Ch-ch-ch-ch-cherubs could sing me to sleep while Taylor Kitsch himself feeds me peeled grapes and throatily murmurs, "Friends?" in my ear, and it still couldn't match the LOVE I have for this episode. I think they hit a season high, and since the season was pretty damn high to begin with, that's quite an accomplishment. Clear eyes! Full hearts! Can't lose! TEXAS FOREVER!!

"WE'RE MOVING AGAIN, AREN'T WE?" -- As Eric and Tami mull over the TMU coaching offer and all the details inherent in a move (we get the impression that Tami's thrilled to the point of hiccups at the idea of living in Austin), Julie comes in. When she susses out the potential move, she says flat-out that she's not going. The footstomp and the "so there!" are implied. She even refuses to go to the Daddy-Daughter dance as a gesture of her discontent. But as in so many families, if mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy, and Tami says...well, here, it's better if she tells you: "No, y'all are going to Father-Daughter Dance. I'm gonna pull out my camera and take a picture of you both, and you're going to look real happy and I'm going to cherish it for the rest of my life. So y'all stop being a pain in the ass and make me happy! For once!" Heee. You tell 'em, Tami. Later, as she helps Eric put his tie on (and trust me, it's incredibly sexy and intimate and I can't believe they're not really married!), Tami tells him that it's not Dillon, or school, or Austin, or anything like that that's got Julie twisted up -- it's Matt. "I think our little girl's in love," she says, while Eric looks like he's still thinking castration by shoulder pad might a reasonable option for Matt. Julie grudgingly gets dressed up, but says she'll only stay for one song. Outside the dance, Eric and Julie sit in the car for awhile, until he gets her to open up to him about how she feels about the impending move. It all comes down to feeling like she's home in Dillon, with Matt, and she can't bear the thought of losing that, or him. She knows her dad has dreams about being a college coach, but she has dreams, too, and they're coming true right there in Dillon. "I hear you," Eric says, and that's all any of us really want -- even quasi-rebellious love-struck teenagers -- we just want to be heard. Julie hugs him, and he whispers, "I love you," to her while I blow my nose noisily and reach for the phone to call my dad.

Like patterns drawn on a scarred gym floor by murderball players running drills, several of tonight's storylines overlap. My Ever-Patient Mister says the whole episode's about faithfulness -- coach to team, man to woman, friend to friend, parent to child -- and all the ways that faith is tested. He's a smart fella, my Mister. We'll get to all that soon, but first...there's a game to be played!

"SOMEBODY JUMP-START MY HEART!" -- The Panthers meet and beat the Royal Rock Dragons 26-21 when a last-second Dragon "Hail, Mary" gets a Panther "Hell, No" in the end zone, and the March To State continues its inexorable surge. Next stop: the semi-finals. Go, Panthers! I can honestly say that our boys, sweat-soaked and game-flushed in their bright blue jerseys, look so good that I have to break out my "the actors are all over 21, the actors are all over 21" mantra to keep from feeling like a total pervert. Speaking of which, did you know that Zach Gilford

is six months older than Jared Padalecki?

Yeah. Chew on that for awhile. No, not Jared, though I wouldn't blame you for trying.

"HONEY, WHAT IS THAT THING THAT'S ON OUR FRONT PORCH?" – After Pam Garrity kicks Buddy out on his keester, he shows up on the Taylors' doorstep like a stray basset hound looking for new owners and proceeds to pee in all the corners. Okay, not really...at least not that we see...but he does take over the bathroom, demand pork chops, and pull out Eric's game tapes to watch. When Eric and Tami go out to dinner with the athletic director from TMU, who wants to talk to Eric about a possible job, Buddy uses a little trick he learned from Magnum P.I. and shades in the message pad to read who the Taylors are meeting. Clever! And nosy! And entirely inappropriate! Meanwhile, Julie, resentful at being left alone in the house with St. Satan, sneaks out to a party at Trouble's house. Double, having drowned her Buddy-related sorrow in sleeping pills, wanders out into the party and falls into a glass coffee table, cutting herself badly enough to warrant a trip to the emergency room. Julie calls her mom, interrupting the TMU dinner, and tells her there's no adult there to handle things, so Tami hightails it to the hospital. When Eric gets home, Buddy confronts him about the TMU thing. Eric seems a little conflicted himself, but then does some confronting of his own when he tells Buddy he really ought to be paying more attention to the mess he's made with his family and less attention to the goddamn Panthers. Okay, that's paraphrased, but if you watch Kyle Chandler's face in the scene, you totally know that's what he's thinking. Oh, and at the end of the episode? TMU makes an offer. WOW! What will Coach T do?

Let's see...we've got teen sex, tears, fury, heartbreak, fistfights, tenderness and pudding. Must be Friday Night Lights! I guess I might as well get the subplots out of the way first, since the two main storylines are both such gooders.

