"I want you to let yourself off the hook son"
With the first 2 episodes of Friday Night Light being so breath taking, I expected to be in for a slight let down for episode 3. It was the first episode with out big name director Peter Berg. And while yes, this episode was not exactly up to the excellence of the first two, it was definitely still a great hour of television.
The show does a great job when it demonstrates just how seriously this small town takes its football games. The Panthers lose 1 game, the first game without their star quarterback, and all of a sudden everyone on the team is under ridicule. Saracen, after playing an inspired game in a losing effort, is taunted with chants of loser from other town members. Heck, he even gets ridiculed by his own teammates. Coach Taylor goes to grab some food with his daughter, and not only is he taunted, but some jerk also had the audacity to taunt his daughter, who has absolutely nothing to do with the football team. Kyle Chandler shines here again showing the anger on his face but being able to keep his cool in front of his child and just walk away from the situation.
And speaking of Coach Taylor, I was very happy that they tried to establish the fact that he is not immune to the pressure of town. He is not the all mighty saint that we see in the first 2 episodes. Sure he is still a fantastic man, but when push came to shove, he could have said no to the whole illegal recruiting of another quarterback. He could have put his foot down and let everyone know that no matter what, Matt Saracen was his quarterback. But because of the pressure he felt from the people around him, he decided to go along with the recruiting of Voodoo, even if it was going to be on his terms. His speech to Voodoo was fantastic and it seemed like at that moment he realized that he had to say something in order to salvage any power he had over his own team.
This episode also gave us our most in depth look at the new dynamic between Street, Lyla and Riggins. We got some very strong performances here from Porter and Kitsch here with the weak link so far in regards to performance has been Minka Kelly by a longshot. Its not that she is that bad, but everyone around her is so good, that even an ok performance sticks out like a sore thumb. Still i like the fact that we got some development on this front, and now with cheating going on (We saw Tim and Lyla kiss and i think more was implied by Jason saying "Can we just forget last night ever happened?") Along with Kyle Chandler, Taylor Kitsch has this uncanny ability to say so much with just a facial expression. The look on his face when Coach was telling him that Streets injury was not his fault was one of half pain and half relief. No matter what anyone says to him he is going to blame himself for his best friend being paralyzed, at least until he is able to visit him in the hospital. I am very excited for the scene where Tim does finally visit Street, should be very emotional.
It looks like the show is cutting down the amount of actual game footage that we are seeing but what they showed still looked great. I especially loved the way they shot the last play of the game with Matt coming up short of scoring the touchdown. They way they showed him on the ground, literally inches away from the endzone really illustrated that as hard as he worked to get to that point, he knew it still was not going to be enough to quiet the citizens of Dillon. With the arrival of Voodoo Tatum, i fear that he may be right
A little slip from the first 2 episodes but still very strong. I give it a 7 out of 10. Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can’t Lose.
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