Instead it’s that they’re scared for her, and they’re scared for her because she’s a girl. It’s not that they don’t trust Julie-in fact, a lot of the episode indicates that they do. But it’s at the heart of Eric and Tami’s concern for Julie. What strikes me about the Julie/Matt storyline is how, in the end, it’s a story about power: The moment of change is introduced by Matt saying no, not Julie. And though “I Think We Should Have Sex” is literally a line that Julie says to Matt, it’s Julie’s relationship to her parents that is really the point of this story. Both episodes are centrally about the Taylors though “Black Eyes And Broken Hearts” is primarily about the racism storyline, Julie’s increasing rebellion against her parents plays a surprisingly large role-it’s the major subplot of an episode that is already full of stories. But sometimes, you need a bad guy on your side.Įvery review, I try to make a note in the strays about the Family Coach: This week, it would be redundant. And maybe the world is split up into good guys and bad guys, and only the bad guys say awful racist things. Because if the kids are terrified, and Coach Taylor is frustrated, Mac is exactly one thing they’re not- knowing. It’s here where Friday Night Lights offers a moment of pure transcendental hope in the universe-the quiet stand of Mac McGill, assistant coach, government employee, casual racist. But like as not, they would have sat there, terrified. If they’d boarded, I’d like to think the team would have stood up and prevented it. The boys have already been through one fight-they’re tired and freaked out. Tell me that’s not vigilante “justice.” For a moment in the lives of these Panthers, it looks like the world is going to fall right to pieces. But there’s always a good excuse.Īnd just when it seems like the Panthers have escaped the worst of it, police lights flash in the background.Tell me that’s not a witchhunt. Sure: The Cardinals were also pissed that the officials didn’t give them a chance to finish out the game. The further indignity-and this is really how the show plays it, as an increasing set of terrible injustices-that the Cardinals fans, pissed and drunk, would harass these teenagers as they left the field, with the collective rage of a lynching mob, is even more awful. And yet the reach of institutional racism is so far that it comes out on another team’s field.) The further idea that a brawl would break out, after Smash scores a touchdown, because the other team is that pissed off by his existence, is terrible. (It’s not even a Cardinals problem, or a football problem-it was explicitly an issue Smash had with his own assistant coach. The mere idea that Smash would be harassed on the field so openly without the officials calling it out-that offends the audience’s sense of justice. He’s talking the talk to Waverly, who he teasingly calls his “Angela Davis.” And even when Corinna orders him to return to the game, he’s pushing-he doesn’t give Mac the time of day, he’s a peaceful opponent on the field, and faces, for a hot second, the idea of being pulled into a holding cell. He’s bucking up his fellow strikers (by falling into a language pattern that he doesn’t use with the white players). From the very first scene of this episode, Smash is sweating, straining, trying to be more than he is. Last week I mentioned that Smash the boy had turned into Smash the man-and of course, that doesn’t come without its pressures. This rewatch has offered me more depth on this character, and though I am still frustrated with him from time to time, seeing him in this episode is heartbreaking. I spent a few of my reviews earlier in the year not being quite sure why the show focused on Smash, and I’m glad I did-if only because I can now see how wrong I was.
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