manifesto
The third season finale of Friday Night Lights aired on DirectTv last night, and I have not been able to bring myself to look for a download because I'm pretty sure that it will not get renewed next season and knowing that this episode is probably the last episode ever makes me so sad that I want to prolong it as long as I can stand. So that's the bad news. The good news is that YOU can start watching the third season when it airs from the beginning on NBC starting this Friday night at 9:00PM.
"Wait, throughadoor, I watched the first season, and I liked it, but I didn't watch the second season and/or I stopped watching the second season halfway through because it was so awful and I don't want to go back and finish the second season just so I can watch the third season?"
Here is a summary of everything that happened during the writer's strike shortened second season so you can jump directly to the start of the third season. The previouslys at the beginning of the first episode are also very thorough, but just in case.
COACH TAYLOR left his job at TMU after a couple episodes and came back to be the head coach at Dillon. The players were cagey about forgiving him, and were just finally starting to come around when the second season abruptly ended. TAMMY had the baby, struggled with having a baby + a career and mostly did not do much else that season, for a minute you thought she was going to have an affair with one of the other teachers but then it went nowhere thank god. Her sister stays with them for a while and they fight a lot.
MATT and JULIE broke up, and I shed a thousand tears because I am embarrassingly OTP about them. She kinda-sorta dated this older guy that for some reason was nicknamed "The Swede" but it ended up going nowhere. There's some weird thing with her English teacher that thankfully seems to go nowhere as well. He ended up hitting it with the home health nurse that moved in with them to take care of his grandmother. This was a total train wreck, not the least of which because after she took off to move back to the Latin American country where she's from (yeah, did I mention she's Latina and the show does not handle this particularly gracefully?) they don't get another home health nurse which is really fucking stupid.
JASON is emo, and briefly fucks off to Mexico to find an experimental cure for his paralysis. He comes back, moves in with Herc and starts selling cars for Buddy. At one point he has a one-night stand with a waitress and in the last episode of the abbreviated second season, he finds out that the waitress is pregnant and tries to convince her to keep the baby.
LYLA becomes a born-again Christian, and dates some guy she meets through church, and repeatedly rejects TIM. He fucked off to Mexico with Jason which gets him in a really inordinate amount of trouble with the football team that drags on forever and at one point for a reason I can't remember he has to stay with the Taylors and Eric thinks that he catches Tim making a move on Julie but it was a misunderstanding and it takes a stupidly long time to get resolved and then I think Tim stops having a storyline and just moons over Lyla.
SMASH gets lots of recruitment attention and has a really awkwardly portrayed relationship with a white girl. At one point, he's committed to a really big-name school, but then he gets into a fight with some white guys at a movie theater because they're harassing him for being there with his white girlfriend and the white guys press charges and it's terrible and he loses his scholarship. Eventually he gets an offer from a smaller school and things are mostly resolved. Waverly is never mentioned and it's really fucking irritating.
TYRA and LANDRY oh my god it's so stupid I'm saving it for last. In the season premiere, Landry accidentally kills the guy who tried to rape Tyra in season one. First they try to cover it up, but then the body gets found, then Landry tells his dad, then Landry and his dad try to cover it up, then Landry confesses, then no charges were pressed because it was ruled self-defense. Summarized like this, it doesn't seem so bad but it was the single most ridiculous story line on a show ever, I can't even tell you. While all this is happening, Tyra and Landry finally hook up, but then Tyra wants to keep it a secret and so they stop, and then Landry dates someone else and Tyra gets jealous, and then Landry choses Tyra over the other girl.
This may not be 100% accurate because I've mostly tried to repress the second season because it was, as aforementioned, awful. I think they were trying to go for a whole "nothing's the same! everything's in turmoil!" thing, which could have worked okay if (a) the season hadn't been trainwrecked by such awful plot lines as the dead guy and the poorly portrayed interracial relationships, (b) the show runners hadn't gone away from what made their show so great, which is structuring every episode around the weekly football game and (c) the season hadn't been cut short by the writer's strike, because it was just starting to recover when it abruptly ended.
"No, but, wait, throughadoor, I watched the second season, and it was terrible, and I do not believe you when you say that the third season is just as good if not better than the first season."
There are no spoilers for anything that DOES happen in the third season behind this cut tag, but here is a list of plot elements from the second season which I can promise you do not re-appear in the third season.
1. Coach Taylor's ennui about whether he made the right decision to return to high school coaching.
2. Tammy's sister.
3. Julie's teacher crush, and about 90% of Julie's constant fighting with Tammy.
4. Carlotta the home health nurse.
5. Lyla's born-again Christianity.
6. ANY MENTION WHATSOEVER OF THE DEAD GUY, THANK GOD. Yes, I realize that this is sort of glaring, but I don't care.
Lots and lots of other interesting and unexpected things happen, and the show does not forget its own canon and there are a couple AMAZING things that happen where something from the first season is revisited from a different perspective and it's awesome, but this stuff I couldn't stand from season two seriously does not come up at all. It's like the first time in the history of ever that show runners were like, "Wow, that was dumb, let's have a do-over," and it was good.
