Friday Night Lights: Looking Ahead to the Premiere

Friday Night Lights returns Oct. 28, and Ausiello over at EW.com had a few spoilers for the premiere in his weekly report. Apparently one of the returning characters turns into "an unbelievable douchebag" (his words, not mine.) My bet is that it's J.D., that little punk. Any thoughts?

Your Fall Television Primer: The Veterans

Aaahh, September, my favorite month of the year. I love September for many reasons: the weather starts to turn crisp, football returns, my birthday happens, and, by far most importantly, THE NEW TELEVISION SEASON BEGINS! That's right, boys and girls, the new season is practically upon us, so I've decided to lay out in chronological order when our favorites return:

August 16th (i.e., two week ago-ish): MAD MEN, 10 p.m. Sundays, AMC
Ok, so I was a little late to the Mad Men party, only having just discovered it this summer, but I can tell you I'm completely enamored of this show. After two seasons, I still do not understand these characters, but I mean that in a good way. Mad Men is the perfect way to spend a Sunday night.

September 14th: GOSSIP GIRL, 9 p.m. Mondays, The CW
I can't wait to find out what Chuck, Blair, and Serena's boobs have been up to all summer. I wonder if Little J still has that mullet. Or if Dan is still a tool. I'd ask if Vanessa is still a weird stalker, but I know that's true, since I've seen her peeping through my windows. Or maybe that was just a nightmare. In any case, I'm thankful that this moved to 9 p.m. so I can now watch HIMYM in real time.

September 17th: THE OFFICE, 9 p.m. Thursdays, NBC
JIM AND PAM ARE HAVING A BABY. Oh, I'm sorry, did you want a spoiler warning for that one? Well eff you, I don't care. I'm going to scream that one from the hill tops, because I AM SO EXCITED FOR THOSE TWO. (Yes, I'm really that excited.) I'm hoping The Office can rebound a bit this season since last year was a bit uneven. Thankfully they're not starting with those hour-long episodes again, so we should be ok.

September 21st: HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER, 8 p.m. Mondays, CBS
So if you know me personally, you may have heard me talk about a little show called How I Met Your Mother, and you may have heard me bring it up in conversation every chance I got, and you may have heard me go on and on and on and on about it. If you weren't so lucky, let me just tell you now, that if there were only one show you were going to watch this fall, How I Met Your Mother (or HIMYM as I affectionately refer to it) should be that show. HIMYM is Friends for the Millenial generation except funnier and more relevant and more realistic and more absurd all at the same time. I cannot wait to see Barney and Ted and Robin and Marshall and Lily again, and more importantly, I CANNOT WAIT TO MAYBE GET A GLIMPSE OF THE MOTHER. That's right, THE MOTHER is in the offing (that's not a sexual thing) and she'll always be just around the corner this year. It's going to be fantastic, and I cannot wait.

September 24th: GREY'S ANATOMY, 9 p.m. Thursdays, ABC
So, regular readers of this blog know that I have a love-hate relationship with Grey's Anatomy in that I love to hate on it (for a great example, click here), but at the same time I cannot imagine not watching it. I was very happy to see Derek and Meredith take the leap at the end of last season, and very, very conflicted about Izzie's potential death. I'm very curious to see how the show deals with T.R. Knight's departure. I'm anticipating a bunch of gloomy episodes early on in the season, but hopefully that won't last for too long, because as much as I once liked George, I don't like my Grey's all dark and twisty.

October 15th: 30 ROCK, 9:30 p.m. Thursdays, NBC
30 Rock is fucking funny. Enough said. I shouldn't have to give you another reason to watch, but there are some of you out there who I know might need one AND I know would like this spoiler, so I'll give it to you (it comes from Ausiello over at EW.com):

Question: What’s in store for Jane Krakwoski’s Jenna on 30 Rock this season? —Kimberly

Ausiello: Her career will literally start sucking when she lands the female lead in a second-rate Twilight franchise. “For tax reasons, they shoot it in Iceland and then they realize the sun doesn’t set,” explains exec producer Robert Carlock. “So they’re shooting a vampire movie without having light.” Genius.

October 28th: FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS, Wednesdays (if you're lucky enough to have DirecTV or know of sites where you can watch it online the next day)
Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose. This show is a winner in every sense of the word (except for that one sense where the dumb Academy of Television Arts and Sciences finally honors with a Best Drama Emmy, because alas that has not come to pass). When we last left our hearts in Dillon, Texas, Smash and Jason had left town to live their dreams, Lyla, Tyra, Tim, Matt, and Landry were all about to follow them there, and poor wonderful Coach Taylor had been banished from the hallowed halls of the Panthers locker room to coach (gasp) the football team at the recently reopened East Dillon High. I cannot wait to watch the East Dillon Lions kick the ever loving shit out of the Panthers next season. It's going to be amazing.

