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(Warning: this post contains spoilers. –PB)

With the stage for Season 4 having been set in “East of Dillon,” “After the Fall” (Hulu) started to move the story forward. The episode proved to be a showcase of some of FNL‘s best qualities.

The first was the show’s sense of narrative balance. Even as the core plot line — Eric’s effort to pick up the pieces after forfeiting East Dillon’s season opener — unfolded, the episode still spent a huge chunk of screen time advancing the stories for all of the other characters. This is in contrast to, say, Lost, which generally moves stories forward one piece at a time, to the extent that fans refer to most episodes as “Jack episodes” or “Kate episodes” or “Locke episodes.” “After the Fall” was an Eric episode, to the extent that such a thing exists, but we still got to know two new main characters (Luke Cafferty and Jess Merriweather), pumped our fists as Tami stood up to Joe McCoy and his crew, watched with restrained skepticism as Tim Riggins continued to try to put his life back together, and cringed as Matt Saracen discovered that his new art internship with a “genius” didn’t live up to his expectations. Obviously, you can only make so much narrative progress when you keep so many threads running. Friday Night Lights is a slow burn, demonstrating tremendous patience on the part of its writers and requiring equal patience from its viewers.

Which brings me to the second great quality — the music. FNL‘s musical style, patient like everything else about it, is gentle and minimal, deceptively simple. Much of the episode doesn’t have any score at all, and when it does, it serves the narrative without getting in the way. Just check out the climax of the episode and how W.G. Snuffy Walden‘s score (I really love this guy’s work) builds emotion without ever becoming kitschy or melodramatic. The first two notes set the tone for the entire scene.

The third quality, which I realize I mentioned last week and therefore need to stop talking about, is the show’s trueness to life. My favorite scene in the entire episode was the one in which Eric and Tami argue about the mailbox used by the Panthers boosters to establish Luke’s residence in West Dillon.

The way this scene develops is like all arguments in real life, and like FNL itself: ragged and raw. The escalation is uneven and, in some ways, unexpected, and Tami and Eric argue like people who don’t fully understand how they got into this argument in the first place. And I love how the scene ends with Eric storming out of the house saying that he’s going to go get some milk, as if he has any clue whether there’s milk in the house or not. We’ve all done that — made up a ridiculous excuse just to escape an argument with someone.

You get the sense from this episode that the strength of Eric and Tami’s relationship will be tested in this season more seriously than we’ve yet seen. It’ll be interesting to see how they cope, and how we cope along with them.