Friday Night Lights "Thanksgiving"

If Vegas allowed you to bet on what would happen in this season of Friday Night Lights "East Dillon beats the Panthers to knock them out of the playoffs" would have opened at 10:1. The challenge for Jason Katims et. al. Was to make that compelling and believable for the audience, while they sort of accomplished the latter they definitely accomplished the former. I literally stood up and fist pumped when Landry's FG went through, eventhough my brain knew it was going in. There has been a lot of misery and despair in East Dillon, but the writers are not sadists. Landry losing his girlfriend, best friend* and the big game in such a short span would be too cruel for the audience and the characters. So as soon as the score was 22-24 I knew Landry would be the hero, but I still cared about the characters and East Dillon so it didn't matter that I knew it was coming.

* Yes him and Saracen patched things up, but as lots of friends do I expect them to lose touch as life gets in the way.

As usual Coach and Mrs. Coach are the backbone of the show and while it wasn't necessarily the pragmatic thing to do it was nice to see Mrs. Coach go off book, because she knows she's right. Kyle Chandlers look of pride and worry at her press conference perfectly showed how I believe most of the audience reacted to her stand. I thought it was a little contrived for Tami to get the guidance counselor job at East Dillon so easily, but it will make next season less chaotic allowing them to fully develop all the arcs, so I don't mind it.

The finale also gave a happy and tragic ending to two of the shows staple characters Matt Saracen and Tim Riggins. Saracen finally gets the finale he deserved after seeing him sparingly since he left for Chicago. In possibly his last episode* Zach Gilford gives another wonderful performance; his banter with Julie really brings out the best in Aimee Teegarden, who has been hit or miss throughout the series. Little things like Saracen talking about Greektown or joking about Matt "deflowering" Julie created a bunch of little real moments that makes this show so good.

*He won't be a regular but it wouldn't surprise me if the last season ended in a big West Dillon vs. East Dillon game where everyone came back to watch the game.

Finally I would be remiss without touching on the tragedy of Tim Riggins, the season premiere seems so far away, but in season 4 Tim Riggins went from being a scholarship athlete to a felon. I knew they would be writing Riggins off the show as he is trying to pursue acting in films, but it still hurts to see him go. He has an incredible screen presence and charisma, in addition to being incredibly good looking. I started tearing up a bit when Tim saw Mindy and Billy playing with the baby and I knew he was going to fall on the sword. I started tearing up again as he walked into the police station alone, very few actors could elicit that emotional response from me from so little. I was expecting the Riggins brothers to turn on Mo, solving Vince and Riggins' problems, but like real life not everyone in Friday Night Lights gets a happy ending. I realize I have complimented almost everyone's acting in this blog post, but I need to mention Derek Phillips as Billy Riggins. He was always good as the goofball older brother of Tim, but he has showed off some good dramatic chops this season. His rambling apology to Tim and rambling toast at Thanksgiving dinner, were two great heartbreaking speeches that were compelling, but also difficult to watch because they were so sad.

Stray Thoughts

- Friday Night Lights does a really good job executing or putting a spin on typical sports movie cliches. The two best examples this week were Coach Taylors speech over a montage of practices at the beginning of the episode that literally gave me goosebumps and Coach Taylor''s Thanksgiving practice where the other coaches wanted to leave.

- Of course Buddy Garrity would deep fry a turkey.

- All of the new cast members have been very good this season and while the finale left a lot of open ends for Vince, Jess, Becky and Luke I expect them to all be addressed in the fifth and final season.

-I initially planned on writing this blog right after the episode, but felt so sad afterwards that I decided to do something else.