Friday Night Lights: Season Finale
This post contains spoilers for this episode and for the season but more than that, it's a love letter to football and the very concept of underdogs.
I'm starting this with 20 minutes left in the show and no idea if Dillon will win or lose. Of course I turned on the television tonight under the confident assumption they will win, because that's what underdogs are all about on television but just as there are no guarantees in life, it's entirely possible there are no guarantees on this show. Do they win because they deserve it? Do they win because this might have been the last episode of FNL ever? Do they lose because sometimes you can struggle and fight and be outmatched despite it all?
There's something noble about football. In a lot of ways, it's a sport of the biggest and strongest, but the passing game works and because it does, it's also a game of the smartest and fastest. It's a game of who can figure out how to win and work together to get it. The set of the uniforms - the way the shoulder pads force a bend in the spine, the way the helmet dangles from a player's fingers, it creates a symbolic image of humility in a setting that's otherwise rife with machismo and violence. It's a game of teamwork where everyone has a part to play and when they each play their small part to the best of their abilities, they create more than the sum of their parts; they create a team that is capable of things far greater than any group of individuals.
I have always loved and cheered for the underdog. It's probably why SGA grabbed me so hard - these are people no one wanted, a leader who outlasted her political usefulness, a pilot exiled for doing the right thing, a scientist who loves science more than humanity and is punished for it. Similarly, Dillon is filled with forgotten children. Matt Saracen, everyone's ultimate woobie, has no mother and his father is overseas, fighting for the freedom of other people's children. He needs to take care of his grandmother more than she can take care of him. And we've seen him find love and a mentor, and find the confidence in himself to truly lead a team and stand up for his father. We watched Matt Saracen grow up this season.
Smash Williams was the man on top, with the utmost confidence in himself and constantly frustrated by his own temper and his own small-town invisibility. And we've seen him realize that there are things bigger than himself. He doesn't have a free pass, as he found out with the whole steroid debacle. He found humility, he found teamwork, he found sacrifice. We've seen him confess his love and fear for Waverly and we've seen him throw his lot in with his team instead of looking for the bigger headline.
Tim Riggins is maybe the character whose journey has been the most subtle and most touching. Tim, more than anyone, is looking for a family. When I first started watching, my reaction was, "Why is he so emo?" But his mother is gone, his father is scum, and his brother loves him, but is hardly a parent and not much of a role model. It was heartbreaking to see his father give him hope and then to watch it slip away. But at the same time, I could watch those experiences write themselves in Tim's heart, and when the little TimRiggins! kid showed up, it's been gratifying and heartening to see Tim demonstrate that he knows what damages children and isn't willing to contribute to the pain of another kid. I've said before that Tim and Tyra are the characters I see as growing into Coach and Mrs. Coach. Matt and Julie will go their own way, Jason and Lila will find new places for themselves, but Tim and Tyra have been abandoned and forgotten, and they have been found again and loved by the Taylors and that will be with them always.
The one character who wasn't forgotten, who was revered, who was idolized, who was a star who was going to escape that town, Jason Street, lost it all in the first episode. We saw him become lost, and to find himself again, to redefine himself, to dig deeper into himself and find out who he really was, deeper than football, deeper than what Buddy Garrity and his parents told him he was.
More even than the football players, the other characters have been lost and forgotten. Lyla, like Jason, has had to remake herself and define herself outside her father's and the community's perceptions. She couldn't be a football player so she dated one. When we first knew her, her goal in life had been to follow Jason wherever he went and support him. Now she can't depend on anyone she thought she could. Not her father, not in the way she used to, not Jason who no longer fits into the life they had imagined together.
Tyra resents football for overshadowing everything else in the town; she has done whatever she thought it would take to get out, and now we're seeing that all she really wanted was for someone to say, "You can do it," and "I have faith in you." We watched her go from thinking that it would take a man to get her out of town to finding the reserves in herself to pull herself out by herself.
We watched Julie grow up, too, watched her realize that her insular nuclear family is a blessing, that she has been lucky and coddled her entire life. She's seen the unloved kids now, and she understands pride, and she understands that there is a big, scary world out there that she hasn't experienced. She has learned that she doesn't know everything and she is starting to learn grace and humility as well. If there's no more than 6 more episodes, she may be the one I'm most sorry to not see grow up more. I think her development started late and slowly and that she hasn't quite gotten where she's going yet. She's not the most interesting character to me, because she's far too much like me, but at the same time, that makes me think she has that much farther to go.
I don't know what to say about Landry, but it would be wrong to talk about FNL and not talk about Landry, so let's just say that Landry + 5 women in a car? A thing of beauty.
And now that I've seen the end...
Smash Williams has won my heart forever more and for whatever horrid storyline they might give him after this. In my first Army-Navy game, Corey Schemm, a senior in my company, dislocated his shoulder for the nth time. It was the injury that was already sending him restricted line instead of to the regular Fleet. It was his senior year and he wanted to beat Army. So they popped his shoulder back in and he went back onto the field and dove into the endzone in the snow and freezing rain. In short, Smash Williams completed the pass that Corey Schemm didn't, 9 years ago. Schemm caught the pass but didn't make the touchdown. I don't remember now what the actual call was, but seconds before it was made, the radio commentary announced that Navy had won the game. But we didn't. We lost to Army that day. But the Dillon Panthers won and they aren't real people and they aren't a real team. But we loved them and we cheered for them, and so we can share in their victory tonight. But we would love them and cheer for them if they'd lost because they went out and fought their hearts out and win or lose, they had nothing to be ashamed of, and that's the beauty of football and what we've seen tonight.