"I MAY HAVE SAID SOME THINGS IN THE HEAT OF PASSION" -- St. Satan is up to his old tricks again; like daughter, like father. He and Trouble's mom, Double, have been making the beast with two backs, or as Buddy coyly puts it to Eric over a drink, "I've strayed outside my marriage." Wow, that's almost exactly the same tone as Lyla's "I was unfaithful, Daddy." Huh. He says, "I'm a weak man." Eric rebuts with, "You're a stupid man," and I couldn't agree more. He sure picked the wrong "wildcat" to tangle with; those Collette girls will leave heel marks on your back, for sure. Double works up a nice bubbly froth of righteous indignation after Buddy lets her go from both his employment and his adulterous bed with hooker cab fare and a "you'll be all right," and, to Trouble's mortification, confronts him on the church lawn in front of God, the preacher, Pam and the kids, and basically all the white folk in Dillon. Pam Garrity walks off with Lyla trailing behind her, and I get the feeling Buddy's going to pay and pay and PAY for that little indiscretion.

"HEY, AFTERSCHOOL SPECIAL!" -- Jason and Herc arrive at the quad rugby training camp, but just as football has become a backdrop to the real drama in Dillon, so goes murderball in Austin. Jason meets a tattoo artist named Suzy Q, spills his guts to her at a party, and ends up bonding with her at her tattoo parlor over a sanskrit symbol meaning "peace." The best part of the whole Austin storyline? Seeing our old friend Corey (remember Stumpy?) roll his torsoed self out from under a kitchen sink, scaring the bejeezus out of everybody.

Now. Let's talk about sex, baby. Let's talk about you and me.

NBC starts the episode with a "graphic language" advisory, but I've heard worse on the playground, and, frankly, a warning for plaid-clad strip-club booty might have been more appropriate.

"IT LOOKS LIKE YOU'VE PUT ALL YOUR EGGS IN THE QUAD RUGBY BASKET" -- In a plotline that feels increasingly extraneous, Jason decides to ditch school for two weeks to attend the national quad rugby training camp in Austin. Lyla's not happy; neither is Tami, but Jason's determined, and says if he misses final exams and can't make them up, getting his GED is still an option. He's turning toward his new life while his old life goes on without him, which makes me sad. *sniff*

"WHO BLINKS FIRST" -- The big story is how the fallout from Mac's ill-advised remarks on the "natural" abilities of black and white players continues to complicate life in Dillon. The black players are sticking to the strike, with Smash as their leader and voice in the media, with only three days left to the next playoff game. When asked by a reporter if he thinks Mac should be fired, Smash says on camera, "That'd be a good start." Coach T has NO idea what to do. He's got two dilemmas -- what do to about Mac and what to do about the game. Not surprisingly, the game comes first. Taylor pulls up several acne'd and achingly young players from junior varsity who look like their balls dropped about five seconds ago, and tries to ready them for the playoff game. He puts them under the Bob Knight-like care of Tim Riggins, whose coaching philosophy seems to be limited to beating the pimply babies with the hard end of a verbal stick and then denying them canned pears. Since it's Tim, I, of course, am utterly charmed by his gruff patina.

Where else but on FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS could rampant racism and powder-puff football co-exist so peaceably? And both carry such weight? I love this show beyond the telling of it, and it's not just because of my colossal crush on Tim Riggins. How can you not love a show that turns Landry Clarke into a zebra with an attitude?

The Panthers win the first playoff by a score of 30-10, ending the game with a kick-ass play where Matt, Tim, and Smash all touch the ball and Matt ends up as a receiver in the end zone! WOO HOO! That was SWEET! Coach T is proud as punch of our boys in blue, and jubilation reigns in the locker room. Kyle Chandler's pretty no matter what, but this particular combination of pride, relief, and outright joy looks FANTASTIC on him.

We've got two basic storylines in tonight's episode -- the powder-puff football game and the fallout from racially volatile remarks made by an assistant coach after the playoff win, so let's get the more minor plot points out of the way: Smashmama's thinking about buying a house, but her loan's not approved, and she wonders if it's because she's black. Jason tries making a move back toward normalcy by going back to school, but feels he doesn't fit in and decides to just get his GED instead. Why? Because he's earned a spot at quad rugby training camp in Austin, which could lead to a place on the national team. Oh, and Trouble's mama, Double, has been "working late" with Buddy at the dealership. Uh-huh. And eww.

Let's start with the serious and move to the sublime.

I've never liked Mac McGill, not since he watched Voodoo's game tape with Buddy Garrity behind Coach T's back, but even I'm surprised when two reporters double-team him into implying that black players have more natural ability and white players are smarter. Think that's bad? He refers to players like Smash, Baxter and Voodoo (all black, mind you) as "junkyard dogs." *boggles* His remarks get hashed over on the radio and it snowballs from there. Everybody's got an opinion, from Slammin' Sammy's listeners to Panthers we've never heard speak before, dividing pretty much along racial lines. When Coach T tells Mac he needs to make a public apology, Mac says what's done is done and an apology isn't going to change that. Coach T mans up and says flatly, "I'm not making a request." So Mac gives what one of the black players calls "a lame-ass excuse" on television, and it makes things worse, not better.

