It's Different For Girls

Mark here...Laurel and I are watching the next episode of Friday Night Lights.  This one is called, "It's Different For Girls".  I've made us some sausages with sauteed peppers and onions and a potato salad (keeping with the Texas football theme).  Laurel made us some cocktails (called "the Derby") to go along with.

The episode title is fitting for what happens. Lyla is facing the fallout from her affair with Tim Riggins. Sure, Tim got his car bashed in last episode but Lyla bears the brunt of things.  She's marked a la "Scarlet Letter" as a school slut and another girl even creates a website dedicated to calling her out as a whore.  I mean who but a teenager has that much time on their hands?  Lyla really gets beat up on this episode, but it gives us a chance to see a deeper side of her personality.  It also shows us a softer side of her father, Bud Garrity, which is nice. We saw a bit of his sensitive side last episode, but it's nice to see the writers following through with it.  Lyla's two men also show a bit of sympathy...Jason is tortured and a bit of a jerk, but definitely shows a bit of heart towards her.  Tim shows he may have stronger feelings for her (called out by Tyra).

The second plotline is Matt Saracen trying to work out dating Julie, Coach Taylor's son.  It plays out a bit comically as Coach tries to impede things wherever he can.  Tami Taylor is awesome once again in calling out Coach's ideas "worst idea ever" and such.  Tami's not thrilled about her daughter dating either but clearly knows to stay out of it as much as she can, to avoid fanning the flames.  The coach however can't resist attempts to break them up, unsuccessfully.

We also see a bit more of Smash as he tries to date the Reverend's daughter.  She has been away in Africa supposedly.  We later gets hints that that may not have been the case.  She also clues in that Smash didn't use his money from church for SAT classes.  Also, Smash's steroid use is catching up with him, in the form of nose bleeds...

Hi Laurel here...this is such a good episode!  This is one of those where the amazing writing on this show really comes into play.  All of there characters are so complete...we see the good side of all the "villains" and some of the flaws int he saintly characters.  Until now there has been no reason at all to like Buddy Garrity.  The father of the girl who starts the website comes to the dealership to apologize to Buddy and let him know about what's on the internet.  Buddy really takes it to heart..it really effects him and he is so supportive of Lyla after.  Who knew?  Buddy actually is a good guy, it's just that his methods are usually all wrong.  We see a new side of Lyla too.  She seems like kind of a bitchy priss with a silver spoon in her mouth, but with the fallout from the cheating thing we see her really taking her medicine, and do so with grace.

On the flip side we see more of the chinks in Coach Taylor's armor.  Since he's such a good Coach we ususally see him making the right choices all the time (the Voodoo incident being an exception), but in this episode we see him succumb to his emotions and do all of the wrong things.  All of his silly dad attempts to squelch Matt and Julie just backfire and bring them closer together.  He sends Matt home for the weekend with a bunch of game tapes to study so that Julie and him wont have time to hang out, but Julie ends up spending even more time with Matt because she decides to help him study the tapes.  In your face Coach!

It's also interesting to see Smash take a real interest in a girl that's not just about putting another notch in his bedpost.

I can't wait for the next episode!  I really want to see if his girl is in fact laying about going to Africa, and if so what did she REALLY go away for?