Love flowers and deflowers on 'Friday Night Lights'

Due to popular demand from at least two readers, it may be time to check in again on the residents of Dillon, the quarterback-swapping Panthers and the rest of the Friday Night Lights gang.

[Obviously this recap will contain spoilers, so if you haven't been watching on DirecTV, you may want to hold out until NBC airs the episodes, eh? Exactly.]

Actually, two weeks ago would have been the best time to check in after "Hello, Goodbye," which wasn't just the season's best episode to date, it was probably the series' best episode since Season One.

Last week wouldn't have been as good a time to check in. "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" was full of silly or retreaded subplots -- Julie gets a tattoo! Tami worries Tyra's a bad influence (again)! Matt gets pouty with his mom! -- and was probably the season's worst episode.

This Wednesday's (Nov. 5) DirecTV episode, titled "It Ain't Easy Being J.D. McCoy" put the show back on solid footing and included at least one massive plot development.

Matt and Julie finally made sweet, sweet love!

Some people will probably feel like Julie and Matt (or "Mulie" if you're one of those people who likes to combine couple names) rushed into the sexy-time, but they'd done the protracted build-up before. It yielded "I Think We Should Have Sex," which ranks as either my second or third favorite Friday Night Lights episode ever. But in the context of this season, the impetuous decision made a lot of sense. With his grandma, his ma and his benching, Matt has been going through a lot lately, while for Julie it was a bit of over-obvious symmetry that last week she got flowered (on her ankle) and this week she was deflowered. And, honestly, thank heavens she didn't sleep with The Swede or John From Cincinnati.

Their first time was handled in that trademark, sensitive Friday Night Lights style, which is to say that after they started passionately making out and fell to the ground, everything was handled in dialogue-free, montage fashion. We got lots of shots of them sweetly driving home in the early morning all-aglow and we saw Julie staring into her mirror examining herself with an "I'm a woman now!" grin. There was nothing tawdry or salacious, which I'm sure disappointed a few viewers.

Julie and Matt were one of those couples where neither has ever been nearly as appealing as individuals or when paired with anybody else, so for the sake of Aimee Teegarden and Zach Gilford, I'm pleased.

But I have one major concern: Friday Night Lights is the sort of show where if we don't see characters using protection or discussing using protection, they probably didn't. Since this wasn't something that either of them planned and since Matt hasn't been getting any action since his grandma's nurse went back to Central America, it's unclear how prepared anybody was. I just don't feel like dealing with a "After having sex for the first time, Julie has a pregnancy scare" storyline. That sort of thing is so very FOX or The CW and yet it may well be inevitable. After all, the show is still dealing with Jason Street and his Miracle Baby.

Can I just say again how much I hated that plotline last season? Jason Street knocking up a waitress after a one-night stand and convincing the already financially struggling stranger to keep the baby just because it seemed like a biological impossibility still rubs me the wrong way, but the past two episodes have handled that arc well, if only because of how very good Scott Porter has been.

Even though Friday Night Lights has had to largely write out Gaius Charles' Smash and Porter's Street, the series has done well by its two originals. Charles was absolutely Emmy-worthy in "Hello, Goodbye," while Porter has gotten one great moment after another the past two weeks, particularly working his magic on Buddy Garrity last week and singing "Hole in the Bucket" to his son this week. Yeah, the stuff with Street, Herc and Team Riggins flipping Buddy's house has been beyond out-of-left-field, but it has been important to position the wheelchair-bound former-QB1 as a responsible father willing to do whatever it takes to support his son.

This contrasts him with bland rodeo clown Cash, who only seems to be around to make Tyra realize how great a guy Landry is and since I never believed in the Tyra-Landry romance last season, this isn't helping. Does anybody out there actually believe that Cash is telling the truth about the woman claiming to be the mother of his child? Me neither. The problem is that I don't care. Tyra's been on a poorly written rollercoaster this season, obsessing about her future one moment and falling into old habits the next. I'm assuming that she's on the verge of falling for Landry again, which will come just in time for Landry to have begun to romance the new Crucifictorious bass player.

Am I think only one who thinks that Crucifictorious is a joke that's funniest the less we see of the band? Also, I continue to prefer Stigmatalingus as a band name. Mostly, though, I don't get why Landry suddenly has so much free time for band rehearsals and try-outs. Shouldn't he be at football practice? I'd become convinced that they'd dropped that stupid plotline this season -- he was really only playing to impress Tyra, which doesn't matter now -- but this episode featured two Landry Plays Football references (in Matt's dialogue and with his presence at the Naked Mile). I guess he's got lots of free time now that he's quit killing people.

Other thoughts on this week's episode:

E-mail

• Digg
• Facebook
• Fark
• Yahoo Buzz
• Stumbleupon