Friday Night Lights: Is That A Cabo In Your Pants?

As there were no turkey emergencies this week, I sadly have no fun intro story to share with you. So I’ll just put up the link to the best Public Service Announcement ever. Thanks, Canada! See you in my nightmares!

Or, should I say, Friday Night Lights-mares?

No. No, I shouldn’t.Football, football, football. The Panthers are eating it at the end of the third quarter, 37-0. Slammin’ Sammy Mead puts it best: “You can call in the dogs, because this hunt is OVER!” I really want Slammin’ Sammy to narrate my life. I’d just be walking down the sidewalk, when a disembodied voice suddenly yells: “You can slap in those earbuds, because your iPod is ROCKIN’!” and I would, and he would be right, because what’s playing on there? JOURNEY.

Shelly (dammit, she’s STILL here?) is sitting with Tami in the stands, mocking and harping on her lack of a sex life with Coach these days. Tami just says she’s tired. Shelly, somehow thinking that she’s changing the subject for the better, points out Julie, who’s hanging out with Noah, the creepy/sexy-only-to-teenagers new teacher. (“And what’s up with his Saved by the Bell hair?” my friend says. “Who does he think he is, Zak Morris?”) Shelly really doesn’t understand when to shut her mouth, because she goes on and on about how wonderful Julie thinks he is. Tami firmly says that she doesn’t like it, glaring with that special Tami-brand crazy homicidal look in her eye.

“I will cut you.”

Anyway, Panthers lose. Though Smash doesn’t seem to care. He looks in the mirror in his locker and practically makes out with his own face. Smash is really ramping up the douchebaggery right now and it’s making me a little nauseous. He informs the team that he’s going on a recruitment trip this weekend to McNair State and it’s going to be like “Cabo in his pants.” That’s unfortunate. Cabo is a sandy place.

Matt and Horseface make out in his shitbox car. She tells him that her parents are gone and he’s welcome to stay the night, but he plays the Crazy Grandma card and says that he has to go home. Then he watches as her disembodied legs walk off into the night.

I’ll bet you anything Criss Angel has something to do with this.

Matt goes home, corners Carlotta as she’s cleaning the stove, and attempts to woo her with talk of spices. Yeah, that’ll win her over, Matt. Tell her more about nutmeg, or rosemary. Ooh, and majorum. Who doesn’t love a good majorum? He stammers that he thought they had taken things to the next level and had a connection, but she says that nothing happened and they’re not to talk about it anymore. Damn, Matt. Should have played the parsley card.

Smash is getting ready to leave for his trip, but he’ll have to get past Mama first. She informs him that she hates that school, but as long as he’s there he’s going to be representing his family, so don’t do anything stupid. Let’s start the stupid count now, shall we?

Tim corners Tami outside school and begs her to talk to Coach about getting him back on the team. She says she’ll do what she can. Tim thanks her, then heaves a tired sigh. Petsitting ferrets is hard work!

Tyra is sitting in class, about to take a pop quiz, when an administrator and a woman with a badge walk in and request to speak with her. It turns out that the rapist’s brother wants to meet with some of the victims in order to make amends on behalf of his family. Tyra is unsure, but the woman reassures her that it might help her get a sense of closure. What, even better than a lead pipe to the back of the head? Why didn’t you present this option before the guy became guppy food?

Tami and Glenn are laughing and chowing down on cheeseburgers in her office when he informs her that she has baby vomit all over her back. At the very moment he starts helping her clean it off, Coach of course walks in and proceeds to have a mini freak out. He asks why the door was closed, and then snarks that he can come back later. It’s very cute, and I would be laughing if not for the fact that this was already highlighted in the “previously” portion before the show, so this is going to be part of the plotline, which makes me nervous. I can handle the murder thing, I can handle underage liasons, I can even handle a Jason sabbatical (barely). But I can NOT handle a Tami-Coach breakup. My world would totally collapse.

Anyway, Coach asks to speak with Tami alone, and once Glenn leaves he suppresses the rage for a minute and instead tells her that he can’t just let Tim back on the team. He let him down, he let the whole team down, and he can’t just hop in and out like it’s a bus or a real estate class. Huh? Tami asks if he’s referring to her sister, and he does a very funny “well, yeah, I guess I am sort of making fun of her.” It’s adorable. She ignores this and says that she needs a night out. Coach gets all romantic and tries to woo her with talk of a fancy Italian restaurant, but she pushes him away, saying she smells like onions, and says she just wants to play bunco with some of the other teachers. Coach looks Irked, to say the least.

