NJ.com Review of East of Dillon

A new season of “Friday Night Lights” has begun, and, like last year, I’m going to review each episode as it airs on DirecTV, then repost these reviews whenever NBC gets around to showing each episode. Spoilers for the season premiere coming up just as soon as I embark upon my hero’s journey…

“You think you’re gonna waltz back in here, and everything’s gonna be okay?” -Billy

I wrote in generalities about how much I like the new East/West Dillon set-up in today’s column, so once you’re done reading that (you do all read my columns, right?), I’ll get to some specifics on “East of Dillon.”

While characters like Eric, Tim and Landry are all struggling to walk into situations they think are familiar, but really aren’t, “East of Dillon” felt very familiar in a good way. The colors of the uniforms have changed, as have some of the faces, but this is still the show we know and love so well.

The gerrymandering subplot from last season’s “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall” (done back when Eric had no idea he wouldn’t be coaching the Panthers anymore) helped cover most of the potential plot holes. Buddy, Joe McCoy and company made sure that any kid with even a vague amount of football experience would be placed on the “west” side of town, which leaves Eric with nothing but scrubs like Landry or untrained athletes like Vince. And so the understandably desperate composition of the East Dillon Lions led to that stunning, typically “Friday Night Lights” spin-tingling, sequence in the locker room at halftime, with the Lions looking like they’d just stormed the beaches at Normandy, and Eric walking from casualty to casualty, trying to comfort each wounded, shell-shocked boy, and slowly recognizing that the only thing he could do for them was to spare them another 30 minutes of beating.

Read the rest Friday Night Lights, “East of Dillon”: Reviewing the season premiere | New Jersey Entertainment – TV & Film – - NJ.com.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 28th, 2009 at 11:59 pm and is filed under Season 4. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.