There Ain't Going to Be a Jumbotron

"This year is going to be different."

It was almost surprising how efficient the season premiere of Friday Night Lights was providing all the exposition for its third season.

While the Taylor family still bickers with the same rhythms and realism as ever, a lot has changed. Smash injured his knee and lost his scholarship (which I can't recall happening at the end of last season so I assume happened in the interim), Riggins is the new tailback, leaving the team struggling. A new quarterback has come to Dillon to shake things up and maybe take Matt's QB1 position. Coach Taylor's job is seemingly in danger after not taking the team far enough last season.Tami is now principal of Dillon. Lyla has given up on Jesus and rebounded with Riggins, and lastly, Tyra and Landry are just friends again. Unfortunately Street and his pregant waitress are nowhere to be seen, but in contrast to that, it at least seems we are forever rid of the Latino stereotypes of Carlotta and Santiago as well as that damn Jesus freak Logan Huntzberger. And, oh yeah, the show is about football again.

And now that we're all caught up, I can say that this was quite a welcome return. I personally never had a horrible problem with Season 2, although watching this episode and thinking back, I really feel like the show has found itself again. I'm no sports fan, and so the very idea of the show focusing more on football doesn't exactly excite me, but that hardly matters. What really works about this show is that by focusing on football and the team, it's able to capture the smaller moments in the characters lives around it, instead of becoming a show about grand moments and inanane melodrama as it did last season.

This might sound like some attempt to be overly profound, but by actually being about football, the show actually gets to be about so much more that feels real. In a way, Tami's current conflict with the school budget seems to be a commentary on season 2 as she is concerned with everything else but football at Dillon, including the students, the teachers, the textbooks, and meanwhile while she struggles with the budget, the coaches have new computersand working AC. It's especially telling when Buddy starts telling Tami "Clear Eyes, Full Hearts..." and Tami saying "Let's not go there." It's as if the writers are saying that as great as football is, there are other things that matter.

And what really matters about the show is the people and their lives. Really, this show is about the Taylors and how they inspire and support everyone around them. While the vice principal tells Tyra that there is no way she is getting out, and will be lucky to get into a tech college, Tami lets her know that she can do anything she wants as long as she works hard enough. And in the best scene of the episode, which got me pumped the way the best moments in the run of the series have, Coach Taylor plays a game of raquetball with Brian "Smash" Williams, and tells him that he will play football again and make it onto a college team, and he won't give up on him until it happens because he needs something good to happen. The scene is especially powerful because not only does Coach tell him, but he shows him that he can be fast again as we watch him move around that raquetball court and implicitly understand that while he's a half second slower now, Smash will play again.