Friday Night Lights – Episode 7 – “Homecoming”
If last week was all about the wrong, this week is all about the right.
Doing what is right for your team, for your friends, for your town and finally realizing that you can’t always do what is right, sometimes the wrong just keeps knocking on your door until you invite it inside, into you, whether through alcohol, needles or careless words, the wrong always manages to find a way back…
Billy and Tyra believe the right thing to do is to throw one heck of a party (as they call it, an anti-homecoming party). They have some great chemistry (although it seems more brother/sisterly than anything romantic) and some of the best scenes in the episode – From the strip-club scene, to the morning after the party.
I know many people on other sites have moaned that Tyra’s storyline seems to be too separate from the rest of the show, but I feel that is actually a great metaphor (or whatever figure of speech is correct to use here) for all the people in the town of Dillon that are not interested in Football. They are separate from everything else, they’re looking in on this whole Town, this obsession these people have, and they shake their heads in frustration at the stupidity of it all.
I feel quite a kinship with Tyra in this…
The party is a very big success, we get to see a drunk Billy and a smart Tyra as they count their loot, making a success of the thing they (or at least Tyra) hate the most – Football, and the homecoming that is linked to the sport - Again, this is totally my kind of girl… Even if you don’t like something, make sure you see the opportunities it leaves in your sight…
Matt and Julie – Aww… Not all that much of them in this episode, but what there was, was golden. Matt corners Julie at the homecoming dance (think it was there and not at the anti-homecoming party) and very stuttery and cutely asks her on a date. We are left without her answer – Now that is NOT right!
Tim believes the right thing to do is to stop drinking (after he’s called pathetic by an enraged Lyla) – He is right.
He cleans up his act, wins the game for the panthers, gives the ball to Jason (no that is NOT meant as some kind of freaky insinuation) and generally is a pretty decent guy throughout the episode (if you forget the whole sleeping with paralyzed best friends girlfriend part…) I really hope that he keeps up the “clean” act. He could actually go far if he is able to keep his act clean, may even get a scholarship and live out the dream they had planned out for Jason before the accident…
An old player, who was one of the key-members in winning the State Championship for Dillon in 2000 has returned to town for the Homecoming. He fibs and tells everybody that he has an insurance company in Dallas and that everything is going great in his life. However, it turns out he returned to Dillon in search of a job, apparently he busted his knee, dropped out of College, fathered a child he’s only seen once or never (Coach isn’t sure) and is basically struggling to survive.
He asks Coach Taylor for a job as a Coach, but unfortunately Coach can’t help him with this. This is right. As Tami says, the problem is the Town, the people in the Town that treats these boys as Idols, only for these “boys” to go out into the big wide world and realize that they are nothing out of Dillon. That is when their struggles begin, and they can’t seem to cope with the pressures of the real world.
Coach tells the man (who would so desperately like to still be a boy that is idolized by the town) that he can’t help him, and suggests he looks for help from elsewhere. Many people may think this harsh by Eric, but I strongly believe that was the right thing to do. This isn’t a boy anymore, this is a man that has made mistake after mistake, that believes he can still be given anything he wants on a platter, without working for it.
That is not the way the world works, Coach knows it, and is trying to instill this knowledge on him. Whether it worked is a whole other question…
The saddest story in this episode is that of Smash. Smash is a young boy that is trying desperately to be man. To be the one to provide for his family, but he is still (ultimately) only a boy, whose smooth talking is actually a cover-up for a lot of insecurities.
A college recruiter is in town, with his list of potential members for his college team. Smash says he has what it takes to be on this team – he does! But unfortunately, although he says it, inside he doesn’t believe it. Ultimately it is belief that counts and not words, ultimately his belief overrides his words, and he plays a terrible game.
The recruiter tells him he still has time, that he needs to bulk up, that he has the speed but not the size.
Unfortunately Smash doesn’t know the difference between bulking up in a safe, secure way, and bulking up in the wrong way. He knows the right, but he chooses the wrong. And in that final scene, we are pulled into a world that is unfortunately quite common in high-school and college sports (In the US, in SA, everywhere…) And so, we have to suffer with Smash as he plunges the needle filled with steroids into is arm, and shake our heads at this mistake that could cost him his future, all because of the careless words of somebody that may or may not have had this boy’s best interests at heart.
It’s a difficult world out there, and the right and wrongs are everywhere, in Dillon they don’t know when to choose what, here in South Africa, all of us, have the same problems… THAT is what makes this show great…