Alright I can’t blame anyone but myself for the lateness of this Friday Night Lights recap.  Here we are though.  I’m already starting on the next one.  So really sorry.  Also since the last one of these I’ve joined NBC-Universal’s Affiliate program, which means they give me some cash if I promote their products.  The reason I choose to promote their products though is some of it is really cool.  Like their FNL stuff which I’d kill for a lot of.  And they have Lions stuff coming soon.  So check it out and support us and Shop for Friday Night Lights merchandise at NBC Universal Store. Without any further delay here is Season 4 Episode 8: The Toilet Bowl.

Anyway this episode starts off with Tami and Julie heading off to a college interview in Boston with Coach all stressed.  He’s all like “Gracie has no pants”. but no one cares.  Buddy Garrity is driving through town while listening to the radio.  This is used to give us the exposition that the Lions will be playing the other last place team this week and they’ve dubbed it the titular “Toilet Bowl”.

See there's even a trophy.

We also find that Luke is apparently taking pain pills.  He’s playing and hiding his injury.  And is all out of pills.  Apparently the accident on the farm wasn’t that bad.  Also Jess, Juvie, and Landry are getting all involved in a love triangle.  Landry asks her out for Wednesday and she says ok.  But let’s get back to Julie.  Now auditing a class in Boston, with her mother.  Because that’s what normal people do.

The teacher asks a question and Tami winds up answering it.  Julie gets all like this:

Julie spends most of this episode being like that.  If “like that” means whiney and annoying.  I usually love Julie, but she’s so bratty in this episode I kinda wanted Tami to smack her.  To sum up the entire storyline here, basically she’s still lost without Matt and she’s not too happy at Boston College, because she only applied there because it was her mom’s dream school.  So the entire time in Boston she’s all grumpy.  Finally she goes on her interview and realizes (or at least for the first time voices the realization) that she’s always been fighting to leave Dillon, but now she’ll miss it.  That’s basically it.

Moving on Jess is at the store and encounters Juvie and Juvie’s now clean mom.  Juvie’s mom insists she comes over for dinner.  We still don’t know what the hell happened between these two and they are really milking it.  Or I’m retarded and am missing something.

On the Lions front Garrity wants to “be something” to the Lions like he was to the Panthers.  So he goes and gets the spanish radio station to sell him time for games.

OK skipping around, remember how Riggins fell in love with that bit of property?  He goes and finds out it’s 85k.  Clearly Riggins does not have this much, or really any money.  He’s called by Mindy (his sister in law) who tells him she thinks his brother is cheating on her because he’s at the garage late all the time and acting suspicious.  So Tim goes down and confronts him about it.

His brother admits that he’s running a chop shop.  Tim is pretty disgusted by this.  There’s some pretty excellent acting in this scene, and actually Taylor Kitsch in general brings it hardcore this episode.  I’ve said it before but this show deserves all the Emmys.  And I really mean it.  The acting is so superb.

It’s now Wednesday apparently and we get a Crucifictorious scene! Crucifictorious scenes make me so happy.  Actually any scene with Devin makes me deliriously happy.  Stephanie Hunt is awesome and I love her.  According to IMDb this is the last episode this season she’s in, but I hope it’s just not updated.

Back to the scene at hand.  Landry is sucking because Jess rescheduled their date on him.  This is because:

She’s enjoying a lovely dinner at Juvie’s house.  Apparently his mom knows her very well and they’ve known each other since they were kids.  Juvie also dresses up for her and everything.  Still no explanation of what happened.

Riggins tries applying for a job at Sears.  Which he does not get ultimately.  He then takes Becky to his special place.

Where he tells her all about his plans for the land and this happens:

Yeah again.  But this time he doesn’t really push her away so much.  Uh oh.  There might be some complications coming.

Alright so Landry goes on his date with Jess and one of the kids Jess is constantly with says something about Juvie and so Landry is now all worried that something might be going on there.  Smart boy.

But now it’s time for the toilet bowl.

Buddy is now one of the radio announcers for the first ever radio broadcasted Lions game (also the only English program on that particular station).  I gotta say another very well done game sequence.  There’s a ton of suspense and drama in what is a very short piece of the episode.  Also it’s mostly set to music in another one of FNL’s brilliant musical pieces (also really the music supervisor who’s name I couldn’t find deserves an Emmy as well for finding the perfect gems of music to go with this perfect gem of a show).  This time it’s set to A. A. Bondy’s Killed Myself When I Was Young:

It’s beautiful and also available of course on .

The Lions do alright, I forgot to mention earlier that Riggins told Luke how to get pain pills from a particular Dr. Feelgood so he’s drugged up but obviously still in pain.  Landry makes a super field goal and finally with time running out:

Luke makes the final touchdown, just barely and wins it.  The Lions first win!  So I guess this means they’re only next to last and not last anymore.  There is much celebrating and Jess shrugs off Juvie’s glances and walks off with Landry (aww).

In the meantime Riggins goes back to his brother’s shop where of course his brother is busy chopping up a car.  He’s hit rock bottom.  He just wants that land so bad.

He’s so destroyed and broken down by the whole world.  I mean he can’t even get a job at Sears.  His brother tells him that he doesn’t want him getting involved, but he can’t stop Tim.  Tim asks how much he’d be able to make and his bro tells him in 2 months he could make more than in 2 years.  And so we end the episode with a broken Riggins committing a felony:

That’s all for episode 8.  I promise episode 9 is coming real soon.