The Taylors adjust to their new situation. Connie Britton, Aimee Teegarden, Kyle Chandler by Bill Records/NBC
Episode Recap: "Last Days of Summer""Welcome back to another glorious year of Panther football." I'm not ready to classify the football as glorious just yet, what with this new Coach McGregor (the anti-Eric Taylor) and all, but the show itself is certainly back and in sublime form.Let us first welcome into the world Miss Grace Taylor, second daughter of Eric and Tami, sister to suddenly moody teen, Julie. Now Eric has another daughter to defend against football players and Swedes; too bad he's a plane ride away in Austin. His new coaching job at TMU is having a deleterious effect on his family and (I'm not even being dramatic when I say this) the entire football-loving community in Dillon, but more about that in a bit. Julie won't talk to him because she considers him to have been an absentee father for the last 8 months, and Tami — Connie Britton, proving yet again how wrong the Emmy voters got it with her incredible performance tonight — is absolutely destroyed that he c...
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Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton in Friday Night Lights by Bill Records/NBC Photo
What more can its devoted critics say about NBC’s Friday Night Lights except to celebrate the fact that it’s back for a second season, which means it has already beaten the odds, at least for now. Not that the odds aren’t still incredibly steep for this eternal underdog in its new Friday time period: 9 pm/ET, when many of those who might savor this wonderful drama’s small-town football backdrop are out enjoying their own high school football matches this time of year. No matter how you watch it — in real time, in your own time via recording or online viewing — you really don’t want to miss it.Friday Night Lights is powerfully entertaining drama, and returning to Dillon, Texas, is like going home again. The characters are instantly familiar as they recapture your heart, especially the Taylors. That would be Coach Eric and wife Tami, unhappily maintaining a long-distance relationship as he adjusts to a new college job while Tami copes with a new baby...
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Aimee Teegarden by Virginia Sherwood/NBC Photo
It came thisclose to a move out of the Lone Star State for Year 2 of NBC's critical darling Friday Night Lights. "Texas didn't follow through on the rebates promised when we based the production in Austin," says Aimee Teegarden, who plays the coach's daughter Julie. "NBC said, 'We're going to move.' It was talks about money. Arizona and New Mexico were both anxious to have us and offered incentives, so I was expecting our show to leave Austin.""Aimee's right," says executive producer Jason Katims. "We were scouting new location bases and were courted by the other states' film commissions, but the network and the appropriate people in Texas settled things. I can't provide specifics, but it worked out so we could remain in Austin."And what did Teegarden get out of this? "I got a new apartment in Austin," replies the Southern California native. "There was no reason to keep my original place when I heard we might move to New Mexico or Arizona."Teegarden celebrates her milestone 18th bir...
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Just think of each of the following as exhibition games:The first-season DVD goes on sale this Tuesday, Aug. 28, and if you order it through Amazon.com, it'll be only $19.99. (Buy one for a friend — or 12, while you're at it.) For all those who've wondered what would happen if Connie Britton and Zach Gilford were together in a horror film, their movie, The Last Winter, comes on out Sept. 19. Finally, show some love for IHOP because Miss Julie Taylor herself (Aimee Teegarden) appears in one of their commercials.Season 2 premieres Friday, Oct. 5, at 9pm/ET. Order some wings, drink a beer, and pray that Buddy Garrity doesn't show up with the word "Panthers" painted across his chest.
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“You feel different?” “I do. I do.” I do, too. Has there been a more sheerly exuberant episode of television this season than this? In a way, it was the perfect capsule of this show: Even if someone had never watched this show before, they could fall instantly into its rhythms and story lines just in this one hour. In fact, in looking at the whole season, both the pilot and the finale could be viewed as perfect one-offs. When I said last week that I thought the writers would be bringing their best game, I wasn't expecting for it to be the blow out that it was.Is it possible for a show to be both more than the sum of its parts and have those parts be almost more important at the same time? As wonderful as the episode was as a whole, the individual scenes themselves were so fully developed, they could have counted as one-acts. The pre-game dinner, for instance, with Buddy’s “Eric, I just came by to tell you that I’m gonna miss you, and that you’...
