'Friday Night Lights' is a slow-developing play
THE MONITOR
THIS IS how new characters make their way onto "Friday Night Lights": They creep. The producers and writers of this finely whittled show know this: There are few truly grand entrances in life. And so when a fresh face needs introduction, it's in neatly doled-out dabs -- seen from a distance, barely sniffable at first. After a little while, when that person becomes central to a plot line, it's with a heavy inevitability. They've been there all the while, it seems, waiting for a change in tide.
In last week's third-season premiere, you first glimpse Joe McCoy (D.W. Moffett) in the empty bleachers, talking with Dillon Panthers booster Buddy Garrity (Brad Leland) while getting the once-over from Coach Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler). No one crosses his arms quite like Coach Taylor: right palm tucked into left pit, left arm on top of right, hand wrapped around the right bicep. They never intertwine. From the outside, it appears hard and impenetrable. But try it: It's like hugging yourself.
Coach Taylor's body never betrays him. His quiet certainty is the center of "Friday Night Lights," the perennially underwatched show about football and its fallout in the small town of Dillon, Texas. Easily among the most nuanced, felt and emotionally incisive shows on television, it still felt distant on NBC, an apparition that was more talked about than seen. Now on DirecTV (9 p.m. Wednesday), it will likely feel even more so. (NBC will air this season beginning in February.)
How much longer can material this strong vaporize into ether? Though the first two episodes of this season are slightly denser than those that preceded it -- space has always been one of this show's great virtues -- the basics remain, slightly tweaked. Coach Taylor's wife, Tami (Connie Britton), has progressed from guidance counselor to principal, setting up a host of future conflicts. The ever-drunk layabout Tim Riggins (Taylor Kitsch) has become a team leader, after the graduation of Brian "Smash" Williams (Gaius Charles), who is still hovering around Dillon, having lost his college scholarship after an injury. Tim has also finally worn down Lyla Garrity (Minka Kelly), the churchgoing good girl who was formerly his best friend's girlfriend, and made her something like his own. School flirt Tyra (Adrianne Palicki) has ended her relationship with the warm brainiac Landry (Jesse Plemons), though they spend more time together than ever before.
