Just one week off from the season’s unceremonious finale (my heart, it hurts!), and pretty much everyone on Friday Night Lights is an emotional wreck. Saracen, fresh off his live-in girlfriend’s abrupt exodus from the country, is drowning his sorrows with Riggins in all sorts of seedy hillbilly dives (also frequented by born-agains, of course). Smash’s post-high school plans are falling under question thanks to his very public mishandling of a racially charged feud with some jackholes two towns over. Tyra is coming to realize that her rebuffing of Landry’s affections may have been a tad premature. And Julie… poor Julie further solidified her status as Dillon’s resident “Dawn” by once again overreacting to her poor mother’s good intentions. The night was filled with emotional breakdown after emotional breakdown, but where did they fall on the sympathy scale? Let’s start with the least tragic and work our way up.
Tyra Collette – The World’s Smallest Violin
Come on. As if that charming albino was ever going to choose a pixie-haired early 90s reject over the hotness that is Tyra. The revelation of her Landry love was long overdue, and the payoff was inevitable.
Julie Taylor – That Stain Will Never Come Out
Sure, her insecurity is legitimate. Her dad has his team, her mom has her team and they both have that bug-eyed baby to fawn over. There isn’t a whole lot of time in the Taylor house to dote on the unathletic, adolescent first born. Julie’s whining and angsty theatrics, though warranted and completely pivotal to her family dynamic, are still damn annoying.
Matt Saracen – Left at the Altar
My attention isn’t the only thing that’s abandoned poor Saracen this season. During a drunken confrontation with Coach Taylor, Matt went through the laundry list of people who’ve left him hanging. His father, his girlfriend, his coach, his other girlfriend, his grandmother’s lucidity… it just goes on and on. I’m wept a little, but mostly out of guilt. I’ve been so preoccupied with other characters this season – I accidentally left him too.
Brian “Smash” Williams – Cancer of the Puppy
If Matt’s bathroom breakdown didn’t dampen your ducts, Smash’s locker room speech and ensuing sob-fest probably did the trick. He lost his scholarship to TMU after he was suspended for the rest of the season, and I think he may have been the only one who was surprised. The real tragedy of the Friday Night Lights book and film was the futility of small town sports heroes. They have a lifetime’s worth of praise poured over them before their 18th birthdays, but then they end up going nowhere. The show has given us a taste of this with some of Dillon’s adults and with Jason Street’s catastrophic misfortune, but none of the current Panthers have ever faced the highly undramatic reality that playing ball after high school just isn’t always in the cards.
Smash’s fate is anything but sealed. Considering the unjust origins of his current situation, I really doubt he won’t find his way to TMU somehow. But when exactly will that happen? This Friday is it, folks… all they flippin’ wrote! After that it’s just the gaping abyss of uncertainty over a third season. 2008’s fairly nonexistent pilot season lends me to believe that FNL will probably see a junior year, but we won’t know for some time.