So here's the thing. This story line drives me crazy. Not because the "interracial relationship" aspect of it feels dated (though it does, to an extent), but because we have absolutely no investment in Smash and Noelle as a couple. So why would we care that their "relationship" is threatened? Further, now they suddenly encounter racist reactions to their relationship, when previously they dated one another unmolested? If they are serious enough for their parents to meet (for God's sake, my parents didn't meet my husband's parents until we were engaged), then surely they have gone on dates in public before. Where was the community outrage then? This whole narrative arc is completely inorganic, it mixes up causes and effects and it, as I said before, drives me crazy. If we can't count on Friday Night Lights to give us gadfly narrative observations about something like small-town resistance to interracial relationships, who can we count on? I feel let down. Sigh.

Okay. Deep breath. Coach and Mac are going over game tape in Eric's office. Mac says that he saw Tami with Gracie in school again. Coach admits it's the third day that's happened, switches back to football talk, and then back again to domestic matters: "Sometimes I wish Tami would just stay home and take care of Gracie and quit the damn job. But I can't say that to her." Mac, looking at the game tape, says, "You can prevent that by just forcing them to go left," and then turns his head to Coach: "You know you're entitled to your opinion." I really love how this scene puts two men in a very gender-specific, ''male" atmosphere while they both hash out exactly how gender-specificity organizes (or, in the case of the Taylors, disorganizes) their lives. Coach replies to Mac, saying that he could never ask Tami to do something (quit her job) that he wouldn't be willing to do himself. Mac, our favorite old-timey whipping post, declares, "That's because men aren't built that way. Women are supposed to want to stay home with the kids." Coach gets exasperated, even more so after Mac announces that he would never let a woman of his go to work if she had a kid at home. Hearing it put that way, Eric decides that "that sounds really stupid and ignorant." Mac answers, "Well, sometimes the truth is stupid and ignorant." I guess that explains the last two Presidential elections.

Lyla and Chris are hanging out in the creepily cavernous empty mega-church. Lyla is giving him her God-o-biography, explaining how she gave up cheerleading because of everything she'd been through. She then claims that she burned her cheerleading uniform, which is patently untrue. I was there! I saw it! You dumped your cheerleading uniform in the maid's cart in a hotel in Dallas. I don't think God would approve of lying. Or sloppy continuity, for that matter. Chris asks her what led her from "lighting up" to the church. I don't understand what he's talking about. Lyla's problem was never the "lighting up," it was the getting down. Lyla says that she felt lost, her whole life was upended in six months, God was the only source of comfort for her at that time and that relationship just grew and grew. Chris nods his head, self-importantly, and tells Lyla she's an interesting girl, but "it's too bad you're so hard on the eyes." They both laugh; Chris looks embarrassed and Lyla simply says thank you.

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