FNL 1x22 State

[exsequar]

I am so glad there is a second season of this because otherwise I would be even more of a wreck than I am now.


God, during the game? I screamed myself HOARSE. And at the end? Wracking sobs. My god. MATT SARACEN. TIM RIGGINS. SMASH WILLIAMS. Good god, could they be any more incredible? I just. BOYS. YAY. PANTHERS ARE NUMBER ONE BWEE!!!

Tami's pregnant! Coach looks to be rethinking his decision! Matt's eyes are hollow and dead! Tim LOVES that little boy! Tyra and Lyla are on the road to some kind of understanding! Everyone is all OVER the place and words cannot express how excited I am for next season.

Question: are any of the characters we know seniors?

In conclusion: that is some DAMN FINE TELEVISION.

Comments

[trinity_clare]

I TOLD YOU. God, the song during the parade? PERFECT. Could this show get any more awesome?

Answer: the writers have no idea, even though with all the college talk pretty much everyone besides Matt, Julie, and Landry (so, Jason and Tim and Smash and Tyra and Lyla) should be seniors. But nobody's really going to leave.

[exsequar.livejournal.com]

Well that seems an awful gross breach of realism! o.O I wonder how they're going to pull THAT off. Do you think they didn't expect a second season, or something?

[trinity_clare]

bexone has a better breakdown of it, but what it boils down to is that even if Tyra and Smash are juniors, there's no way Tim and Jason are anything but seniors, and the same probably goes for Lyla. The problem with having a high school sports show like this is that the star athletes pretty much have to be seniors, so if the show was going for realism that way there would be massive cast turnover every year. Which would be a really awesome long-term experiment, but for right now I just want everybody to come back. I'm just hoping this doesn't turn out like Veronica Mars, with one perfectly executed season and then no idea where to go after that.

[bexone.livejournal.com]

I think at some point early in the season Smash was specified as a junior (wait -- the recruiter guy/insecurity/steroids story arc -- it's actually laid out that Smash has another year to prove himself); age-mentions throughout the season on Julie and her total lack of ever driving indicate she's probably a sophomore; Street was the senior-QB-leading-his-team-to-victory at the beginning of the pilot (by implication, so was Tim); Tami takes on Tyra as her "next project" and gets her thinking about college, which, unless she's looking at strictly community-college-and-transfer ideas, would suggest that Tyra's a junior (still time to do the application dance by fall of senior year) or younger. Possibly an overage sophomore? I have no idea about Lyla, Matt, or Landry. Um.

It's possible I just spent half an hour at work considering this.

[exsequar.livejournal.com]

*laughs* Thank you! I went through it all so fast, it's kinda a blur ^_^ All of your guesses sound spot on to me. It seems clear that Jason will stay on as a coach (how awesome is that??) but we can't lose Timmy Riggins! *bites nails*

[trinity_clare]

Maybe Tim will fail his senior year or something. *crosses fingers like a bad person*

[bexone.livejournal.com]

I can't spin Tim staying any other way. And they certainly set him up well enough for it -- but I don't remember if high school sports have eligibility rules the way colleges do. (Unless he sticks around in some kind of coaches'-assistant capacity? He and Street so totally need each other. Or Tim could be that guy whose high point in life was the football team, but oh my god, what a depressing storyline that would be.)

Matt, on the other hand, could arguably be a sophomore, even. I mean, he was QB3, so. (Also? What the hell ever happened to QB2? Do we even know who he was? Or was Street just so awesome that he was QB1 *and* 2 ALL BY HIMSELF? Inquiring minds want to know.) Junior seems more likely, though. Landry's in calculus, yes? Given that the edumacational standards given to us by the Gret Stet of Texas say that everybody has to be in Algebra 1 by eighth grade, he could totally be a junior who got bumped ahead in math at some point.

In conclusion? OH MY GOD I LOVE THIS SHOW SO MUCH.

[trinity_clare]

Wait. Matt was QB3? I missed that. Maybe the emergency backup was Smash, but he couldn't be QB long term? And I thought that Matt was established as a sophomore, but I don't remember where. I'm positive he is, though. And while I didn't get edumacated in the Gret Stet of Texas, I know people who took calculus as sophomores. Freakishly smart sophomores, but I think Landry counts. I'm assuming he's at least a year younger than Tyra, for their interaction to work out the way it has. As for Tim, I don't know if there's an official rule, but Coach Taylor is absolutely a "no pass, no play" guy. I don't know how that would translate to repeating a year of school. If he benched Tim, though, Tim would probably just drop out, so maybe letting him play is actually in his best interests.

[bexone.livejournal.com]

I swear it's a running thing, that 3, all through the season. I don't have my fnl eps on my ipod right now (and possibly not for a while OMG I HATE COMPUTERS WTF) or I'd say to hell with work and check, but yeah.

Re: Landry, I'm reading him from the perspective of someone who attended schools in a district that generally found money for some but not much in the way of accelerated programs (as in, I should have been bumped ahead but when you can fund the five kids who should be doing algebra a year early or an extra twenty-five who need remedial or something for the sports program, the smart kids will get screwed every time), so that's probably biasing me. And that was before the muppet in the white house claimed to be an "education president" and pushed the standards he imposed in Texas on every other state too, so. I'll shut up about No Teacher Left Unpunished No Child Left Untested Behind now. *does so*

I actually used to know about high school eligibility. Um. Long story. Anyway, I was thinking of how the NCAA does it -- where you have five calendar years to play four calendar seasons of whatever sport, so if you lose a season for injury or you transfer and sit out a year you can still play your four full seasons, but if at the end of your first four the problem is just that you haven't managed to get your diploma it doesn't matter, the funding's gone. I can't imagine that high school sports -- who really do have to be so much more careful about things like recruiting and academic eligibility and geographic eligibility -- wouldn't have some kind of rules around that sort of thing. Not to mention that the difference between 18 and 19 can really be the difference between boys and men for some guys, with all the safety concerns that come with that. Huh.

This is making me worried. Faith! I have faith! They will resolve these questions and it will be AWESOME! *hands of praise*

[trinity_clare]

To all of this I say: Bah, reality. Tim should coach Pee Wee football. THE END.

[bexone.livejournal.com]

TIM CAN BE BEAU'S PEEWEE COACH AND STREET'S ASSISTANT. And he's, like, grooming Beau for the day that he'll try out for Coach Street and Jason'll be, all, "you got it, kiddo, QB" and, like, he's on JV for a year because he has to be but then they bring him up to Varsity his sophomore year and he's awesome, he beats out two seniors for the 2 slot and then after that QB1 is his and this funny little smart kid leads the Panthers on to VICTORY omg and Street/Riggins RISES AGAIN.

[bubbles83.livejournal.com]

It was so perfect. I sobbed like a baby. And I watched it while I was at work. I'm just glad no one decided to come in. I don't think I could have explained it.

FNL might be the most perfect show I have ever watched.