Smash is being led through a tour of the locker room at McNair State. He is well-received by the boys on the team, who have already heard about him, his giant ego having already spread throughout Texas and currently threatening to take over the capital. But one particularly thorny (and huge) kid will not stand for this, so he yells at Smash and stalks off. Smash brushes it off, but we all know this will come back to bite him in the ass later.

Tim is hanging out with his new loser roommate, feeding his ferrets, when OH GOD NO MY EYES!!

I’M BLIND

The Blob, who I’m fairly certain is wearing a penis necklace, makes Tim an alcohol-laden smoothie. He tells him that there’s a lot more to life than just football, and to prove this, he’s taking him hunting tomorrow. Perfect. What a wonderful opportunity for Tim to go all Dick Cheney on him.

Julie flags down Noah in the hallway to return his copy of The World According to Garp, and to loan him a CD. Tami has the good fortune to witness this little tryst, so after Julie leaves she pulls Noah into an empty classroom (without closing the door!!) to talk to him. And by ‘talk’ we all know she means ‘ream a new asshole’. She’s upset that he gave Julie that book, as it’s chock full of Adult Themes and Situations. The guy has balls, though. He counters that he’s an English teacher and he’s allowed to make recommendations to his students. Well, Tami has had enough of this bullshit. She says she finds him inappropriate. “I’m sorry you feel that way,” he smirks.”I find you condescending,” she shoots back. Ha. Nice, Tami. She says that she doesn’t want him having lunch with her daughter and touching her, and that if it continues she can have him fired, beaten up by Coach, and sent to prison. Oh man. I’d love to see Coach lay the smackdown on his candyass. Noah blows her off as if she’s nuts, then storms out, but not before a handful of students loitering around the door eavesdrop on everything that was just said.

In another empty classroom (are there any actual classes offered at this school?), Tyra is moaning to Landry about her strange predicament. She doesn’t want to go meet with the brother, so Landry offers to go in her place. Sweet. I’ve always wondered what Landry would look like in drag.

Julie sits down to lunch with – hey, it’s Ugly Lois! I’ve missed her. Julie, clearly uninformed about the gossip of the day, says she was supposed to meet up with Noah. Lois tells her what happened, that her yelled at him and practically called him a pedophile. Oh no. Commence Ãœber Freakout in 5, 4, 3, 2…

“HOW DARE YOU?!” Julie screams, tearfully barging into Tami’s office. She unleashes a barrage of yelling and crying – how could you call him a pedophile in front of the entire school (Telephone is a fun game, eh?), you don’t have the right to take away the only person who listens and understands me, you leave me no choice but to run away with him to Mexico, etc, etc. Tami attempts to get a word in edgewise, but it’s useless. There’s no stopping Hurricane Julie, who storms out and even tears something off the wall in anger, which I like to think was a flier for Pedophiles Anonymous. In all seriousness, though, I think the acting in this scene was superb. The extremely teenagery screaming and crying – it was very authentic. So, props to you, Miss Teegarden. Fancy a scone?

Tim and The Blob are sitting up in a tree. Blob is droning on about how important it is to kill your own food and how awesome this is. “You’re right, it doesn’t get any better than this,” Tim deadpans. Is he joking, is he serious? Who can tell? It’s Tim Riggins, the deadpanniest kid on the block. Either way, it’s pretty funny. “I just feel free,” he says, as Blob blows into a duck call and clacks some antlers together. He’s also drinking out of his binoculars. Good Lord. These two are a regular Larry and Balki.

I smell sitcom!

Smash arrives at what I first perceive to be a strip joint, but later figure out is just a really slutty nightclub. He gets his own reserved table, and suddenly becomes covered in half a dozen girls. Matt, meanwhile, is sitting at home, watching Carlotta do Grandma’s hair. So Smash calls him up, and has one of the random girls talk to him. She asks him if he’s as cute as Smash, and Matt immediately hangs up the phone to get back to his busy schedule of staring at Carlotta’s ass.

Landry goes to meet up with the rapist’s brother, who turns out to be the poor man’s Jeff Daniels. Landry is quite short with him, but the guy says he’s sorry and he’s just trying to understand what happened to his brother, since he wasn’t always like this. Landry informs him that he was an irredeemable, worthless piece of scum, but the guy says that he took care of him when he was a kid, when their mom left. Landry doesn’t want to hear it, both because it’s no excuse and because it’s humanizing the guy that he killed, but the guy just shrugs and says, “He was my brother, okay?” Landry looks Thoughtful, though he is perhaps wondering just where it is his eyebrows have run off to. Jeff Daniels, meanwhile, proceeds to squirt a bottle of ketchup into the air and catch it in his mouth.

“You can’t triple stamp a double stamp! Lloyd!”

Coach is crankifying all over the house as Tami gets ready for bunco night. He complains about babysitting and snarks about her wearing perfume, until finally she just says I love you and flies out of the house, leaving her poor befuddled husband to stew in his own irritability.

