'Friday Night Lights': Of tattoos and babies

Those going through "Smash" withdrawal were rewarded early with this week's "Friday Night Lights." One of last season's biggest cliffhangers was answered, and then some.

Just as Gaius Charles' Brian "Smash" Williams was getting out of town, viewers were reminded that Scott Porter's Jason Street was still in Dillon. Not that anyone forgot, as nary an episode goes by without a character in Dillon mentioning the name Jason Street.

The fallen legend, met with a tragic end in the series premiere, went from the town favorite to the town martyr. And despite his sometimes hair-brained schemes, and underlying anger, he can still win a favor just by flashing a smile, or tapping into the glorified nostalgia that Dillon holds for football.

But if Street were looking for a purpose after suffering a spinal injury, he's found one in Erin (Tamara Jolaine). The mother of his son (cliffhanger answered, and there's photographic evidence up above), Street viewed the birth as a miracle, as the doctors told him it wasn't possible. Now if only Erin would corporate.

If "Friday Night Lights" spent its first four episodes dealing with football and community concerns, what with the whole JumboTron saga and Smash's college tryout, Episode 5 goes straight to the heart. And when Street pleads to Erin to move in with him -- if their names are together on a birth certificate, it's only logical they're together on a lease, he argues -- it's a giant bundle of warm, desperate puppy love. One almost feels awkward just watching it, and Street's roommate Herc (Kevin Rankin) is helpless to stop him.

A brief diversion to praise Herc: For those who missed Street, who didn't miss Herc just as much, if not more? At first, Herc seemed a bad influence, dragging Street into some hardcore games of wheelchair rugby. But really, he's done something Street -- and many in Dillon -- have failed to do, and that's learn to laugh of the absurdity that's around them. When Street is frantically trying to clean the apartment for the arrival of the baby, Herc is right behind him, picking up everything Street is throwing aside. And how does he let Street know he's gone too far? By yelling this:"You do not have to hide porn from a baby!"

'Friday Night Lights': Smash's last stand

And just like that, Smash is gone. It was no secret that Gaius Charles' Brian "Smash" Williams would be leaving "Friday Night Lights" four episodes into Season 3. The writing team even weaned viewers off him, announcing two episodes ago that Smash had a walk-on tryout at Texas A&M this very week .

And that tryout was grand, a tension-filled scene loaded with respect and fear. When "Friday Night Lights" began two years ago, Smash strutted around like high school was nothing but an annoyance, a necessity standing between him and his "Cribs"-worthy mansion. His transformation has been a joy to watch, as Smash has been dealt numerous blows over the past 40 or so episodes.

He survived a bevy of attacks from the racist, mostly white, fictional town of Dillon, Texas, and its surroundings. He lost the respect of Coach Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler) by experimenting with steroids, and gradually won it back with a strong work ethic, good ol' family values and the slow realization that the coach is right far more often than the Smash is wrong.

Smash thought about doubting Taylor in this episode. With the help of Landry's (Jesse Plemons) Wi-Fi, he discovered the coach had arranged a tryout at Texas A&M not with the head coach or an offensive coordinator, but with the "director of group sales."

But getting Smash on the field was all  Taylor really had in mind. The brief showdown between Taylor and the head coach of Texas A&M was a delight. Kept waiting an hour, Taylor and Smash were told to come back next week. Instead, Taylor marched to the 50-yard line. The coach knew that making sure the boy stood up straight and ran his plays would be enough to get him out of fast food joint the Alamo Freeze for good, and it was. 

And here's the beauty of "Friday Night Lights," and what makes it so hard to criticize a slightly flawed episode (and this one had it flaws). The character who made the biggest impact on the tryout scene was neither the coach nor Smash, but the coach's wife, Tami Taylor (Connie Britton).

Gaius Charles talks about leaving 'Friday Night Lights'

With a few more weeks of filming before the third season wraps, the "Friday Night Lights" cast is still hunkered down in Austin, Texas. Gaius Charles, however, is in Los Angeles, knee-deep in filming a movie with Hayden Christensen, Paul Walker and Chris Brown.

