a series whose passionate following falls far short of making it a hit.

 Wait to see if the producers of "FNL" will get offers to do a third season from a cable network (Hello, NBC-Universal-owned big-tent cable network USA).

 Wait to see if the creators and actors stay or move on.

 Last week at an "FNL" panel discussion at the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, "FNL" exec producer Jason Katims said he’s got a football arc in mind for the end of this season.

 I hope he gets to do it because I’ll tell you this, Panther fans: Last night’s episode of "FNL," the final one completed before the writers strike, felt dangerously close to ho-hum.

OK, let’s just say it—yawnster!

First of all, how can you end one week with an impassioned, pre-game pep talk from your fallen star, Smash Williams, and not begin the next week with the dag-gum game? It’s indicative of what has ailed "FNL" this season, the oft-cited criticism that the show gave up being about the outsized importance of high school football in a small Texas town and became a weekly teen soap occasionally interrupted by activity on the gridiron.

That’s a sweeping generalization, of course, 'cause we need some soap opera. This week, Smash lost his big-time college scholarship, ending up finally at a small school where he'll make an immediate impact. "FNL" has done a good job with his recruiting saga this season, which has effectively deepened his character (as my g'friend pointed out admiringly, he certainly cries a lot for a football player).

The big shocker last night was Street’s one-night stand of a few weeks back, a cute waitress, re-appearing to inform him that she’s pregnant. Impotent on so many levels, Street urges her to go through with the pregnancy.

“This is a miracle,” he tells her. “It’s a blessing from God.”

If I heard it right, the scene included one of the most unusual lines I’ve ever heard on network television, when Street says to her: “Even to get an erection with you, I had to go reflex instead of psychogenic. Which you were great with, by the way.”

Et tu, frank talk on "Grey's Anatomy"?

But we digress. We digress when we should point out that Lyla and Riggins just need to hook up; I’m sick of watching Jesus forced into service as their wing man. He’s got better things to do, kids!

 And while I offer kudos to actor/writer/director Peter Berg for creating the show-based-on-the-movie-based on the book, his guest shot  last night as an old flame of Tami Taylor’s reeked of self-indulgence.

Was he paying homage to J.R. Ewing?  Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones?

Most especially, that kind of scene-chewing robs the show of face time for more deserving characters—i.e. Buddy Garrity, the most unsung character on network TV.

I’m laying on the platitudes here because it’s desperation time, Panther fans, no time to be vamping like there’s no tomorrow. Because there is a tomorrow, and it’s probably coming fast, and when it arrives, that might very well be that.

--Paul Brownfield

(Photo courtesy Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times)

 

Panther fans, I saw the Panthers. They were all dressed up and on display, part of an evening with “Friday Night Lights.”

This was Thursday night at the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in North Hollywood, for a screening of last night’s episode and a panel discussion with the producers and cast (complete with mini red carpet outside).

Riggins was there, and Tyra, and Landry, and Lyla, and Coach Taylor and his wife, and their daughter Julie, but not Smash or Saracen or Street.

Speaking of Street, here's a plot spoiler alert (skip the first paragraph on the jump if you wish):

Would you a buy new car from Jason Street?

I would. But then, I was almost weeping for that character last night, watching him pull on that suit to go sell cars at Buddy Garrity’s dealership. Pity not Street, I know, for his physical condition; it was more the sight of him trying to close customers that stirred the cockles of my heart. For it had come to this: A star quarterback riding high on his abilities reduced to selling glory through the purchase of a Chevy Malibu.

Even Street’s pal Herc called him Willie Loman. Maybe it was all a little over the top, but pathos, Panther fans, doesn’t come much richer on “Friday Night Lights.”

Elsewhere — and at the risk of a harsh segue — Lila’s new Christian boyfriend is so not hot. Or put another way, the dude can’t weather the extreme FNL close-up with the grace and beauty of our fair wastrel Tim Riggins.

Riggins' declaration of love last night to Lila, however, didn’t play, even though he lit candles and made a chicken dish. The whole sequence felt kind of rushed; in football parlance, it was a pass on third and long that fell short.

Because where did it leave Riggins? Once again standing in that cruel Dillon night, brooding like a poster of himself.

Maybe it’s time Riggins and seemingly 27-year-old Tyra got back together. They were reunited in volleyball practice anyway, Tyra conned into joining the team by new coach Tami Taylor. Riggins, for some reason, is the team’s ball boy, and Tyra found her anger mojo by spiking balls at his head.

I can think of worse ideas for foreplay, Panthers fans. Speaking of which, Landry seems to have met his match in the new nerd-i-licious girl in his physics class. What a long strange trip it’s been for our boy Landry this season: He killed Tyra's stalker and got the hottie girl of his dreams in the bargain, then confessed to the deed (of the killing), but was given immunity.

Then he lost Tyra.

It’s amazing Landry’s kept his appetite, much less his sense of humor. And who knows, maybe he’ll have to fill in as an emergency running back for the Panthers, now that Smash has been suspended for the rest of the season for coming to his baby sister’s rescue and hitting that boy in the movie theater.

Here was a storyline that played out well: Smash didn’t do anything wrong, really, except (he thought) issue an apology for the incident that he knew to be false. Then he unburdened himself only to land into more trouble.

Smash was betrayed by his ego, but also by his honesty. A great scene at the end of the episode showed this: Smash and his mother and Coach Taylor sitting in the Williams' living room, the boy bewildered by the news of his suspension, and the adults crestfallen.

By the way, what was that song they were playing?

Paul Brownfield

(Photo courtesy NBC.com)

Panther fans, are you familiar with the term realpolitik?

I’m no poli-sci expert, but realpolitik (and Wikipedia backs me up on this) refers to the art of diplomacy and doing politics based on desired outcomes as opposed to things like ethics and core values.

In world affairs, realpolitik means you sometimes do business with the bad guys, and on “Friday Night Lights,” it meant Smash’s mother stared racism in the face and, instead of getting her back up, backed down in the interest of unhinging her son from the gold-digging white girlfriend hoping to ride his coattails into life as a pro football wife.

Yes, it was a little shocking when the gold-digging girlfriend’s parents invited the Smashes for dinner, only to announce that they didn’t think Dillon was any place for interracial relationships. So much for dessert and coffee.

You expected Mrs. Smash to get indignant, but only Smash did; his mother pursed her lips, softened and quietly agreed that the two kids should break up.

Well-played, Mrs. Smash. You sensed an opportunity to free your son from this too-smooth little tart on his arm and took it; Henry Kissinger himself would approve.

Smash, however, was less sanguine and later used his baby sister to sneak a make-out assignation with his girl at the multiplex, only to have his sister get harassed by one of the white boys in the house.

“You got one of ours, why shouldn’t we get one of yours? Know what I mean?” the white boy taunted Smash in a Dillon suddenly revealed as a small-minded place.

FNL was all about the socio-economic/racial politics of the town Friday night; it was as if the writers woke up from their Riggins-induced fog and realized they’d forgotten their show was also supposed to be about the makeup of this Texas town.

So they overloaded the episode with echoing B-stories about class, race, religion. Good ol’ Buddy Garrity invited his boarder Santiago to have his friends over, only to remove his valuables from his home, worried that Santiago’s ex-homies would steal from him (Buddy later put the stuff back, caving into his softer side).

Saracen’s Guatemalan girlfriend announced she was returning home to her family — because what chance their love in gringo Dillon? — while Lila gave sex-advice to people calling in to a Christian radio show, only to engage in some flirting herself with the show’s host, which ended in a kiss.

I’ve lost track of that whole realpolitik motif, but I think when you kiss the boy counseling God over sex without love you’re straying into dangerous diplomatic waters. Or, to put it another way, where does Kissinger stand on premarital heavy petting?

But I liked this episode of FNL because it felt removed from the claustrophobia of recent weeks, most of which focused on Coach and Tami’s travails as new parents again, while we followed hottie wastrel Riggins’ search for a place to lay his weary head.

I know our boy Riggins is cute, ladies, but really — Dillon is more than a pretty face. Or Tami’s post-partum mania (Tami’s a great character, but they’ve overplayed her hand too).

Friday night, we even got to glimpse the long-lost character Jason Street (QB1 in the house!), and Street’s friend Herc, and assistant coach Mac, while Landry was in a scene with Saracen, learning that his bud was sleeping with “the hot maid,” as Landry called her.

FNL is always at its best when it seems to move easily among its wealth of characters, the natural voyeurism of the hand-held camera work making it feel as if we’re a fly on so many walls. If the ax of cancellation didn’t hang over this show’s head, FNL might even be allowed to relax into the kind of sneaky-smart show about innocence lost that it’s always been.

-- Paul Brownfield

First of all, I’d like to apologize for calling the coach of Larabee a jerk last week. How was I to know his wife is terribly sick?

Still, what he did to Riggins at the end of that game, coming out on the field and tackling him like that — it was not only crazy but dangerous. Particularly at Dillon High, where memories of Jason Street’s devastating spinal injury must still be fresh.

Sidebar: Where is the Street character? Does actor Scott Porter have a particularly busy film schedule of late? Incidentally, if you happen to be flipping through your HBOs and see that the Drew Barrymore/Hugh Grant rom-com “Music and Lyrics” is on, check out Street as an effete British pop star. 

Anyway: Wouldn’t the sight of a coach blind-siding Riggins have painful echoes of the Street injury for Coach Taylor?  Maybe, but on “Friday Night Lights” loss of family trumps all; as soon as he heard about the Larabee coach’s wife, Coach Taylor apologized and left the man to his private anguish.

That sort of appropriateness is very FNL. TV seasons tend to have a values candidate, and last night’s episode seemed to go out of its way to re-assert the show’s status as our nation’s prime-time after-school special. Julie came correct to her father about getting drunk at that party; Tami came correct to her sister about loving her but wanting her to move out; Smash canoodled with the two-timing promises of recruiters from big-time schools before choosing the right one—TMU, up the road in Austin.

Why is that better than going to Alabama or Michigan? Because TMU is the known world. It’s close to home. And home is where family is. I got misty there, when Smash and his Mom embraced over his decision to remain close to the nest, but how much more layered would this relationship be if Mom had even a smidgeon of the son’s hunger for big-time stardom, or thought Michigan offered a unique  opportunity for her son?

As it is she’s Coach Taylor -- fearsome, morally correct --a nd Smash is Julie, wide-eyed, bushy-tailed.

Elsewhere: Riggins reunited with his brother, but ended his streak of Job-like forbearance by stealing three grand from that loony, ferret-owning drug dealer with whom he’d once stayed. Hmm, wonder if this will end badly.

Riggins is eye candy, no doubt, but I still feel FNL has over-played the Riggins card this season, at the expense of Saracen or Street or Buddy Garrity.

Come to think of it, why isn’t Riggins being recruited?  Isn’t he a pretty gaudy offensive/defensive talent?  Doesn't he make big plays for the state champion Dillon Panthers? Or do the recruiters just intuit he’s destined to remain in Dillon, a gazer-out at the larger world more than a participant?

-- Paul Brownfield

(Photo courtesy NBC)

Welcome back, Panther fans, and happy new year.

Must say I found it very easy to get sucked right back into FNL after the holiday break.

Nothing like a good injection of testosterone to get the Panther blood going again — those jerks from neighboring Larabee High, with their jerk coach, invading Panther-ville after a tornado sweeps through the area and levels the rival school.

No Panthers were affected by the twister, although Julie and Riggins were out shopping, and Riggins cradled Coach’s daughter in his arms while the windows of the store blew out. This yielded the most memorable line of the night, Julie’s friend Lois later asking dreamily: “What does he smell like?”

Riggins is the best-looking wastrel on TV. Lately he’d been staying with Coach, where last night he was touching off major hormonal activity in the Coach household — something bordering on soft porn, with Riggins as the cable guy.

He fixed their cable, you see. But later in the hour, after chivalrously getting a drunk Julie home from a party, Coach saw him tucking her in and thought the worst.

Thus did our Tim once again have to head out into that hard, dark Dillon night. Everyone wants him but who will take care of him?  FNL has been hitting this theme hard this season, maybe too hard at times. Riggins left the Taylors like he leaves every house he’s driven from: In his truck, wearing a martyr’s grin, those eyes crying out for a hug.

Meanwhile, seemingly 27-year-old high school senior Tyra broke up with newly un-guilty Landry, and slightly older Pam Garrity officially ended it with car dealer hubby Buddy. Of the former relationship, I found Tyra’s reasons for breaking up with Landry (in essence, you make me feel too much, too taken care of, I prefer flaky guys I don’t have to need) totally convincing.

Buddy’s plea to his wife (in essence, I love you) was comparatively thin on nuance. It did, however, put Coach Taylor and Buddy in a scene together, the two having a confab of mutual support in the laundromat.

Coach was stressed about the jerk coach with whom he had to share a practice field, while Buddy was laid low by the news that his cheatin’ ways was driving his wife to marry another man.

Of all the various pairings on FNL, Buddy and Coach is my favorite. The smooth-talking fixer and the hard-nosed moralist, both wanting to win so badly on Friday night. It’s a match made in Dillon.

Now go get dag-gum Larabee!

-- Paul Brownfield

And so we arrive at the holiday break for “Friday Night Lights,” in the midst of a sophomore slump.

"FNL" no longer feels special. Is it me or the show? 

Must. Stop. Comparing. This. Season. To. Last.

I was unmoved by the goings-on last night, Panther fans. I was even annoyed at Landry for seeming so badly to want martyrdom, though in the end he decided (I guess) that he was acting in self-defense that night he clubbed Tyra’s attacker to death. The old deception-confession-redemption play seemed to bring to a climax the fateful act of violence that kicked off this season.

I could otherwise recap last night’s episode (in brief, Julie fought more with her mom, Riggins arrived like a wet puppy at Coach Taylor’s house, Street found waitress love, Saracen continued to find home healthcare worker love, Buddy Garrity got the paroled kid Santiago to find football love).

But here’s a few things I’m wishing for "FNL" (or what remains of the show during a writers-strike-marred season) in the new year.

• Fewer scenes of Landry and Tyra staring at each other in fierce close-up.

I mean, really, I think I could sketch every pore of Landry’s face, and I don’t sketch.

• A new haircut for Tyra, who should break up with Landry for God’s sake.

That bob she’s wearing this season isn’t doing her any favors; she looks like a soccer mom without the ball, the minivan or the kids. I get that she’s supposed to have newfound maturity, but did the producers not trust her acting talents? 

• A bed for Riggins at the TV Home for Wayward Cute Boys.

Does he now move in with the Taylors and consummate a fierce -- but age-appropriate for both -- affair with daughter Julie? Would Tami Taylor stand for it? 

• A new boyfriend for Lila.

That holier-than-thou expression she’s forever wearing -- dropping in on episodes as if she’s Joan of Arc of Dillon, or maybe just “The Ghost Whisperer” -- has transformed her into a real bore.

• A new story direction for Street.

What does the character do, other than take impetuous trips to Mexico for miracle cures and wheel onto episodes every now and then?

• Less sighing, more playing.

Have budget constraints made it difficult for the producers to stage games? I think the Panthers won their game Friday night, but the result was not shown. I believe their record this season is 2-5. Or 5-2. Or maybe 3-3. You’d have to ask Coach Taylor, although I'm not certain he knows. News conference, anyone?

-- Paul Brownfield

They still play games, don’t they?

“Friday Night Lights” has been awfully short on football this season. Not so much football scenes as a sense of the season. This week’s episode opened with the Panthers getting trounced 37-0. But don’t ask me why, or what their record is, or how many games they’ve played. Because I don’t know.

Aren’t our boys supposed to be defending their state title? Are they experiencing a championship hangover? Did they lose too many players to graduation? Is it the turmoil of a season stunted by the surprise return of Coach Taylor and the sudden departure of that other guy?

It’s hard not to wonder whether Coach doesn’t long for the college job he left behind in Austin. Because that blue Panther cap-and-shirt ensemble is beginning to evoke not so much head coach of a storied football program as manager of a muffler shop.

That wandering puppy thing with Riggins was getting terribly old, so thank God "Friday Night Lights" had him arrive at a story line at the end of the episode.

