"FNL" Writers Defend Season 2's Murder Storyline

[JamesG]

"Friday Night Lights" Writers Defend That Season 2 Murder Storyline
by Darren Franich
February 1, 2017


The first season of "Friday Night Lights" had everything. And the second season of "Friday Night Lights" had… well, something else.

While the Dillon Panthers struggled to live up to the victorious heights of their State Championship, the TV show around them pushed its characters in a series of different directions far beyond the football field. Jason Street rode south to Mexico with Tim Riggins. Tim moved from home to home, taking up residence with a drug dealer and (all-too-briefly) the Taylors. Lyla Garrity went to Church. Coach Taylor took a job in Austin.

With distance came stress, on the central characters and on the shows’ defining relationships. Tensions between Tami and Julie Taylor reached a boiling point, and then a slapping point. New love interests bloomed: This was the season of The Swede and The Nurse. And also, well, Landry killed a man.





On the latest episode of EW’s Binge podcast, some of FNL‘s finest grapple with the legacy of season 2. Writers Bridget Carpenter (creator and showrunner of 11.22.63) and Kerry Ehrin (co-creator and showrunner of Bates Motel) recall the roots of the murder plotline – and offer their own perspective on the audience’s reaction to it.

“I feel like something happens in the beginning of a second season of any show, which is you kind of play out the pilot in the first year and then the second year you feel the need to kind of reinvent a little bit to get new seeds growing,” Ehrin explains. “I think it came more out of that, of wanting to turn up the jets a little bit. I think I’m still probably one of the only people that really still… I like that storyline.”

“I do too,” Carpenter agrees. “I don’t feel defensive about it at all. I remember exactly why we did it. I was shocked at the animus towards it. I was sort of like, ‘Hey people, it’s TV, things happen.’ I will say too that I really enjoyed all the great gifts it gave us, which was Landry and Tyra getting really close.”

Ehrin adds: “I think a lot of the reaction to the murder plotline had something to do with people feeling like NBC had asked for it. There was a sense of like a political thing… like, they were like, ‘oh make it more network-y.’ It could not have been farther from the truth.”





The murder storyline may have been one of the biggest indicators to viewers that "Friday Night Lights" wasn’t going to be the average small town USA type of show.

“I think people thought it’s not like small town America and Friday Night Lights is about these real slice of life things,” Ehrin says. “Honestly, that was never my personal perception of Friday Night Lights, I thought it was a story about a town where everyone was crazy. It was like everyone had drank the Kool-Aid and that’s sort of what kept it spinning, and then the slice of life stuff was within that world. It isn’t this small town USA storytelling about families – it was never that. It was about people who were crazy!”

http://ew.com/tv/2017/02/01/friday-n...ters-season-2/

[JamesG]

Jesse Plemons was "As Shocked As Everyone" about Landry Killing a Guy on "Friday Night Lights"
by Shania Russell
December 30, 2025


"Friday Night Lights" stunned millions when it turned the adorably awkward Landry Clarke into a killer — including the actor who portrayed him.

Looking back on the infamous season 2 storyline, Jesse Plemons told host Gerrad Hall on a recent episode of Entertainment Weekly's The Awardist podcast that he was "pretty shocked" to learn that Landry would be kicking off their sophomore season with a body count.




The actor explained that while he wasn't warned in advance, he knew that something big was coming.

"They didn't tell me that something bad was gonna happen or I was going to be killed off or something, so I wasn't worried about that," Plemons recalls. "But it was kind of a double-edged sword because on the one hand, I was as shocked as everyone to read that script where the comedic relief kills for love in high school. But at the same time, I don't think I could allow myself to question it too much, because it was happening."




Praising "Friday Night Lights" for the "level of realism" that it so often achieved, Plemons shared that his major concern was finding a way to make a "really extreme storyline that does not seem too rooted in something realistic" mesh with the rest of the show.

"'How am I going to not sink the show with this and try and keep it as real as everything else?,'" he recalls wondering.




As for what the actor remembers from actually shooting the scene, Plemons shared that they tested a few murder weapons before deciding on which object Landry would use to deliver the fatal blow.

"I did end up killing him multiple times with the bottles and then we reshot it with a pipe or something," Plemons said, adding, "It's a weird, weird, weird thing we do."

https://ew.com/friday-night-lights-j...a-guy-11877574