There is life after graduation.

For those with DirecTV, Charles' Brian "Smash" Williams will move on to Texas A&M Wednesday night, bringing with him some of the show's more ambitious story lines. Once a self-absorbed high school junior who experimented with steroids, "Friday Night Lights" producers threw the best of what they had at Smash, as he's most often referred to on the series, over the last two and a half seasons. Through Smash, "Friday Night Light" explored issues of race, mental illness, class and the hawkish practices of college recruiters.

"When we first came in and did the pilot, it would have been very easy for Smash to be a one-dimensional, cocky running back, a caricature," said Williams last week, an hour before he was due to report to the set of "Bone Deep." "But [developer] Peter Berg and [producer] Jason Katims and everyone on the creative side was adamant on making this guy three-dimensional. It’s very rare that we see African American male characters in this setting, in a complete picture. Sometimes, these story lines are so streamlined and so commercialized that you get all the spectacle and none of the heart."

In Season 3, there's been very little flashiness surrounding the Smash character. Humbled by a knee injury that saw Smash losing the second of his two scholarships — the first when Smash was painted as violent for striking back at a racist buffoon — Smash was hanging around the fictional town of Dillon, Texas, by doing time at a fast-food joint. It's a last-minute, walk-on tryout with Texas A&M that saves the character from what surely would have been a life in near-poverty.

It brings one of the first major story arcs of Season 3 to a close, and sees, perhaps, the final "Friday Night Lights" appearance from one of the show's marquee players. Charles took a few minutes last week to reflect on "Friday Night Lights," and talk about his character's future.       

'Friday Night Lights': The principal's husband

"Friday Night Lights" wasted no time getting to the game in this week, the third chapter in the series' 13-episode third season. References to a spread offense were tossed about in the opening moments, but this wasn't an episode about the finite details of a football bout.

Instead, "Friday Night Lights" deftly showed the ways in football can tear people apart, and bring others together. Never mind different approaches to coaching, as "Friday Night Lights" has always been more for those who subscribe to the sports-as-a-metaphor-for-life theory. When Coach Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler) has to make personnel decisions this week, it becomes a question of whether or not he's letting his gut get in the way of what's best for the team.

The answer isn't clear, as nothing ever is in the fictional town of Dillon, Texas. But Taylor's managing arguably results in what passes for a tragic moment in Dillon -- a loss by the Panthers of Dillon High. It's the first lost shown this season, and it has the townspeople placing "for sale" signs on the Taylor home.

While a Dillon Panthers loss has massive repercussions in Dillon, this week's "Friday Night Lights" was more about power than it was a fumble in the end zone by Matt Saracen (Zach Gilford). And the coach feels he's losing it on all fronts.

'Friday Night Lights': Zach Gilford on the future of Matt Saracen, the series

After having a starring role for two seasons on “Friday Night Lights,” Zach Gilford has grown accustomed to being on a television series that doesn’t exactly promise job security. But now, even if “Friday Night Lights” is able to score another season, Gilford may have an even longer wait to find out if he still has a spot on the roster.

His character, the shy, hardworking, midlevel talent Matt Saracen, is a senior. In its third season, and first as a partnership between DirecTV and NBC, “Friday Night Lights” has started to transition some of its gradating class off the show.

Former high school star Brian “Smash” Williams (Gaius Charles) only has a couple of episodes left. Jason Street (Scott Porter), the once can’t-miss quarterback who became paralyzed in the series opener, has yet to be seen in Season 3.

But if this, the shortened 13-episode season of “Friday Night Lights,” ends up being Gilford’s last with a major role -- Gilford says he hasn’t gotten a straight answer from the show's producers -- it’s at least one that’s giving his Saracen prominent placement. One of this year’s key story lines, in which a freshman quarterback wins the hearts of the fictional Texas town of Dillon, subsequently stealing a bit of Saracen’s confidence, gets some much-needed tension in the this year’s third episode.

