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There’s no reason to defend season 2 ofFriday Night Lights.
The show survived it and thrived.
But it deserves study, close analysis, and maybe a new cockeyed appreciation.
(Think Don Draper flashbacks, think Sand Snakes, think “He’s therealSeymour Skinner!")
Everyone becomes their most aggressive worst self.
Matt tackles Smash, and kicks his car, and calls his teacher a “bitch.”
This is the only season where someone steals $3,000 from one of the biggest drug dealers in Dillon.
It all builds up to the season 2 finale.
Mo is one of the most elaborate guest characters ever.
In his single episode, he wears a white cowboy hat and a black cowboy hat.
He favors loud farmboy shirts; he rides a helicopter.
Next to Mo McArnold, Buddy Garrity looks subtle.
Next to Mo McArnold, John Wayne looks subtle.
Berg was, of course, the guy who originally developed Friday Night Lights as a TV enterprise.
So here we have Eric Taylor, the on-camera avatar of authority, grappling with his off-camera overlord.
On a show where people could always talk about anything, here are actions speaking drunker than words.
The Taylor women leave Eric in bed, moaning; they have to get to Church.
We’ve become too precious about TV shows as works of steady coherence.
Any show that takes a big swing runs the risk of angering fans.
Friday Night Lightsseason 2 was not much beloved while it was happening.
That was almost a decade ago, when fandom was blogs and comment boards.
If season 2 happened today, there would be Tumblr riots.
In season 1 (and forever after season 2),Friday Night Lightswas about people who talk.
Characters work out everything, gradually but eventually.
Precocious teenagers debate the merits of losing their virginity.
Dreamers explain the agony and ecstasy of their impossible dreams.
But then there is season 2, bloodthirsty with soap operatics and pseudo-fantasies.
All sensitivity is thrown out the window.
(Wasn’t the ghost inVertigonamed Carlotta, too?)
In season 2, it’s the Smash show all over again, his id re-unleashed.
But “regression” doesn’t come close to describing what happens to Jason Street.
In season 2, that future’s gone rotten.
There’s a new Coach in Dillon who doesn’t like the ex-quarterback very much.
But then the bummer gets surreal, florid,Fear and Loathing-y.
Jason flees to Mexico with Tim.
They go to prison and they sing Spanish karaoke.
Their mutual lovemate Lyla Garrity arrives.
This is famously weird stuff, but it plays better on second viewing.
The sensual pleasures are real.
Street gets drunk and sings “La Cucaracha” to a cheering karaoke crowd.
On the soundtrack, someone called Blue Merle sings something called “If I Could.”
It should feel likeButch Cassidy and the Sundance Kidbut it’s much closer toY Tu Mama Tambien.
I’m not saying that the characters were diminished, far from it.
In season 1,Friday Night Lightscreated a portrait of a town.
In season 2, the show tries to expand its vision far away.
Coach Taylor is down in Austin.
Themenage a Streetgoes to Mexico.
Smash cares less about his final season with the Dillon Panthers than about his bright future in college.
The show follows his wandering gaze.
This is the least football-y season of the show.
Characters who were once football-adjacent might as well exist in a distant parallel universe.
Cheerleader Lyla is a reborn churchgoer and a radio host.
Jason Street leaves coaching behind for his true destiny as a car salesman.
This was actually a common experience when you watched TV dramas in the 2000s, mid-24, mid-Lost.
That was the era of shows ending on wild season finale cliffhangers.
Some finales were brilliant and destructive, breaking their shows' narrative spines asunder.
Some of these decisions were brilliant, some terrible.
All of them reflect the spirit of the moment, the medium pushing its own boundaries.
After he wins State in the finale, the Coach says he’ll turn down the job.
But Tami is too tough and the show too bittersweetto refuse that easy victory.
But almost immediately, it’s clear thatFriday Night Lightsseason 2 can’t sustain its boldest narrative decision.
Keeping them apart is just a bummer, and the show admits that almost immediately.
What was the point of that exactly?”
Tami responds: “I don’t know.
That was just my idea.
It was just astupididea.”
It wasn’t, actually!
A coach like Ericwith big professional dreams and the understandable desire to provide for his familycouldn’tpossiblyrefuse the TMU job.
Eric can only return after Buddy pushes out the new Dillon coach, a tough-faced man named McGregor.
On his way out of town, McGregor visits the Taylor household late at night.
“This is the first time I have been screwed by another coach,” he says.
“I have a family too, you just remember that.”
NEXT: Was the Writer’s Strike a blessing?
It sounds like a threat that the show takes seriously.
But he never sees Coach Taylor again not as far as we know, anyways.
The Writer’s Strike put any such plans to bed.
This would be a bummer, if the season had been telling a coherent story.
Some of season 2’s best ideas are short-lived, but they would come back in interesting ways.
And maybe there is some follow-up on the McGregor arc, on a purely karmic level.
To return to Dillon, Coach Taylor pushed McGregor out of a job.
On season later, Eric would be unceremoniously fired, kicked across town to the East Dillon no-hopers.
Not all of the ideas workshopped herein are great.
(Whenever you see Julie Taylor spark romantic chemistry with a teacher, run for the hills!)
Some of them would be further explored outside ofFriday Night Lights.
(Long beforeFargo, this was the moment we learned Jesse Plemons is great at accidentally killing people.)
And some of the best ideas in season 2 were never fleshed out.
Eric becomes Athletic Director and immediately runs afoul of Bobbie Roberts, outspoken girls' soccer coach.
Bobbie Roberts is the only person who ever makes Eric Taylor look like a fatcat.
It could’ve run longer.
Tyra is weirdly convincing as the Riggins of volleyball.
(Adrienne Palicki is tall enough, and has a great war face.)
You sense, maybe, that theFriday Night Lightswriters were plotting for some future beyond football.
And you feel the alternate future where the show became a more recognizable connection-era show.
Desperation and frustration bubble up frequently in the dialogue.
“You ever notice that no one ever changes in this town?”
“Nothing ever changes.
Everybody goes to the same church, or the same job, same restaurants.
Everybody goes to the football game on Friday night.
Season 2 tries to break that fish tank.
It got rid of all the new characters.
Nobody ever mentioned soccer again, or volleyball, or Mexico.
“It’s the keys to the ignition.”
When the show returned for season 3, it was focused on football.
In the premiere, Tim says he’s “focused on football and only football.”
Truly, I wish every show had a season like this.
“Do you think that all human beings are capable of evil?”
is a question Landry asks in season 2, apropos of nothing.
None of those plot points are really important, in the long term.
Plot points could be dropped; cathartic season-finale moments would become throwaway moments in the following premieres.
Tim Riggins would work a whole season to get to college, and then drop out immediately.
Landry and Tyra could be wonderfully together in one season finale, and then simply never talk again.
Buddy’s car dealership could close, offscreen, with no explanation beyond his general downward trajectory.
Julie and Jess could both dance and then suddenly never dance again.
The failures of season 2 were important.
The people who madeFriday Night Lightslearned from them, even if the characters forgot.
And: Maybe they didn’t forget.
All kindhearted dramas should have a go at be this weird.
All good TV shows should dare to break so bad.