Hey! I'm Ran, your new armchair quarterback. This is my first recap for popculturejunkies! I'm dragging along my old friends from Fandom Talk and MediaBlvd -- we're all BIG fans of FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS.

Since the football-crazy town of Dillon is a big, sticky spider web of interconnected characters and ongoing plots, for simplicity's sake, I'm going to break down "Upping The Ante" by storyline, rather than by scene. Park your behind on a bleacher and hang out with me as the Panthers prepare for their first playoff game. Watch as, for a fleeting moment, Life trumps Football. Shocking!

Jason & Lyla's ONE TREE HILLish Engagement: At a backyard barbecue, Buddy ridicules Murderball, calling it a "hobby." That doesn't sit well (pardon the pun) with Jason, who gets furiouser and furiouser with Buddy and finally announces that he and Lyla are engaged. Stunned silence from the entire Garrity family -- including Lyla -- might not have been the impact he was hoping for. Lyla stands up for herself later as she and Jason sit in his for-sale Wrangler (I'm hand-waving how in the heck he got from his chair up into the driver's seat) and tells him she thinks they're too young to get married. Coach Taylor agrees, and it's his voice that Jason really seems to hear when Taylor risks censure at the courthouse by talking to Jason, who's taking part in the suit against him. It's nice to see that the coach still has sway with his former quarterback.

The Worst Idea Ever (aka Julie & Tyra hook up): Back at my old recapping gig, I called Tyra "Trouble" and nothing she does in this episode changes my mind. When Matt ends up pulling QBEffin'1 Duty and reluctantly abandons Julie at the Applebee's, Trouble takes her under her wing. This leads to: 1) Julie going to the strip club where Trouble's big sis, Toil, works, and we learn that Buddy Garrity is Toil's biggest customer; 2) Julie and Trouble shoplifting cosmetics; and 3) Julie inviting Trouble to the Saracens' house while she baby-sits Grandma, where Trouble gets Grandma soused on white wine and paints her toenails black. Okay, the girltalk and pedicure are cute, but just picture the look on Tami's face if she knew what was going on. Yeah, pretty scary, huh?

Yay Peyton! Yay Tony! Sorry, Tom Brady; you're cute and all, but you've got your rings and it's time to give somebody else a chance. We had to work some serious chair karma to get Indy back from eighteen down -- my Ever-Patient Mister tried watching the game on the couch downstairs, but Peyton and the boys only played well when he was in the recliner upstairs, so what could he do? We all have to do our part! He's already staking out real estate for the Super Bowl. Now that we've got the pros situated, let's see if we can't get our Panthers into the playoffs.

What do the producers of Friday Night Lights do while they're waiting? Make a filler episode! That's not quite fair, since a couple of plot points progress minutely, and the whole point of the series seems to be that the journey is as important as the destination, but basically, at the end of the hour? We're still waiting. Along the way, we get our usual fill (pardon the pun) of gorgeous moments, pitch-perfect characterization, smiles and sniffles, but compared to last week's bucking bronco of dirty, dirty, dirty quad porn, parking lot fights, speed metal, and Tim's discovery of the joys of American literature, this episode feels more like a pony ride. Still, I'd take FNL's pony ride over most shows airing this week: *koff*Armed & Famous*koff*

FNL Cast

Oh, Friday Night Lights, I've missed you! *clings* Fortunately, I had friends, family, presents, honey-baked ham, cheese grits soufflé, dirty fuzzball cookies, Taylor Kitsch on the cover of Men's Health magazine and lots and lots of football to help fill the gap. Over the holidays, Friday Night Lights popped up on every year-end Top Ten list known to man (except People, which…no big loss there, you know?) but still nobody's paying it a lick of attention. Though in its defense, this week FNL went up against LSU and Notre Dame in the Sugar Bowl; you can't expect one high school team to beat two college teams! That's crazy talk!

We've spent nine weeks focusing primarily on the boys; now it's the girls' turn. Lyla doesn't have enough scarves to cover all the mirrors in her world; she's standing in front of one in the girls locker room, looking at herself as she wets down some paper towels, and we see why as the camera shows us her locker, with "SLUT" and "WHORE" painted in red across the front. I guess the game was just the beginning of the long gauntlet for Lyla. She scrubs at the ugly words, then jogs out to join the bitch brigade cheerleaders on the practice field. The cheer coach chastises her for being late, expositing that the Championship Classic is only five days away and Lyla's tardiness is unacceptable since she's a captain. Miss Malicious #1 (they have names but I'll be damned if I'll give them that much credit) says to Miss Malicious #2, "Is it wrong to enjoy this?" Yes, yes it is. They lift Lyla in a Liberty but don't stabilize her enough, and she flails a little trying to find her balance. The coach says to Lyla the move is "summer camp" stuff and wonders what's up with her. I'm going to assume the coach hasn't seen Lyla's locker or she wouldn't have to ask. Miss M#1 says in a snide aside, "I guess Tim Riggins banged the balance right out of her." *pffffffffft*