Gilford’s character, thrust into the spotlight when Street was injured, gradually became the coach’s pet. But all the coddling in the world doesn’t mean a thing when the entire town starts demanding that Coach Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler) give the untested natural, J.D. McCoy (Jeremy Sumpter), the starting role.

Although this is one of the show’s more football-focused subplots, “Friday Night Lights” manages to bring in larger issues of class. McCoy comes from an obscenely rich family, one that hires him a personal quarterback tutor, whereas Saracen is scraping by. Saracen rapidly has to become a parent to his grandmother, who is drifting into dementia. (And previously on "Friday Night Lights": In this season’s second episode, Saracen was forced to seek out his estranged mother to get a signature granting him emancipation.)

One might also be hard-pressed to find a bigger fan of the series than Gilford. He’s a tough critic, openly talking about his least-favorite storyline (the one in which Saracen dated his grandmother’s nurse, Carlotta Alonso, played by Daniella Alonso). Yet moments later, the Midwest-born sports fan is also eager to report that "Friday Night Lights" is no longer all about "murder and sex," and starts comparing his character to the Chicago Bears’ hit-and-miss Kyle Orton.

The Evanston, Ill.-native, and Northwestern University grad, took some time last week to chat with Show Tracker about the third season of “Friday Night Lights.” He offered some hints of what to expect in coming episodes, and a plea for the series, which is being shown now on DirecTV and will air in 2009 on NBC, to be renewed. His argument: The “Friday Night Lights” average of 6.2 million viewers last season, according to Nielsen Media Research, doesn’t look all that bad in the face of declining television viewership.

'South Park' vs. Lucas and Spielberg: Too far?

Never mind "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report," the most welcome Comedy Central program this election season just might be "South Park."

The series has been on a roll for the past four/five seasons, and whether turning an alien invasion into an examination of immigration, or leprechauns into targets of terrorism, "South Park" has been presenting relatively reasoned examinations of cultural issues.

Until, perhaps, last night. "South Park" has missed out on skewering this summer's pop-culture events, and last night, the episode was on the attack. As dark and twisted as "The Dark Knight" was, "South Park" was just as aggressively over the top.

Returning with new episodes as part of its 12th season, "South Park" didn't level its aim at presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain (fingers are crossed for such an episode to be forthcoming). Instead, the series had Hollywood heavyweights George Lucas and Steven Spielberg directly in sights.

Oh, there was also a paranoid Cartman convinced that China's Olympic opening ceremony telegraphed an attack on the United States, but Cartman's mockery of Chinese stereotypes was almost an afterthought after Matt Stone and Trey Parker completely dismantled the worldwide hit "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull."

"We all saw it happen," says the handicapped Jimmy, discussing "The Crystal Skull" as if it's a personal tragedy. "Do you remember that scene with Indiana in the refrigerator? It didn't make any sense, Stan."

From there, an excited Stan sits down to watch the latest film in a dream sequence/nightmare, but soon has to warn Indiana Jones that Spielberg and Lucas are nearby. And then in a series of film parodies, Indy's pants come off.

'Friday Night Lights': "New principal vows to shake up establishment"

When the characters of "Friday Night Lights" fight, the tension isn't just in the argument between two people. Underscoring nearly every battle in the fictional town of Dillon, Texas, is the struggle against some seemingly unmovable force. Whether the threats are real or not, politics, class and race have a way of interfering.

A decision from a principal to divert some money from academics to athletics ends up in the mayor's office, a fancy dinner becomes a statement of power from the ruling class, and a boy's need to take care of his grandmother could set him up for the same fate as his father, who's off to war without a return date.

'Friday Night Lights' preview: Tami vs. Dillon

The coach's wife and Dillon High's newest principal become the centerpiece of a town controversy in  "Friday Night Light's" second episode of Season 3. The decision by Tami Taylor (Connie Britton) to reallocate money raised for athletics to academics, preferring new books to a new JumboTron, has the mayor of the fictional town of Dillon, Texas, on the attack early on in the episode.

