Friday Night Lights

Friday Night Lights: Smash and Street say good-bye

Two of the most recognizable stars of Friday Night Lights will be walking away from the show in Season Three.

Well, perhaps walking is the wrong word.

Jason Street, the wheelchair-bound former QB, and Smash Williams, the egotistical, troubled RB, will be leaving the show in the fall. So much for minority actors.

The timing of the announcement makes sense, considering Smash was about to go away for college and Street was about to begin a storyline that no one really wanted to see begun (more on that later, unfortunately). Really, if FNL producers had to choose two characters to leave, Smash and Street were pretty good choices…unless the statutory English teacher was an option.

Their departure, however, will leave several voids in the storylines of Dillon. They were intertwined in so many different aspects of the show, and they have connections to some of the best supporting roles since Arthur Spooner in King of Queens. For instance, have we seen the last of Mama Smash? She won’t really be necessary once her son is gone, unless she plans on marrying Buddy Garrity (note to producers: let’s explore this). What will become of Street’s fast-talking wheelchair friend Herc? We highly doubt quad rugby is paying the bills.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Are Street and Lyla done for good? Whose girlfriends will Riggins have feelings for now? Was Smash ever into Mrs. Taylor? Whom will Saracen boss around at the knock-off Dairy Queen?

Thankfully, we’ll get the answers some time soon, since FNL will be providing both Street and Smash with four-episode story arcs before saying good-bye for good. While it may not be long enough to tie up the loose ends to these two’s complicated pasts, it should at least provide a little bit of closure.

Dillon was not very wheelchair accessible anyway

Street’s loose ends seem decidedly looser than Smash’s. After all, Street is the one who has been through more ups and downs than Tyra’s neckline. Remember the experimental spinal cord shark treatment? The Mexico visitor’s bureau is still trying to recover from that one.

For a kid who started out his FNL career so promising (star quarterback, cheerleader girlfriend, feeling in his extremities), he sure has ended it rather ingloriously (not very good car salesman, soon-to-be absentee father, surly). Though in a sense, Street is a perfect example of the unordinary way that FNL approaches the show. Instead of setting him up to be the invincible jock, the producers squashed his hopes and dreams with one ill-fated neck tackle. Remember the Titans this ain’t.

But you could get the feeling that the tires were wearing pretty thin on Street’s storyline. His character, for all intents and purposes, had jumped the shark. When we last left him, he had miraculously (his words, not mine) impregnated a waitress and vowed his eternal commitment to raising the child (couldn’t he have just left a 15 percent tip like everyone else?). Who knows where you go from there.

It might have been easier on everyone to explain him away in a hastily edited “Street goes soul-searching in his wheelchair-modded Ford Fusion” segment, but producers wanted to reward him with four episodes to say good-bye. In that case, I imagine those episodes will go something like this:

• Episode 1: Street goes to La Maz class.
• Episode 2: Street and Lyla have a fight, which ends with them making out.
• Episode 3: Dillon waitress gives birth to Street’s son, causing Street to go on a five-night drinking binge with Herc, Riggins, and Saracen. Hilarity ensues.
• Episode 4: Landry kills Street.

“House of Payne” might have an opening

Smash’s story may be a little more believable. He has had some of the typical athlete plot points thus far: being arrogant and putting steroids into his rear end. And although his girlfriends have been unusual (bipolar in Season One, white in Season Two), Smash’s story could very well be the same as any number of cocky high school football players.

Smash’s story was just coming to a head when the second season of FNL ended. He was suspended for the remainder of the regular season for legal problems that we have neither the time nor the patience to get into. Let’s just say it involved the Dillon movie theater, bigotry, Applebee’s, fisticuffs, and a Coach Taylor speech. The whole ordeal cost Smash a scholarship at Texas State A&M something or other, but Coach Taylor, being well-connected, got him a scholarship at a rough replica of Sun Belt school.

No doubt when his four episode story arc resumes, Smash will already be in college, partying on weekends and having kids write his papers for him. Isn’t that what college athletics are all about? I can tell you from personal experience that college intramurals are at least sort of like that.

The good-bye from Smash will be a tough one to work out because he may already be away from Dillon and in college when the season begins. Therefore, I imagine that the third season of FNL will conclude the Panthers’ season from where they left off in the winter. The big deal back then was that the team was struggling to make the playoffs, and Smash was unavailable to help until the postseason. Stupid hate crime suspension.

Naturally, the Panthers will make the playoffs, probably on an epic coin flip that Coach Taylor lets Smash call in the air. “Smash chooses heads, baby!” The team’s first playoff opponent? An all-white prep school that Smash’s assault victim attends. The team’s next playoff foe? A team of intolerant Latinos from a border school. The semifinals? Drug testers and KKK members. And in the state championship game, after an epic slate of last-second victories (complete with irreconcilable time clock malfunctions), Smash will score the winning touchdown, ask his white girlfriend to marry him, and watch as Texas Stadium slowly collapses in on itself due to all the political uncorrectness.

I can’t wait for the third season to begin.

© 2008 KevanLee.com.