I get that Riggins is adrift and hurting oh-so-much inside, awaiting reinstatement to the football team by Coach Taylor. But his brooding love affair with the camera was coming at the expense of the character.

Now he will apparently move in with a guy who doesn't wear a shirt around the house and has ferrets for pets.

Come to think of it, there was lots of movin' in last night. That Santiago kid moved in with booster Buddy Garrity; Tim moved in (temporarily) with Tyra (who's become a bit too officious and goody-goody, if you ask me), before moving in with the ferret guy.

Panther fans, a strike-shortened TV season now threatens our beloved "Friday Night Lights."

Not to be too doom-and-gloom here, but the forecast is troubling: Six episodes of "FNL" have now aired. According to the Show Tracker TV grid, NBC expects 15 of the 22 episodes ordered to be completed, which means we might already be flirting with the halfway point of Season 2. Of equal concern, if not more, is this: If the Writers Guild of America strike effectively curtails the 2007-08 TV season, does "FNL," a little-show-that-could, have any chance of renewal for a third go-around? Might we have to say goodbye to Coach Taylor, Coach's wife, Riggins, Saracen, et al without a proper group hug?

Hear me, Panther faithful, for I am worried. As if to tweak our coming nostalgia, the latest episode of the show hit some first-season grace notes. (Although why no game? Can we please have a game!)

In football, pass interference is called when a defender unlawfully prevents a receiver from attempting to catch the ball. The penalty is a violation of space, in essence. "Friday Night Lights" keeps violating my space -- the ability to enjoy the characters and fabric of a town that were so richly established in Season 1.

Has the show completely lost its way? No. But it definitely feels as if it has detoured.

This week found Lila Garrity showing up down Mexico way, where the paralyzed QB Jason Street is about to undergo a highly iffy miracle-cure surgery, with the brooding hottie fullback Tim Riggins along for the beer. Enter born-again Christian Lila, Street's ex-fiancee, summoned by Riggins, her ex-fling, to talk Street out of the procedure.

Their successful intervention ended in an extremely suggestive three-way of tenderness at a honky-tonk bar, Lila seductively caressing Street, then brushing lips with Riggins, only to declare, "I gotta go pray."

What do we have here, "Y Tu Lila Tambien"?

Let us take a moment to go in praise of casting. In this, "Friday Night Lights" has rarely goofed. Families -- the Taylors, the Garritys, Matt Saracen and his father, Smash Williams and his mother -- actually look like families, and this season the show has exceeded itself in the casting of Landry's policeman father, played by Glenn Morshower.

Morshower not only looks like Jesse Plemmons' Landry but also exudes the rectitude that lies behind his son's goofball-genius persona.

The Landry kid is the character the producers of "FNL" decided to gamble on this season, changing his persona from sidekick to soul searching after he came to the aid of his high school crush, Tyra, killing her stalker.

The two then dumped the body in the river. Their cover-up seemed to get resolved in this week's episode, after Tyra was called to police headquarters to ID the body found in the river as the guy who'd attempted to rape her.

Is it case closed?  Doubtful.

First of all, what's with the goofy, soapy mid-episode recap, sponsored by J.C. Penney?

I realize that embedded advertising is the future in a DVR world. But, please, I don't need to be told what's just happened in the first half-hour of "Friday Night Lights."

The show has me at "hello"! The corporate-sponsored recaps are both no big deal and a microcosm of a sophomore jinx, demeaning a quality show with faux intrigue.

We are moving inevitably, inexorably, gloriously to the episode in which Coach Taylor returns to Dillon to re-take over Panther football.

Right?

It has to work out this way. Coach’s coach (wife Tami) is falling apart. Uber-booster Buddy Garrity is falling apart. Coach’s daughter Julie is turning into a harpy. Riggins is adrift again. And the Panthers haven’t even opened up defense of their state title!

You could practically subtitle this second season "Where's Papa?" For all of Dillon, it seems, is moody and unstable, what with Coach Taylor up in Austin.

A wise friend once told me: "The best job you'll ever have is the one before the one you thought you always wanted." And so it is with Coach Taylor, who isn't so much coaching college ball in Austin as babysitting bling-ridden players.

As that guy on the radio in Dillon would say, Welcome back, Panther fans, to a second season of the one and only "Friday Night Lights."

Fade in: End of summer, and Panther footballers, state champs, are frolicking in the town pool with rally girls. Brainy nerd Landry's still mooning for party-girl-turned-chaste-homebody Tyra; he even goes out for the football team to impress her. Coach Taylor is coaching college ball in Austin, while Coach's coach (his wife, Tami) is about to burst with their second child. First child Julie is a lifeguard; her beau, the shy, word-swallowing quarterback Matt Saracen, watches her flirt with a fellow lifeguard.

He's an older dude ironically dubbed "The Swede." "In some situations," Landry says, as Saracen regards the Swede situation with a wounded look, "you need to ask yourself, WWRD — what would Riggins do?"

'FNL': An evening with the Panthers

Panther fans, I saw the Panthers. They were all dressed up and on display, part of an evening with “Friday Night Lights.”

This was Thursday night at the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in North Hollywood, for a screening of last night’s episode and a panel discussion with the producers and cast (complete with mini red carpet outside).

Riggins was there, and Tyra, and Landry, and Lyla, and Coach Taylor and his wife, and their daughter Julie, but not Smash or Saracen or Street.

Speaking of Street, here's a plot spoiler alert (skip the first paragraph on the jump if you wish):

Would you a buy new car from Jason Street?

I would. But then, I was almost weeping for that character last night, watching him pull on that suit to go sell cars at Buddy Garrity’s dealership. Pity not Street, I know, for his physical condition; it was more the sight of him trying to close customers that stirred the cockles of my heart. For it had come to this: A star quarterback riding high on his abilities reduced to selling glory through the purchase of a Chevy Malibu.

Even Street’s pal Herc called him Willie Loman. Maybe it was all a little over the top, but pathos, Panther fans, doesn’t come much richer on “Friday Night Lights.”

Elsewhere — and at the risk of a harsh segue — Lila’s new Christian boyfriend is so not hot. Or put another way, the dude can’t weather the extreme FNL close-up with the grace and beauty of our fair wastrel Tim Riggins.

Riggins' declaration of love last night to Lila, however, didn’t play, even though he lit candles and made a chicken dish. The whole sequence felt kind of rushed; in football parlance, it was a pass on third and long that fell short.

Because where did it leave Riggins? Once again standing in that cruel Dillon night, brooding like a poster of himself.

Maybe it’s time Riggins and seemingly 27-year-old Tyra got back together. They were reunited in volleyball practice anyway, Tyra conned into joining the team by new coach Tami Taylor. Riggins, for some reason, is the team’s ball boy, and Tyra found her anger mojo by spiking balls at his head.

I can think of worse ideas for foreplay, Panthers fans. Speaking of which, Landry seems to have met his match in the new nerd-i-licious girl in his physics class. What a long strange trip it’s been for our boy Landry this season: He killed Tyra's stalker and got the hottie girl of his dreams in the bargain, then confessed to the deed (of the killing), but was given immunity.

Then he lost Tyra.

It’s amazing Landry’s kept his appetite, much less his sense of humor. And who knows, maybe he’ll have to fill in as an emergency running back for the Panthers, now that Smash has been suspended for the rest of the season for coming to his baby sister’s rescue and hitting that boy in the movie theater.

Here was a storyline that played out well: Smash didn’t do anything wrong, really, except (he thought) issue an apology for the incident that he knew to be false. Then he unburdened himself only to land into more trouble.

Smash was betrayed by his ego, but also by his honesty. A great scene at the end of the episode showed this: Smash and his mother and Coach Taylor sitting in the Williams' living room, the boy bewildered by the news of his suspension, and the adults crestfallen.

By the way, what was that song they were playing?

Paul Brownfield

(Photo courtesy NBC.com)

Panther fans, are you familiar with the term realpolitik?

I’m no poli-sci expert, but realpolitik (and Wikipedia backs me up on this) refers to the art of diplomacy and doing politics based on desired outcomes as opposed to things like ethics and core values.

In world affairs, realpolitik means you sometimes do business with the bad guys, and on “Friday Night Lights,” it meant Smash’s mother stared racism in the face and, instead of getting her back up, backed down in the interest of unhinging her son from the gold-digging white girlfriend hoping to ride his coattails into life as a pro football wife.

Yes, it was a little shocking when the gold-digging girlfriend’s parents invited the Smashes for dinner, only to announce that they didn’t think Dillon was any place for interracial relationships. So much for dessert and coffee.

You expected Mrs. Smash to get indignant, but only Smash did; his mother pursed her lips, softened and quietly agreed that the two kids should break up.

Well-played, Mrs. Smash. You sensed an opportunity to free your son from this too-smooth little tart on his arm and took it; Henry Kissinger himself would approve.

Smash, however, was less sanguine and later used his baby sister to sneak a make-out assignation with his girl at the multiplex, only to have his sister get harassed by one of the white boys in the house.

“You got one of ours, why shouldn’t we get one of yours? Know what I mean?” the white boy taunted Smash in a Dillon suddenly revealed as a small-minded place.

FNL was all about the socio-economic/racial politics of the town Friday night; it was as if the writers woke up from their Riggins-induced fog and realized they’d forgotten their show was also supposed to be about the makeup of this Texas town.

So they overloaded the episode with echoing B-stories about class, race, religion. Good ol’ Buddy Garrity invited his boarder Santiago to have his friends over, only to remove his valuables from his home, worried that Santiago’s ex-homies would steal from him (Buddy later put the stuff back, caving into his softer side).

Saracen’s Guatemalan girlfriend announced she was returning home to her family — because what chance their love in gringo Dillon? — while Lila gave sex-advice to people calling in to a Christian radio show, only to engage in some flirting herself with the show’s host, which ended in a kiss.

I’ve lost track of that whole realpolitik motif, but I think when you kiss the boy counseling God over sex without love you’re straying into dangerous diplomatic waters. Or, to put it another way, where does Kissinger stand on premarital heavy petting?

But I liked this episode of FNL because it felt removed from the claustrophobia of recent weeks, most of which focused on Coach and Tami’s travails as new parents again, while we followed hottie wastrel Riggins’ search for a place to lay his weary head.

I know our boy Riggins is cute, ladies, but really — Dillon is more than a pretty face. Or Tami’s post-partum mania (Tami’s a great character, but they’ve overplayed her hand too).

Friday night, we even got to glimpse the long-lost character Jason Street (QB1 in the house!), and Street’s friend Herc, and assistant coach Mac, while Landry was in a scene with Saracen, learning that his bud was sleeping with “the hot maid,” as Landry called her.

FNL is always at its best when it seems to move easily among its wealth of characters, the natural voyeurism of the hand-held camera work making it feel as if we’re a fly on so many walls. If the ax of cancellation didn’t hang over this show’s head, FNL might even be allowed to relax into the kind of sneaky-smart show about innocence lost that it’s always been.

-- Paul Brownfield

First of all, I’d like to apologize for calling the coach of Larabee a jerk last week. How was I to know his wife is terribly sick?

Still, what he did to Riggins at the end of that game, coming out on the field and tackling him like that — it was not only crazy but dangerous. Particularly at Dillon High, where memories of Jason Street’s devastating spinal injury must still be fresh.

Sidebar: Where is the Street character? Does actor Scott Porter have a particularly busy film schedule of late? Incidentally, if you happen to be flipping through your HBOs and see that the Drew Barrymore/Hugh Grant rom-com “Music and Lyrics” is on, check out Street as an effete British pop star. 

Anyway: Wouldn’t the sight of a coach blind-siding Riggins have painful echoes of the Street injury for Coach Taylor?  Maybe, but on “Friday Night Lights” loss of family trumps all; as soon as he heard about the Larabee coach’s wife, Coach Taylor apologized and left the man to his private anguish.

That sort of appropriateness is very FNL. TV seasons tend to have a values candidate, and last night’s episode seemed to go out of its way to re-assert the show’s status as our nation’s prime-time after-school special. Julie came correct to her father about getting drunk at that party; Tami came correct to her sister about loving her but wanting her to move out; Smash canoodled with the two-timing promises of recruiters from big-time schools before choosing the right one—TMU, up the road in Austin.

Why is that better than going to Alabama or Michigan? Because TMU is the known world. It’s close to home. And home is where family is. I got misty there, when Smash and his Mom embraced over his decision to remain close to the nest, but how much more layered would this relationship be if Mom had even a smidgeon of the son’s hunger for big-time stardom, or thought Michigan offered a unique  opportunity for her son?

As it is she’s Coach Taylor -- fearsome, morally correct --a nd Smash is Julie, wide-eyed, bushy-tailed.

Elsewhere: Riggins reunited with his brother, but ended his streak of Job-like forbearance by stealing three grand from that loony, ferret-owning drug dealer with whom he’d once stayed. Hmm, wonder if this will end badly.

Riggins is eye candy, no doubt, but I still feel FNL has over-played the Riggins card this season, at the expense of Saracen or Street or Buddy Garrity.

Come to think of it, why isn’t Riggins being recruited?  Isn’t he a pretty gaudy offensive/defensive talent?  Doesn't he make big plays for the state champion Dillon Panthers? Or do the recruiters just intuit he’s destined to remain in Dillon, a gazer-out at the larger world more than a participant?

-- Paul Brownfield

(Photo courtesy NBC)

Welcome back, Panther fans, and happy new year.

Must say I found it very easy to get sucked right back into FNL after the holiday break.

Nothing like a good injection of testosterone to get the Panther blood going again — those jerks from neighboring Larabee High, with their jerk coach, invading Panther-ville after a tornado sweeps through the area and levels the rival school.

No Panthers were affected by the twister, although Julie and Riggins were out shopping, and Riggins cradled Coach’s daughter in his arms while the windows of the store blew out. This yielded the most memorable line of the night, Julie’s friend Lois later asking dreamily: “What does he smell like?”

Riggins is the best-looking wastrel on TV. Lately he’d been staying with Coach, where last night he was touching off major hormonal activity in the Coach household — something bordering on soft porn, with Riggins as the cable guy.

He fixed their cable, you see. But later in the hour, after chivalrously getting a drunk Julie home from a party, Coach saw him tucking her in and thought the worst.

Thus did our Tim once again have to head out into that hard, dark Dillon night. Everyone wants him but who will take care of him?  FNL has been hitting this theme hard this season, maybe too hard at times. Riggins left the Taylors like he leaves every house he’s driven from: In his truck, wearing a martyr’s grin, those eyes crying out for a hug.

Meanwhile, seemingly 27-year-old high school senior Tyra broke up with newly un-guilty Landry, and slightly older Pam Garrity officially ended it with car dealer hubby Buddy. Of the former relationship, I found Tyra’s reasons for breaking up with Landry (in essence, you make me feel too much, too taken care of, I prefer flaky guys I don’t have to need) totally convincing.

Buddy’s plea to his wife (in essence, I love you) was comparatively thin on nuance. It did, however, put Coach Taylor and Buddy in a scene together, the two having a confab of mutual support in the laundromat.

Coach was stressed about the jerk coach with whom he had to share a practice field, while Buddy was laid low by the news that his cheatin’ ways was driving his wife to marry another man.

Of all the various pairings on FNL, Buddy and Coach is my favorite. The smooth-talking fixer and the hard-nosed moralist, both wanting to win so badly on Friday night. It’s a match made in Dillon.

Now go get dag-gum Larabee!

-- Paul Brownfield

And so we arrive at the holiday break for “Friday Night Lights,” in the midst of a sophomore slump.

"FNL" no longer feels special. Is it me or the show? 

Must. Stop. Comparing. This. Season. To. Last.

I was unmoved by the goings-on last night, Panther fans. I was even annoyed at Landry for seeming so badly to want martyrdom, though in the end he decided (I guess) that he was acting in self-defense that night he clubbed Tyra’s attacker to death. The old deception-confession-redemption play seemed to bring to a climax the fateful act of violence that kicked off this season.