It's not the only drama in the episode, which sees a former couple start to reconnect (no, not Jesse Plemons' Landry and Adrianne Palicki's Tyra) and brings a bit of good news back to Brian "Smash" Williams (Gaius Charles), but it's rightfully the one that dominates. Last season, "Friday Night Lights" got side-tracked early on by focusing too much on the personal and the melodramatic. See the much maligned self-defense murder plot, or the silly love affair between a teenager and his grandmother's caretaker.

But Season 3, which is airing now on DirecTV, and early 2009 on NBC, has brought the focus back to the larger, community-focused issues that made the source material -- the television series and film are inspired by a nonfiction book of the same name by H.G. Bissinger -- so irresistible to begin with.

And the academics vs. athletics issue is rooted in reality. Bissinger's book followed the Panthers of Permian High School in Odessa, Texas, and the debate still had the town talking in 2007, at least judging by the Associated Press story. The article quotes former Permian High football coach John Wilkins as saying the book "was one of those things that did bring to the public’s attention, 'Is there too much emphasis on athletics?’ I don’t know that anyone came to that definite conclusion.”

Probably not. Any SoCal resident who has spent some time on the USC campus knows that the academics vs. athletics discussion will persist as long as a team is successful. But if the fictional "Friday Night Lights" is following reality, it looks like the Panthers got the JumboTron:

--Todd Martens

'Friday Night Lights' Season 3 premiere: 'Have you ever seen two people engaged on a JumboTron?'

Perhaps to herald the move to DirecTV, the third-season premiere of NBC drama "Friday Night Lights" clocked in with a slightly longer run time than is the norm for hourlong network dramas. And tonight's broadcast needed every one of its 50 minutes (most network shows finish at about 42 minutes).*  For longtime viewers, "Friday Night Lights" made its DirecTV debut by opening with a blitz of revelations and surprises.

But this wasn't a show only for the in-crowd. "Friday Night Light's" third-season premiere was a starting-over of sorts, even referencing the very first episode of the series with its day-by-day format that leads to the big game.

'Friday Night Lights': Season 3's scouting report

"Friday Night Lights" returns on Wednesday -- at least for some of us. The show will air at 9 p.m. on DirecTV's 101 Network, with its 13-episode third season not beginning on NBC until February. But whether you're watching now or are forced to wait until 2009, here's a preseason primer, one that was prepared after viewing Season 3's first two episodes.

1. On the subject of cliffhangers. When "Friday Night Lights" ended last spring, the strike-shortened season was far from resolved.

The basics: Would Tim (Taylor Kitsch) finally wear down Lyla (Minka Kelly)? Was Jason (Scott Porter) going to persuade his one-night-stand to forgo an abortion so he'd become a dad? Would Brian "Smash" Williams (Gaius Charles) return to his near pro form after his suspension and begin his college football career? Would Landry (Jesse Plemons) and Tyra (Adrianne Palicki) actually last as a couple? Had Coach Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler) won back the town of Dillon after bolting -- briefly -- for a university coaching job in Austin? Does Tami Taylor (Connie Britton) have academic ambitions beyond being a guidance counselor and a volleyball coach? The show doesn't make its audience wait long for answers. In fact, most are given within the first 10-20 minutes, so come ready to watch. "Friday Night Lights" is on the offensive when it returns, and the surprises come quick.

2. Newcomers, don't be put off by the above paragraph! Yes, the series has two-seasons of deeply developed back stories for most of its characters, but Season 3 is a fresh start of sorts. Rather than an overwhelming montage of past clips, "Friday Night Lights" eases newcomers into the drama. Past developments are woven right into the narrative via an easy-to-follow news conference with Coach Taylor.

'Friday Night Lights' gets a spooky makeover

The NFL? College football? Please.

The only pigskin-related drama worth tuning into this fall is "Friday Night Lights," at least for those with DirecTV (the rest of us commoners can catch it on NBC in early 2009, or read spoilers on places like Show Tracker).

While we haven't caught any real scenes from Season 3 of "FNL," which launches Oct. 1, this brief promo has been making the Web rounds, and DirecTV is definitely looking to put its mark on this season of the series.

