Friday Night Lights- Saracen Slams the Door

In what should have been a let down of an ep, due to the fact that it almost solely focused around the death of a character we hardly knew, it most certainly did not let me down. I don't think Friday Night Lights has bad eps. The way that the writing, direction and acting builds drama on FNL is ridiculously good. On 90210 they had the passing of a character that the audience (or some of the audience) has known for 20 years, in Jackie Taylor, and couldn't really get me to care less. In this week's Dillon saga, they got me to feel for everyone involved with the death of Matt Saracen's absentee father. We saw him what one, two episodes over the three and a half seasons? Why should I care? Because they made me care. Fantastic job.

Several other great moments...

After Vince and Luke decide to run the Wildcat and score a touchdown off of it.
Coach- "Who called the play?!?"
Vince- "I blacked out Coach."

When Coach brings up the passing of Matt's dad in the locker room after the game, he let's Landry say the prayer. Only he doesn't call him Landry, he brings it back to when he didn't know his actual name and calls him Lance.
--I completely disagree with Sepinwall's analysis of the sequence...

I'd like there to be more consistency with the Landry/Lance thing. Either Eric knows his real name by now, or he doesn't. In theory, they could turn the joke into something a bit deeper by having Eric call him Lance when he's annoyed with him in practice, or just in a light moment, and shift to Landry when things are more serious. But to call him Lance while asking him to say a prayer for his best friend's dead father was a distraction.

--You see he used Lance because it was a serious moment. As we know, FNL as with most shows, tends to skip by some moments. What we need to infer is that Coach figured out Landry's real name at some point. He calls him Lance in this moment, and I'm sure he'll do it again down the road, because it was heartfelt. It is something that had together and was something that really only the two of them in the locker room might have understood.

As Saracen's anger builds and builds at his father's wake, JD and Joe McCoy show up at his doorstep offering condolences and gifts. Saracen slams the door right in their faces. Gets no reaction from any of the guests. Awesome.

Unbelievable move to have Coach watching Smash Williams on tv. I thought he was just watching some random football game, but then the announcer starts talking about Smash. Sweet.

A Lyla Garrity sighting! Welcome back for seven seconds.