Grid Effect

I’m not sure if this is good news or bad news, but it is news none the less so we’ll let you come to your own conclusions. Scott Porter and Gaius Charles, who play Jason Street & Smash Williams on Friday Night Lights respectively, are being relegated to minor recurring characters due to budget issues with DirectTV.

Since the budget seems to be the problem, we imagine the cast replacing Porter and Charles will look something like this.

Given that this is the result of budget issues, we’re not terribly optimistic about what it means for the upcoming season. But at the same time, Smash had graduated and signed on to play at whatever black college after his overblown, implausible fallout from the incident at the movie theater. So it seems like at least in the realm of Dillon, Texas his arc is all but done. Having him pop in sporadically is really all that is necessary.

Street, while we generally loved his storyline and all it entailed, was almost peripheral to the main storyline after he extricated himself more and more from the community. If we are to assume he convinced that waitress to have his kid, then at least in terms of Dillon football he isn’t really in the picture, either. And really only needs a few minutes every few episodes to keep us updated.

This probably means more screen time will be focused on Tyra, Lyla and Riggins, which means we might actually get that three-way we’ve long been expecting. You could even throw that frightened celibate Christian kid into the fray and most people probably wouldn’t mind. So in that respect maybe it is good news. However, if you want to see the series maintain an ounce of integrity, then maybe this isn’t your cup of tea. Eh, whatever. Tomato, tomhato.

Essentially, there are a hundred different ways of looking at this. Truth be told, the storylines had felt jumbled and interchangeable for much of the second season, so all but eliminating two of them that were outside the core group of the series (the white Dillon football faction, we’ll call it, mainly consists of the Taylors, Garritty, Lyla, Tyra, Riggins, & Landry), doesn’t seem like a terrible idea.

When all is said and done, they could have Landry and Saracen rob a bank at the behest of Riggins to help support Street’s kid and we’d still watch it. Mainly because we remember how great this series usually is, and the potential it still has (especially after a strong sophomore close). About the time of the second season finale we were quite certain the series wasn’t going to be back, so while seeing some twitchy high school kids commit armed robbery might be a little out of context, we’re pretty much desperate at this point.

Probably it for the day unless something really tickles our fancy. Otherwise we’ll see you tomorrow.