There's been nothing exciting about some of the earlier "FNL" DirecTV promos, but the latest ad for the upcoming season gets a supernatural-looking indie rock makeover. No sign of the football in the clip, but there's defnitely drama a-brewin' down in Dillon, Texas.

Over the summer break, the football-obsessed town seems have been spooked-up with some fantastical, "Pan's Labyrinth"-like lightning bugs, giant backward raindrops and haunted swing sets. The colors of the video look like something between an Edward Hopper oil painting and a Disney Pirates of the Caribbean ride. And then there's the dashing Sunday clothes the cast is outfitted in.

But heightening the ghostly atmosphere is the soundtrack of the clip, a cover of Daniel Johnston's "Devil Town" by indie rock's Bright Eyes, a song of lonely reverberation that sounds as if it's being performed in an empty church.

Watch the clip below.

'The Office': What you need to know

With "The Office" returning tonight after a four-month layoff, here's a quick refresher so you don't feel like you're walking in late to a meeting.

Show: "The Office"

Location: Scranton, Pa.

Setting: Dunder-Mifflin paper company.

The players:

Regional manager of Dunder-Mifflin Scranton branch: Michael Scott (Steve Carell)

Sales rep (assistant to the regional manager): Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson)

Assistant regional manager: Jim Halpert (John Krasinski)

Receptionist: Pam Beesly (Jenna Fischer)

Account supervisor: Angela Martin (Angela Kinsey)

Michael Scott's former boss, his current unemployed girlfriend: Jan Levinson (Melora Hardin)

Former intern, current VP of regional sales: Ryan Howard (BJ Novak)

Dunder-Mifflin sales: Andy Bernard (Ed Helms)

To recap:

-- Tonight's episode, "Dinner Party," centers around Michael Scott's season-long desire to have the recently-coupled Jim and Pam over for dinner. After three seasons of hinting at a relationship, Jim and Pam officially announced their relationship in the first episode of Season 4.

Throughout the season, Jim has dodged dinner invites by changing the subject or inviting Michael and his boss-turned-unemployed girlfriend Jan over for a meal on a night when he knows Michael is out of commission.

-- Michael, the clueless boss who ultimately means well, is obsessed with being friends with his employees.

-- Unlike past seasons of "The Office," early episodes of Season 4 have centered heavily on locations outside of the Scranton cubicles. Ambitious brown-noser Dwight Schrute, for instance, was revealed to own a bed & breakfast, and Michael spent one episode trying to prove to his current boss (and former intern), Ryan, that he could survive in the wild.

But the more inspired moments of the season continue to take place inside the Scranton office, such as when Jim faced a staff revolt by deciding to combine three birthday celebrations into one.

-- Michael and Jan have had a rocky past.

In the last episode aired by the writers strike, Michael was caught in the middle of Jan's suit against Dunder-Mifflin for wrongful termination. Michael says in a deposition that Jan believed her termination had something to do with her "twins," a.k.a., her recently enhanced breasts.

It's also revealed during the depo that Jan gave Michael a scathing performance review -- after they had started dating -- and had looked through Michael's diary. These storylines will likely pop up in the remainder of the season.

-- Dwight and Angela, who long had a "secret" relationship, split up early in Season 4.

The breakup happened shortly after Angela had asked Dwight to take care of her sick cat, Sprinkles. Rather than follow a lengthy medication procedure, Dwight killed the cat, justifying his actions thusly: "As a farmer, I know that when an animal is sick, sometimes the right thing to do is to put it out of its misery. With the electricity we're using to keep Meredith alive we could power a small fan for 2 days. You tell me what's unethical."

-- Seeing an opportunity to hit on a grieving Angela, Andy made his move. He brought Angela a new cat, a ploy Dwight had tried and failed. Angela finally accepted Andy's advances: "You may ask me out to dinner. Nothing fancy or foreign, no bars, no patios, no vegetables, and no seafood." A major plotline of Season 4 has been Dwight's grieving over Angela.

-- NBC has announced a spinoff to "The Office," which will debut after the Super Bowl in 2009. Details are scant.

-- Todd Martens

Photo courtesy NBC