Friday Night Lights s.2 ep.5: "Let's Get It On" Wri. Patrick Massett/John Zinman, 2007

This is TV that feels good, but the reasons are sometimes cheap. Landry's pep-talk read like a script stop-gap, a more verbose version of INSERT RALLY SPEECH HERE, but I'll be damned if his gridiron heroism didn't bring a smile to my face. Alan Sepinwall details pretty thoroughly how Landry the football hero is mostly incongruent with the Landry of season one (not to mention Landry the murderer, but I'm going to stay away from that one for right now - just getting back my sea legs, no need to chase a white whale), but, again, Landry makes a great football hero. Jesse Plemons is a fine actor, and that's part of the problem. He can sell these bathetic character changes so well that the result feels real good, but the writing - at least w/r/t his character - can't really justify the end with its means. I.e. the script doesn't earn its gut punches.

Still, this is good television on the whole; there are failings here only because chances are being taken. And they're paying off in other places: while Coach Taylor's move to TMU seemed like a rethought script detour at first, the effects of his departure are starting to come to light in his marriage. This is good: what was already the best marriage on television is becoming deeper and wider, more realistic. Lila Garrity's ridiculous revivalism is presenting itself to be just another symptom of the lost and forlorn angst of late teenhood, akin to Riggins' drinking and Street's hopeless search to walk again. This is also good. Hopefully these good things continue to bloom; here's hoping we get a good resolution to this Landry/Tyra/Murder plot.