Friday Night Lights, Season 3

Kyle Chandler as Eric Taylor and Connie Britton as Tami Taylor in Friday Night LightsI got lost in the soundtrack this week because of all those stops and starts and slo-mos, and also because why fight the welling of emotion brought on by the music? This episode really wrapped the season and the show in the nostalgia theme we've talked about before. Tim, especially, is the Ghost of High School Past, smiling beatifically on the bus to state; refusing to talk about college when Matt asks him; offering up, instead, "Last game, seven"; and tossing the Frisbee in the dark under the dome of the Texas state Capitol.

The kids are saying goodbye to their lives up until now, and we're saying goodbye to them and also, of course, to our own high-school selves. The good adults are the ones who just step out of the kids' way. Lyla announces to her father that she's going to San Antonio State with Tim. "And we're probably going to get a place together. It's kind of like the whole Vanderbilt thing was fate, you know." This is a terrible idea, but Buddy doesn't say so. Lorraine heads in the opposite and wrong direction when she forces Matt to pretend that art school is just a passing thought. But later, sitting in the stands with Julie, she says, "I don't want to be the one to hold him back from anything. I just can't stand the thought of losing him." Julie answers, "Me too," and, of course, she is speaking for all of us.

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So in answer to your question about the next two seasons, Hanna, well, I guess I'd rather just concentrate on the long, sweet goodbye. Maybe the show will jump-start itself with some new talent. (Reader e-mail tells me that Tyra and Lyla will be gone.) But while I'm curious about what comes next, I'm not expecting much.

The lawyer in me says that Tami and Eric were right to think they didn't have a choice about calling Child Protective Services on the McCoys. Principals and coaches, like teachers, are mandated reporters, which means that if they have a credible suspicion of child abuse, they have to report it. If there's wiggle room here, it would be in the definition of abuse in the Texas statute—whether hitting a 15-year-old, for the first time, as far as the Taylors know, constitutes abuse. I'd imagine the answer is yes, and even if the bureaucracy seems invasive and ugly in this case, those rules probably (I hope) help more kids than they hurt. And let's not forget: Joe accuses Eric of starting the fire when he placed the call, but it's Joe who did the slugging.

My other favorite bit of dialogue—and, yes, five pages of needlepoint is an instant editor's classic—also comes from Tyra and Landry's college-essay duet. It's sappy, but, hey, it's clear you've got to let yourself go with that mood to make it through this ending. Tyra says, "Two years ago I had enough hate in my heart to stop a friggin' car."

"What changed?" Landry asks. And Tyra answers, "Jason Street got paralyzed." This is unusual for TV, isn't it—to assume the audience knows exactly what's meant by invoking a character who's no longer part of the action? But it seemed right. I remembered Tyra going to see Jason in the hospital even though, as she told him, they weren't friends. And since Jason's accident is the show's emotional source, it belonged here as the coda to all the nostalgia.

You know, we haven't talked football yet. Were you ready for the Panthers to lose, even a teeny bit rooting against them? Did you see it coming that Matt would finish out the season back at QB1? I was surprised by how little satisfaction I took from it. I did love Eric's closing speech about his champions and Tim's gift of his cleats to the field. But then, as I said, I decided to go with the welling of the music and the tears.

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