TV

The DirecTV-only thread last season was pretty barren, but let's see how it goes this season. We can always start another thread for when the show returns to NBC.

Friday Night Light's 13-episode fourth season debuts October 28, 2009, on DirecTV and the summer of 2010 on NBC.

Information about returning cast members and new cast members are floating out there if you choose to seek it out, but since casting information is a grey zone, I'll keep it vague for now.

Ugh. This would be the only reason I would get direct tv. And I am bummed we have to wait until Summer on NBC and not January. Still, I am happy we are getting it - I will take it any way I can!

 

Just a bump to remind anyone with DirecTV that Friday Night Lights season 4 premieres tonight at 9 pm ET on the 101 Network.

I'm even more psyched after I've thought about it a bit. We all know that Eric Taylor is a great teacher who is able to help boys become better men. But in the past three seasons, we've mostly seen the end results of his work. For all their faults, Riggins and Smash had worked with Taylor in some form or other before we met them in season 1. Now, we get to see how Eric Taylor work his ways from the start with a fresh batch of boys and teach them to become good, kind-hearted men. And I'm assuming that we'll see this all in comparison to JD McCoy, who won't have Coach Taylor's guidance and will suffer for it.

http://www.nj.com/entertainment/tv/index.ssf/2009/10/friday_night_lights_season_fou.html

 

Allan Sepinwall discusses the upcoming season here. No real spoilers.

I envy you and your DirecTV. Enjoy the show. I'll be waiting until the summer.

Since I might be the only one watching it on DirecTV, I'll spare the spoilers and just say that the season 4 premiere was very strong, and because it was directed by Peter Berg, there are some framing homages to the pilot.

The new characters have a lot of potential, and the Taylors still set the example for the best TV family.

(Similarly avoiding spoilers)

"Stop throwing the ball, you look like a girl".  I love her.

I don't disagree with Sepinwall about the one character's heel turn being a bit heavy-handed, but I can't say it really bothered me either.  It's more that it's such a shift from where we left him than the thought that he couldn't be that way that throws me.

That game...ouch.

Overall, a great start to the season.

Me Likey a Whole Lot!

I wanna talk about it...

We'll have to do it in code. I'm bursting to talk about it.

Why don't we? We could mark this a DirecTV thread or create one.

 

Ted!

Done.  Spoil away.

I'm going to only be skimming the thread so as to not be spoiled myself so I won't be policing behavior in this thread very much, so do behave.

Thanks, Ted! So, spoilers for the 10/28 episode of Friday Night Lights, the fourth season premiere. Wow. We've never seen Coach Taylor struggle with the basic things, and as Peter Berg pointed out in the introduction before the episode, it will a moment of pure triumph when the Lions score a touchdown, much less win a game. I didn't mind the JD McCoy heel turn as much because it's completely conceivable that all of the town's attention would go to his head. And he was drunk in that scene, not that it completely excuses him. Jesse Plemons looks old. And funny that the singer girl at East Dillon looks like season three Adrienne Palidicki with that hairstyle. Wallace survived his gunshot and moved to Dillon to play football for Coach Taylor. How does the Saracen story end? Can it end without Lorraine dying or being hospitalized for good? How does the Riggins story end? Will it follow the obvious Campbellian hero's journey that they hung the lampshade on? Maybe Coach Taylor will finally remember Landry's name now. So much more to talk about.

OMG THIS WAS SO GOOD!

The only complaint i have is about JD cuz that is just a sloppy writing turn.  Nothing has happened to justify that kinda swagger or arrogance.

Man i barely recognized Wallace and Alicia Witt has lived a HARD HARD life apparently.

Even >I< had to take notice of how hot Riggins is in that one shot.  Speaking of Hot, I like the new mixed daughter, although she is superchatty.

Like I said, I don't think it's so far out of the realm of possibility that the attention would go to JD's head in the worst way possible. Where's Mama McCoy? The Riggins brothers fighting definitely had a less playful tone this time around. So, what's the next stage of Riggins's heroic journey? Alicia Witt looked ROUGH. The triage scene during halftime was amazing.

>>I didn't mind the JD McCoy heel turn as much because it's completely conceivable that all of the town's attention would go to his head. And he was drunk in that scene, not that it completely excuses him<<

That was my thinking too.  JD had already started gravitating more towards Joe after the arrest and aftermatch last season. Add to that a summer's worth of the town's attention and Daddy filling his ears with "If Taylor hadn't pulled you.." talk and I could see the arrogance growing on him. I can totally see him being an asshat to Saracen who he sees as the embodiment of everything that went wrong at the end of last season.

I didn't even realize that was Alicia Witt until it was mentioned here.

Wow, Wallace got BIG.

Witt wasn't looking too good on that Mentalist finale.

Some other thoughts: The writers very subtly introduced the racial angle into the gerrymandering that divided the town. The white mother screaming at Tami Taylor about the school board sending her daughter "with those elements," most of the black players leaving the East Dillon Lions when Coach Taylor flipped out after practice, almost no white parents at the East Dillon game. They brought back Landry's lesbian bandmate, and it looks like she's being forcibly transferred to East Dillon. That scene of her eviction from Dillon High was surreal. Could this be the final hurrah for Crucifictorix? Buddy Garrity is going to lead a mini-revolt now that he's been usurped by Joe McCoy. With Coach Taylor in desperate circumstances, does he have a choice but to accept? We need to give Riggins and Saracen their send-offs. I'd guess that Lyla and maybe even Tyra would return to give Riggins one more kick in the butt. But how does Saracens's story move on? And you're telling me Saracen couldn't at least keep the job at the Alamo Freeze?