I'm starting this with 20 minutes left in the show and no idea if Dillon will win or lose. Of course I turned on the television tonight under the confident assumption they will win, because that's what underdogs are all about on television but just as there are no guarantees in life, it's entirely possible there are no guarantees on this show. Do they win because they deserve it? Do they win because this might have been the last episode of FNL ever? Do they lose because sometimes you can struggle and fight and be outmatched despite it all?
There's something noble about football. In a lot of ways, it's a sport of the biggest and strongest, but the passing game works and because it does, it's also a game of the smartest and fastest. It's a game of who can figure out how to win and work together to get it. The set of the uniforms - the way the shoulder pads force a bend in the spine, the way the helmet dangles from a player's fingers, it creates a symbolic image of humility in a setting that's otherwise rife with machismo and violence. It's a game of teamwork where everyone has a part to play and when they each play their small part to the best of their abilities, they create more than the sum of their parts; they create a team that is capable of things far greater than any group of individuals.
I have always loved and cheered for the underdog. It's probably why SGA grabbed me so hard - these are people no one wanted, a leader who outlasted her political usefulness, a pilot exiled for doing the right thing, a scientist who loves science more than humanity and is punished for it. Similarly, Dillon is filled with forgotten children. Matt Saracen, everyone's ultimate woobie, has no mother and his father is overseas, fighting for the freedom of other people's children. He needs to take care of his grandmother more than she can take care of him. And we've seen him find love and a mentor, and find the confidence in himself to truly lead a team and stand up for his father. We watched Matt Saracen grow up this season.
Smash Williams was the man on top, with the utmost confidence in himself and constantly frustrated by his own temper and his own small-town invisibility. And we've seen him realize that there are things bigger than himself. He doesn't have a free pass, as he found out with the whole steroid debacle. He found humility, he found teamwork, he found sacrifice. We've seen him confess his love and fear for Waverly and we've seen him throw his lot in with his team instead of looking for the bigger headline.
Tim Riggins is maybe the character whose journey has been the most subtle and most touching. Tim, more than anyone, is looking for a family. When I first started watching, my reaction was, "Why is he so emo?" But his mother is gone, his father is scum, and his brother loves him, but is hardly a parent and not much of a role model. It was heartbreaking to see his father give him hope and then to watch it slip away. But at the same time, I could watch those experiences write themselves in Tim's heart, and when the little TimRiggins! kid showed up, it's been gratifying and heartening to see Tim demonstrate that he knows what damages children and isn't willing to contribute to the pain of another kid. I've said before that Tim and Tyra are the characters I see as growing into Coach and Mrs. Coach. Matt and Julie will go their own way, Jason and Lila will find new places for themselves, but Tim and Tyra have been abandoned and forgotten, and they have been found again and loved by the Taylors and that will be with them always.
The one character who wasn't forgotten, who was revered, who was idolized, who was a star who was going to escape that town, Jason Street, lost it all in the first episode. We saw him become lost, and to find himself again, to redefine himself, to dig deeper into himself and find out who he really was, deeper than football, deeper than what Buddy Garrity and his parents told him he was.
More even than the football players, the other characters have been lost and forgotten. Lyla, like Jason, has had to remake herself and define herself outside her father's and the community's perceptions. She couldn't be a football player so she dated one. When we first knew her, her goal in life had been to follow Jason wherever he went and support him. Now she can't depend on anyone she thought she could. Not her father, not in the way she used to, not Jason who no longer fits into the life they had imagined together.
Tyra resents football for overshadowing everything else in the town; she has done whatever she thought it would take to get out, and now we're seeing that all she really wanted was for someone to say, "You can do it," and "I have faith in you." We watched her go from thinking that it would take a man to get her out of town to finding the reserves in herself to pull herself out by herself.
We watched Julie grow up, too, watched her realize that her insular nuclear family is a blessing, that she has been lucky and coddled her entire life. She's seen the unloved kids now, and she understands pride, and she understands that there is a big, scary world out there that she hasn't experienced. She has learned that she doesn't know everything and she is starting to learn grace and humility as well. If there's no more than 6 more episodes, she may be the one I'm most sorry to not see grow up more. I think her development started late and slowly and that she hasn't quite gotten where she's going yet. She's not the most interesting character to me, because she's far too much like me, but at the same time, that makes me think she has that much farther to go.
I don't know what to say about Landry, but it would be wrong to talk about FNL and not talk about Landry, so let's just say that Landry + 5 women in a car? A thing of beauty.
And now that I've seen the end...
Smash Williams has won my heart forever more and for whatever horrid storyline they might give him after this. In my first Army-Navy game, Corey Schemm, a senior in my company, dislocated his shoulder for the nth time. It was the injury that was already sending him restricted line instead of to the regular Fleet. It was his senior year and he wanted to beat Army. So they popped his shoulder back in and he went back onto the field and dove into the endzone in the snow and freezing rain. In short, Smash Williams completed the pass that Corey Schemm didn't, 9 years ago. Schemm caught the pass but didn't make the touchdown. I don't remember now what the actual call was, but seconds before it was made, the radio commentary announced that Navy had won the game. But we didn't. We lost to Army that day. But the Dillon Panthers won and they aren't real people and they aren't a real team. But we loved them and we cheered for them, and so we can share in their victory tonight. But we would love them and cheer for them if they'd lost because they went out and fought their hearts out and win or lose, they had nothing to be ashamed of, and that's the beauty of football and what we've seen tonight.