‘FNL’: Is it case closed?

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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.

‘Character is who you are when no one is watching,’ says the sign in the Panthers locker room, glimpsed by Coach Taylor upon his return.

That moral extends to our Landry. The high drama of it all has upset core fans of ‘FNL’ -- the show’s best customers overlooked in pursuit of new ones. ‘Once you start to see how the story line unfolds, you see it doesn’t change the fabric of the show in any way,’ executive producer Jason Katims told The Times this week, in an interview addressing criticism of the sophomore season.

For the record, the Panthers are 1-1 as defending state champs, and that .500 record reflects the show too -- lots of potential, bit of a slow start.

To be generous, Season 2 can challenging for TV shows -- you have to reestablish the stuff viewers loved while spinning things forward. In that vein, ‘FNL’ has been alternately gripping and muddled.

Take the example of Coach Taylor’s successor, Coach MacGregor. He was fired in Friday’s episode, replaced by our hero, Coach Taylor, after uber-booster Buddy ‘The Eagle Has Landed’ Garrity successfully orchestrated a switcheroo, seemingly from his car dealership, and Taylor quit his college assistant job to return home. There was a nicely nuanced scene at the end of the episode, MacGregor showing up at Taylor’s house and accusing him of coach-on-coach subterfuge. (The scene foreshadowed a future grudge match between the two.)

You felt for the newbie, finally. But missing from this story line, all along, was a key ingredient: Who hired MacGregor in the first place, and why? The show never told us, and it has been a problem; he simply appeared at the outset of Season 2, a straw dog of tyranny with a bulldog’s mug, who changed the Dillon Panther offense, changed the locale of the kickoff barbecue, changed the whole culture of the team.

Doesn’t Dillon hire from within? Meanwhile, ‘gripping and muddled’ is also how I’d describe quarterback Jason Street’s gambit to Mexico with Tim Riggins in search of a miracle drug to get him out of his wheelchair.

You had to feel for the drunken Street the night before his treatment, the weight on his shoulders, but couldn’t we have gotten at least one quick scene in which his parents wonder after his whereabouts? And where did he come up with that bag of cash?

Back in Dillon, why did it come as a surprise to Coach Taylor that news of his return was splashed on the front page of the local newspaper? Wouldn’t its reporter have called him for comment?

Increasingly, I fear, ‘FNL’ isn’t sweating the small stuff. And it’s the small stuff -- yielding to the bigger stuff -- that has distinguished the show all along.

-- Paul Brownfield

Photo courtesy of Bill Records / NBC