Sooo happy I have DirecTV (and that I can program my DVR from my computer - was out of town and had almost completely forgotten the show started this week until USA Today had an article about it).

This could be a really interesting season although there is one possibility I _really_ hope they stay away from (and please note this is total guesswork on my part - I have no clue whether this is even being considered for one of the game matchups): do not make the first win or first touchdown be against West Dillon.  Just too, too cliche and predictable for me.  Although revenge on Wade and the McCoys would be good, I'd just rather see that first W be more in the spirit of some of the games from the first season - where it was just a tough opponent and the team really earned the win.  I'd feel like a win over West Dillon, at least this season, would be more because Coach Taylor knows the strengths and weaknesses of the guys he used to coach, the strengths and weaknesses and minds of the coaching staff, and the playbook (I doubt Wade's thrown the entire thing out).

I thought it interesting watching Landry start to do the things that captains do (although he doesn't have the position), like telling the players to get on their knees, correcting the names of plays, and doing the right thing instantly with the player he got into a fight with.

Wondering exactly which part of the redistricting the Taylors' house falls in - as principal, Tammy gets to have her kid attend the school she works at (at least, that's how it used to work), and it's not like Julie can just pick and choose between the two schools.

Knowing that we'll only get to see Matt's grandmom for a few episodes makes me realize that I miss Smash's mom.  There have been some great supporting characters during the run of this show who add so much to its texture.

Mama Smash! I hope that we'll see Smash's sisters at either school at some point too. It would make continuity sense. And which character will get a job at Applebees this season to get those promotions in?

Yeah, I was wondering how the redistricting would affect the Williamses.  I was a bit surprised not (hoping) to see Mama Smash at that school meeting (though it was unclear which parents were there - it seemed a mix of both West and East Dillon parents based on what they were saying).

And doesn't Julie work at Applebee's already?  Could have sworn she started working there last season (I remember Matt walking her home a couple of times when they were starting to rekindle things).

I loved the scenes with Landry, too. It's like he's the only person who knows -how- the team is supposed to act. Hopefully he ends up in a leadership position on the team.

Which would be a far cry from his view of high school football from season 1.

I try not to think about that too much. I either tell myself that the writers tried to make his character not involved in football and failed, or that the moral of Landry's story is that everyone gets sucked into football in Texas sooner or later.

Didn't he join to finally belong to something? Its not like he went from being nothing to a great player. He still sucks, he just knows what to do because he's a fast learner.

It felt a little too bad news bears-y in the beginning there.  I honestly thought we has seen the end of Tim last season, and I wish we had.  maybe they will pull it out, but I feel about Tim now how I felt about Lyla last year — I'm tired of watching this character screw up.  The Craftsman Coach is annoying, which I suppose he is meant to be, but I hope he levels out soon.

Still, I liked the show.  Yay! new FNL.

--

I think they said the Taylor house is in West district, when one of the parents asked, but it was a lot of shouting,. so I may have heard incorrectly.

SPOILERS FOR THE 11/4/09 EPISODE

 

That was a very satisfactory follow-up to the season premiere. The introduction of the other students at East Dillon High has been pretty well-paced, and I can't wait to see Julie's choice to attend East Dillon High blow up in her face. Saracen's story feels like it belongs in a different show though.

I hope that they don't drop the Assistant Coach Riggins idea like they did with Assistant Coach Jason Street idea. Street's better suited to be a coach than Riggins, but it'll be interesting. And it was curious to see the Riggins brothers' idea that Riggins' Rigs would just allow them to fix cars and drink beers all day everyday evaporate under the strain of reality.

The highlight of the new season has been Tami vs. Joe McCoy. That was a very smart play by Tami to call Joe's bluff in front of the other boosters. Her maturation into a political player has been fascinating.

Has this seedier side of Dillon always been there? It surprised me to see Walla...Vince's drug-addled mother since that's a side of Dillon we've never seen before. I know that it shouldn't surprise me; I've seen enough stories about the dark side of small towns from Lynch to know that.

I think the interplay between the Riggins brothers has always been fascinating.  These two episodes the anger Billy has at Tim about dropping out of college (a dream Billy has espoused for Tim since the first season), and Tim not realizing that's why Billy is so angry at him, has been very realistic (plus you know Mindy has just had totally unrealistic, expensive dreams for that baby).  I think it's going to be interesting to watch the story of what happens to the high school football hero when he doesn't have that to be anymore (and not because of something life-changing happening to him like Jason Street's story).

I don't find Matt's story to be quite so jarring.  They're trying to give the viewer closure on his story, and Jason Street's story was similarly outside the rest of the big story last season, although Jason had more interaction with regular characters during his closing arc.

 

This instant ghetto that has popped up in Dillon bothers me a little from a story standpoint.  Theoretically, all these kids were going to Dillon last year!

While I can buy there being a poor, seedy side of town, it feels pretty stereotypical the way they've pushed it, particularly the portrayal of East Dillon as a school.  I can buy Vince being in a shit family in a shit part of town, but the school seems teleported in from Ghettotown, USA.