A television post addendum

I'm giving my kid ten minutes to fuss in his crib (JUST GO TO SLEEP ALREADY) before I hop in the shower and get ready to spend the day with Grandpa, just long enough to smack myself in the forehead for forgetting Friday Night Lights. I know! How could I?!

Eagle-eyed reader Shelby (hi Shelby! Where's your blog?) alerted me to this most disappointing of errors. Yes, I HAVE been watching Friday Night Lights and there's been all of what? Two? Three episodes so far? As you well know, I thought the book was fascinating and the movie was pretty good. But the TV series (which has pretty much nothing to do with the book except for football and Texas) is my favorite thing on television. I think this has a bit to do with Peter Berg, he of the shaky camera and grainy scenes.

Insert Huge Tangent: Did anyone see The Kingdom? It's a Peter Berg movie (and featuring, if only for minutes, a couple of FNL actors). I really liked it. We were at my folks' house one afternoon and decided to take advantage of the free babysitting and go see a movie. Neither of us were particularly gunning to see it, but you know how it is when you don't want to see the movie the other person really wants to see, right? (Superbad was still out, but I didn't want to tell my parents we were going to see Superbad. Sigh.) So anyway, I agreed to see this movie even though I have two rules about movies: 1) no war movies and 2) no realistic violence. I think the last war movie I saw was Saving Private Ryan which gave me nightmares for weeks. (Same with Ken Burns' WWII documentary, unfortunately. I TiVo'ed the whole thing and really wanted to watch it, but the D-Day episode made me sick to my stomach and the rest of the day I had visions of Jackson paratrooping into enemy lines, UGH. And I can handle, say, space age violence, but nothing that I can picture actually happening. Like no matter how many times people tell me I should see these movies, I am never going to sit down and watch The Passion or the movie about Flight 93. Ever! Do you people WANT me to have a nervous breakdown?) Okay so I just hoped it would be a big ridiculous action movie. And it was. But! It was also really good. They killed about 30 more jihadists than necessary in that last scene, but I really liked how Peter Berg wasn't bashing me over the head with his personal politics and left a lot of it up to me and, well, it was just about HUMANITY and FAMILY and THINKING ABOUT THINGS and I might have cried at the end. All right. End tangent.

So, Friday Night Lights. I thought last season was very real. The high schoolers were a whole lot prettier than the high schoolers I remember, but they talked the way I remember high schoolers talking. Especially the Matt and Julie scenes. The awkwardness of realizing you both like each other, the game you play to make sure he's wrapped around your finger and not the other way around. There were some cliches- the drunk dad, the slutty girl, the crippled kid- but for the most part the relationships ring so true. And Coach Taylor and his wife... MAN. I saw Connie Britton on a late night show a few weeks ago and I was all, "Hey! That's not how Mrs. Taylor talks!" Like she IS Mrs. Taylor. And when I saw an old episode of Grey's Anatomy with Kyle Chandler I was all, "HEY! What are you doing! You're COACH TAYLOR!" (Maybe it is me who has a problem? Possibly?)

Okay so enter this season, which is just as good as last season (even better in the Matt and Julie department, because which one of us didn't do the exact same thing Julie is doing right now?) EXCEPT FOR: (dum dum dum) Landry and Tyra. I don't do this very often, but: WTF!

I just have a SUPER hard time believing that Landry would do this. Smash the guy's face in with a brick? Yes. Definitely. Especially after we saw his declaration of love to Tyra (which, SWOON!) But taking the body? Sticking it in the trunk of a car? DUMPING IT OFF THE SIDE OF A BRIDGE?

Maybe I want to give more credit than is due a lovestruck teenage boy, but that is the dumbest thing ever. And his dad's a cop! Seriously! I mean, I get the emotionalness of it all, and how freaky and scary it would be, but Landry is not an idiot. Tyra- yes. Tyra may get herself to college after all, but she has yet to display a real set of smarts. On the other hand, Landry is the sharpest object in Dillon. He knows what's going on. He's constantly setting out all the options and scenarios for Matt. And then he does this?

What annoys me is that it's going to get smoothed out like the whole steroids storyline last year. When that happened I thought Smash was over. That's a huge deal! And it was nicely ironed out weeks before the season finale. Is that what's going to happen with Landry and Tyra? I just hate storylines where characters do such stupid needless things for the benefit of a little drama. I feel like the writers are lazy. They can pull awesome stuff out of Julie and Matt and the Taylors and Buddy Garrity and even prissy little Lyla with their average this-stuff-happens storyllines. But I feel like they've screwed over one of my favorite characters, because I don't see how this ends well (or ends satsifactorily.) BOO.

I can't believe I have written an entire post about one television show.

So here's another- I watched Ugly Betty last night with my sister and: BEST EPISODE YET. How awesome was that writing class with Victor Garber? AWESOME! I had a creative writing prof kind of like that. We called her Dragon Lady. Dragon Lady ended up publishing one of my angsty poems in her regional poetry journal so I can't be too snotty about her, but dude, she was meeeeean. Possibly we deserved it, just for being creative writing undergrads in the first place. But I felt for Betty, man. Poor Betty. And Marc's collapsing-on-the-floor-scene-of-woe? I love Marc. Sigh.

All right, off to be productive! Have a good weekend.

Comments

[Leticia]

I'm soooo happy you wrote about Friday Night Lights because I LOVE that show. LOVE. And, I missed the season premier because I thought I had programmed it to record, but didn't...ahhhh.

Anyway, I love what they are doing too with the coach's wife and the baby. Its hard having a baby after your other baby is so grown.

Ditto about Landry. Dumb....don't know where its going.

I hope they don't cancel this show....I'm so scared to get really hooked (ok, I already really am hooked), but still scared I'll tune in one day and it will be gone.

[Shelby]

Hi Maggie! I don't actually have a blog (am I the only one?) . . . But I did put a link to the blog we (read: my husband) created during our Europe trip a few weeks ago =)

I've been so curious what you've thought of FNL! I had a really hard time with the premiere. We all know the show is on the bubble, and needs all the viewers it can get. In the premiere, everything just felt so contrived to create tension and controversy in order to attract viewers -- the type of viewers that need that sort of thing in order to be interested. It just felt like such a departure from last season. Those who watched last season loved the show for what it was, for its heart. The first episode felt like the show kind of abandoned that, and instead embraced scandal and controversy. It was like watching "sexy" Friday Night Lights. I do think the second episode was better, though. And we'll see what tonight brings!

[Alyssa]

Hi Maggie,

Loved your blog. Just wanted to say thanks for sharing you thoughts ~ and invite you to come and visit our Kyle Chandler fandom:

www.kylechandlercentral.com

Be sure to click on the Forum link where we get into discussing all that is Kyle. sigh.

You'll LOVE it.

Alyssa

[karianne]

You are playing right into my tv loving soul! I love it! Keep it up since I don't have ti-yaknow and I wait to watch full series when they are on DVD.

Did I tell you that I "won" the complete series of Alias last month or so?

[Manda]

MAGGIE! We freaking LOVE Friday Night Lights over here!! And I agree! What is up with this whole Landry MURDER? ARGHTHTH! Why didn't they tell HIS DAD THE COP?

Also saw the Kingdom because I LOVE Jen Garner. LOVE HER. The movie was eh- all right. Peter Berg is a geno, though.

Too bad we don't live in the same town... we could totally have FNL parties on Fridays!