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Can I take a moment here to reiterate that I hate promos for shows I care about? Promos are supposed to give you a teaser to keep you coming back; they are not supposed to give away key plot points. In any case, next week’s episode looks fantastic, and that’s as far as I’ll go.The more I thought about it, the more I considered last week’s episode to be a high point in an exceptionally strong freshman season. Compared to that, of course, this week was going to be a bit of a come down. Part of it has to do with the fact that we’re being set up for the final episode, so while we got many great little moments, something tells me they’re saving the bonafide A-material for next week.So let’s talk about those little moments. The meeting that Coach and Jason had with Saracen was hilarious. Jason had the best line in the scene when he explained, “I’ll take care of Julie. I’ll give her a nice call and tell her there’s a new girl in town a...
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“Welcome to the most talked about football game in the State of Texas.” It should go without saying that most sports commentators — and most network promo people — are prone to hyperbole, but I don’t think that this particular commentator was exaggerating, nor do I think that last week’s preview of this episode, touting it as, “one of the most inspirational,” was off the mark.It seems that we so rarely get to see the Panthers actually compete, but those games really serve to anchor their respective episodes. In the past they’ve embodied our characters’ feelings of suspense and disappointment, but this week it was all about control.Lyla told Jason what no one else was willing to tell him, which was that despite this terrible thing that happened to him, he doesn’t get a free pass in and that perhaps it was time for him to start getting a handle on his life. And he did. He took control during the settlement talks, finally getti...
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I’m having a hard time choosing my favorite scene here. On the one hand, we have the four boys on the football field reveling in small-town glory. On the other, the father-daughter dance. It’s too tough, so I’m not even going to make an attempt because both scenes were so full of joy on a show that never hesitates to show us the awful consequences of just about any decision one might make. Tyra’s mom seems to have a knack of making incredibly private moments available to all of Dillon, while the boys can be in what is usually the most public place in all of Dillon — the football field — and be completely cut off from the world.And here we are, going into the final three episodes and I have no idea where it’s all headed. Lyla has lost her faith in men in the space of about 48 hours, so while it doesn’t seem right to outright condemn her destructive behavior, I can’t see that it’s going to benefit anyone — least of all her. The ...
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Reason to cheer: After several weeks off, we finally have NBC’s instant classic Friday Night Lights to kick around for several more weeks. The first of four new episodes that will close out the first (hopefully not the last) season begins tonight, and once again, it reminds us that Friday Night Lights is not just a show about football.It’s about family. It’s about community. It is, also, about football. It’s about a small town that lives for the game while also playing the game of life. It’s about the sacrifice, hard knocks, hard work, hard truths, triumphs and joys, setbacks and sorrows, that make life so memorable, if not always easy to bear — or watch.NBC sent me screeners of this and next week’s episodes so late I was forced to screen them in the office, and while watching them, it was all I could do not to bawl in public, like that little girl on American Idol this week. Friday Night Lights moves me like no other show. It reminds me of where ...
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In the space of three episodes I’ve gone from hating to loving Tim Riggins. I’m sure I’ll hate him at some point again this season, but for the moment, I’m pretty enamored. When he taught little Bo how to throw a spiral, I thought I was going to crack my face open with my smile. Yes, there’s probably a little more going on there than just trying to be a good neighbor, but it was nice to see him doing something constructive to help someone else out (as opposed to instigating a riot on the football field). Also, how cute was it that Bo always had to call Tim by his full name? It’s the little touches like that that get to me.Of course, as well as things are suddenly going for Riggins, they’re going as badly for Smash and Waverly. She was pretty disturbing this episode, but it was the first time I felt much sympathy for the character at all. I have to wonder what will happen now that we know about her mood disorder. It would seem that Smash has no cho...
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