Other returning shows:

• Sept 8: 90210 (8 p.m., The CW). Same zip code, (relatively) same crappy cast, still won't be watching.
• Sept 9: So You Think You Can Dance (8 p.m., FOX). So I think this was just on, no? Another season already? Fox is getting des-perate.
• Sept 17: Fringe (9 p.m., Fox). This show was a victim to my busy TV watching last season, and will be again this year. If you finally give up on Grey's, make room for this show.
• Sept 21: Heroes (9 p.m., NBC). If you watch this show, it will stay on the air, which would be bad, since it is TERRIBLE. If you don't watch however, NBC will expand Jay Leno to two hours on Mondays, thus furthering his plot to take over the world. Either way, we're fucked.
  
• Sept 24: The Mentalist (10 p.m., CBS). This is one show I loved last season that I did not watch enough of. Perhaps the new timeslot will change that.
• Sept 27: Family Guy (9 p.m., Fox). Cannot wait for this show, although I really wish they would just air the "Something, Something, Something, Dark Side" episode already.
• Sept 27: Desperate Housewives (9 p.m., ABC). This show no longer makes the cut. I find the characters annoying. Do you?
• Sept 27: Brothers & Sisters (10 p.m., ABC). Now that the adventures of those wacky Walkers air at the same time as Mad Men, I'm going to be DVRing this one for a while.
  
• Oct 1: Private Practice (10 p.m., ABC). Please do not watch this show. If it gets cancelled, Kate Walsh (i.e., ADDISON) goes back to Grey's. Wouldn't that be nice?

Check back Thursday for an overview of the new shows I may pick up this season. Until then, you should be catching up on old TV and clearing out your DVRs. Remember, an organized DVR is a happy DVR.

I FUCKING LOVE THIS SHOW

Ok, so I'm spending today catching up FNL. I was planning on writing a longer post about all of the reasons why I think this is the most wonderful show in the history of television. But I can't wait for that to say this: Mrs. McCoy just said she read The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. For those of you that know me personally, you know I fucking love Malcolm Gladwell. Malcolm Gladwell + Friday Night Lights = J.I.M.P. (And for those of you that don't know what J.I.M.P. is, see the clip below):

Clip of the Day: Some Musical Inspiration for Your Tuesday Morning

Because I find that this one always makes me want to do more:

Clip of the Day: A Little Inspiration for Your Friday Morning, Part II

Because sometimes we all need someone else to show us how great we can be (cue music):

Toeing the Line

Since I was out of town all weekend, I didn't have a chance to catch Friday Night Lights (aka The Perfect Show) until tonight. As many of you that have been watching know, the show has been good this season, but there have been some problems (Tyra and Landry, I'm looking at you). In the past couple weeks, the show has gotten back on point, but this last episode concerns me. Here's why: FNL has always (and when I say "always" I mean "the perfection of Season 1") been about subtle drama. The things we loved were the little things: the nervous way Matt used to talk to Julie, the small moments between Coach and Mrs. Taylor, that one episode where Tyra has dinner at the Taylor's house and she's both delighted and disappointed at the same time, etc., etc., you get the idea. By contrast, this past episode hits you over the head with exposition. Here's the rundown:

The small town event of the week this episode is Pantherama, which from what I can gather is some kind of pep rally on steroids. Mrs. Taylor, who planned the whole event last year, is far too busy now with the new baby to be able to do it again this year, so she enlists the help of Tyra and Lyla to plan the entertainment portion of the event. The girls, making great use of their natural gifts, i.e. their hot bodies, get the football team to perform a striptease at the event, pushing the boundaries of decorum for many of the adults in attendance, who ultimately seem to like it, and Mrs. Taylor, who does not. Matt, who for the first half of the episode interacts cutely with his new girlfriend (although I'll be damned if I can remember her name.....Leslie, maybe?), has trouble with the dance and gets help from his grandmother's sexy Latin nurse. Her reward? A kiss from our QB 1, which should be totally inappropriate, but doesn't seem to be given the looks they were shooting each other the next morning over breakfast. Yeah, that relationship definitely ain't kosher and is way too soapy for my liking. There's enough of a story with Matt just dating the new girl and getting over Julie, no need to add the older hot Latina into the mix.

Speaking of Julie, she's apparently part of the school newspaper, where her assignment this week is to write an article about Pantherama which is supposed to focus on the seedy underbelly of the event. You know what I'm talking about: one of those articles that's supposed to expose school corruption that would definitely never get published in the real world b/c the faculty adviser would be too afraid of pissing the administration off. Speaking of the faculty adviser, he's a new young teacher who went to Columbia and worked at a newspaper and is supposed to be all cool and interesting. He and Julie become friendly after she ducks into his classroom to avoid Matt and his new girlfriend and then starts crying and tells him the whole story, blah, blah, blah, we all know where this is going. In fact, I knew where this was going as soon I saw her go into that room. I swear I could "Don't Stand So Close to Me" by The Police playing in the background. It wasn't? Well it should have been. Even Mrs. Taylor thinks so because she does not respond well to finding the two of them talking alone together in his classroom. Have I mentioned how awesome she is?

