Before we wax rapturous about the intense goings-on in this penultimate episode of the fourth season of The Wire: West Texas Friday Night Lights, we thought we’d share an Instant Message we received yesterday from a fellow diehard Lions fan: “Can we talk about what a completely depressing, agonizing, joyless season this is?!?†she wrote, before adding a frowny emoticon. Yikes, friend! And yet we share her suffering: unlike, well, just about any show we can think of aside from David Simon’s HBO masterpiece, Friday Night Lights this season has flexed its improved storytelling chops, its broader social milieu and impressive new cast members to tell stories that are bleaker and more heart-wrenching than ever before. It was never Mayberry, but life in East Dillon is competely stripped of any Hollywoodian happy endings or gloss. And we love it! But sometimes, like with this week’s episode “Laboring,†this love can be a very painful thing indeed.
Read the rest of the recap, originally published when DirecTV aired the episode in February, here.