I could otherwise recap last night’s episode (in brief, Julie fought more with her mom, Riggins arrived like a wet puppy at Coach Taylor’s house, Street found waitress love, Saracen continued to find home healthcare worker love, Buddy Garrity got the paroled kid Santiago to find football love).

But here’s a few things I’m wishing for "FNL" (or what remains of the show during a writers-strike-marred season) in the new year.

• Fewer scenes of Landry and Tyra staring at each other in fierce close-up.

I mean, really, I think I could sketch every pore of Landry’s face, and I don’t sketch.

• A new haircut for Tyra, who should break up with Landry for God’s sake.

That bob she’s wearing this season isn’t doing her any favors; she looks like a soccer mom without the ball, the minivan or the kids. I get that she’s supposed to have newfound maturity, but did the producers not trust her acting talents? 

• A bed for Riggins at the TV Home for Wayward Cute Boys.

Does he now move in with the Taylors and consummate a fierce -- but age-appropriate for both -- affair with daughter Julie? Would Tami Taylor stand for it? 

• A new boyfriend for Lila.

That holier-than-thou expression she’s forever wearing -- dropping in on episodes as if she’s Joan of Arc of Dillon, or maybe just “The Ghost Whisperer” -- has transformed her into a real bore.

• A new story direction for Street.

What does the character do, other than take impetuous trips to Mexico for miracle cures and wheel onto episodes every now and then?

• Less sighing, more playing.

Have budget constraints made it difficult for the producers to stage games? I think the Panthers won their game Friday night, but the result was not shown. I believe their record this season is 2-5. Or 5-2. Or maybe 3-3. You’d have to ask Coach Taylor, although I'm not certain he knows. News conference, anyone?

-- Paul Brownfield

They still play games, don’t they?

“Friday Night Lights” has been awfully short on football this season. Not so much football scenes as a sense of the season. This week’s episode opened with the Panthers getting trounced 37-0. But don’t ask me why, or what their record is, or how many games they’ve played. Because I don’t know.

Aren’t our boys supposed to be defending their state title? Are they experiencing a championship hangover? Did they lose too many players to graduation? Is it the turmoil of a season stunted by the surprise return of Coach Taylor and the sudden departure of that other guy?

It’s hard not to wonder whether Coach doesn’t long for the college job he left behind in Austin. Because that blue Panther cap-and-shirt ensemble is beginning to evoke not so much head coach of a storied football program as manager of a muffler shop.

That wandering puppy thing with Riggins was getting terribly old, so thank God "Friday Night Lights" had him arrive at a story line at the end of the episode.

I get that Riggins is adrift and hurting oh-so-much inside, awaiting reinstatement to the football team by Coach Taylor. But his brooding love affair with the camera was coming at the expense of the character.

Now he will apparently move in with a guy who doesn't wear a shirt around the house and has ferrets for pets.

Come to think of it, there was lots of movin' in last night. That Santiago kid moved in with booster Buddy Garrity; Tim moved in (temporarily) with Tyra (who's become a bit too officious and goody-goody, if you ask me), before moving in with the ferret guy.

Panther fans, a strike-shortened TV season now threatens our beloved "Friday Night Lights."

Not to be too doom-and-gloom here, but the forecast is troubling: Six episodes of "FNL" have now aired. According to the Show Tracker TV grid, NBC expects 15 of the 22 episodes ordered to be completed, which means we might already be flirting with the halfway point of Season 2. Of equal concern, if not more, is this: If the Writers Guild of America strike effectively curtails the 2007-08 TV season, does "FNL," a little-show-that-could, have any chance of renewal for a third go-around? Might we have to say goodbye to Coach Taylor, Coach's wife, Riggins, Saracen, et al without a proper group hug?

Hear me, Panther faithful, for I am worried. As if to tweak our coming nostalgia, the latest episode of the show hit some first-season grace notes. (Although why no game? Can we please have a game!)

In football, pass interference is called when a defender unlawfully prevents a receiver from attempting to catch the ball. The penalty is a violation of space, in essence. "Friday Night Lights" keeps violating my space -- the ability to enjoy the characters and fabric of a town that were so richly established in Season 1.

Has the show completely lost its way? No. But it definitely feels as if it has detoured.

This week found Lila Garrity showing up down Mexico way, where the paralyzed QB Jason Street is about to undergo a highly iffy miracle-cure surgery, with the brooding hottie fullback Tim Riggins along for the beer. Enter born-again Christian Lila, Street's ex-fiancee, summoned by Riggins, her ex-fling, to talk Street out of the procedure.

Their successful intervention ended in an extremely suggestive three-way of tenderness at a honky-tonk bar, Lila seductively caressing Street, then brushing lips with Riggins, only to declare, "I gotta go pray."

What do we have here, "Y Tu Lila Tambien"?

Let us take a moment to go in praise of casting. In this, "Friday Night Lights" has rarely goofed. Families -- the Taylors, the Garritys, Matt Saracen and his father, Smash Williams and his mother -- actually look like families, and this season the show has exceeded itself in the casting of Landry's policeman father, played by Glenn Morshower.

Morshower not only looks like Jesse Plemmons' Landry but also exudes the rectitude that lies behind his son's goofball-genius persona.

The Landry kid is the character the producers of "FNL" decided to gamble on this season, changing his persona from sidekick to soul searching after he came to the aid of his high school crush, Tyra, killing her stalker.

The two then dumped the body in the river. Their cover-up seemed to get resolved in this week's episode, after Tyra was called to police headquarters to ID the body found in the river as the guy who'd attempted to rape her.

Is it case closed?  Doubtful.

First of all, what's with the goofy, soapy mid-episode recap, sponsored by J.C. Penney?

I realize that embedded advertising is the future in a DVR world. But, please, I don't need to be told what's just happened in the first half-hour of "Friday Night Lights."

The show has me at "hello"! The corporate-sponsored recaps are both no big deal and a microcosm of a sophomore jinx, demeaning a quality show with faux intrigue.

We are moving inevitably, inexorably, gloriously to the episode in which Coach Taylor returns to Dillon to re-take over Panther football.

Right?

It has to work out this way. Coach’s coach (wife Tami) is falling apart. Uber-booster Buddy Garrity is falling apart. Coach’s daughter Julie is turning into a harpy. Riggins is adrift again. And the Panthers haven’t even opened up defense of their state title!

You could practically subtitle this second season "Where's Papa?" For all of Dillon, it seems, is moody and unstable, what with Coach Taylor up in Austin.

A wise friend once told me: "The best job you'll ever have is the one before the one you thought you always wanted." And so it is with Coach Taylor, who isn't so much coaching college ball in Austin as babysitting bling-ridden players.

As that guy on the radio in Dillon would say, Welcome back, Panther fans, to a second season of the one and only "Friday Night Lights."

Fade in: End of summer, and Panther footballers, state champs, are frolicking in the town pool with rally girls. Brainy nerd Landry's still mooning for party-girl-turned-chaste-homebody Tyra; he even goes out for the football team to impress her. Coach Taylor is coaching college ball in Austin, while Coach's coach (his wife, Tami) is about to burst with their second child. First child Julie is a lifeguard; her beau, the shy, word-swallowing quarterback Matt Saracen, watches her flirt with a fellow lifeguard.

He's an older dude ironically dubbed "The Swede." "In some situations," Landry says, as Saracen regards the Swede situation with a wounded look, "you need to ask yourself, WWRD — what would Riggins do?"

No glory in 'Friday Night Lights' job

Would you a buy new car from Jason Street?

I would. But then, I was almost weeping for that character last night, watching him pull on that suit to go sell cars at Buddy Garrity’s dealership. Pity not Street, I know, for his physical condition; it was more the sight of him trying to close customers that stirred the cockles of my heart. For it had come to this: A star quarterback riding high on his abilities reduced to selling glory through the purchase of a Chevy Malibu.

Even Street’s pal Herc called him Willie Loman. Maybe it was all a little over the top, but pathos, Panther fans, doesn’t come much richer on “Friday Night Lights.”

Elsewhere — and at the risk of a harsh segue — Lila’s new Christian boyfriend is so not hot. Or put another way, the dude can’t weather the extreme FNL close-up with the grace and beauty of our fair wastrel Tim Riggins.

Riggins' declaration of love last night to Lila, however, didn’t play, even though he lit candles and made a chicken dish. The whole sequence felt kind of rushed; in football parlance, it was a pass on third and long that fell short.

Because where did it leave Riggins? Once again standing in that cruel Dillon night, brooding like a poster of himself.

Maybe it’s time Riggins and seemingly 27-year-old Tyra got back together. They were reunited in volleyball practice anyway, Tyra conned into joining the team by new coach Tami Taylor. Riggins, for some reason, is the team’s ball boy, and Tyra found her anger mojo by spiking balls at his head.

I can think of worse ideas for foreplay, Panthers fans. Speaking of which, Landry seems to have met his match in the new nerd-i-licious girl in his physics class. What a long strange trip it’s been for our boy Landry this season: He killed Tyra's stalker and got the hottie girl of his dreams in the bargain, then confessed to the deed (of the killing), but was given immunity.

Then he lost Tyra.

It’s amazing Landry’s kept his appetite, much less his sense of humor. And who knows, maybe he’ll have to fill in as an emergency running back for the Panthers, now that Smash has been suspended for the rest of the season for coming to his baby sister’s rescue and hitting that boy in the movie theater.

Here was a storyline that played out well: Smash didn’t do anything wrong, really, except (he thought) issue an apology for the incident that he knew to be false. Then he unburdened himself only to land into more trouble.

Smash was betrayed by his ego, but also by his honesty. A great scene at the end of the episode showed this: Smash and his mother and Coach Taylor sitting in the Williams' living room, the boy bewildered by the news of his suspension, and the adults crestfallen.

By the way, what was that song they were playing?

Paul Brownfield

(Photo courtesy NBC.com)

Panther fans, are you familiar with the term realpolitik?

I’m no poli-sci expert, but realpolitik (and Wikipedia backs me up on this) refers to the art of diplomacy and doing politics based on desired outcomes as opposed to things like ethics and core values.

In world affairs, realpolitik means you sometimes do business with the bad guys, and on “Friday Night Lights,” it meant Smash’s mother stared racism in the face and, instead of getting her back up, backed down in the interest of unhinging her son from the gold-digging white girlfriend hoping to ride his coattails into life as a pro football wife.

Yes, it was a little shocking when the gold-digging girlfriend’s parents invited the Smashes for dinner, only to announce that they didn’t think Dillon was any place for interracial relationships. So much for dessert and coffee.

You expected Mrs. Smash to get indignant, but only Smash did; his mother pursed her lips, softened and quietly agreed that the two kids should break up.

Well-played, Mrs. Smash. You sensed an opportunity to free your son from this too-smooth little tart on his arm and took it; Henry Kissinger himself would approve.

Smash, however, was less sanguine and later used his baby sister to sneak a make-out assignation with his girl at the multiplex, only to have his sister get harassed by one of the white boys in the house.

“You got one of ours, why shouldn’t we get one of yours? Know what I mean?” the white boy taunted Smash in a Dillon suddenly revealed as a small-minded place.

FNL was all about the socio-economic/racial politics of the town Friday night; it was as if the writers woke up from their Riggins-induced fog and realized they’d forgotten their show was also supposed to be about the makeup of this Texas town.

So they overloaded the episode with echoing B-stories about class, race, religion. Good ol’ Buddy Garrity invited his boarder Santiago to have his friends over, only to remove his valuables from his home, worried that Santiago’s ex-homies would steal from him (Buddy later put the stuff back, caving into his softer side).

Saracen’s Guatemalan girlfriend announced she was returning home to her family — because what chance their love in gringo Dillon? — while Lila gave sex-advice to people calling in to a Christian radio show, only to engage in some flirting herself with the show’s host, which ended in a kiss.

I’ve lost track of that whole realpolitik motif, but I think when you kiss the boy counseling God over sex without love you’re straying into dangerous diplomatic waters. Or, to put it another way, where does Kissinger stand on premarital heavy petting?

But I liked this episode of FNL because it felt removed from the claustrophobia of recent weeks, most of which focused on Coach and Tami’s travails as new parents again, while we followed hottie wastrel Riggins’ search for a place to lay his weary head.

I know our boy Riggins is cute, ladies, but really — Dillon is more than a pretty face. Or Tami’s post-partum mania (Tami’s a great character, but they’ve overplayed her hand too).

Friday night, we even got to glimpse the long-lost character Jason Street (QB1 in the house!), and Street’s friend Herc, and assistant coach Mac, while Landry was in a scene with Saracen, learning that his bud was sleeping with “the hot maid,” as Landry called her.

FNL is always at its best when it seems to move easily among its wealth of characters, the natural voyeurism of the hand-held camera work making it feel as if we’re a fly on so many walls. If the ax of cancellation didn’t hang over this show’s head, FNL might even be allowed to relax into the kind of sneaky-smart show about innocence lost that it’s always been.

-- Paul Brownfield

First of all, I’d like to apologize for calling the coach of Larabee a jerk last week. How was I to know his wife is terribly sick?

Still, what he did to Riggins at the end of that game, coming out on the field and tackling him like that — it was not only crazy but dangerous. Particularly at Dillon High, where memories of Jason Street’s devastating spinal injury must still be fresh.

Sidebar: Where is the Street character? Does actor Scott Porter have a particularly busy film schedule of late? Incidentally, if you happen to be flipping through your HBOs and see that the Drew Barrymore/Hugh Grant rom-com “Music and Lyrics” is on, check out Street as an effete British pop star. 

Anyway: Wouldn’t the sight of a coach blind-siding Riggins have painful echoes of the Street injury for Coach Taylor?  Maybe, but on “Friday Night Lights” loss of family trumps all; as soon as he heard about the Larabee coach’s wife, Coach Taylor apologized and left the man to his private anguish.

That sort of appropriateness is very FNL. TV seasons tend to have a values candidate, and last night’s episode seemed to go out of its way to re-assert the show’s status as our nation’s prime-time after-school special. Julie came correct to her father about getting drunk at that party; Tami came correct to her sister about loving her but wanting her to move out; Smash canoodled with the two-timing promises of recruiters from big-time schools before choosing the right one—TMU, up the road in Austin.

Why is that better than going to Alabama or Michigan? Because TMU is the known world. It’s close to home. And home is where family is. I got misty there, when Smash and his Mom embraced over his decision to remain close to the nest, but how much more layered would this relationship be if Mom had even a smidgeon of the son’s hunger for big-time stardom, or thought Michigan offered a unique  opportunity for her son?

As it is she’s Coach Taylor -- fearsome, morally correct --a nd Smash is Julie, wide-eyed, bushy-tailed.

Elsewhere: Riggins reunited with his brother, but ended his streak of Job-like forbearance by stealing three grand from that loony, ferret-owning drug dealer with whom he’d once stayed. Hmm, wonder if this will end badly.

Riggins is eye candy, no doubt, but I still feel FNL has over-played the Riggins card this season, at the expense of Saracen or Street or Buddy Garrity.

Come to think of it, why isn’t Riggins being recruited?  Isn’t he a pretty gaudy offensive/defensive talent?  Doesn't he make big plays for the state champion Dillon Panthers? Or do the recruiters just intuit he’s destined to remain in Dillon, a gazer-out at the larger world more than a participant?

-- Paul Brownfield

(Photo courtesy NBC)

Welcome back, Panther fans, and happy new year.

Must say I found it very easy to get sucked right back into FNL after the holiday break.

Nothing like a good injection of testosterone to get the Panther blood going again — those jerks from neighboring Larabee High, with their jerk coach, invading Panther-ville after a tornado sweeps through the area and levels the rival school.

No Panthers were affected by the twister, although Julie and Riggins were out shopping, and Riggins cradled Coach’s daughter in his arms while the windows of the store blew out. This yielded the most memorable line of the night, Julie’s friend Lois later asking dreamily: “What does he smell like?”

Riggins is the best-looking wastrel on TV. Lately he’d been staying with Coach, where last night he was touching off major hormonal activity in the Coach household — something bordering on soft porn, with Riggins as the cable guy.

He fixed their cable, you see. But later in the hour, after chivalrously getting a drunk Julie home from a party, Coach saw him tucking her in and thought the worst.

