Friday Night Lights - Season Two

Season two of Friday Night Lights was terrible. It was full of groan-y storylines which even the actors seemed to have a hard time being convinced by, and things too often wrapped up nicely by the end of the episode when actually they should have taken longer to resolve. An example scene:

PERSON 1: I am absolutely going to do this thing and no one can stop me!

PERSON 2: Nooooooo!

PERSON 3: You can’t do it! You might die! Are you even thinking of anyone but yourself?

PERSON 1: You have no idea what it’s like to be me!

PERSON 2 and 3: [wring their hands]

*3 minutes pass*

PERSON 1: Y’know, y’all were totally right. I’m not going to do that thing that moments ago I said I’d definitely be doing. All of my passion’s magically dissolved because there’s not enough time left in this episode to fully explore it. Let’s just hug and go home.

PERSON 1, 2 and 3: [hug and go home]

[Credits roll]

*Eyes roll*

Season two made me roll my eyes at even Tami Taylor and Tim Riggins, two characters I’ve developed full-blown crushes on, so that’s saying something. And now it’s tainted my enjoyment of season three. I’m noticing little problems and reacting as if they’re BIG DEALS, kinda like when Alan leaves his socks on the loungeroom floor and then later says something ridiculous, and if it’d just been the ridiculous thing, I’d have let it go, but because it was the socks AND the ridiculous thing, I think, “Wait - SERIOUSLY?!?!” and huff and puff inside my head about how much better the world would be if everyone did things my way. 

I <3 TAMI

So I’m up to the fifth or sixth episode of season three and already someone’s suddenly in a job I didn’t think she was qualified for, and people have played squash wearing black-soled shoes, and someone left a room without her handbag, and I basically sit here wondering how it’s sunk to these kinds of depths (black-soled shoes, people. ON A SQUASH COURT) after such a cracking first season, and daydreaming about going back in time, travelling to the US, and somehow winning a spot on the Friday Night Lights production team, just so I could correct all of these mistakes.

It may just be that I’ve watched too much TV since starting holidays last week. It may be that I’m irritable and exhausted and underwhelmed by everything, which is my typical let-this-year be-over-soon December mood. It may be that the show really is struggling to reach the glorious heights of season one. I’m not sure.