For those just tuning in, I watched the third season of Friday Night Lights when it aired on DirecTV last fall. All, that is, except for the season finale, which ran during a time when DirecTV decided it didn’t like me and broadcast only static for a week. (We’ve since made up.) And so I’ve been left in suspense in the meantime. Well, suspense of a sort: Season three’s penultimate episode was clearly the climax of the year’s various plots, leaving this one to handle epilogue duty. It also could easily have ended up wrapping up the series and not just the season. We now happily know that Friday Night Lights will return for two more 13-episode runs through the same sharing agreement between DirecTV and NBC that brought us this season. So, yay. That’s a good thing.
Watching the episode at hand, however, I kept thinking how I would have reacted to it if I didn’t know that, and I think a lot of it would have bothered me. I know it may be the last time we’ll be seeing some of these characters. But if it were the last time we saw all of them, I think I would have been left wanting a lot more. Fortunately, that’s not the case. In fact, the episode plays like a calculated gamble from show runner Jason Katims, who penned this episode, to set up the then-unsure next season. Rather than tying up the stories of our favorite Dillonites, it sends them heading off into the sunset on paths that jut off in unexpected directions at the last moment.
As the opening title informs us, the action is now five months after the Panther’s failed championship bid. (Nice touch, starting with a baseball game.) And as the montage informs us, life has gone on. Coach and Buddy have becoming golfing pals, Billy’s still getting married, and Julie/Matt, Landry/Tyra, and Tim/Lyla all remain happily coupled. A waffle breakfast brings us further up to speed: Matt’s going to the Art Institute Of Chicago, Lyla and Tim are going to San Antonio State, and Tyras’ still waiting to hear from UT. Much of the rest of the episode involves getting them where they’re going, even if it’s not where they think they’re going.
Same with Coach. Let’s deal with that first, since it has the most far-reaching implications for future seasons. Coach is out at Dillon thanks to a revenge scheme from monster dad Joe McCoy. (Didn’t anyone else find themselves stifling an “Oh shit” when the episode hit that shot of Coach walking up to the McCoy house.) And while it’s left undecided whether he’ll take the job at the rundown, reopened East Dillon High as the episode ends, I don’t think there’s much doubt about that. As a set-up for season four, it’s pretty brilliant, if a little too convenient. And I’m not sure that I believe someone at Coach’s professional level wouldn’t be snatched up by another powerhouse school rather than taking over at what amounts to a new school with no football program. But we’ve already learned that applying real-world logic to FNL doesn’t really get us anywhere, right? And who would want to deny the show its chance to have Coach lead a bunch of scrappy kids already counted out by the redistricting maneuvers up against his hated McCoy rival?