Thus did our Tim once again have to head out into that hard, dark Dillon night. Everyone wants him but who will take care of him?  FNL has been hitting this theme hard this season, maybe too hard at times. Riggins left the Taylors like he leaves every house he’s driven from: In his truck, wearing a martyr’s grin, those eyes crying out for a hug.

Meanwhile, seemingly 27-year-old high school senior Tyra broke up with newly un-guilty Landry, and slightly older Pam Garrity officially ended it with car dealer hubby Buddy. Of the former relationship, I found Tyra’s reasons for breaking up with Landry (in essence, you make me feel too much, too taken care of, I prefer flaky guys I don’t have to need) totally convincing.

Buddy’s plea to his wife (in essence, I love you) was comparatively thin on nuance. It did, however, put Coach Taylor and Buddy in a scene together, the two having a confab of mutual support in the laundromat.

Coach was stressed about the jerk coach with whom he had to share a practice field, while Buddy was laid low by the news that his cheatin’ ways was driving his wife to marry another man.

Of all the various pairings on FNL, Buddy and Coach is my favorite. The smooth-talking fixer and the hard-nosed moralist, both wanting to win so badly on Friday night. It’s a match made in Dillon.

Now go get dag-gum Larabee!

-- Paul Brownfield

And so we arrive at the holiday break for “Friday Night Lights,” in the midst of a sophomore slump.

"FNL" no longer feels special. Is it me or the show? 

Must. Stop. Comparing. This. Season. To. Last.

I was unmoved by the goings-on last night, Panther fans. I was even annoyed at Landry for seeming so badly to want martyrdom, though in the end he decided (I guess) that he was acting in self-defense that night he clubbed Tyra’s attacker to death. The old deception-confession-redemption play seemed to bring to a climax the fateful act of violence that kicked off this season.

I could otherwise recap last night’s episode (in brief, Julie fought more with her mom, Riggins arrived like a wet puppy at Coach Taylor’s house, Street found waitress love, Saracen continued to find home healthcare worker love, Buddy Garrity got the paroled kid Santiago to find football love).

But here’s a few things I’m wishing for "FNL" (or what remains of the show during a writers-strike-marred season) in the new year.

• Fewer scenes of Landry and Tyra staring at each other in fierce close-up.

I mean, really, I think I could sketch every pore of Landry’s face, and I don’t sketch.

• A new haircut for Tyra, who should break up with Landry for God’s sake.

That bob she’s wearing this season isn’t doing her any favors; she looks like a soccer mom without the ball, the minivan or the kids. I get that she’s supposed to have newfound maturity, but did the producers not trust her acting talents? 

• A bed for Riggins at the TV Home for Wayward Cute Boys.

Does he now move in with the Taylors and consummate a fierce -- but age-appropriate for both -- affair with daughter Julie? Would Tami Taylor stand for it? 

• A new boyfriend for Lila.

That holier-than-thou expression she’s forever wearing -- dropping in on episodes as if she’s Joan of Arc of Dillon, or maybe just “The Ghost Whisperer” -- has transformed her into a real bore.

• A new story direction for Street.

What does the character do, other than take impetuous trips to Mexico for miracle cures and wheel onto episodes every now and then?

• Less sighing, more playing.

Have budget constraints made it difficult for the producers to stage games? I think the Panthers won their game Friday night, but the result was not shown. I believe their record this season is 2-5. Or 5-2. Or maybe 3-3. You’d have to ask Coach Taylor, although I'm not certain he knows. News conference, anyone?

-- Paul Brownfield

They still play games, don’t they?

“Friday Night Lights” has been awfully short on football this season. Not so much football scenes as a sense of the season. This week’s episode opened with the Panthers getting trounced 37-0. But don’t ask me why, or what their record is, or how many games they’ve played. Because I don’t know.

Aren’t our boys supposed to be defending their state title? Are they experiencing a championship hangover? Did they lose too many players to graduation? Is it the turmoil of a season stunted by the surprise return of Coach Taylor and the sudden departure of that other guy?

It’s hard not to wonder whether Coach doesn’t long for the college job he left behind in Austin. Because that blue Panther cap-and-shirt ensemble is beginning to evoke not so much head coach of a storied football program as manager of a muffler shop.

That wandering puppy thing with Riggins was getting terribly old, so thank God "Friday Night Lights" had him arrive at a story line at the end of the episode.

I get that Riggins is adrift and hurting oh-so-much inside, awaiting reinstatement to the football team by Coach Taylor. But his brooding love affair with the camera was coming at the expense of the character.

Now he will apparently move in with a guy who doesn't wear a shirt around the house and has ferrets for pets.

Come to think of it, there was lots of movin' in last night. That Santiago kid moved in with booster Buddy Garrity; Tim moved in (temporarily) with Tyra (who's become a bit too officious and goody-goody, if you ask me), before moving in with the ferret guy.

Panther fans, a strike-shortened TV season now threatens our beloved "Friday Night Lights."

Not to be too doom-and-gloom here, but the forecast is troubling: Six episodes of "FNL" have now aired. According to the Show Tracker TV grid, NBC expects 15 of the 22 episodes ordered to be completed, which means we might already be flirting with the halfway point of Season 2. Of equal concern, if not more, is this: If the Writers Guild of America strike effectively curtails the 2007-08 TV season, does "FNL," a little-show-that-could, have any chance of renewal for a third go-around? Might we have to say goodbye to Coach Taylor, Coach's wife, Riggins, Saracen, et al without a proper group hug?

Hear me, Panther faithful, for I am worried. As if to tweak our coming nostalgia, the latest episode of the show hit some first-season grace notes. (Although why no game? Can we please have a game!)

In football, pass interference is called when a defender unlawfully prevents a receiver from attempting to catch the ball. The penalty is a violation of space, in essence. "Friday Night Lights" keeps violating my space -- the ability to enjoy the characters and fabric of a town that were so richly established in Season 1.

Has the show completely lost its way? No. But it definitely feels as if it has detoured.

This week found Lila Garrity showing up down Mexico way, where the paralyzed QB Jason Street is about to undergo a highly iffy miracle-cure surgery, with the brooding hottie fullback Tim Riggins along for the beer. Enter born-again Christian Lila, Street's ex-fiancee, summoned by Riggins, her ex-fling, to talk Street out of the procedure.

Their successful intervention ended in an extremely suggestive three-way of tenderness at a honky-tonk bar, Lila seductively caressing Street, then brushing lips with Riggins, only to declare, "I gotta go pray."

What do we have here, "Y Tu Lila Tambien"?

Let us take a moment to go in praise of casting. In this, "Friday Night Lights" has rarely goofed. Families -- the Taylors, the Garritys, Matt Saracen and his father, Smash Williams and his mother -- actually look like families, and this season the show has exceeded itself in the casting of Landry's policeman father, played by Glenn Morshower.

Morshower not only looks like Jesse Plemmons' Landry but also exudes the rectitude that lies behind his son's goofball-genius persona.

The Landry kid is the character the producers of "FNL" decided to gamble on this season, changing his persona from sidekick to soul searching after he came to the aid of his high school crush, Tyra, killing her stalker.

The two then dumped the body in the river. Their cover-up seemed to get resolved in this week's episode, after Tyra was called to police headquarters to ID the body found in the river as the guy who'd attempted to rape her.

Is it case closed?  Doubtful.

First of all, what's with the goofy, soapy mid-episode recap, sponsored by J.C. Penney?

I realize that embedded advertising is the future in a DVR world. But, please, I don't need to be told what's just happened in the first half-hour of "Friday Night Lights."

The show has me at "hello"! The corporate-sponsored recaps are both no big deal and a microcosm of a sophomore jinx, demeaning a quality show with faux intrigue.

We are moving inevitably, inexorably, gloriously to the episode in which Coach Taylor returns to Dillon to re-take over Panther football.

Right?

It has to work out this way. Coach’s coach (wife Tami) is falling apart. Uber-booster Buddy Garrity is falling apart. Coach’s daughter Julie is turning into a harpy. Riggins is adrift again. And the Panthers haven’t even opened up defense of their state title!

You could practically subtitle this second season "Where's Papa?" For all of Dillon, it seems, is moody and unstable, what with Coach Taylor up in Austin.

A wise friend once told me: "The best job you'll ever have is the one before the one you thought you always wanted." And so it is with Coach Taylor, who isn't so much coaching college ball in Austin as babysitting bling-ridden players.

As that guy on the radio in Dillon would say, Welcome back, Panther fans, to a second season of the one and only "Friday Night Lights."

Fade in: End of summer, and Panther footballers, state champs, are frolicking in the town pool with rally girls. Brainy nerd Landry's still mooning for party-girl-turned-chaste-homebody Tyra; he even goes out for the football team to impress her. Coach Taylor is coaching college ball in Austin, while Coach's coach (his wife, Tami) is about to burst with their second child. First child Julie is a lifeguard; her beau, the shy, word-swallowing quarterback Matt Saracen, watches her flirt with a fellow lifeguard.

He's an older dude ironically dubbed "The Swede." "In some situations," Landry says, as Saracen regards the Swede situation with a wounded look, "you need to ask yourself, WWRD — what would Riggins do?"

Diplomacy in Dillon

Panther fans, are you familiar with the term realpolitik?

I’m no poli-sci expert, but realpolitik (and Wikipedia backs me up on this) refers to the art of diplomacy and doing politics based on desired outcomes as opposed to things like ethics and core values.

In world affairs, realpolitik means you sometimes do business with the bad guys, and on “Friday Night Lights,” it meant Smash’s mother stared racism in the face and, instead of getting her back up, backed down in the interest of unhinging her son from the gold-digging white girlfriend hoping to ride his coattails into life as a pro football wife.

Yes, it was a little shocking when the gold-digging girlfriend’s parents invited the Smashes for dinner, only to announce that they didn’t think Dillon was any place for interracial relationships. So much for dessert and coffee.

You expected Mrs. Smash to get indignant, but only Smash did; his mother pursed her lips, softened and quietly agreed that the two kids should break up.

Well-played, Mrs. Smash. You sensed an opportunity to free your son from this too-smooth little tart on his arm and took it; Henry Kissinger himself would approve.

Smash, however, was less sanguine and later used his baby sister to sneak a make-out assignation with his girl at the multiplex, only to have his sister get harassed by one of the white boys in the house.

“You got one of ours, why shouldn’t we get one of yours? Know what I mean?” the white boy taunted Smash in a Dillon suddenly revealed as a small-minded place.

FNL was all about the socio-economic/racial politics of the town Friday night; it was as if the writers woke up from their Riggins-induced fog and realized they’d forgotten their show was also supposed to be about the makeup of this Texas town.

So they overloaded the episode with echoing B-stories about class, race, religion. Good ol’ Buddy Garrity invited his boarder Santiago to have his friends over, only to remove his valuables from his home, worried that Santiago’s ex-homies would steal from him (Buddy later put the stuff back, caving into his softer side).

Saracen’s Guatemalan girlfriend announced she was returning home to her family — because what chance their love in gringo Dillon? — while Lila gave sex-advice to people calling in to a Christian radio show, only to engage in some flirting herself with the show’s host, which ended in a kiss.

I’ve lost track of that whole realpolitik motif, but I think when you kiss the boy counseling God over sex without love you’re straying into dangerous diplomatic waters. Or, to put it another way, where does Kissinger stand on premarital heavy petting?

But I liked this episode of FNL because it felt removed from the claustrophobia of recent weeks, most of which focused on Coach and Tami’s travails as new parents again, while we followed hottie wastrel Riggins’ search for a place to lay his weary head.

I know our boy Riggins is cute, ladies, but really — Dillon is more than a pretty face. Or Tami’s post-partum mania (Tami’s a great character, but they’ve overplayed her hand too).

Friday night, we even got to glimpse the long-lost character Jason Street (QB1 in the house!), and Street’s friend Herc, and assistant coach Mac, while Landry was in a scene with Saracen, learning that his bud was sleeping with “the hot maid,” as Landry called her.

FNL is always at its best when it seems to move easily among its wealth of characters, the natural voyeurism of the hand-held camera work making it feel as if we’re a fly on so many walls. If the ax of cancellation didn’t hang over this show’s head, FNL might even be allowed to relax into the kind of sneaky-smart show about innocence lost that it’s always been.

-- Paul Brownfield

First of all, I’d like to apologize for calling the coach of Larabee a jerk last week. How was I to know his wife is terribly sick?

Still, what he did to Riggins at the end of that game, coming out on the field and tackling him like that — it was not only crazy but dangerous. Particularly at Dillon High, where memories of Jason Street’s devastating spinal injury must still be fresh.

Sidebar: Where is the Street character? Does actor Scott Porter have a particularly busy film schedule of late? Incidentally, if you happen to be flipping through your HBOs and see that the Drew Barrymore/Hugh Grant rom-com “Music and Lyrics” is on, check out Street as an effete British pop star. 

Anyway: Wouldn’t the sight of a coach blind-siding Riggins have painful echoes of the Street injury for Coach Taylor?  Maybe, but on “Friday Night Lights” loss of family trumps all; as soon as he heard about the Larabee coach’s wife, Coach Taylor apologized and left the man to his private anguish.

That sort of appropriateness is very FNL. TV seasons tend to have a values candidate, and last night’s episode seemed to go out of its way to re-assert the show’s status as our nation’s prime-time after-school special. Julie came correct to her father about getting drunk at that party; Tami came correct to her sister about loving her but wanting her to move out; Smash canoodled with the two-timing promises of recruiters from big-time schools before choosing the right one—TMU, up the road in Austin.

Why is that better than going to Alabama or Michigan? Because TMU is the known world. It’s close to home. And home is where family is. I got misty there, when Smash and his Mom embraced over his decision to remain close to the nest, but how much more layered would this relationship be if Mom had even a smidgeon of the son’s hunger for big-time stardom, or thought Michigan offered a unique  opportunity for her son?

As it is she’s Coach Taylor -- fearsome, morally correct --a nd Smash is Julie, wide-eyed, bushy-tailed.

Elsewhere: Riggins reunited with his brother, but ended his streak of Job-like forbearance by stealing three grand from that loony, ferret-owning drug dealer with whom he’d once stayed. Hmm, wonder if this will end badly.

Riggins is eye candy, no doubt, but I still feel FNL has over-played the Riggins card this season, at the expense of Saracen or Street or Buddy Garrity.

Come to think of it, why isn’t Riggins being recruited?  Isn’t he a pretty gaudy offensive/defensive talent?  Doesn't he make big plays for the state champion Dillon Panthers? Or do the recruiters just intuit he’s destined to remain in Dillon, a gazer-out at the larger world more than a participant?

-- Paul Brownfield

(Photo courtesy NBC)

Welcome back, Panther fans, and happy new year.

Must say I found it very easy to get sucked right back into FNL after the holiday break.

Nothing like a good injection of testosterone to get the Panther blood going again — those jerks from neighboring Larabee High, with their jerk coach, invading Panther-ville after a tornado sweeps through the area and levels the rival school.

No Panthers were affected by the twister, although Julie and Riggins were out shopping, and Riggins cradled Coach’s daughter in his arms while the windows of the store blew out. This yielded the most memorable line of the night, Julie’s friend Lois later asking dreamily: “What does he smell like?”

Riggins is the best-looking wastrel on TV. Lately he’d been staying with Coach, where last night he was touching off major hormonal activity in the Coach household — something bordering on soft porn, with Riggins as the cable guy.

He fixed their cable, you see. But later in the hour, after chivalrously getting a drunk Julie home from a party, Coach saw him tucking her in and thought the worst.

Thus did our Tim once again have to head out into that hard, dark Dillon night. Everyone wants him but who will take care of him?  FNL has been hitting this theme hard this season, maybe too hard at times. Riggins left the Taylors like he leaves every house he’s driven from: In his truck, wearing a martyr’s grin, those eyes crying out for a hug.

Meanwhile, seemingly 27-year-old high school senior Tyra broke up with newly un-guilty Landry, and slightly older Pam Garrity officially ended it with car dealer hubby Buddy. Of the former relationship, I found Tyra’s reasons for breaking up with Landry (in essence, you make me feel too much, too taken care of, I prefer flaky guys I don’t have to need) totally convincing.