In a plotwise unrelated but episode-theme related coincidence, this week also happens to be the first week that college recruiters can talk to senior Panther players about scholarships and the like. Smash is as excited as a geek on a visit to the Lucas Ranch (what, you thought I was going to make a sports reference?) He sees this as his first step towards the pros and he'll do anything to make it happen, even if it means going against Coach's instructions and possibly damaging his high school eligibility. Some might say Smash crosses a line here. Are you sensing a theme yet?

Tim decides to move out his house because his brother and the older lady from next door that he used to do the nasty nasty with have been spending too much in the house. He stays with Tyra for two nights, but she makes him leave after that because if he stayed any longer it would be crossing the line (did I just say that again?) So he moves in with some guy with ferrets. Yeah.

And finally we have Santiago (Lyla's project, remember?). It turns out he has no legal guardian, which just makes me feel even worse for this guy, because he seems ok. Until he gets one, Mrs. Taylor won't clear to play on the team as Tim's replacement. Coach's solution? Let Buddy Garrity become his legal guardian. Great idea coach, given how much his other kids still like him. The episode ends with Santiago moving into Buddy's apartment and Buddy apologizing for the room being so small. Santiago doesn't mind, though, because it's his first real bed. Way to make choke up, show, way to make me choke up.

I think the Santiago and Lyla/Tyra storylines were the strong ones tonight, as they were believable but not over the top (some might say the Santiago one is, but given that Buddy's always been over the top, I think it fits). The Smash plot was also fairly realistic, but I didn't like b/c I don't want Smash screwing things up for himself. The weak storylines: Julie's and Matt's. Can we stop having these two hook up with inappropriate people, please? This is not The O.C., thank you very much.

So what do you guys think? Is the show staying too soapy? Would you like if it did? (If you answer yes to this question, we can longer be friends). One final piece of good news: FNL will have 15 episodes completed once they finish filming all of the scripts that were written before the writer's strike, meaning that the show will stick around for a while after all of your other favorite shows go off the air. That's something to make sure your thankful for as you gorge yourself on turkey on Thursday.

And I've Always Thought of Watching This Show as a Relgious Experience.

Hey, America, you'll watch Women's Murder Club, but you won't watch FNL? What's wrong with you? Tell me, please, so I can help you fix it.

For those of you who do watch BSE (Best Show Ever), let's discuss how much we loved this week's episode, because we all should have loved it. Or at least most of it. Here's the list of things we liked:

• Lyla trying to get Tim to go to her church. Additionally, Tim going to Lyla's church and then later using the line that he feels closer to God when he's with her. And I thought these two were headed for a reunion. Oh well.
• The way the show presented Lyla's church. I had a nice discussion with a friend about this, and I really feel like it was an objective presentation. I think that when religious institutions like this one are depicted in the media, it's often with an inherent bias towards derision which I didn't really feel here. Kudos, show.
• Mrs. T slapping that little bitch Julie. Girl needed a reality check. I know if I came home after 3 a.m. when I was in high school, I would have gotten a lot more than a slap. Also, the way Mrs. T broke down b/c she hit Julie. Lady's losing it and Coach had better get home to take care of her. Speaking of which,
• Coach making a deal with the devil, i.e., Buddy Garrity, to get his old job back.
  
• Matt hitting Smash at the end of the game. Just because I like the rivalry, and b/c it shows the people of Dillon how bad the new coach is for the team.

Two things I didn't like:

• The way the relationship dynamic between Matt and his grandmother's nurse seems to be heading. It's bad enough that the show has one soapy plotline (Landry and Tyra, although I'm so happy that they're together). We don't need another.
• Jason going to Mexico for surgery. Same reason as above. Also, when Jason said he was going to get the surgery, I just kept thinking of last week's 30 Rock episode when Jenna asks about her crazy surgical options. Yeah.

I think things are on the up and up here, and it seems like that dumped body story line will start moving towards resolution next week, which should be great.

And Somewhere An Angel Just Got Its Wings

Friday night marked the return of the most perfect, most beautiful, most wonderful, most (insert platitude here) show ever to be on TV. Ever. You know which one I'm talking about.......The Ghost Whisperer! Just kidding, although Ghost Whisperer is not bad fluffy TV. No I'm talking about the critically-acclaimed, massively-underrated Friday Night Lights.

