Friday Night Lights, Season 3

Connie Britton (far left) as Tami Taylor in Friday Night LightsTurns out I was entirely wrong about the Joe-hits-J.D. subplot. It does not go the after-school-special route but in fact takes a brave and unexpected turn. The episode opens with Eric and Tami agonizing over what to do about it. Tami decides to report Joe to child protective services. When they show up at the McCoy McMansion, Joe is unrepentant ("I want a lawyer present"), Katie is furious, and J.D. is shellshocked. Not one of them is grateful to Tami, and we are left not really knowing whether Tami was right or just buckling to bureaucratic pressure.

J.D. spends the rest of the episode in confusion—distracted, angry, tepidly defiant. Mostly he walks around stiffly like a zombie, glaring and saying little. In my view, he is not the most dynamic actor, so does not move us with his stifled rage. Compare him, for example, with Matt Saracen's version of restrained emotion. Grandma Lorraine thinks it's crazy for him to go to Chicago for art school, which he desperately wants to do. "It was just an idea I had for a minute," he says, which is, of course, not true—heartbreakingly not true. He reminds me—and forgive me this dopey analogy—of Charlie in Lauren Child's Charlie and Lola kids books. He is the patient, loving, pitch-perfect caretaker who is not supposed to be in that role but nonetheless rises to the occasion every time.

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The real problem this points to is the future of the show. The McCoys are the main drama for next season, but I'm not all that attached to any of them. Lila and Tim are going to San Antonio State. Landry, Tyra, and Matt are out. Who are we left with? Julie, I guess. Buddy. The Gossip Girl. Billy Riggins, who outdoes himself in this episode by pissing in the sink. Not something I need to see again. So, any ideas? Ladies? Readers? What can they pull out of their hats to keep us watching?

Also, this episode really played like the penultimate, with lots of sentiment and heavy silences. I absolutely loved Landry as Tyra's editor. He reads a draft of her college essay and proclaims it the equivalent of a "five-page needlepoint pillow." That's definitely a line I will steal. Also this one, for rewrite: "dig deeper, and fastly." My husband, David, thought Tyra's recitation of the final, soaring draft was cheesy, but I thought it was a perfect send-off for this show. "Two years ago I was afraid of wanting anything," she begins, and ends with how now she can't stop wanting.

There are also lots of beautiful pauses throughout the game: stops and starts, slow-motion passes, and of course the field goal that seals the game. The other team is in all black, the devils you can't beat. The locker room is dead silent for a few seconds, and then you hear only breathing. And then the final scene, in which Riggins walks through the field as if it's a graveyard, head down, dragging his feet, stopping to gently place down his cleats. It left me wanting maybe one last teary goodbye, but not necessarily two more whole seasons.

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