Friday Night Lights - Season 2 Thread (1 Viewer)

Season 2 premieres on Friday, 10/5 at 9:00 PM.

For those that don't mind watching in a tiny window on your screen, you can actually watch the first episode online (link below). Personally, I'll be waiting to watch in high def on the big screen.

http://tv.yahoo.com/falltv2007/frida...w/38958/videos

I just finished watching all of S1 on DVD. So, I watched the preview on Yahoo.. oh lord, do I not like the way the S2 premiere is going. I will reserve judgement until a few episodes in, but S1 had kind of a really original story, well played.. and that premiere on yahoo is the most cliche packed, ridiculous soap opera.. if those are the plot lines for the year, I'll wait for the DVD set.

That's disappointing to hear, but not surprising. They're probably feeling very desperate right now and unfortunately the show will suffer.

Wasn't crazy about the first 2/3 of the premiere, but it got a little good, and then it just took a swerve into oncoming traffic, and will cast a pall throughout much of the season, I suspect.

Spoilerized below, here's the problem as I see it:

Landry in Season 1 was the jimminy cricket, kind of a voice of concience smart thoughtful friend who was not in the "cool" clique, but a very bright academic student who pointed out that he would 'amount to something'. The premiere starts off in a way I don't care for with him trying out for the football team, which kind off upsets his character, IMHO.. but the show went off the total deep end at the piggly wiggly. Tara gets attacked by the would-be rapist from Season 1, who's apparently not at all afraid of her seeing his face now. He starts kicking & beating her, Landry comes out to break it up, fight ensues, lots of punching.. Landry picks up a beer bottle cracks guy over head, he's dead. Landry points out he's a cop son and he'll call his dad and they will figure it out. Of course! It's SELF DEFENSE. Instead, Tara influences him that they can't do it and they drag the body off to dispose of it or something, which makes this go from an event no one would be charged for to a felony murder. A cop son would know much better then this, especially in a self defense case. For as bright as Landry is supposed to be, this is idiotic. But I'm now thinking a big slice of the season will have to be devoted to their little conspiracy to hide the body etc. and that has no interest at all from me.

I am curious to see how the Coach Taylor angle plays out with him being in Austin with TMU. I would has thought that after the finale he was coming back to coach the Panthers. If the arc is for him to return to coach Dillion it probably will not be until season 3.

Wasn't Riggins a senior last year? And I thought he got past his demons on the field after he and Street talked.

Buddy Garity is still one of my favorite characters. Loved his on screen time in the premiere. He might be able to get Taylor back faster..

Didn't like the Landry angle at all. But kids do stupid stuff. Tyra is not above making a stupid decision despite her intelligence. So i'll give some latitude there.

They made a believer out of me last season so I am sticking with them.

Dumb, dreary, and disappointing. If dumbing down was the only way to stay alive, maybe this show should have died. Much as I like Landry, I just don't think this plot is going to work. But Glenn Morshower (Agent Pierce of 24) is on the way as Papa Landry, so I'll keep my fingers crossed.

What I think made Season 1 interesting was that the problems were things you could relate to. That plotline is something that is so goofball and out there that it just breaks that suspension of disbelief for me.

To be honest

If someone was going to die, it would have been much more believable if a football player got drunk and hit someone drunk driving. I would have bought that, and it would have been a pretty powerful message. But killing a guy in self defense with a wack of a beer bottle and then hiding the body? Done by a character who was portrayed all last season as one of the smartest, and a character with a father in law enforcement.. ?

I didn't watch last season but ripped through the DVDs and enjoyed it. But seeing the premiere via Yahoo makes me wonder if they are jumping the shark.

I just finished watching the first season DVD, ate it up in three days actually, and man am I sorry I didn't watch this when it was on! The finest damn hour of engaging drama on television is how i'd describe the first season, I just hope that some of the things i've read here about the season 2 premiere are represenative of that ep only and they don't turn this outstanding show into Dawson's Creek.

Haven't read any spoilers or watched it yet, but I think the biggest problem for this show is the fact that it got moved to Friday Nights...duh...the night most people in the target audience are at hometown football games of their own

Actually, I think the target audience is People Who Don't Like Football but Like the Human Interest Stuff. They thought they would get football fans watching it last season and it never really happened, but there were a lot of "Man, I can't stand football but this is a great show!" reviews.

I hate to see these comments about season two's premiere. I saw the exact same type of storyline play out in a soap opera earlier this year, right down to the attempted rape and one of the two "conspirators" being involved with a cop.
That said, after that incredible first season, I'm in for the long haul. I just can't foresee them turning the best outright drama on television into a soap opera.

Interesting sidenote: Both Connie Britton and Zach Gilford have major roles in the new eco-horror film, The Last Winter. That was a nifty bonus for this FNL fan.

Just a reminder FNL returns for its sophomore season tonight.

While this season opener appears to have put FNL into the cliched murder/self-defense killing subplot territory, bear in mind some critics have seen the 2nd and 3rd episode and are okay with the start of the new season and how it unfolds, so, let's not panic after just this first episode.

Because I really enjoyed S1, I'm sticking with it. Besides, I've got kids so I'm home on Friday night and there literally is nothing else on.

But the murder subplot, which I pointed out above, is so beyond-the-pail ridiculous that I'm struggling for this show to redeem itself. The son of a cop would know better then to turn an obvious self defense event into a hide-the-body plot. One means you are seen as a noble defender by many, probably face limited to no time. The other is an instant conspiracy and murder charge. I can't believe he's that stupid. I have to admit, I also don't like Landry going out for football... being a HS Debater myself I don't remember that many speech folk who already gave big speeches on how their academic work would be their ticket out suddenly hopping ship and deciding they had to pick up football to belong.