The show brings us back to Dillon eight months after last season's finale and times have changed. Coach Taylor has apparently been in Austin for the better part of that time. Mrs. Taylor is about nine months pregnant and still looking like the best MILF in town. Julie is a lifeguard at the pool where everyone hangs out and she and Matt seem to be on the outs even though they haven't broken up. Julie only seems to have eyes for someone called the Swede but isn't Swedish but grungy and in a band. Whatever. Tim seems to have spent the better part of the summer drunk and Lyla found Jesus. Landry is still pining over Tyra, but they at least seem to be friends now. We don't hear much about Smash, except for the fact that he's on the cover of Texas Football magazine. Ok, so Tami is at the pool when she goes into labor, then she Julie are at the hospital in the delivery room waiting for Coach to show up, which he does right before the baby is born and its beautiful and touching and AWESOME, all at the same time. Things don't stay AWESOME for long though. Julie's apparently been acting up at home, mostly because she resents her dad for being away. Didn't see that one coming, did you? Eric finds out that he's going to have to go back to Austin much earlier than he thought, which results in a tense and heartbreaking scene where he asks Tami to talk to him but she can't and then she breaks down in tears right after he leaves the room. Julie sneaks out to a bar to go see the Swede's band play (really sweaty bad emo band, by the way. I mean this guy instead of Matt? Come on.) only to find out that the Swede has a girlfriend. Having sent her fried Lois home (I think is the first time we've actually seen Lois, so it was nice to finally put a name with a face), she had to call her Dad for a ride home. Coach starts to rip into her, but then Julie goes and plays Daddy's Girl card and starts crying and tells her dad how it sucks that he left and that she's afraid to be with Matt because he's perfect and he's afraid she'll wind up like her parents which she knows isn't bad thing but she wants to see the world an is afraid of getting trapped at 16. I can remember feeling the same way at that age. Coach goes AWESOME again and tells Julie that everything is going to be ok and that if she doesn't want to keep dating Matt she shouldn't. I still can't understand how this show got no major Emmy nominations and Boston Legal did. I mean, BOSTON LEGAL?!!! Come on.

Ok, now it's time to address the other major plotline, the one most people have been having a lot of issues with. Tyra's being stalked by the guy that attacked her at the end of last season. He almost runs her over with his car and she's basically scared shitless for most of the episode. One night she thinks she hears noises outside, so she calls Landry to come over and check. It turns out to be a skunk, but since he's there they watch a movie. Landry thinks this is his shot, so he calls Tyra from Matt's bathroom while trying to freshen to up. Matt, having been ditched by Julie (she went to go see the Swede, sorry for not mentioning it earlier) tells him to brush his arm against hers and if she doesn't freak out than he's probably ok. Landry, after a long buildup, lays his fingers on her arm. Instead of freaking out, Tyra decides she hungry and they head out for food. Coincidence? Maybe, maybe not. At the deserted convenience store, Tyra decides to wait out by the car while Landry goes in. She's not even sitting in the car. If I was being stalked, I would think being alone in a deserted parking lot might not be such a great idea, but that's just me. Sure enough, we see Stalker's car pull up behind her. He gets out, calls her, and then grabs her Landry comes out in the nick of time, and gets stalker off her. Stalker walks away but says that he'll get her eventually. As he's walking away, Landry picks up a pipe and hits him in the back of the head, then hits him a couple more times for good measure. Tyra starts to freak out b/c Stalker is good and dead. Instead of calling the cops, they get Stalker into the car and dump his body off a bridge. At least that's what the editing makes it look like, but this show has always been about the cool editing, so I can't be sure. I talked about this for a while with a couple friends and to be honest, Landry hitting the guy with the pipe didn't really bother me. He did what it took to protect the person he loves. What did bother me was the completely uncharacteristic move of trying to dump the body instead of calling the cops. It doesn't fit with what we know about him and Tyra as well. I think the reason this bothers people so much, aside from being kinda gruesome, is that its not the kind of drama we're used to from this show. I read one article that called the show a subtle drama and this storyline soap operatic. It's totally true. Think about the scene with Tami and Coach earlier where they don't talk; they don't make any noise. Think about how Matt and Julie talked to each other last season. The best moments on this show are often about what's not said, what's not done. The show is believable as real life. Throwing the guy off the bridge? Not so much.

A few other things I liked:

• Lyla ripping into her Mom and Mom's new boyfriend while saying grace.
• Lyla and Tim's quick little interaction. I have funny feeling these two will be getting back together somewhere down the line. They're chemistry is too good to be wasted.
• The new coach, only b/c he's such a jerk that's going to get fired and Coach is going to have to come back.

What do you guys think? Are you as ecstatic as I am that FNL is back? You should be. And if you've never seen it, please, please give it a chance. It will change your life, I promise you. If it doesn't, then you probably have no soul, so I have nothing further to say to you. Goodbye.