Buddy’s plea to his wife (in essence, I love you) was comparatively thin on nuance. It did, however, put Coach Taylor and Buddy in a scene together, the two having a confab of mutual support in the laundromat.

Coach was stressed about the jerk coach with whom he had to share a practice field, while Buddy was laid low by the news that his cheatin’ ways was driving his wife to marry another man.

Of all the various pairings on FNL, Buddy and Coach is my favorite. The smooth-talking fixer and the hard-nosed moralist, both wanting to win so badly on Friday night. It’s a match made in Dillon.

Now go get dag-gum Larabee!

-- Paul Brownfield

And so we arrive at the holiday break for “Friday Night Lights,” in the midst of a sophomore slump.

"FNL" no longer feels special. Is it me or the show? 

Must. Stop. Comparing. This. Season. To. Last.

I was unmoved by the goings-on last night, Panther fans. I was even annoyed at Landry for seeming so badly to want martyrdom, though in the end he decided (I guess) that he was acting in self-defense that night he clubbed Tyra’s attacker to death. The old deception-confession-redemption play seemed to bring to a climax the fateful act of violence that kicked off this season.

I could otherwise recap last night’s episode (in brief, Julie fought more with her mom, Riggins arrived like a wet puppy at Coach Taylor’s house, Street found waitress love, Saracen continued to find home healthcare worker love, Buddy Garrity got the paroled kid Santiago to find football love).

But here’s a few things I’m wishing for "FNL" (or what remains of the show during a writers-strike-marred season) in the new year.

• Fewer scenes of Landry and Tyra staring at each other in fierce close-up.

I mean, really, I think I could sketch every pore of Landry’s face, and I don’t sketch.

• A new haircut for Tyra, who should break up with Landry for God’s sake.

That bob she’s wearing this season isn’t doing her any favors; she looks like a soccer mom without the ball, the minivan or the kids. I get that she’s supposed to have newfound maturity, but did the producers not trust her acting talents? 

• A bed for Riggins at the TV Home for Wayward Cute Boys.

Does he now move in with the Taylors and consummate a fierce -- but age-appropriate for both -- affair with daughter Julie? Would Tami Taylor stand for it? 

• A new boyfriend for Lila.

That holier-than-thou expression she’s forever wearing -- dropping in on episodes as if she’s Joan of Arc of Dillon, or maybe just “The Ghost Whisperer” -- has transformed her into a real bore.

• A new story direction for Street.

What does the character do, other than take impetuous trips to Mexico for miracle cures and wheel onto episodes every now and then?

• Less sighing, more playing.

Have budget constraints made it difficult for the producers to stage games? I think the Panthers won their game Friday night, but the result was not shown. I believe their record this season is 2-5. Or 5-2. Or maybe 3-3. You’d have to ask Coach Taylor, although I'm not certain he knows. News conference, anyone?

-- Paul Brownfield

They still play games, don’t they?

“Friday Night Lights” has been awfully short on football this season. Not so much football scenes as a sense of the season. This week’s episode opened with the Panthers getting trounced 37-0. But don’t ask me why, or what their record is, or how many games they’ve played. Because I don’t know.

Aren’t our boys supposed to be defending their state title? Are they experiencing a championship hangover? Did they lose too many players to graduation? Is it the turmoil of a season stunted by the surprise return of Coach Taylor and the sudden departure of that other guy?

It’s hard not to wonder whether Coach doesn’t long for the college job he left behind in Austin. Because that blue Panther cap-and-shirt ensemble is beginning to evoke not so much head coach of a storied football program as manager of a muffler shop.

That wandering puppy thing with Riggins was getting terribly old, so thank God "Friday Night Lights" had him arrive at a story line at the end of the episode.

I get that Riggins is adrift and hurting oh-so-much inside, awaiting reinstatement to the football team by Coach Taylor. But his brooding love affair with the camera was coming at the expense of the character.

Now he will apparently move in with a guy who doesn't wear a shirt around the house and has ferrets for pets.

Come to think of it, there was lots of movin' in last night. That Santiago kid moved in with booster Buddy Garrity; Tim moved in (temporarily) with Tyra (who's become a bit too officious and goody-goody, if you ask me), before moving in with the ferret guy.

Panther fans, a strike-shortened TV season now threatens our beloved "Friday Night Lights."

Not to be too doom-and-gloom here, but the forecast is troubling: Six episodes of "FNL" have now aired. According to the Show Tracker TV grid, NBC expects 15 of the 22 episodes ordered to be completed, which means we might already be flirting with the halfway point of Season 2. Of equal concern, if not more, is this: If the Writers Guild of America strike effectively curtails the 2007-08 TV season, does "FNL," a little-show-that-could, have any chance of renewal for a third go-around? Might we have to say goodbye to Coach Taylor, Coach's wife, Riggins, Saracen, et al without a proper group hug?

Hear me, Panther faithful, for I am worried. As if to tweak our coming nostalgia, the latest episode of the show hit some first-season grace notes. (Although why no game? Can we please have a game!)

In football, pass interference is called when a defender unlawfully prevents a receiver from attempting to catch the ball. The penalty is a violation of space, in essence. "Friday Night Lights" keeps violating my space -- the ability to enjoy the characters and fabric of a town that were so richly established in Season 1.

Has the show completely lost its way? No. But it definitely feels as if it has detoured.

This week found Lila Garrity showing up down Mexico way, where the paralyzed QB Jason Street is about to undergo a highly iffy miracle-cure surgery, with the brooding hottie fullback Tim Riggins along for the beer. Enter born-again Christian Lila, Street's ex-fiancee, summoned by Riggins, her ex-fling, to talk Street out of the procedure.

Their successful intervention ended in an extremely suggestive three-way of tenderness at a honky-tonk bar, Lila seductively caressing Street, then brushing lips with Riggins, only to declare, "I gotta go pray."

What do we have here, "Y Tu Lila Tambien"?

Let us take a moment to go in praise of casting. In this, "Friday Night Lights" has rarely goofed. Families -- the Taylors, the Garritys, Matt Saracen and his father, Smash Williams and his mother -- actually look like families, and this season the show has exceeded itself in the casting of Landry's policeman father, played by Glenn Morshower.

Morshower not only looks like Jesse Plemmons' Landry but also exudes the rectitude that lies behind his son's goofball-genius persona.

The Landry kid is the character the producers of "FNL" decided to gamble on this season, changing his persona from sidekick to soul searching after he came to the aid of his high school crush, Tyra, killing her stalker.

The two then dumped the body in the river. Their cover-up seemed to get resolved in this week's episode, after Tyra was called to police headquarters to ID the body found in the river as the guy who'd attempted to rape her.

Is it case closed?  Doubtful.

First of all, what's with the goofy, soapy mid-episode recap, sponsored by J.C. Penney?

I realize that embedded advertising is the future in a DVR world. But, please, I don't need to be told what's just happened in the first half-hour of "Friday Night Lights."

The show has me at "hello"! The corporate-sponsored recaps are both no big deal and a microcosm of a sophomore jinx, demeaning a quality show with faux intrigue.

We are moving inevitably, inexorably, gloriously to the episode in which Coach Taylor returns to Dillon to re-take over Panther football.

Right?

It has to work out this way. Coach’s coach (wife Tami) is falling apart. Uber-booster Buddy Garrity is falling apart. Coach’s daughter Julie is turning into a harpy. Riggins is adrift again. And the Panthers haven’t even opened up defense of their state title!

You could practically subtitle this second season "Where's Papa?" For all of Dillon, it seems, is moody and unstable, what with Coach Taylor up in Austin.

A wise friend once told me: "The best job you'll ever have is the one before the one you thought you always wanted." And so it is with Coach Taylor, who isn't so much coaching college ball in Austin as babysitting bling-ridden players.

As that guy on the radio in Dillon would say, Welcome back, Panther fans, to a second season of the one and only "Friday Night Lights."

Fade in: End of summer, and Panther footballers, state champs, are frolicking in the town pool with rally girls. Brainy nerd Landry's still mooning for party-girl-turned-chaste-homebody Tyra; he even goes out for the football team to impress her. Coach Taylor is coaching college ball in Austin, while Coach's coach (his wife, Tami) is about to burst with their second child. First child Julie is a lifeguard; her beau, the shy, word-swallowing quarterback Matt Saracen, watches her flirt with a fellow lifeguard.

He's an older dude ironically dubbed "The Swede." "In some situations," Landry says, as Saracen regards the Swede situation with a wounded look, "you need to ask yourself, WWRD — what would Riggins do?"

'Friday Night Lights': Family Matters

First of all, I’d like to apologize for calling the coach of Larabee a jerk last week. How was I to know his wife is terribly sick?

Still, what he did to Riggins at the end of that game, coming out on the field and tackling him like that — it was not only crazy but dangerous. Particularly at Dillon High, where memories of Jason Street’s devastating spinal injury must still be fresh.

Sidebar: Where is the Street character? Does actor Scott Porter have a particularly busy film schedule of late? Incidentally, if you happen to be flipping through your HBOs and see that the Drew Barrymore/Hugh Grant rom-com “Music and Lyrics” is on, check out Street as an effete British pop star. 

Anyway: Wouldn’t the sight of a coach blind-siding Riggins have painful echoes of the Street injury for Coach Taylor?  Maybe, but on “Friday Night Lights” loss of family trumps all; as soon as he heard about the Larabee coach’s wife, Coach Taylor apologized and left the man to his private anguish.

That sort of appropriateness is very FNL. TV seasons tend to have a values candidate, and last night’s episode seemed to go out of its way to re-assert the show’s status as our nation’s prime-time after-school special. Julie came correct to her father about getting drunk at that party; Tami came correct to her sister about loving her but wanting her to move out; Smash canoodled with the two-timing promises of recruiters from big-time schools before choosing the right one—TMU, up the road in Austin.

Why is that better than going to Alabama or Michigan? Because TMU is the known world. It’s close to home. And home is where family is. I got misty there, when Smash and his Mom embraced over his decision to remain close to the nest, but how much more layered would this relationship be if Mom had even a smidgeon of the son’s hunger for big-time stardom, or thought Michigan offered a unique  opportunity for her son?

As it is she’s Coach Taylor -- fearsome, morally correct --a nd Smash is Julie, wide-eyed, bushy-tailed.

Elsewhere: Riggins reunited with his brother, but ended his streak of Job-like forbearance by stealing three grand from that loony, ferret-owning drug dealer with whom he’d once stayed. Hmm, wonder if this will end badly.

Riggins is eye candy, no doubt, but I still feel FNL has over-played the Riggins card this season, at the expense of Saracen or Street or Buddy Garrity.

Come to think of it, why isn’t Riggins being recruited?  Isn’t he a pretty gaudy offensive/defensive talent?  Doesn't he make big plays for the state champion Dillon Panthers? Or do the recruiters just intuit he’s destined to remain in Dillon, a gazer-out at the larger world more than a participant?

-- Paul Brownfield

(Photo courtesy NBC)

Welcome back, Panther fans, and happy new year.

Must say I found it very easy to get sucked right back into FNL after the holiday break.

Nothing like a good injection of testosterone to get the Panther blood going again — those jerks from neighboring Larabee High, with their jerk coach, invading Panther-ville after a tornado sweeps through the area and levels the rival school.

No Panthers were affected by the twister, although Julie and Riggins were out shopping, and Riggins cradled Coach’s daughter in his arms while the windows of the store blew out. This yielded the most memorable line of the night, Julie’s friend Lois later asking dreamily: “What does he smell like?”

Riggins is the best-looking wastrel on TV. Lately he’d been staying with Coach, where last night he was touching off major hormonal activity in the Coach household — something bordering on soft porn, with Riggins as the cable guy.

He fixed their cable, you see. But later in the hour, after chivalrously getting a drunk Julie home from a party, Coach saw him tucking her in and thought the worst.

Thus did our Tim once again have to head out into that hard, dark Dillon night. Everyone wants him but who will take care of him?  FNL has been hitting this theme hard this season, maybe too hard at times. Riggins left the Taylors like he leaves every house he’s driven from: In his truck, wearing a martyr’s grin, those eyes crying out for a hug.

Meanwhile, seemingly 27-year-old high school senior Tyra broke up with newly un-guilty Landry, and slightly older Pam Garrity officially ended it with car dealer hubby Buddy. Of the former relationship, I found Tyra’s reasons for breaking up with Landry (in essence, you make me feel too much, too taken care of, I prefer flaky guys I don’t have to need) totally convincing.

Buddy’s plea to his wife (in essence, I love you) was comparatively thin on nuance. It did, however, put Coach Taylor and Buddy in a scene together, the two having a confab of mutual support in the laundromat.

Coach was stressed about the jerk coach with whom he had to share a practice field, while Buddy was laid low by the news that his cheatin’ ways was driving his wife to marry another man.

Of all the various pairings on FNL, Buddy and Coach is my favorite. The smooth-talking fixer and the hard-nosed moralist, both wanting to win so badly on Friday night. It’s a match made in Dillon.

Now go get dag-gum Larabee!

-- Paul Brownfield

And so we arrive at the holiday break for “Friday Night Lights,” in the midst of a sophomore slump.

"FNL" no longer feels special. Is it me or the show? 

Must. Stop. Comparing. This. Season. To. Last.

I was unmoved by the goings-on last night, Panther fans. I was even annoyed at Landry for seeming so badly to want martyrdom, though in the end he decided (I guess) that he was acting in self-defense that night he clubbed Tyra’s attacker to death. The old deception-confession-redemption play seemed to bring to a climax the fateful act of violence that kicked off this season.

I could otherwise recap last night’s episode (in brief, Julie fought more with her mom, Riggins arrived like a wet puppy at Coach Taylor’s house, Street found waitress love, Saracen continued to find home healthcare worker love, Buddy Garrity got the paroled kid Santiago to find football love).

But here’s a few things I’m wishing for "FNL" (or what remains of the show during a writers-strike-marred season) in the new year.

• Fewer scenes of Landry and Tyra staring at each other in fierce close-up.

I mean, really, I think I could sketch every pore of Landry’s face, and I don’t sketch.

• A new haircut for Tyra, who should break up with Landry for God’s sake.

That bob she’s wearing this season isn’t doing her any favors; she looks like a soccer mom without the ball, the minivan or the kids. I get that she’s supposed to have newfound maturity, but did the producers not trust her acting talents? 

• A bed for Riggins at the TV Home for Wayward Cute Boys.

Does he now move in with the Taylors and consummate a fierce -- but age-appropriate for both -- affair with daughter Julie? Would Tami Taylor stand for it? 

• A new boyfriend for Lila.

That holier-than-thou expression she’s forever wearing -- dropping in on episodes as if she’s Joan of Arc of Dillon, or maybe just “The Ghost Whisperer” -- has transformed her into a real bore.

• A new story direction for Street.

What does the character do, other than take impetuous trips to Mexico for miracle cures and wheel onto episodes every now and then?

• Less sighing, more playing.

Have budget constraints made it difficult for the producers to stage games? I think the Panthers won their game Friday night, but the result was not shown. I believe their record this season is 2-5. Or 5-2. Or maybe 3-3. You’d have to ask Coach Taylor, although I'm not certain he knows. News conference, anyone?

-- Paul Brownfield

They still play games, don’t they?

“Friday Night Lights” has been awfully short on football this season. Not so much football scenes as a sense of the season. This week’s episode opened with the Panthers getting trounced 37-0. But don’t ask me why, or what their record is, or how many games they’ve played. Because I don’t know.

Aren’t our boys supposed to be defending their state title? Are they experiencing a championship hangover? Did they lose too many players to graduation? Is it the turmoil of a season stunted by the surprise return of Coach Taylor and the sudden departure of that other guy?

It’s hard not to wonder whether Coach doesn’t long for the college job he left behind in Austin. Because that blue Panther cap-and-shirt ensemble is beginning to evoke not so much head coach of a storied football program as manager of a muffler shop.