Tim and the Blob are discussing the finer qualities of the cinematic masterpiece Road House, when Blob pulls up next to a store and orders Tim to go buy some more beer and also some cold medicine. Oh I get it! They’re going to make some Flaming Moes! (Or Flaming Homers, for us purists.)

Matt corners Carlotta and whispers her name in a Spanish accent, which is both hilarious and also very sweet. He kisses her, she pushes him away, they kiss again, and then Horseface bangs on the door. Matt answers it, and it is decided that they will watch television while Carlotta mopes alone in the bedroom. So everyone’s happy, then.

Tami arrives home to an even crankier Coach, who informs her that Grace cried all night and projectile pooped across the room. Wow. Grace is becoming my new hero. All those great faces, AND the ability to projectile poop? I want five just like her. He asks how Tami’s night was, and she says it was really fun. Then, apparently unable to detect the scorn practically radiating out of Coach’s eyebrows, she goes on to say that Glenn won $100 and they went out for a beer. Uh oh. Bad move, Tami. Poop isn’t the only thing that can become a projectile.

Coach gets serious. He tells her that he doesn’t appreciate she and Glenn “yukking it up” all the time together like a couple of goofy teenagers. Tami makes a series of ridiculous faces (that must be where Grace gets it), and dismisses his accusations as adorable yet erroneous. But he’s not letting her off the hook this time. He says that Glenn is disrespectful and all of that silliness undermines their relationship. Tami thinks he’s overreacting, as do I. The Glenn thing is slightly inappropriate, but does that really count as infidelity? Anyway, Coach has got one more little gem in his arsenal. “You need to pay more attention to your family,” he says. I audibly gasp at this, because short of spontaneously combusting into a fireball of rage, I don’t know what Tami could possibly say to that. I love me some Coach, but he’s just dead wrong on that one. Her jaw dropping, she quietly spits “How dare you?” (another Taylor family favorite) and informs him that he can sleep on the couch tonight, so that she can get a lot of sleep in preparation for paying attention to her family tomorrow. Coach looks bewildered as she leaves. Haha. Only Coach could pick a fight, clearly thinking he’s in the right, and nevertheless end up on the couch.

Matt knocks on Carlotta’s door after Horseface Snugglefest 2007. She tells him to go to bed.

Smash has now wandered into a frat party, which features more debauchery and naked girls everywhere. He practically foams at the mouth. He sets his eyes on a particularly saucy strumpet, and two seconds later they’re tearing each other’s clothes off in the bedroom. Things get steamy until the giant Land Monster from the locker room starts banging down the door. Smash, unaware that he was banging his girlfriend, tears out of the room, down the hallway, and out the door in his boxers, with the big lug chasing him all the way. He finally jumps over a fence to safety, his McNair State fate neatly sealed.

“There’s a sale on mirrors!”

In the morning, Matt pulls up next to some random bridge, where Smash has been sitting, naked, for several hours. He gives him a shirt and laughingly asks how the visit was. Smash says he doesn’t want to talk about it. Matt puts on a very straight face and asks, in all seriousness, “Was it like Cabo in your pants?” Ha! Little Matty Saracen, driving it home for the line of the night! I chuckle heartily.

On the drive home, Smash recounts the whole prickly tale, saying that he never ran so hard in his entire life. Matt, apparently not having listened to anything Smash just said, decides that it’s a good idea to solicit relationship advice from him. He asks if there’s an easy way to break up with somebody. Smash’s gem of advice: tell her you want an open relationship, and things will just work themselves out. Hey Smash, didn’t Waverly say that exact same thing to you last season and it turned out that it’s exactly the opposite of what you wanted? Well, Waverly is nowhere to be found these days, so I guess it did work out. Smash is confusing.

Tami walks in on Shelly and Julie having a deep, cathartic talk, and looks, yet again, as if she’s been slapped in the face. That brings her total up to like 17 for this episode. Shelly later joins Tami in the kitchen. Julie leaves, thanking Shelly for the talk while completely ignoring Tami. Once they’re alone, Shelly says that Julie is very upset, but Tami says that she does not know the whole situation, that Julie is blowing things out of proportion, and that she doesn’t understand because she’s not a mother. Shelly flips out at this, then asks how Tami would have felt if her mom did that to her. “I probably would have been mortified,” she says sadly.

Clifford is judging you.

