a Friday Night Lights query
I continue to really enjoy the new FNL season, though it's not making me spontaneously burst into tears like it has in the past. Perhaps I'm still just getting adjusted to the new characters and such. Also, I miss Tyra. A lot. And I find it disconcerting that curly-haired-girl kind of looks like her.
Anyway, no real comment on the most recent eps, but I did have a question for those of you have seen last week's ep, 4.02 "After the Fall." What were your thoughts on the Mike Leach cameo? The guy at the gas station who asked Eric directions and gave him advice. Did you recognize him? I'm particularly curious to know how that worked for people who didn't recognize him, actually, because it's a very different scene, depending on how well one follows NCAA football.
The guy at the gas station, in case you didn't get the fourth wall-breaking cameo, was Mike Leach, the quite successful head coach of Texas Tech University's football team. I still can't decide if he was really supposed to be Mike Leach (and consequently Eric, who of course would recognize him, is sitting there going "hey, it's Mike Leach! Giving me advice at a gas station--how weird!"), or if it's only the audience who's in on it (if we are--I wonder what percentage of the audience follows college football well enough to be in on it) and Eric's sitting there going "hey, random guy giving me advice at a gas station--how weird!" He was asking directions to Lubbock, where Texas Tech is located, but that also felt like part of the cypher, rather than a marker that we're supposed to realize that this is Mike Leach within the world of the show. Incidentally, imdb credits him as playing himself rather than "guy at the gas station" or something. But it still only works if you get the reference.
It's not the first time the show has integrated the real Texas into its fictionalized Texas: when Smash went to Texas A&M last season, for instance, those scenes were actually filmed in A&M's relatively distinctive-looking stadium. But it feels like a significant storytelling step to go from authentic location filming to a cameo by a real football coach who is not identified as such. I'm usually don't mind and am even often fond of that kind of fourth wall-breaking, winking nod to the audience, but it didn't quite work for me here, and I've been trying to figure out why. It's a different narrative mode than this show usually employs, and I think that's my problem: it just doesn't fit. Having Smash go to A&M and filming a scene there participates in FNL's primary mode: realism. Having Mike Leach play himself as a random, cryptic, advice-giving sage at a gas station is almost the opposite of realism: it's self-referential and draws attention to itself as a device and to the story as fiction. That just doesn't work in this story, and as a result, the scene really threw me out--but is that only because I'm a die-hard NCAA football fan and recognized Mike Leach immediately? Is this one of those moments where it's actually better not to get the reference?
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As an unrelated PSA, Deep Discount DVD has ALL OF FARSCAPE FOR $74.38!!!!!!!!! This is momentous! Consider that I paid that much for each season when I bought it a few years ago. So if you were planning to invest, now would be the time.
Anyway, no real comment on the most recent eps, but I did have a question for those of you have seen last week's ep, 4.02 "After the Fall." What were your thoughts on the Mike Leach cameo? The guy at the gas station who asked Eric directions and gave him advice. Did you recognize him? I'm particularly curious to know how that worked for people who didn't recognize him, actually, because it's a very different scene, depending on how well one follows NCAA football.
The guy at the gas station, in case you didn't get the fourth wall-breaking cameo, was Mike Leach, the quite successful head coach of Texas Tech University's football team. I still can't decide if he was really supposed to be Mike Leach (and consequently Eric, who of course would recognize him, is sitting there going "hey, it's Mike Leach! Giving me advice at a gas station--how weird!"), or if it's only the audience who's in on it (if we are--I wonder what percentage of the audience follows college football well enough to be in on it) and Eric's sitting there going "hey, random guy giving me advice at a gas station--how weird!" He was asking directions to Lubbock, where Texas Tech is located, but that also felt like part of the cypher, rather than a marker that we're supposed to realize that this is Mike Leach within the world of the show. Incidentally, imdb credits him as playing himself rather than "guy at the gas station" or something. But it still only works if you get the reference.
It's not the first time the show has integrated the real Texas into its fictionalized Texas: when Smash went to Texas A&M last season, for instance, those scenes were actually filmed in A&M's relatively distinctive-looking stadium. But it feels like a significant storytelling step to go from authentic location filming to a cameo by a real football coach who is not identified as such. I'm usually don't mind and am even often fond of that kind of fourth wall-breaking, winking nod to the audience, but it didn't quite work for me here, and I've been trying to figure out why. It's a different narrative mode than this show usually employs, and I think that's my problem: it just doesn't fit. Having Smash go to A&M and filming a scene there participates in FNL's primary mode: realism. Having Mike Leach play himself as a random, cryptic, advice-giving sage at a gas station is almost the opposite of realism: it's self-referential and draws attention to itself as a device and to the story as fiction. That just doesn't work in this story, and as a result, the scene really threw me out--but is that only because I'm a die-hard NCAA football fan and recognized Mike Leach immediately? Is this one of those moments where it's actually better not to get the reference?
**
As an unrelated PSA, Deep Discount DVD has ALL OF FARSCAPE FOR $74.38!!!!!!!!! This is momentous! Consider that I paid that much for each season when I bought it a few years ago. So if you were planning to invest, now would be the time.