Only problem I had with the premiere was the murder, that sort of thing isn't what this show is about and it doesn't feel genuine which is one of the things that I absolutely fell in love with in season 1.

That sort of run-of-the-mill stuff doesn't belong and isn't wanted on Friday Night Lights, it totally ruined the funny, and REAL, way that Landry was trying to clumsily make a move on Tyra.

Felt intrusive in the extreme.

Everything else was golden IMO, felt completely on par with what we've seen in season 1. Landry, aside from the murder, is emerging as one of my favorite characters, mostly because he is so me at times, I would have been terrified to try something with Tyra lol.

Can't stand the new coach, he reminds me of that hard-ass coach from Beavis and Butt-Head lol, I was waiting for him to order Riggins to kick him in the jimmy.

Minka Kelly is looking sexier than ever , although I go back and forth with her as a character, she can at times be so sweet but she can also be sort of a bitch and I can't get a fix on her.

And what in the hell is coach Taylor doing!? My god man forget what your wife told you to do last season and go home to your family and stay there!

I didn't have a problem with the opener at all. It was pretty damn solid. Landry thought they were on the way to the hospital, and they ended up on a bridge. That's going to fuck up the believability of the legitimate self-defense argument. Besides, he's wrapped around Tyra's finger, and in a mindblowing situation like they found themselves in, a stupid option might start to sound good. Besides, we didn't see the body go into the water, so maybe they came to their senses and didn't dump him. I've been worried about this for weeks now, but I only knew that the shark jump (and can we retire that phrase now?) involved Landry. The whole episode, I was scared it was going to turn out that Riggins was cut and Landry took his spot. Now that would be hangin' ten with the Fonz time.

Sign of the quality of this show that I was sick that Julie was throwing Matt under the bus, but it certainly felt real. People grow apart, even when they thought they were made for each other.

The thing that worries me, and I don't want to violate forum rules here, but I hope they don't make Lyla's religious conversion an excuse to lambast Christianity in general. They were respectful of it last season. I don't mind what they're doing so far, because I do know that sometimes baby Christians go off the deep end and become overly zealous. They often are the ones who end up backsliding and becoming totally wild. Example: I attended a couple of Bible studies led by a guy who would really browbeat anyone who didn't read the week's lesson, and he was kind of a zealot. He ended up becoming a pagan, and ultimately a transsexual. True story. Lyla was always kind of religious, so maybe she'll settle into a nice groove with it. If not, I hope they make some of what I've said above clear, and balance it with a more positive portrayal like Smash's family.

Buzzcut.

I hope we can't just take it for granted that Coach will be coach. The hallmark of last season was that the rules of television didn't apply, that sometimes things happened more like they might in real life than in a script, where things can't change too much. That's an unrealistic expectation, since it would require Coach to be virtually unseen as far as Dillon is concerned, but I hope there isn't a deus ex machina that gets him back in the drivers set by next week. If there is, however, I'll be back here to rationalize it.


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The whole "Ode to Billie Joe" subplot was disappointing to say the least, but the rest of the episode was fairly solid. I think Katims tried to serve up too many plot threads for a single episode though. A lot of the main cast was relegated to "cameo" status.

This time-lapse between seasons bugs me a bit, too. So eight months have passed and even taking into account how "bumbling" Landry is supposed to be, do you mean to tell me that after all this time of seeing Tyra on a regular basis, he has never made any kind of move on her?? Come on!

I have no problem with the producers throwing in this murder/self defense storyline in an attempt to make the show accessable to a broader audience. I just hope they don't forsake the more grounded-in-everyday-life drama (that is the hallmark of the series) in the process...

My memory is that it was a lead pipe, but that is just details. I don't know how it would be handled by the law and a jury, but in television land, it definitely was not self defense. That's why they made the point of having the guy walking away, telling Tyra he was walking away but would be back. In a real life situation, I would imagine this would cause the surviving participants to engage in a bit of a "white" lie: "Okay, after he knocked me down, he was going for you again, RIGHT? That's why I hit him in the back of the head, RIGHT? He wasn't leaving."

If I was on the grand jury and a lie *wasn't* involved, I think I could be comfortable no-billing Landry. I'd have to be there to really know, but I could see it: guy tried to rape and beat her before, tried to run her down, followed her, attacked her again, and in the heat of the moment, Landry did what he thought he had to do. But, again, in TV land, that's not how it works. The hero is expected to give the villain every chance at salvation. You've seen it countless times. The hero has the bad guy down on the ground, and he says, "It's over." Then, when he turns his back, the villain produces a hidden gun, and the hero has to shoot him dead. It's very rare for the hero to have the villain down and go ahead and kill him. To Hollywood, this is a worse breach of conduct than anything the villain had done to that point.

Anyway, I can see where this could be seen as a heat-of-the-moment murder rather than pure self-defense, and perhaps Landry recognizes that as well and is tempted by the easy alternative of dumping the problem. It'll be far worse in the end, of course.

By the way, I thought Tyra took the guy's eye last season. Did it not happen that way at all?

If an admin is reading this thread, you might edit the title of this thread to warn that there are major spoilers here. FWIW, I enjoyed the first episode last night.

As far as Landry being an intelligent kid doing stupid things, I don't think this was a plot stretch. He's a teenager in love with a hot chick. That could easily cause an intelligent kid to do the stupid things he did.