Landry is sulking alone in the cafeteria, with scripture passages from Lyla’s Christian Gang wafting over to his guilt-ridden ears. Lyla comes over and asks if he’s okay, then sits down. “Are you a good Christian or a bad Christian, Lyla Garrity?” he asks. I know I’ve said this before, but I still enjoy that everyone on this show calls each other by their full names, and so, in turn, we do too. Every time I say the name Tim without tacking on a Riggins at the end, I die a little inside. Anyway, Landry tells her that he has a secret that’s eating away at him, so Lyla says it’s always best to just tell the truth and have faith that everything will work out. So tell us, Lyla, where’d you stash Jason’s body? Mmm? MMM?

Matt tells Horseface that he wants an open relationship, and she unsurprisingly freaks out, shoves him, and runs away crying. Smash jumps out of the bushes and congratulates him on a job well done. Matt, didn’t you hate Smash along with the rest of us only a few days ago? Methinks the Saracen senility apple doesn’t fall too far from the insanity tree.

Tim (Riggins) starts snooping around the Blob’s backyard trailer, which contains a drug lab of some sort. I won’t pretend to know exactly what’s being made there (thanks, D.A.R.E.!), so let’s just call it a Nefarious Substance Factory. Blob finds him, and says that it’s a good thing he’s a cool dude, or he’d have to kill him. Ew, I can just smell the guy through my television. Someone open a window. Tim, having had just about enough of this harrowing look into his deadend future, flees. Let’s hope a shower shortly follows.

He soon shows up on the field during warm-ups, in uniform, and refuses to leave. Coach starts in on the yelling again, blaring at him to get off his field, and reminding him for the 153rd time that he let the entire team down. (By running off to Mexico – okay, fine. But doesn’t he get any brownie points for bringing Jason back alive and well? Has everyone forgotten about that?) Tim, realizing what he must do, starts apologizing individually to random members of the team. The redhead whom I had always called Corey is now given a much better nickname, Firecrotch, and Tim tells him he’s sorry for letting him down. He then addresses some random freshman, then Smash, then Saracen, then the entire team. Coach, still visibly cranky, relents and tells him to take a place on the field. Aw, the whole team’s back together. It’s a Dillon Christmas miracle!

Coach arrives home. Tami is there alone, explaining that Julie and Shelly took baby Grace to the mall to buy some new baby clothes. Up until now I have enjoyed the expression “baby Grace”. It’s very cute. But I feel like it’s starting to sound like she’s one of those missing children, or the first test tube baby, or that girl that fell down the well. Enough with the baby Grace. She’s not on a milk carton, dammit. Anyway, Tami tells him that she needs someone to yuk it up with for twenty minutes a day. Coach admits that it’s not about Glenn, that HE wants to be the one that she’s yukking it up with, and that he misses her. She misses him too. “I like you,” he adds. Aww. Thank GOD. Not that I doubted that they’d be okay, but I don’t like it when Mom and Dad fight.

And keep it that way! Don’t you ever scare me like that again, you two!

Matt informs Carlotta that he broke up with Horseface because he likes her instead, and he wants to spend every moment with her. He leaves it at that and heads into his bedroom. She follows a few minutes later, and the clothes come off. Is Matt still a virgin at this point? I doubt Julie gave it up while they were dating, and I don’t think Horseface got that far. So maybe this is it. And where’s Grandma during all of this? Probably crooning “I Left My Heart In San Francisco” to a ficus plant or something.

Landry, meanwhile, is deep in the throes of his Existential Crisis. Also, his shirt this time has a root system on it extending up to the neckline to create the effect of making his head look like a tree. Interesting. Eh, I’m sure there’s a photosynthesis diagram on the back. He walks into the police station, which is apparently located at the end of a long, dark, tunnel located deep within the bowels of outer space. He announces to the room full of officers that he killed Caldwell. The detectives collapse into a pile of laughter. And…scene!

Go towards the light, Landry.

So, there it is. Let’s see. I’m happy Tim Riggins is back on the team, though the whole visit from the Ghost of Trailer Park Future was, though funny at times, a little unsettling. I still don’t understand why he’s not at Jason’s house, but whatever. I’m a little surprised at how unnerved I became by the Taylor fight, but I’m not actually worried for them. I like to think that the writers understand that their delightful marriage is truly the glue that holds this show together. I’m so ready for the murder plotline to be over. Matt and Carlotta – meh. Smash has really reached the highest level of dickitude, even for him. I hope that gets cranked down a little. And loved the Noah plotline this week – I could watch Tami hand sniveling little shits their asses on a plate any day. Still missing Jason, but now also missing Buddy and Santiago! What sort of delightful buffoonery could possibly be unfolding within that house?? I must know.

What did you think? Will Coach dispose of Noah by:
a) shoving a veggie sandwich down his throat
b) beating him to death with a copy of A Prayer For Owen Meany
c) drenching him in a vat of boiling grease

Not gonna lie – praying for the grease.