If there is anything else I can do (short of buying you a pony) to convince you to watch this show, please let me know in the comments. Seriously. I'm not kidding.
"Wait, throughadoor, I watched the first season, and I liked it, but I didn't watch the second season and/or I stopped watching the second season halfway through because it was so awful and I don't want to go back and finish the second season just so I can watch the third season?"
Here is a summary of everything that happened during the writer's strike shortened second season so you can jump directly to the start of the third season. The previouslys at the beginning of the first episode are also very thorough, but just in case.
COACH TAYLOR left his job at TMU after a couple episodes and came back to be the head coach at Dillon. The players were cagey about forgiving him, and were just finally starting to come around when the second season abruptly ended. TAMMY had the baby, struggled with having a baby + a career and mostly did not do much else that season, for a minute you thought she was going to have an affair with one of the other teachers but then it went nowhere thank god. Her sister stays with them for a while and they fight a lot.
MATT and JULIE broke up, and I shed a thousand tears because I am embarrassingly OTP about them. She kinda-sorta dated this older guy that for some reason was nicknamed "The Swede" but it ended up going nowhere. There's some weird thing with her English teacher that thankfully seems to go nowhere as well. He ended up hitting it with the home health nurse that moved in with them to take care of his grandmother. This was a total train wreck, not the least of which because after she took off to move back to the Latin American country where she's from (yeah, did I mention she's Latina and the show does not handle this particularly gracefully?) they don't get another home health nurse which is really fucking stupid.
JASON is emo, and briefly fucks off to Mexico to find an experimental cure for his paralysis. He comes back, moves in with Herc and starts selling cars for Buddy. At one point he has a one-night stand with a waitress and in the last episode of the abbreviated second season, he finds out that the waitress is pregnant and tries to convince her to keep the baby.
LYLA becomes a born-again Christian, and dates some guy she meets through church, and repeatedly rejects TIM. He fucked off to Mexico with Jason which gets him in a really inordinate amount of trouble with the football team that drags on forever and at one point for a reason I can't remember he has to stay with the Taylors and Eric thinks that he catches Tim making a move on Julie but it was a misunderstanding and it takes a stupidly long time to get resolved and then I think Tim stops having a storyline and just moons over Lyla.
SMASH gets lots of recruitment attention and has a really awkwardly portrayed relationship with a white girl. At one point, he's committed to a really big-name school, but then he gets into a fight with some white guys at a movie theater because they're harassing him for being there with his white girlfriend and the white guys press charges and it's terrible and he loses his scholarship. Eventually he gets an offer from a smaller school and things are mostly resolved. Waverly is never mentioned and it's really fucking irritating.
TYRA and LANDRY oh my god it's so stupid I'm saving it for last. In the season premiere, Landry accidentally kills the guy who tried to rape Tyra in season one. First they try to cover it up, but then the body gets found, then Landry tells his dad, then Landry and his dad try to cover it up, then Landry confesses, then no charges were pressed because it was ruled self-defense. Summarized like this, it doesn't seem so bad but it was the single most ridiculous story line on a show ever, I can't even tell you. While all this is happening, Tyra and Landry finally hook up, but then Tyra wants to keep it a secret and so they stop, and then Landry dates someone else and Tyra gets jealous, and then Landry choses Tyra over the other girl.
This may not be 100% accurate because I've mostly tried to repress the second season because it was, as aforementioned, awful. I think they were trying to go for a whole "nothing's the same! everything's in turmoil!" thing, which could have worked okay if (a) the season hadn't been trainwrecked by such awful plot lines as the dead guy and the poorly portrayed interracial relationships, (b) the show runners hadn't gone away from what made their show so great, which is structuring every episode around the weekly football game and (c) the season hadn't been cut short by the writer's strike, because it was just starting to recover when it abruptly ended.
"No, but, wait, throughadoor, I watched the second season, and it was terrible, and I do not believe you when you say that the third season is just as good if not better than the first season."
There are no spoilers for anything that DOES happen in the third season behind this cut tag, but here is a list of plot elements from the second season which I can promise you do not re-appear in the third season.
1. Coach Taylor's ennui about whether he made the right decision to return to high school coaching.
2. Tammy's sister.
3. Julie's teacher crush, and about 90% of Julie's constant fighting with Tammy.
4. Carlotta the home health nurse.
5. Lyla's born-again Christianity.
6. ANY MENTION WHATSOEVER OF THE DEAD GUY, THANK GOD. Yes, I realize that this is sort of glaring, but I don't care.
Lots and lots of other interesting and unexpected things happen, and the show does not forget its own canon and there are a couple AMAZING things that happen where something from the first season is revisited from a different perspective and it's awesome, but this stuff I couldn't stand from season two seriously does not come up at all. It's like the first time in the history of ever that show runners were like, "Wow, that was dumb, let's have a do-over," and it was good.
If there is anything else I can do (short of buying you a pony) to convince you to watch this show, please let me know in the comments. Seriously. I'm not kidding.