Friday Night Lights: "Laboring" Recap

SPOILER ALERT for Friday Night Lights: Episode “Laboring”

Instead of just unfurling the myriad of plot-lines in a simple recap, I’d rather grade the plotlines.  Let’s start with some bad ones:

The total lack of football: D

Even in Texas-crazed football towns, the high school kids play only 10 games a year.  A full TV season contains about 22 episodes.  There will be many episodes without games; so I’m willing to forgive the occasional tension building episode... but this episode really poured the lack of football on thick.  The only football we got to see was Luke being told he cannot play football.  Does that mean we can’t watch football either?  In the past, the show has dealt with these build-up episodes very well.  Unfortunately, this time that tension was relieved by silly pranks. 

High-School pranks: C-

I was actually impressed with Landry’s toothpick idea until I found out it took the Panthers only two hours to de-toothpick the field.  It must have taken Landry’s Lions six hours to put those toothpicks on the field.  Mission accomplished? 

The subsequent destruction of the Lions field lacked imagination, but it got the job done.  As a result, the Lions lost home field advantage in the upcoming rivalry game and that almost made me care about the gamesmanship between the rival coaches. 

Is it me or is the Panthers coach is a little too sinister; he’s the modern age’s bad guy archetype.  It feels like he’s trying to rebuild Cobra Kai.  Next week, he’s not going to take any chances with Vince, so he’ll have one of McCoy’s goons sweep the leg.

Riggins and the little girl: C-

I haven’t liked this plotline all season, so why start now?  The saving grace here is that after the girl said she loved him, Riggins agreed that this was a stupid plotline.

Riggins gets happy: C

With Tim’s new relative and with him on the verge of fulfilling his new-found land-ownership dream, he felt genuinely happy.  He’s gotten better as an actor over the years, but not enough that I care about him becoming an uncle or a land owner.  It was nice that a character on this drama was openly happy for a moment, but it was too obvious that the writers would tear that happiness away after the next commercial.  Actually, I’m a little surprised the police didn’t randomly find him on the tract of land to arrest him while he was telling the little girl he was happy.

Riggins goes to jail: C+

He chopped cars to help his brother out, but why did he steal his paralyzed best friend’s girl?  Same reason? 

“There’s law and then there’s life,” (the lawyer explained to Tami about the pragmatism of reading an apology statement.)  I just can’t imagine the next two seasons of Riggins plotlines having to do with him trying desperately not to drop the soap.

Vince’s vengeance: C

I didn’t want Vince to murder anyone in fear of repeating the Landry killing of Season 2, which was the worst story in this show’s history.  On the other hand, after all that hype about Vince getting revenge for the murder of his friend, Vince could have at least tooth-picked the killer’s house or something.  This plotline was saved because of how it played on the love triangle.

Vince-Jess-Landry: A-

I’m overrating this story on purpose because I have to find positives in the episode.  My favorite part about this love triangle is… unlike the Riggins-Lyla-Street love triangle a few years ago, Jess is not sitting around brooding about her terrible Sophie’s choice.  She’s actually enjoying Landry’s company; then she goes and pines after Vince.  Jess realizes that she’s got a good thing going either way.  Landry is a good guy, (thanks Vince for pointing that out,) so I hope the show doesn’t make him do something mean to prove he’s complex when Jess inevitably chooses Vince.

Tami’s abortion scandal: B

The highlights of this story were Julie actually being nice for once (sure she was bribed to be nice, but it’s still something,) and the moment at the end of the episode when Coach and Tami just sat on the couch together staring into oblivion.  Their look clearly reflected, “we’re screwed.”  They are both on the verge of being fired and at that singular moment, the two of them felt resigned to their respective fates.

As for the telephone harassment, I would probably deflect the vitriol, “what are you wearing?” or at least, “Baby killer?  Oh no, sorry, I think you have the wrong number.”

Maybe the difference between Texas and where I’m from (New York) is the use of sarcasm to deflect serious situations… or maybe the show doesn’t have the sarcasm gene.   

Connie Britton had an interesting acting moment with her reaction to pro-life protestors at West Dillon.  She actually seemed more annoyed the protestors were in her way as she was driving than the fact that they were protesting her actions.  I think I liked that because I’m always really annoyed when someone slows me down while I’m driving.  It’s a very practical and pragmatic frustration.

The episode “Laboring:” B-

Admittedly, I was buzzed when I watched the episode, (and as I write this recap,) but I found this episode to be mostly filler.  The real negative is that by writing this recap, I’m realizing how few of these storylines I care about.  However, I still care about the characters… so I got that going for me, which is nice.  As I watched the episode, I thought it should have been called “Retribution,” but in retrospect, “Laboring” does seem rather appropriate.  What did you think?