That wandering puppy thing with Riggins was getting terribly old, so thank God "Friday Night Lights" had him arrive at a story line at the end of the episode.

I get that Riggins is adrift and hurting oh-so-much inside, awaiting reinstatement to the football team by Coach Taylor. But his brooding love affair with the camera was coming at the expense of the character.

Now he will apparently move in with a guy who doesn't wear a shirt around the house and has ferrets for pets.

Come to think of it, there was lots of movin' in last night. That Santiago kid moved in with booster Buddy Garrity; Tim moved in (temporarily) with Tyra (who's become a bit too officious and goody-goody, if you ask me), before moving in with the ferret guy.

Panther fans, a strike-shortened TV season now threatens our beloved "Friday Night Lights."

Not to be too doom-and-gloom here, but the forecast is troubling: Six episodes of "FNL" have now aired. According to the Show Tracker TV grid, NBC expects 15 of the 22 episodes ordered to be completed, which means we might already be flirting with the halfway point of Season 2. Of equal concern, if not more, is this: If the Writers Guild of America strike effectively curtails the 2007-08 TV season, does "FNL," a little-show-that-could, have any chance of renewal for a third go-around? Might we have to say goodbye to Coach Taylor, Coach's wife, Riggins, Saracen, et al without a proper group hug?

Hear me, Panther faithful, for I am worried. As if to tweak our coming nostalgia, the latest episode of the show hit some first-season grace notes. (Although why no game? Can we please have a game!)

In football, pass interference is called when a defender unlawfully prevents a receiver from attempting to catch the ball. The penalty is a violation of space, in essence. "Friday Night Lights" keeps violating my space -- the ability to enjoy the characters and fabric of a town that were so richly established in Season 1.

Has the show completely lost its way? No. But it definitely feels as if it has detoured.

This week found Lila Garrity showing up down Mexico way, where the paralyzed QB Jason Street is about to undergo a highly iffy miracle-cure surgery, with the brooding hottie fullback Tim Riggins along for the beer. Enter born-again Christian Lila, Street's ex-fiancee, summoned by Riggins, her ex-fling, to talk Street out of the procedure.

Their successful intervention ended in an extremely suggestive three-way of tenderness at a honky-tonk bar, Lila seductively caressing Street, then brushing lips with Riggins, only to declare, "I gotta go pray."

What do we have here, "Y Tu Lila Tambien"?

Let us take a moment to go in praise of casting. In this, "Friday Night Lights" has rarely goofed. Families -- the Taylors, the Garritys, Matt Saracen and his father, Smash Williams and his mother -- actually look like families, and this season the show has exceeded itself in the casting of Landry's policeman father, played by Glenn Morshower.

Morshower not only looks like Jesse Plemmons' Landry but also exudes the rectitude that lies behind his son's goofball-genius persona.

The Landry kid is the character the producers of "FNL" decided to gamble on this season, changing his persona from sidekick to soul searching after he came to the aid of his high school crush, Tyra, killing her stalker.

The two then dumped the body in the river. Their cover-up seemed to get resolved in this week's episode, after Tyra was called to police headquarters to ID the body found in the river as the guy who'd attempted to rape her.

Is it case closed?  Doubtful.

First of all, what's with the goofy, soapy mid-episode recap, sponsored by J.C. Penney?

I realize that embedded advertising is the future in a DVR world. But, please, I don't need to be told what's just happened in the first half-hour of "Friday Night Lights."

The show has me at "hello"! The corporate-sponsored recaps are both no big deal and a microcosm of a sophomore jinx, demeaning a quality show with faux intrigue.

We are moving inevitably, inexorably, gloriously to the episode in which Coach Taylor returns to Dillon to re-take over Panther football.

Right?

It has to work out this way. Coach’s coach (wife Tami) is falling apart. Uber-booster Buddy Garrity is falling apart. Coach’s daughter Julie is turning into a harpy. Riggins is adrift again. And the Panthers haven’t even opened up defense of their state title!

You could practically subtitle this second season "Where's Papa?" For all of Dillon, it seems, is moody and unstable, what with Coach Taylor up in Austin.

A wise friend once told me: "The best job you'll ever have is the one before the one you thought you always wanted." And so it is with Coach Taylor, who isn't so much coaching college ball in Austin as babysitting bling-ridden players.

As that guy on the radio in Dillon would say, Welcome back, Panther fans, to a second season of the one and only "Friday Night Lights."

Fade in: End of summer, and Panther footballers, state champs, are frolicking in the town pool with rally girls. Brainy nerd Landry's still mooning for party-girl-turned-chaste-homebody Tyra; he even goes out for the football team to impress her. Coach Taylor is coaching college ball in Austin, while Coach's coach (his wife, Tami) is about to burst with their second child. First child Julie is a lifeguard; her beau, the shy, word-swallowing quarterback Matt Saracen, watches her flirt with a fellow lifeguard.

He's an older dude ironically dubbed "The Swede." "In some situations," Landry says, as Saracen regards the Swede situation with a wounded look, "you need to ask yourself, WWRD — what would Riggins do?"

"Friday Night Lights:" Twists and Turns

Welcome back, Panther fans, and happy new year.

Must say I found it very easy to get sucked right back into FNL after the holiday break.

Nothing like a good injection of testosterone to get the Panther blood going again — those jerks from neighboring Larabee High, with their jerk coach, invading Panther-ville after a tornado sweeps through the area and levels the rival school.

No Panthers were affected by the twister, although Julie and Riggins were out shopping, and Riggins cradled Coach’s daughter in his arms while the windows of the store blew out. This yielded the most memorable line of the night, Julie’s friend Lois later asking dreamily: “What does he smell like?”

Riggins is the best-looking wastrel on TV. Lately he’d been staying with Coach, where last night he was touching off major hormonal activity in the Coach household — something bordering on soft porn, with Riggins as the cable guy.

He fixed their cable, you see. But later in the hour, after chivalrously getting a drunk Julie home from a party, Coach saw him tucking her in and thought the worst.

Thus did our Tim once again have to head out into that hard, dark Dillon night. Everyone wants him but who will take care of him?  FNL has been hitting this theme hard this season, maybe too hard at times. Riggins left the Taylors like he leaves every house he’s driven from: In his truck, wearing a martyr’s grin, those eyes crying out for a hug.

Meanwhile, seemingly 27-year-old high school senior Tyra broke up with newly un-guilty Landry, and slightly older Pam Garrity officially ended it with car dealer hubby Buddy. Of the former relationship, I found Tyra’s reasons for breaking up with Landry (in essence, you make me feel too much, too taken care of, I prefer flaky guys I don’t have to need) totally convincing.

Buddy’s plea to his wife (in essence, I love you) was comparatively thin on nuance. It did, however, put Coach Taylor and Buddy in a scene together, the two having a confab of mutual support in the laundromat.

Coach was stressed about the jerk coach with whom he had to share a practice field, while Buddy was laid low by the news that his cheatin’ ways was driving his wife to marry another man.

Of all the various pairings on FNL, Buddy and Coach is my favorite. The smooth-talking fixer and the hard-nosed moralist, both wanting to win so badly on Friday night. It’s a match made in Dillon.

Now go get dag-gum Larabee!

-- Paul Brownfield

And so we arrive at the holiday break for “Friday Night Lights,” in the midst of a sophomore slump.

"FNL" no longer feels special. Is it me or the show? 

Must. Stop. Comparing. This. Season. To. Last.

I was unmoved by the goings-on last night, Panther fans. I was even annoyed at Landry for seeming so badly to want martyrdom, though in the end he decided (I guess) that he was acting in self-defense that night he clubbed Tyra’s attacker to death. The old deception-confession-redemption play seemed to bring to a climax the fateful act of violence that kicked off this season.

I could otherwise recap last night’s episode (in brief, Julie fought more with her mom, Riggins arrived like a wet puppy at Coach Taylor’s house, Street found waitress love, Saracen continued to find home healthcare worker love, Buddy Garrity got the paroled kid Santiago to find football love).

But here’s a few things I’m wishing for "FNL" (or what remains of the show during a writers-strike-marred season) in the new year.

• Fewer scenes of Landry and Tyra staring at each other in fierce close-up.

I mean, really, I think I could sketch every pore of Landry’s face, and I don’t sketch.

• A new haircut for Tyra, who should break up with Landry for God’s sake.

That bob she’s wearing this season isn’t doing her any favors; she looks like a soccer mom without the ball, the minivan or the kids. I get that she’s supposed to have newfound maturity, but did the producers not trust her acting talents? 

• A bed for Riggins at the TV Home for Wayward Cute Boys.

Does he now move in with the Taylors and consummate a fierce -- but age-appropriate for both -- affair with daughter Julie? Would Tami Taylor stand for it? 

• A new boyfriend for Lila.

That holier-than-thou expression she’s forever wearing -- dropping in on episodes as if she’s Joan of Arc of Dillon, or maybe just “The Ghost Whisperer” -- has transformed her into a real bore.

• A new story direction for Street.

What does the character do, other than take impetuous trips to Mexico for miracle cures and wheel onto episodes every now and then?

• Less sighing, more playing.

Have budget constraints made it difficult for the producers to stage games? I think the Panthers won their game Friday night, but the result was not shown. I believe their record this season is 2-5. Or 5-2. Or maybe 3-3. You’d have to ask Coach Taylor, although I'm not certain he knows. News conference, anyone?

-- Paul Brownfield

They still play games, don’t they?

“Friday Night Lights” has been awfully short on football this season. Not so much football scenes as a sense of the season. This week’s episode opened with the Panthers getting trounced 37-0. But don’t ask me why, or what their record is, or how many games they’ve played. Because I don’t know.

Aren’t our boys supposed to be defending their state title? Are they experiencing a championship hangover? Did they lose too many players to graduation? Is it the turmoil of a season stunted by the surprise return of Coach Taylor and the sudden departure of that other guy?

It’s hard not to wonder whether Coach doesn’t long for the college job he left behind in Austin. Because that blue Panther cap-and-shirt ensemble is beginning to evoke not so much head coach of a storied football program as manager of a muffler shop.

That wandering puppy thing with Riggins was getting terribly old, so thank God "Friday Night Lights" had him arrive at a story line at the end of the episode.

I get that Riggins is adrift and hurting oh-so-much inside, awaiting reinstatement to the football team by Coach Taylor. But his brooding love affair with the camera was coming at the expense of the character.

Now he will apparently move in with a guy who doesn't wear a shirt around the house and has ferrets for pets.

Come to think of it, there was lots of movin' in last night. That Santiago kid moved in with booster Buddy Garrity; Tim moved in (temporarily) with Tyra (who's become a bit too officious and goody-goody, if you ask me), before moving in with the ferret guy.

Panther fans, a strike-shortened TV season now threatens our beloved "Friday Night Lights."

Not to be too doom-and-gloom here, but the forecast is troubling: Six episodes of "FNL" have now aired. According to the Show Tracker TV grid, NBC expects 15 of the 22 episodes ordered to be completed, which means we might already be flirting with the halfway point of Season 2. Of equal concern, if not more, is this: If the Writers Guild of America strike effectively curtails the 2007-08 TV season, does "FNL," a little-show-that-could, have any chance of renewal for a third go-around? Might we have to say goodbye to Coach Taylor, Coach's wife, Riggins, Saracen, et al without a proper group hug?

Hear me, Panther faithful, for I am worried. As if to tweak our coming nostalgia, the latest episode of the show hit some first-season grace notes. (Although why no game? Can we please have a game!)

In football, pass interference is called when a defender unlawfully prevents a receiver from attempting to catch the ball. The penalty is a violation of space, in essence. "Friday Night Lights" keeps violating my space -- the ability to enjoy the characters and fabric of a town that were so richly established in Season 1.

Has the show completely lost its way? No. But it definitely feels as if it has detoured.

This week found Lila Garrity showing up down Mexico way, where the paralyzed QB Jason Street is about to undergo a highly iffy miracle-cure surgery, with the brooding hottie fullback Tim Riggins along for the beer. Enter born-again Christian Lila, Street's ex-fiancee, summoned by Riggins, her ex-fling, to talk Street out of the procedure.

Their successful intervention ended in an extremely suggestive three-way of tenderness at a honky-tonk bar, Lila seductively caressing Street, then brushing lips with Riggins, only to declare, "I gotta go pray."

What do we have here, "Y Tu Lila Tambien"?

Let us take a moment to go in praise of casting. In this, "Friday Night Lights" has rarely goofed. Families -- the Taylors, the Garritys, Matt Saracen and his father, Smash Williams and his mother -- actually look like families, and this season the show has exceeded itself in the casting of Landry's policeman father, played by Glenn Morshower.

Morshower not only looks like Jesse Plemmons' Landry but also exudes the rectitude that lies behind his son's goofball-genius persona.

The Landry kid is the character the producers of "FNL" decided to gamble on this season, changing his persona from sidekick to soul searching after he came to the aid of his high school crush, Tyra, killing her stalker.

The two then dumped the body in the river. Their cover-up seemed to get resolved in this week's episode, after Tyra was called to police headquarters to ID the body found in the river as the guy who'd attempted to rape her.

Is it case closed?  Doubtful.

First of all, what's with the goofy, soapy mid-episode recap, sponsored by J.C. Penney?

I realize that embedded advertising is the future in a DVR world. But, please, I don't need to be told what's just happened in the first half-hour of "Friday Night Lights."

The show has me at "hello"! The corporate-sponsored recaps are both no big deal and a microcosm of a sophomore jinx, demeaning a quality show with faux intrigue.

We are moving inevitably, inexorably, gloriously to the episode in which Coach Taylor returns to Dillon to re-take over Panther football.

Right?

It has to work out this way. Coach’s coach (wife Tami) is falling apart. Uber-booster Buddy Garrity is falling apart. Coach’s daughter Julie is turning into a harpy. Riggins is adrift again. And the Panthers haven’t even opened up defense of their state title!

You could practically subtitle this second season "Where's Papa?" For all of Dillon, it seems, is moody and unstable, what with Coach Taylor up in Austin.

A wise friend once told me: "The best job you'll ever have is the one before the one you thought you always wanted." And so it is with Coach Taylor, who isn't so much coaching college ball in Austin as babysitting bling-ridden players.

As that guy on the radio in Dillon would say, Welcome back, Panther fans, to a second season of the one and only "Friday Night Lights."

Fade in: End of summer, and Panther footballers, state champs, are frolicking in the town pool with rally girls. Brainy nerd Landry's still mooning for party-girl-turned-chaste-homebody Tyra; he even goes out for the football team to impress her. Coach Taylor is coaching college ball in Austin, while Coach's coach (his wife, Tami) is about to burst with their second child. First child Julie is a lifeguard; her beau, the shy, word-swallowing quarterback Matt Saracen, watches her flirt with a fellow lifeguard.

He's an older dude ironically dubbed "The Swede." "In some situations," Landry says, as Saracen regards the Swede situation with a wounded look, "you need to ask yourself, WWRD — what would Riggins do?"

'Friday Night Lights': A wish list

And so we arrive at the holiday break for “Friday Night Lights,” in the midst of a sophomore slump.

"FNL" no longer feels special. Is it me or the show? 

Must. Stop. Comparing. This. Season. To. Last.

I was unmoved by the goings-on last night, Panther fans. I was even annoyed at Landry for seeming so badly to want martyrdom, though in the end he decided (I guess) that he was acting in self-defense that night he clubbed Tyra’s attacker to death. The old deception-confession-redemption play seemed to bring to a climax the fateful act of violence that kicked off this season.

I could otherwise recap last night’s episode (in brief, Julie fought more with her mom, Riggins arrived like a wet puppy at Coach Taylor’s house, Street found waitress love, Saracen continued to find home healthcare worker love, Buddy Garrity got the paroled kid Santiago to find football love).

But here’s a few things I’m wishing for "FNL" (or what remains of the show during a writers-strike-marred season) in the new year.

• Fewer scenes of Landry and Tyra staring at each other in fierce close-up.

I mean, really, I think I could sketch every pore of Landry’s face, and I don’t sketch.

• A new haircut for Tyra, who should break up with Landry for God’s sake.

