[DemonOfTheFall]

I have some grave concerns for the way this season is panning out. Here are some random thoughts that popped into my mind.


SPOILERS AHEAD - YOU HAVE BEEN FOREWARNED




• Disjointed – where is the tightness in the storytelling? Why do these two episodes seem like a montage of scenes rather than an intricately woven parable?


• Parody of greatness of last season. Tami/Julie behave and react in ways they never would have last season. Where were the clues in Tami’s personality that she’d the type of person to lose it in front of a stranger? I understand the writers want to emphasise she’s struggling without the Coach but having her and Julie act unrealistically to show it is lazy writing. Either find a way to work it organically into their characters or don’t show them breaking down at all. Julie breaking up with Saracen without much cause/explanation other than ‘feeling trapped’ is ridiculously lazy writing not worthy of Friday Night Lights.


• Primary focus taken away from more compelling, stable characters – Coach Taylor, Street, Saracen – What do the scenes with Coach Taylor and Antoine have to do with the thematic drive of FNL? Why bother showing those scenes if we’ll get no follow up/no history – nothing that reveals them as anything other than a waste of our viewing time.


• Absurd storylines eg. Tyra/ Landry. This is a ghastly plot direction. When a show’s main appeal is that it refuses to stage cheap plot gimmicks, doing something like this is the equivalent of giving a big finger up to all the people who praised this show last season. Thrusting two peripheral characters suddenly into the spotlight is so grossly misconceived I wonder if the writers from last season were replaced with monkeys who’d just wandered out of their first soap screenwriting class.


• Characters are plot vehicles rather than driving the plot. Once again, I have little to no reason to care about anything Tyra/Landry go through now because it’s all cheapened by the ‘incident’. Breaking up Matt/Julie just as another young female is introduced into Matt’s life is monumentally manipulative and poor writing. Another example: Last season, Street would never have even considered going to Mexico without us seeing an extended episode of deliberation with Herc and his family. This season, it’s just another line in an episode full of things happening to people we vaguely know.


• Camerawork is less intimate – The unconventional filming style, cameras shoved into people’s faces at extremely tough personal moments; it all contributed to a depth and empathy that is noticeably absent.


• Dialogue feels contrived - Everything feels like it’s written to advance a particular plot rather than be an understandable corollary of a character reacting to a situation or a person around them. It removes me from the scene and again it feels cheap and manipulative.


• Confusion about major themes? Too much exposition and mundane storytelling. I want to see dignity, courage and loss; I want to see internal conflict. I do not want to see teenage soapiness nor drunken belligerence. I certainly don’t want to see arrogance or conceit. It seems like the emphasis on what made the characters likeable is a bit skewed. Last season, every character was carefully and compassionately portrayed. Ever action, even those unseemly ones, felt like a real, justifiable reaction. This season it feels like the writers are arbiters of whimsy, stringing characters along in any attempt to drive the plot.


• Absence of ‘Explosions in the Sky’ and scenes of Texan sky– Seriously, the soft, strumming guitars and low shots showing the wide open sky contributed so much to making the show feel like a portrait of a real environment. What we see now is just another TV show, a nicely framed and well shot TV show, but just a TV show. It could be shot in any town and we wouldn’t know the difference.


All in all, most of these are whines and mostly exaggerations, but I’ve seen far too many shows ruined and I sense that this one is heading in that familiar direction.