Friday Night Lights: A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall

Posted by: Sarah Miller  •  March 30, 2009 @ 1:30am

Filed under: Recaps & Reviews

This Week a storm is rolling through Dillon. Tyra has to plan Mindy's bridal shower, Tim tries to help Lyla through her family drama and J.D. finally pushes back against Mr. McCoy and it blows up in his face.

Tyra is helping Mindy and Billy register for their wedding, but she's not having a great time because she can't stop thinking about her SATs. Then Mindy asks Tyra to change up her plans for the bridal shower. She wants Tyra to throw her a bridal tea party, Queen Elizabeth style. Now Tyra is really not having a great time.

At the grocery store, Landry runs into Tyra in the produce section where she is buying thousands of cucumbers to make sandwiches and cucumber water for the bridal shower from hell. Landry is in a good mood because the pub manager from last week asked Crucifictorious to come back and play another show. He offers to help Tyra with the shower prep, because his mom's got a great scone recipe.

While they are making cucumber sandwiches, they have some major flirting time. Nothing says romance like cucumber sandwiches. Tyra shows Landry her SAT scores, and she went up by about 100 points, which is great. Unfortunately she needed to go up by about 200 to make up for her terrible freshman and sophomore years. But Landry is still excited for her anyway, and he tells her he is proud of how hard she has been working and that she's not just coasting by on her good looks.

Landry and Tyra put together a beautiful tea party outside on the deck, but then the thunderclouds roll in and it starts raining. They take the tea party inside and rescue it as best they can, and in the end Mindy is totally happy. After the shower, Tyra and her mom are cleaning up and Tyra starts to cry. She doesn't understand why she doesn't want the same things that her mom and sister do and why it's not enough for her to just find a man and get married. Tyra's mom sits her down and tells her that she surprises her every day and she is sure that Tyra will get everything she is dreaming of. Her mom tells her that she needs to keep reaching and keep going and one of these days she will surprise herself. Ok, I totally cried at that speech. If you didn't your heart is probably made of stone.

Madison and J.D. are still going out, much to the chagrin of Mr. McCoy. She shows up at practice to flirt with QB1 during the water break and even Coach and Wade Aikmen are a little concerned. He is about to lead the team into the state championships, after all. Unfortunately Wade Aikmen takes his concern one step too far and gives Mr. McCoy a call, telling him that J.D. has been slacking at practice. Katie doesn't think it's a big deal that her son has got a girlfriend, but Mr. McCoy thinks "that 15 year old Minx!!!" is going to ruin J.D.'s entire football career.

Rather than talking to J.D. again (because that didn't really do him any good last time), Mr.McCoy calls Madison's parents and tells them that she is a negative influence on his son. When Madison tells J.D. about it, he is understandably pissed. Mr. McCoy gives J.D. some advice about playing football in the rain and ball control in the car on the way to the game on Friday night, but J.D. doesn't pay very close attention. His dad tells him to run the ball, and instead he passes as much as possible. After he throws an interception that the other team runs back for a touchdown, Mr. McCoy starts screaming at him from the sidelines. Coach tells J.D. not to worry about it, because they're only down by seven.

The Panthers catch a lucky break when the other team fumbles the ball and Riggins recovers for a touchdown in the final minute (I guess Riggins plays defence too?). Coach decides to go for a two-point conversion to win the game. After much scrambling around on the play, J.D. fires a pass right into Riggins hands and the Panthers win the game. Even though J.D. won the game, Mr. McCoy is not happy that his boy didn't listen to him. On the way to Applebys after the game, J.D. is on the phone with Madison and Mr. McCoy screams at him to hang up the phone. In the parking lot, Mr. McCoy starts to lay into him and it ends up in a fistfight. Coach Taylor and Tami run out and break it up, and Mr. McCoy walks off by himself in the rain.

After the fight, the Taylors take Katie and J.D. home with them and Tami makes Katie a cup of tea and Coach takes J.D. out on the deck to talk. Tami assures Katie that the whole thing wasn't her fault. Coach listens to J.D. talk about how nothing is ever good enough for his Dad, and how he never wants to go back to the house again. Katie and J.D. spend the night at the Taylors and Tami and Coach promise to help them work things out in the morning.

Lyla is still camping out at the Riggins house, and she seems to have adopted some Riggins behavioral habits as well. First she beats Billy at Super Mario Cart and then when it's bedtime, Tim heads off to catch some Z's and Lyla stays up to keep playing video games and drinking beer with Billy and Mindy. You know it's trouble when Tim Riggins looks like the responsible one. The next morning, Tim can't get her out of bed and heads off to school without her.

After school Buddy Garrity pulls up outside the school and asks Tim to have a little man-to-man conversation with him. Buddy spills his guts to Tim, and tells him how he can't go on thinking that Lyla hates him and he misses her so much. Tim tells Buddy that Lyla misses her dad, but he needs to give her some more time. Later that night, Lyla goes home to pick up more of her clothes and mail. She finds out that she got into Vanderbilt, but she won't be able to go because she doesn't have a college fund to pay for it anymore. When Buddy comes home to find her there he gets excited, thinking that she's come back to stay but she simply tells him about the acceptance letter and then slams the door on the way out.

That night, Tim takes Lyla to church to try and cheer her up. But Lyla doesn't want to be cheered up, and she runs out into the hall. When Tim follows her she cries that she was stupid to let her family go and stay in Dillon. She thinks that she has no family left, but Tim hugs her and tells her she still does, aw! After the big game on Friday Tim decides to stay in with Lyla instead of going out to celebrate the Panthers victory. They have a little heart –to-heart on the couch and Tim tells Lyla that he's her boyfriend but it's not his job to solve all her problems, and the self pity that's been here M.O. for the past few days has gotta stop. Oh yeah, and he loves her and he'll be around no matter what, aw!

Meanwhile the School Board is talking about redistricting, splitting up the town of Dillon and opening up East Dillon high school. The new re-zoning will give each high school 1000 and a class size of about 21, it will also increasing funding by about 20%. Tami stands up at the meeting and tells everyone that the only way the State will consider increasing the funding for Dillon is if they redistrict. The only problem is that if they split Dillon into two schools, they also split the Panthers down the middle, and that would have big consequences for Coach's team.

Mr. McCoy and the boosters draw up a plan to have the redistricting line zig and zag all over Dillon so that the Panthers can keep the same roster. But Coach doesn't like it, and he tells Buddy Garrity so. But Buddy tells Coach that frankly, it's none of his business. Tami and Coach start talking about the crazy new dividing line that the superintendent is pushing forward, but they never get a chance to finish their conversation because Mr. McCoy starts beating up his kid in the parking lot.

Shelby is still trying to help out at the Saracen house, but Gramma is not making it easy. As they are backing out of the driveway on the way to the market, Gramma opens her door and tries to make a break for it. She ends up rolling out of the back seat, and Matt (who didn't see the accident) blames it on Shelby. The doctor at the hospital tells Matt that Gramma's mental health is deteriorating and she might be better off in an assisted care facility. Shelby wants to hear the doctor out but Matt doesn't even want to consider the option, and he freaks out on her.

Later that night, Gramma freaks out because she can't find her slippers. Matt points out that they are on her feet, but she keeps shouting at him that she needs her slippers. Finally Matt gets her to calm down by taking her slippers off her feet and giving them to her. He finally starts to recognize that maybe he's not equipped to handle Gramma anymore. After the game on Friday, Matt apologizes to his mom and admits that he doesn't know how to take care of Gramma anymore. He also asks his Mom to stay in Dillon, she tells him she wasn't planning on going anywhere anyway.

Tags: Friday Night Lights, S03E10

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