That bob she’s wearing this season isn’t doing her any favors; she looks like a soccer mom without the ball, the minivan or the kids. I get that she’s supposed to have newfound maturity, but did the producers not trust her acting talents? 

• A bed for Riggins at the TV Home for Wayward Cute Boys.

Does he now move in with the Taylors and consummate a fierce -- but age-appropriate for both -- affair with daughter Julie? Would Tami Taylor stand for it? 

• A new boyfriend for Lila.

That holier-than-thou expression she’s forever wearing -- dropping in on episodes as if she’s Joan of Arc of Dillon, or maybe just “The Ghost Whisperer” -- has transformed her into a real bore.

• A new story direction for Street.

What does the character do, other than take impetuous trips to Mexico for miracle cures and wheel onto episodes every now and then?

• Less sighing, more playing.

Have budget constraints made it difficult for the producers to stage games? I think the Panthers won their game Friday night, but the result was not shown. I believe their record this season is 2-5. Or 5-2. Or maybe 3-3. You’d have to ask Coach Taylor, although I'm not certain he knows. News conference, anyone?

-- Paul Brownfield

They still play games, don’t they?

“Friday Night Lights” has been awfully short on football this season. Not so much football scenes as a sense of the season. This week’s episode opened with the Panthers getting trounced 37-0. But don’t ask me why, or what their record is, or how many games they’ve played. Because I don’t know.

Aren’t our boys supposed to be defending their state title? Are they experiencing a championship hangover? Did they lose too many players to graduation? Is it the turmoil of a season stunted by the surprise return of Coach Taylor and the sudden departure of that other guy?

It’s hard not to wonder whether Coach doesn’t long for the college job he left behind in Austin. Because that blue Panther cap-and-shirt ensemble is beginning to evoke not so much head coach of a storied football program as manager of a muffler shop.

That wandering puppy thing with Riggins was getting terribly old, so thank God "Friday Night Lights" had him arrive at a story line at the end of the episode.

I get that Riggins is adrift and hurting oh-so-much inside, awaiting reinstatement to the football team by Coach Taylor. But his brooding love affair with the camera was coming at the expense of the character.

Now he will apparently move in with a guy who doesn't wear a shirt around the house and has ferrets for pets.

Come to think of it, there was lots of movin' in last night. That Santiago kid moved in with booster Buddy Garrity; Tim moved in (temporarily) with Tyra (who's become a bit too officious and goody-goody, if you ask me), before moving in with the ferret guy.

Panther fans, a strike-shortened TV season now threatens our beloved "Friday Night Lights."

Not to be too doom-and-gloom here, but the forecast is troubling: Six episodes of "FNL" have now aired. According to the Show Tracker TV grid, NBC expects 15 of the 22 episodes ordered to be completed, which means we might already be flirting with the halfway point of Season 2. Of equal concern, if not more, is this: If the Writers Guild of America strike effectively curtails the 2007-08 TV season, does "FNL," a little-show-that-could, have any chance of renewal for a third go-around? Might we have to say goodbye to Coach Taylor, Coach's wife, Riggins, Saracen, et al without a proper group hug?

Hear me, Panther faithful, for I am worried. As if to tweak our coming nostalgia, the latest episode of the show hit some first-season grace notes. (Although why no game? Can we please have a game!)

In football, pass interference is called when a defender unlawfully prevents a receiver from attempting to catch the ball. The penalty is a violation of space, in essence. "Friday Night Lights" keeps violating my space -- the ability to enjoy the characters and fabric of a town that were so richly established in Season 1.

Has the show completely lost its way? No. But it definitely feels as if it has detoured.

This week found Lila Garrity showing up down Mexico way, where the paralyzed QB Jason Street is about to undergo a highly iffy miracle-cure surgery, with the brooding hottie fullback Tim Riggins along for the beer. Enter born-again Christian Lila, Street's ex-fiancee, summoned by Riggins, her ex-fling, to talk Street out of the procedure.

Their successful intervention ended in an extremely suggestive three-way of tenderness at a honky-tonk bar, Lila seductively caressing Street, then brushing lips with Riggins, only to declare, "I gotta go pray."

What do we have here, "Y Tu Lila Tambien"?

Let us take a moment to go in praise of casting. In this, "Friday Night Lights" has rarely goofed. Families -- the Taylors, the Garritys, Matt Saracen and his father, Smash Williams and his mother -- actually look like families, and this season the show has exceeded itself in the casting of Landry's policeman father, played by Glenn Morshower.

Morshower not only looks like Jesse Plemmons' Landry but also exudes the rectitude that lies behind his son's goofball-genius persona.

The Landry kid is the character the producers of "FNL" decided to gamble on this season, changing his persona from sidekick to soul searching after he came to the aid of his high school crush, Tyra, killing her stalker.

The two then dumped the body in the river. Their cover-up seemed to get resolved in this week's episode, after Tyra was called to police headquarters to ID the body found in the river as the guy who'd attempted to rape her.

Is it case closed?  Doubtful.

First of all, what's with the goofy, soapy mid-episode recap, sponsored by J.C. Penney?

I realize that embedded advertising is the future in a DVR world. But, please, I don't need to be told what's just happened in the first half-hour of "Friday Night Lights."

The show has me at "hello"! The corporate-sponsored recaps are both no big deal and a microcosm of a sophomore jinx, demeaning a quality show with faux intrigue.

We are moving inevitably, inexorably, gloriously to the episode in which Coach Taylor returns to Dillon to re-take over Panther football.

Right?

It has to work out this way. Coach’s coach (wife Tami) is falling apart. Uber-booster Buddy Garrity is falling apart. Coach’s daughter Julie is turning into a harpy. Riggins is adrift again. And the Panthers haven’t even opened up defense of their state title!

You could practically subtitle this second season "Where's Papa?" For all of Dillon, it seems, is moody and unstable, what with Coach Taylor up in Austin.

A wise friend once told me: "The best job you'll ever have is the one before the one you thought you always wanted." And so it is with Coach Taylor, who isn't so much coaching college ball in Austin as babysitting bling-ridden players.

As that guy on the radio in Dillon would say, Welcome back, Panther fans, to a second season of the one and only "Friday Night Lights."

Fade in: End of summer, and Panther footballers, state champs, are frolicking in the town pool with rally girls. Brainy nerd Landry's still mooning for party-girl-turned-chaste-homebody Tyra; he even goes out for the football team to impress her. Coach Taylor is coaching college ball in Austin, while Coach's coach (his wife, Tami) is about to burst with their second child. First child Julie is a lifeguard; her beau, the shy, word-swallowing quarterback Matt Saracen, watches her flirt with a fellow lifeguard.

He's an older dude ironically dubbed "The Swede." "In some situations," Landry says, as Saracen regards the Swede situation with a wounded look, "you need to ask yourself, WWRD — what would Riggins do?"

'FNL': What's the game?

They still play games, don’t they?

“Friday Night Lights” has been awfully short on football this season. Not so much football scenes as a sense of the season. This week’s episode opened with the Panthers getting trounced 37-0. But don’t ask me why, or what their record is, or how many games they’ve played. Because I don’t know.

Aren’t our boys supposed to be defending their state title? Are they experiencing a championship hangover? Did they lose too many players to graduation? Is it the turmoil of a season stunted by the surprise return of Coach Taylor and the sudden departure of that other guy?

It’s hard not to wonder whether Coach doesn’t long for the college job he left behind in Austin. Because that blue Panther cap-and-shirt ensemble is beginning to evoke not so much head coach of a storied football program as manager of a muffler shop.

That wandering puppy thing with Riggins was getting terribly old, so thank God "Friday Night Lights" had him arrive at a story line at the end of the episode.

I get that Riggins is adrift and hurting oh-so-much inside, awaiting reinstatement to the football team by Coach Taylor. But his brooding love affair with the camera was coming at the expense of the character.

Now he will apparently move in with a guy who doesn't wear a shirt around the house and has ferrets for pets.

Come to think of it, there was lots of movin' in last night. That Santiago kid moved in with booster Buddy Garrity; Tim moved in (temporarily) with Tyra (who's become a bit too officious and goody-goody, if you ask me), before moving in with the ferret guy.

Panther fans, a strike-shortened TV season now threatens our beloved "Friday Night Lights."

Not to be too doom-and-gloom here, but the forecast is troubling: Six episodes of "FNL" have now aired. According to the Show Tracker TV grid, NBC expects 15 of the 22 episodes ordered to be completed, which means we might already be flirting with the halfway point of Season 2. Of equal concern, if not more, is this: If the Writers Guild of America strike effectively curtails the 2007-08 TV season, does "FNL," a little-show-that-could, have any chance of renewal for a third go-around? Might we have to say goodbye to Coach Taylor, Coach's wife, Riggins, Saracen, et al without a proper group hug?

Hear me, Panther faithful, for I am worried. As if to tweak our coming nostalgia, the latest episode of the show hit some first-season grace notes. (Although why no game? Can we please have a game!)

In football, pass interference is called when a defender unlawfully prevents a receiver from attempting to catch the ball. The penalty is a violation of space, in essence. "Friday Night Lights" keeps violating my space -- the ability to enjoy the characters and fabric of a town that were so richly established in Season 1.

Has the show completely lost its way? No. But it definitely feels as if it has detoured.

This week found Lila Garrity showing up down Mexico way, where the paralyzed QB Jason Street is about to undergo a highly iffy miracle-cure surgery, with the brooding hottie fullback Tim Riggins along for the beer. Enter born-again Christian Lila, Street's ex-fiancee, summoned by Riggins, her ex-fling, to talk Street out of the procedure.

Their successful intervention ended in an extremely suggestive three-way of tenderness at a honky-tonk bar, Lila seductively caressing Street, then brushing lips with Riggins, only to declare, "I gotta go pray."

What do we have here, "Y Tu Lila Tambien"?

Let us take a moment to go in praise of casting. In this, "Friday Night Lights" has rarely goofed. Families -- the Taylors, the Garritys, Matt Saracen and his father, Smash Williams and his mother -- actually look like families, and this season the show has exceeded itself in the casting of Landry's policeman father, played by Glenn Morshower.

Morshower not only looks like Jesse Plemmons' Landry but also exudes the rectitude that lies behind his son's goofball-genius persona.

The Landry kid is the character the producers of "FNL" decided to gamble on this season, changing his persona from sidekick to soul searching after he came to the aid of his high school crush, Tyra, killing her stalker.

The two then dumped the body in the river. Their cover-up seemed to get resolved in this week's episode, after Tyra was called to police headquarters to ID the body found in the river as the guy who'd attempted to rape her.

Is it case closed?  Doubtful.

First of all, what's with the goofy, soapy mid-episode recap, sponsored by J.C. Penney?

I realize that embedded advertising is the future in a DVR world. But, please, I don't need to be told what's just happened in the first half-hour of "Friday Night Lights."

The show has me at "hello"! The corporate-sponsored recaps are both no big deal and a microcosm of a sophomore jinx, demeaning a quality show with faux intrigue.

We are moving inevitably, inexorably, gloriously to the episode in which Coach Taylor returns to Dillon to re-take over Panther football.

Right?

It has to work out this way. Coach’s coach (wife Tami) is falling apart. Uber-booster Buddy Garrity is falling apart. Coach’s daughter Julie is turning into a harpy. Riggins is adrift again. And the Panthers haven’t even opened up defense of their state title!

You could practically subtitle this second season "Where's Papa?" For all of Dillon, it seems, is moody and unstable, what with Coach Taylor up in Austin.

A wise friend once told me: "The best job you'll ever have is the one before the one you thought you always wanted." And so it is with Coach Taylor, who isn't so much coaching college ball in Austin as babysitting bling-ridden players.

As that guy on the radio in Dillon would say, Welcome back, Panther fans, to a second season of the one and only "Friday Night Lights."

Fade in: End of summer, and Panther footballers, state champs, are frolicking in the town pool with rally girls. Brainy nerd Landry's still mooning for party-girl-turned-chaste-homebody Tyra; he even goes out for the football team to impress her. Coach Taylor is coaching college ball in Austin, while Coach's coach (his wife, Tami) is about to burst with their second child. First child Julie is a lifeguard; her beau, the shy, word-swallowing quarterback Matt Saracen, watches her flirt with a fellow lifeguard.

He's an older dude ironically dubbed "The Swede." "In some situations," Landry says, as Saracen regards the Swede situation with a wounded look, "you need to ask yourself, WWRD — what would Riggins do?"

'FNL': Don't whisper-yell at me

That wandering puppy thing with Riggins was getting terribly old, so thank God "Friday Night Lights" had him arrive at a story line at the end of the episode.

I get that Riggins is adrift and hurting oh-so-much inside, awaiting reinstatement to the football team by Coach Taylor. But his brooding love affair with the camera was coming at the expense of the character.

Now he will apparently move in with a guy who doesn't wear a shirt around the house and has ferrets for pets.

Come to think of it, there was lots of movin' in last night. That Santiago kid moved in with booster Buddy Garrity; Tim moved in (temporarily) with Tyra (who's become a bit too officious and goody-goody, if you ask me), before moving in with the ferret guy.

Panther fans, a strike-shortened TV season now threatens our beloved "Friday Night Lights."

Not to be too doom-and-gloom here, but the forecast is troubling: Six episodes of "FNL" have now aired. According to the Show Tracker TV grid, NBC expects 15 of the 22 episodes ordered to be completed, which means we might already be flirting with the halfway point of Season 2. Of equal concern, if not more, is this: If the Writers Guild of America strike effectively curtails the 2007-08 TV season, does "FNL," a little-show-that-could, have any chance of renewal for a third go-around? Might we have to say goodbye to Coach Taylor, Coach's wife, Riggins, Saracen, et al without a proper group hug?

Hear me, Panther faithful, for I am worried. As if to tweak our coming nostalgia, the latest episode of the show hit some first-season grace notes. (Although why no game? Can we please have a game!)

In football, pass interference is called when a defender unlawfully prevents a receiver from attempting to catch the ball. The penalty is a violation of space, in essence. "Friday Night Lights" keeps violating my space -- the ability to enjoy the characters and fabric of a town that were so richly established in Season 1.

Has the show completely lost its way? No. But it definitely feels as if it has detoured.

This week found Lila Garrity showing up down Mexico way, where the paralyzed QB Jason Street is about to undergo a highly iffy miracle-cure surgery, with the brooding hottie fullback Tim Riggins along for the beer. Enter born-again Christian Lila, Street's ex-fiancee, summoned by Riggins, her ex-fling, to talk Street out of the procedure.

Their successful intervention ended in an extremely suggestive three-way of tenderness at a honky-tonk bar, Lila seductively caressing Street, then brushing lips with Riggins, only to declare, "I gotta go pray."

What do we have here, "Y Tu Lila Tambien"?

Let us take a moment to go in praise of casting. In this, "Friday Night Lights" has rarely goofed. Families -- the Taylors, the Garritys, Matt Saracen and his father, Smash Williams and his mother -- actually look like families, and this season the show has exceeded itself in the casting of Landry's policeman father, played by Glenn Morshower.

Morshower not only looks like Jesse Plemmons' Landry but also exudes the rectitude that lies behind his son's goofball-genius persona.

The Landry kid is the character the producers of "FNL" decided to gamble on this season, changing his persona from sidekick to soul searching after he came to the aid of his high school crush, Tyra, killing her stalker.

The two then dumped the body in the river. Their cover-up seemed to get resolved in this week's episode, after Tyra was called to police headquarters to ID the body found in the river as the guy who'd attempted to rape her.

Is it case closed?  Doubtful.

First of all, what's with the goofy, soapy mid-episode recap, sponsored by J.C. Penney?

I realize that embedded advertising is the future in a DVR world. But, please, I don't need to be told what's just happened in the first half-hour of "Friday Night Lights."

The show has me at "hello"! The corporate-sponsored recaps are both no big deal and a microcosm of a sophomore jinx, demeaning a quality show with faux intrigue.

We are moving inevitably, inexorably, gloriously to the episode in which Coach Taylor returns to Dillon to re-take over Panther football.

Right?

