Friday Night Lights: "East Of Dillon"

Greetings Friday Night Lights fans. A few words of explanation: Because of NBC's production arrangement with DirecTV, I wrote about this (pretty great) season of Friday Night Lights back in the fall. I'm now reposting last fall's pieces each week as it airs on NBC. So now you know. No spoilers, please, if you've already seen the season. Enjoy.)
Hello and welcome back to Dillon, TX. If you’re reading this, you’re probably as grateful for a chance to return as I am. For three seasons, being a Friday Night Lights fan meant watching the show in a state of anxiety over whether each season would be its last, whether the plots it put into play would reach dead ends, and if network “suggestions” would spoil what made the show work. Now we’re looking at two more seasons—though probably only two more seasons—thanks to the renewal of a DirecTV/NBC power-sharing agreement that apparently lets the show squeak into profitability without changing its DNA. Everybody wins. (Well, not everyone onscreen, but we’ll get to that.)
A few more words before we get to the fourth season premiere: As we did last year, we’ll be double-posting our TV Club coverage of FNL, once when an episode airs in the fall and again when it airs next summer (!) on NBC. Also, looking back over last year’s posts, I realize I underrated the show. Maybe it was my own anxiety creeping into the writing or something. Maybe it was the weird rhythm of the season, which had to squeeze in back-to-back going away arcs while also following the football season. But, on reflection, I feel like I was a bit too hard on a season that started well, got even better, and ended on a note that felt a little curious at the time but now seems like a canny way to open up the show to new possibilities.
And so, season four: “This town has been divided,” says Dillon’s ubiquitous sports radio voice over the image of Coach Taylor putting on an East Dillon cap as we ease into a graceful montage catching up with everyone as summer edges into fall. There aren’t any real surprises here. Coach faces an uphill battle at his new East Dillon home—including a raccoon. Buddy continues to be “helpful” to a Panthers team now ruled by the golf cart-riding Coach Aikman and Joe McCoy. Saracen has stuck around, and now delivers pizzas—Panther Pizza, specifically—while, we’ll learn later, taking art classes at Dillon Tech on the side. Landry’s on his way to East Dillon. And, though he’s not in the montage, Riggins has taken to academic life about as well as might be expected.
Onto the new. The fourth season premiere lays out several threads, most of them connected in one way or another to Coach Taylor’s new job at East Dillon. And what a job. Coach has been given a team where Landry shines as a beacon of competence. Of course there’s more going on here: A divided town rarely gets divided evenly. The privileged have stayed on the west side and the money and resources have remained with them. That means Coach has to lure an assistant coach away from his secure job and pick up Stan (played by an actor whose name I don’t yet know), a Sears employee with a Pop Warner background who worships Coach Taylor and can’t shut up about it. And because we already know the redistricting was done in such a way to keep the football talent on the west side, Coach is left with a bunch of guys whose desire to play football outstrips their skills, when it’s clear that they’re there out of desire at all.
Then there’s this: The gerrymandering hasn’t taken place cleanly along racial lines, but East Dillon has a lot more African-American students than its sister school. Race played a major role in the Buzz Bissinger book and it’s a subject the show has dealt with well in the past. Now it’s front and center, even if it’s not addressed directly. Coach Taylor treats this team as he would treat any time, but I wonder if it’s perceived that way by his new players. When he (rightly, if too forcefully) throws out a player for antagonizing Landry and refusing to apologize it makes sense that a lot of the black players would leave. The Coach Taylor mystique hasn’t carried over across town and who wants to stick around and be yelled at by a mean, know-it-all white guy?