Post Idolness ensues. DVR only recorded Friday Night Lights, so I had to watch Jericho and Lost via other means, thank goodness for Verizon FiOS and TVTorrents.com
Lets review from best to worst:
Friday Night Lights – I Think We Should Have Sex
Great episode. The main plot point being QB Matt Saracen being seduced by Coach’s daughter Julie to have sex. Coach’s wife, Tami, sees Matt at the store buying condoms, and being the school counselor puts 1 and 1 together correctly and has a confrontation with straying daughter (who has been unduly influenced in past epis by the town sleaze with a heart of gold, Tyra, who’s status is not going to rise in the eyes of Ms. Taylor with Julie’s recent decision). Post talk, Julie confronts Matt and they decide to press on with the unmentionables, in spite of mother/daughter bonding moment, and set the date and location (Matt has a bachelor pad). Night of the tryst, Coach Taylor is looking for asprin in the bathroom, and runs across thong panties that Tyra induced Julie to buy, and asks his wife, wth? Wife says, ummm, yeah, we should probably talk about this. Coach goes ballistic, saying, “If he touches on hair on her head, she be in a nunnery…” and basically lays a big ol’ guilt trip on Tami that they should have had this conversation before their daughter goes missing. Later, the coaches make up by admitting that neither one of them went to parenting a teenage hormone bag school, so don’t know what the proper procedure is for hooking their offspring up with a chastity belt, but agree that dialog with said hormonal female is probably the best tack. Back at the secluded boudoir, Matt and Julie talk it out and decide leg wrestling is a lot more fun than the exchange of bodily fluids and fore go the sex thing, but in the post-wrestling rest period, they sleep through the alarm and get Julie back waaaaaay past curfew. Ma and Pa Coach are waiting, and Julie assures them that her virtual chastity is still intact, and mom and daughter hug, while coach sends his eye darts needling into the back of both of their heads. One has to wonder how long a grounding will be bestowed upon young Julie. Excellent jobs by all parties, the format of FNL is such that the candid expressions on the actors faces tell more story than pages of Shonda dialog could ever do, and Chandler and Britton play this format sooooooo good.
Other plotlines has Buddy Garrity doing a real good job of completely screwing up his life, his family life, his business and Tyra’s mother (both literally and figuratively). Tim Riggins realizes that his daddy isn’t gonna change, and slips back inside the bottle. Jason gets a taste of life outside of Austin, tries out for the national paralympics and gets a Sanscrit tattoo in his search for ‘peace’.
Jericho – The Day Before
Jericho comes roaring back and actually provides some back story, 36 action packed hours of back story on Jake and Hawkins. They do a good job of answering some questions, asking more, and basically confusing just about all of the audience that live in the real world on how both Hawkins and Jake get from either coast to the middle of the country in automobiles in roughly 8-12 hours. *waves hands* this is not the continuity you are looking for *waves hands*
At the end, we’re back where we started, out of town survivors including Emily’s estranged fiance arrive in downtown Jericho. Also with them is Hawking girlfriend (revealed in the backstory) that will now add another love triangle into the shaky relationships of Wisteria lane.
Backstory: Jake is an out of work pilot that did some contracting work for the government in Afghanistan and Iraq. He’s somewhat on the line between legit and outlaw, but has a good enough heart to want to stay on the legit side. He loses a friend to Ravenwood (the merc group that Jake has met up with since the bombs fell) and comes to Jericho to escape and get some money (the money thing fell through, but the value of a dollar at the moment is questionable)
Hawkins and his girlfriend were in on the plot to blow up the bombs in various cities. He gets his marching orders and the Ryder truck with a thermonuclear bomb in the back, and has orders to head to Columbus, Ohio. on his way out of D.C. he stops by the ex’s place to pick up the kids and their mother (kidnap?) and bring them safely out of D.C. His girlfriend gets kidnapped and used for leverage to ensure that Hawkins delivers his device to the appropriate target. It is unclear is Hawkins is working for CTU, or even if he knows who Jack Bauer is, but we do know that he’s buried his bomb in his basement, and that the terrorist group that planned the whole thing has Hawkins in their sights.
My hate-love-hate relationship with Jericho continues.
Lost – Stranger in a Strange Land
Not willing to recap, so go read Mac’s post (always more entertaining than mine). Some comments. This episode was less than “meh” for me. The backstory on Jack is tapped out, and I could care less about his tattoo, or his time in Phuket. The only good point I can say for the episode is that at least we are all off Alcatraz now, and Locke’s army won’t have to launch an amphibious assault on the south shore of Alcatraz. They can plan for a full on siege of Othersville that is somewhere on the main Island. Kate and Sawyer really don’t mix well. Sawyer continues to be a non-team player, and Kate resists being restrained by anyone, I dunno, maybe the bear cage monkey sex was unsatisfying to Kate. We have a new other to hate *yawn* the Sherrif Isabel. We get no contact with the main body of Losties, but thankfully that means no Nikki and Paulo either. Cindy and the kids from the tail are safe, wearing, figuratively, Izod red shirts. Though they show signs of being fully assimilated. Jack and Julie get closer bound in their alliance against Henry’s Rotu tribe.
A marking time episode with no real ‘reveals’, just more hints and nudges. Hopefully this is just a bump in the road after the last two really good episodes. Sadly, this one probably won’t do well in the ratings either, and with the last couple weeks of sagging, and now ABC’s totally looney marketing department that promised promises that the script just couldn’t pay. We may see more viewers banking towards the hard deck, and turning off the TV after the latest Idol contestant has a bad day.