It has to work out this way. Coach’s coach (wife Tami) is falling apart. Uber-booster Buddy Garrity is falling apart. Coach’s daughter Julie is turning into a harpy. Riggins is adrift again. And the Panthers haven’t even opened up defense of their state title!

You could practically subtitle this second season "Where's Papa?" For all of Dillon, it seems, is moody and unstable, what with Coach Taylor up in Austin.

A wise friend once told me: "The best job you'll ever have is the one before the one you thought you always wanted." And so it is with Coach Taylor, who isn't so much coaching college ball in Austin as babysitting bling-ridden players.

As that guy on the radio in Dillon would say, Welcome back, Panther fans, to a second season of the one and only "Friday Night Lights."

Fade in: End of summer, and Panther footballers, state champs, are frolicking in the town pool with rally girls. Brainy nerd Landry's still mooning for party-girl-turned-chaste-homebody Tyra; he even goes out for the football team to impress her. Coach Taylor is coaching college ball in Austin, while Coach's coach (his wife, Tami) is about to burst with their second child. First child Julie is a lifeguard; her beau, the shy, word-swallowing quarterback Matt Saracen, watches her flirt with a fellow lifeguard.

He's an older dude ironically dubbed "The Swede." "In some situations," Landry says, as Saracen regards the Swede situation with a wounded look, "you need to ask yourself, WWRD — what would Riggins do?"

'FNL': Is it halftime or the fourth quarter?

Panther fans, a strike-shortened TV season now threatens our beloved "Friday Night Lights."

Not to be too doom-and-gloom here, but the forecast is troubling: Six episodes of "FNL" have now aired. According to the Show Tracker TV grid, NBC expects 15 of the 22 episodes ordered to be completed, which means we might already be flirting with the halfway point of Season 2. Of equal concern, if not more, is this: If the Writers Guild of America strike effectively curtails the 2007-08 TV season, does "FNL," a little-show-that-could, have any chance of renewal for a third go-around? Might we have to say goodbye to Coach Taylor, Coach's wife, Riggins, Saracen, et al without a proper group hug?

Hear me, Panther faithful, for I am worried. As if to tweak our coming nostalgia, the latest episode of the show hit some first-season grace notes. (Although why no game? Can we please have a game!)

In football, pass interference is called when a defender unlawfully prevents a receiver from attempting to catch the ball. The penalty is a violation of space, in essence. "Friday Night Lights" keeps violating my space -- the ability to enjoy the characters and fabric of a town that were so richly established in Season 1.

Has the show completely lost its way? No. But it definitely feels as if it has detoured.

This week found Lila Garrity showing up down Mexico way, where the paralyzed QB Jason Street is about to undergo a highly iffy miracle-cure surgery, with the brooding hottie fullback Tim Riggins along for the beer. Enter born-again Christian Lila, Street's ex-fiancee, summoned by Riggins, her ex-fling, to talk Street out of the procedure.

Their successful intervention ended in an extremely suggestive three-way of tenderness at a honky-tonk bar, Lila seductively caressing Street, then brushing lips with Riggins, only to declare, "I gotta go pray."

What do we have here, "Y Tu Lila Tambien"?

Let us take a moment to go in praise of casting. In this, "Friday Night Lights" has rarely goofed. Families -- the Taylors, the Garritys, Matt Saracen and his father, Smash Williams and his mother -- actually look like families, and this season the show has exceeded itself in the casting of Landry's policeman father, played by Glenn Morshower.

Morshower not only looks like Jesse Plemmons' Landry but also exudes the rectitude that lies behind his son's goofball-genius persona.

The Landry kid is the character the producers of "FNL" decided to gamble on this season, changing his persona from sidekick to soul searching after he came to the aid of his high school crush, Tyra, killing her stalker.

The two then dumped the body in the river. Their cover-up seemed to get resolved in this week's episode, after Tyra was called to police headquarters to ID the body found in the river as the guy who'd attempted to rape her.

Is it case closed?  Doubtful.

First of all, what's with the goofy, soapy mid-episode recap, sponsored by J.C. Penney?

I realize that embedded advertising is the future in a DVR world. But, please, I don't need to be told what's just happened in the first half-hour of "Friday Night Lights."

The show has me at "hello"! The corporate-sponsored recaps are both no big deal and a microcosm of a sophomore jinx, demeaning a quality show with faux intrigue.

We are moving inevitably, inexorably, gloriously to the episode in which Coach Taylor returns to Dillon to re-take over Panther football.

Right?

It has to work out this way. Coach’s coach (wife Tami) is falling apart. Uber-booster Buddy Garrity is falling apart. Coach’s daughter Julie is turning into a harpy. Riggins is adrift again. And the Panthers haven’t even opened up defense of their state title!

You could practically subtitle this second season "Where's Papa?" For all of Dillon, it seems, is moody and unstable, what with Coach Taylor up in Austin.

A wise friend once told me: "The best job you'll ever have is the one before the one you thought you always wanted." And so it is with Coach Taylor, who isn't so much coaching college ball in Austin as babysitting bling-ridden players.

As that guy on the radio in Dillon would say, Welcome back, Panther fans, to a second season of the one and only "Friday Night Lights."

Fade in: End of summer, and Panther footballers, state champs, are frolicking in the town pool with rally girls. Brainy nerd Landry's still mooning for party-girl-turned-chaste-homebody Tyra; he even goes out for the football team to impress her. Coach Taylor is coaching college ball in Austin, while Coach's coach (his wife, Tami) is about to burst with their second child. First child Julie is a lifeguard; her beau, the shy, word-swallowing quarterback Matt Saracen, watches her flirt with a fellow lifeguard.

He's an older dude ironically dubbed "The Swede." "In some situations," Landry says, as Saracen regards the Swede situation with a wounded look, "you need to ask yourself, WWRD — what would Riggins do?"

'FNL': Y Tu Lila Tambien

In football, pass interference is called when a defender unlawfully prevents a receiver from attempting to catch the ball. The penalty is a violation of space, in essence. "Friday Night Lights" keeps violating my space -- the ability to enjoy the characters and fabric of a town that were so richly established in Season 1.

Has the show completely lost its way? No. But it definitely feels as if it has detoured.

This week found Lila Garrity showing up down Mexico way, where the paralyzed QB Jason Street is about to undergo a highly iffy miracle-cure surgery, with the brooding hottie fullback Tim Riggins along for the beer. Enter born-again Christian Lila, Street's ex-fiancee, summoned by Riggins, her ex-fling, to talk Street out of the procedure.

Their successful intervention ended in an extremely suggestive three-way of tenderness at a honky-tonk bar, Lila seductively caressing Street, then brushing lips with Riggins, only to declare, "I gotta go pray."

What do we have here, "Y Tu Lila Tambien"?

Let us take a moment to go in praise of casting. In this, "Friday Night Lights" has rarely goofed. Families -- the Taylors, the Garritys, Matt Saracen and his father, Smash Williams and his mother -- actually look like families, and this season the show has exceeded itself in the casting of Landry's policeman father, played by Glenn Morshower.

Morshower not only looks like Jesse Plemmons' Landry but also exudes the rectitude that lies behind his son's goofball-genius persona.

The Landry kid is the character the producers of "FNL" decided to gamble on this season, changing his persona from sidekick to soul searching after he came to the aid of his high school crush, Tyra, killing her stalker.

The two then dumped the body in the river. Their cover-up seemed to get resolved in this week's episode, after Tyra was called to police headquarters to ID the body found in the river as the guy who'd attempted to rape her.

Is it case closed?  Doubtful.

First of all, what's with the goofy, soapy mid-episode recap, sponsored by J.C. Penney?

I realize that embedded advertising is the future in a DVR world. But, please, I don't need to be told what's just happened in the first half-hour of "Friday Night Lights."

The show has me at "hello"! The corporate-sponsored recaps are both no big deal and a microcosm of a sophomore jinx, demeaning a quality show with faux intrigue.

We are moving inevitably, inexorably, gloriously to the episode in which Coach Taylor returns to Dillon to re-take over Panther football.

Right?

It has to work out this way. Coach’s coach (wife Tami) is falling apart. Uber-booster Buddy Garrity is falling apart. Coach’s daughter Julie is turning into a harpy. Riggins is adrift again. And the Panthers haven’t even opened up defense of their state title!

You could practically subtitle this second season "Where's Papa?" For all of Dillon, it seems, is moody and unstable, what with Coach Taylor up in Austin.

A wise friend once told me: "The best job you'll ever have is the one before the one you thought you always wanted." And so it is with Coach Taylor, who isn't so much coaching college ball in Austin as babysitting bling-ridden players.

As that guy on the radio in Dillon would say, Welcome back, Panther fans, to a second season of the one and only "Friday Night Lights."

Fade in: End of summer, and Panther footballers, state champs, are frolicking in the town pool with rally girls. Brainy nerd Landry's still mooning for party-girl-turned-chaste-homebody Tyra; he even goes out for the football team to impress her. Coach Taylor is coaching college ball in Austin, while Coach's coach (his wife, Tami) is about to burst with their second child. First child Julie is a lifeguard; her beau, the shy, word-swallowing quarterback Matt Saracen, watches her flirt with a fellow lifeguard.

He's an older dude ironically dubbed "The Swede." "In some situations," Landry says, as Saracen regards the Swede situation with a wounded look, "you need to ask yourself, WWRD — what would Riggins do?"

'FNL': Is it case closed?

Let us take a moment to go in praise of casting. In this, "Friday Night Lights" has rarely goofed. Families -- the Taylors, the Garritys, Matt Saracen and his father, Smash Williams and his mother -- actually look like families, and this season the show has exceeded itself in the casting of Landry's policeman father, played by Glenn Morshower.

Morshower not only looks like Jesse Plemmons' Landry but also exudes the rectitude that lies behind his son's goofball-genius persona.

The Landry kid is the character the producers of "FNL" decided to gamble on this season, changing his persona from sidekick to soul searching after he came to the aid of his high school crush, Tyra, killing her stalker.

The two then dumped the body in the river. Their cover-up seemed to get resolved in this week's episode, after Tyra was called to police headquarters to ID the body found in the river as the guy who'd attempted to rape her.

Is it case closed?  Doubtful.

First of all, what's with the goofy, soapy mid-episode recap, sponsored by J.C. Penney?

I realize that embedded advertising is the future in a DVR world. But, please, I don't need to be told what's just happened in the first half-hour of "Friday Night Lights."

The show has me at "hello"! The corporate-sponsored recaps are both no big deal and a microcosm of a sophomore jinx, demeaning a quality show with faux intrigue.

We are moving inevitably, inexorably, gloriously to the episode in which Coach Taylor returns to Dillon to re-take over Panther football.

Right?

It has to work out this way. Coach’s coach (wife Tami) is falling apart. Uber-booster Buddy Garrity is falling apart. Coach’s daughter Julie is turning into a harpy. Riggins is adrift again. And the Panthers haven’t even opened up defense of their state title!

You could practically subtitle this second season "Where's Papa?" For all of Dillon, it seems, is moody and unstable, what with Coach Taylor up in Austin.

A wise friend once told me: "The best job you'll ever have is the one before the one you thought you always wanted." And so it is with Coach Taylor, who isn't so much coaching college ball in Austin as babysitting bling-ridden players.

As that guy on the radio in Dillon would say, Welcome back, Panther fans, to a second season of the one and only "Friday Night Lights."

Fade in: End of summer, and Panther footballers, state champs, are frolicking in the town pool with rally girls. Brainy nerd Landry's still mooning for party-girl-turned-chaste-homebody Tyra; he even goes out for the football team to impress her. Coach Taylor is coaching college ball in Austin, while Coach's coach (his wife, Tami) is about to burst with their second child. First child Julie is a lifeguard; her beau, the shy, word-swallowing quarterback Matt Saracen, watches her flirt with a fellow lifeguard.

He's an older dude ironically dubbed "The Swede." "In some situations," Landry says, as Saracen regards the Swede situation with a wounded look, "you need to ask yourself, WWRD — what would Riggins do?"

'FNL': To recap, it's been hit and miss

First of all, what's with the goofy, soapy mid-episode recap, sponsored by J.C. Penney?

I realize that embedded advertising is the future in a DVR world. But, please, I don't need to be told what's just happened in the first half-hour of "Friday Night Lights."

The show has me at "hello"! The corporate-sponsored recaps are both no big deal and a microcosm of a sophomore jinx, demeaning a quality show with faux intrigue.

We are moving inevitably, inexorably, gloriously to the episode in which Coach Taylor returns to Dillon to re-take over Panther football.

Right?

It has to work out this way. Coach’s coach (wife Tami) is falling apart. Uber-booster Buddy Garrity is falling apart. Coach’s daughter Julie is turning into a harpy. Riggins is adrift again. And the Panthers haven’t even opened up defense of their state title!

You could practically subtitle this second season "Where's Papa?" For all of Dillon, it seems, is moody and unstable, what with Coach Taylor up in Austin.

A wise friend once told me: "The best job you'll ever have is the one before the one you thought you always wanted." And so it is with Coach Taylor, who isn't so much coaching college ball in Austin as babysitting bling-ridden players.

As that guy on the radio in Dillon would say, Welcome back, Panther fans, to a second season of the one and only "Friday Night Lights."

Fade in: End of summer, and Panther footballers, state champs, are frolicking in the town pool with rally girls. Brainy nerd Landry's still mooning for party-girl-turned-chaste-homebody Tyra; he even goes out for the football team to impress her. Coach Taylor is coaching college ball in Austin, while Coach's coach (his wife, Tami) is about to burst with their second child. First child Julie is a lifeguard; her beau, the shy, word-swallowing quarterback Matt Saracen, watches her flirt with a fellow lifeguard.

He's an older dude ironically dubbed "The Swede." "In some situations," Landry says, as Saracen regards the Swede situation with a wounded look, "you need to ask yourself, WWRD — what would Riggins do?"

'FNL': Where's Papa?

We are moving inevitably, inexorably, gloriously to the episode in which Coach Taylor returns to Dillon to re-take over Panther football.

Right?

It has to work out this way. Coach’s coach (wife Tami) is falling apart. Uber-booster Buddy Garrity is falling apart. Coach’s daughter Julie is turning into a harpy. Riggins is adrift again. And the Panthers haven’t even opened up defense of their state title!

You could practically subtitle this second season "Where's Papa?" For all of Dillon, it seems, is moody and unstable, what with Coach Taylor up in Austin.

A wise friend once told me: "The best job you'll ever have is the one before the one you thought you always wanted." And so it is with Coach Taylor, who isn't so much coaching college ball in Austin as babysitting bling-ridden players.

As that guy on the radio in Dillon would say, Welcome back, Panther fans, to a second season of the one and only "Friday Night Lights."

Fade in: End of summer, and Panther footballers, state champs, are frolicking in the town pool with rally girls. Brainy nerd Landry's still mooning for party-girl-turned-chaste-homebody Tyra; he even goes out for the football team to impress her. Coach Taylor is coaching college ball in Austin, while Coach's coach (his wife, Tami) is about to burst with their second child. First child Julie is a lifeguard; her beau, the shy, word-swallowing quarterback Matt Saracen, watches her flirt with a fellow lifeguard.

He's an older dude ironically dubbed "The Swede." "In some situations," Landry says, as Saracen regards the Swede situation with a wounded look, "you need to ask yourself, WWRD — what would Riggins do?"

'Friday Night Lights': Returning to the heart of Dillon

As that guy on the radio in Dillon would say, Welcome back, Panther fans, to a second season of the one and only "Friday Night Lights."

Fade in: End of summer, and Panther footballers, state champs, are frolicking in the town pool with rally girls. Brainy nerd Landry's still mooning for party-girl-turned-chaste-homebody Tyra; he even goes out for the football team to impress her. Coach Taylor is coaching college ball in Austin, while Coach's coach (his wife, Tami) is about to burst with their second child. First child Julie is a lifeguard; her beau, the shy, word-swallowing quarterback Matt Saracen, watches her flirt with a fellow lifeguard.

He's an older dude ironically dubbed "The Swede." "In some situations," Landry says, as Saracen regards the Swede situation with a wounded look, "you need to ask yourself, WWRD — what would Riggins do?"