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Last week’s episode ended with a dramatic cleansing ritual in which Coach Taylor and the East Dillon Lions burned their old uniforms, destroying these symbols of a past that included a humiliating forfeit of their season opener and pledging to start anew, to “finish this fight.” “In the Skin of a Lion” (Hulu) deals with the fallout from this incident — fallout which probably wouldn’t happen at all on most shows. Most shows would take this moment for its benefits — an emotional and inspiring scene, a chance for its lead actor to perform, a reason for viewers to get behind a new set of characters — and move on to some other plot line the next week. Friday Night Lights refuses to let go so blithely, lest we forget that these kinds of reckless acts, energizing though they may be, have real consequences.

Eric spends the bulk of the episode dealing with these consequences. I loved the scene where he tries (and largely fails) to explain to Principal Levi Burnwell why, exactly, he needed to burn these uniforms, and why he therefore needs money from the school to purchase new ones. “We’re just a little shy,” Eric begs, getting nothing out of Levi but an admonition that “rebuilding the football program might be a bit premature,” and that he “wasn’t even supposed to take this job.” What’s important about this moment is the oft-ignored truth that even a compelling leader like Coach Taylor is not a leader everywhere: he still has a boss, he still gets put on his heels when his boss doesn’t agree with his decision, and he still has to beg for money like everyone else. He may be in charge on the football field, but that doesn’t mean he can do whatever he wants.

Meanwhile, I still can’t stand Becky. She’s just plain annoying. Even on a second viewing, knowing (though not fully remembering) what happens for the rest of the season, I don’t really understand why, of all the possible subplots they could have written for Tim Riggins, they wrote the one in which he has to listen to a bratty teenage girl prattle on and on, so she can fill the silence and pretend that someone is listening. I get that Tim is supposed to be filling a void in her life — her dad is nowhere to be seen, and her mom is so absent that Becky begs Tim, of all people, to help her choose a dress for an upcoming pageant — but the season’s first three episodes have yet to give us a reason to care. The one redeeming value in this storyline is that it gives us a chance to fully appreciate how much Tim Riggins has grown up in just a few short years; when Luke Cafferty makes a mostly-harmless joke about Becky’s attractiveness, Riggins gives him an unmistakable “I’m too old for this stuff now” look. He would’ve made the same joke a couple of seasons ago.

Plenty of other things happen in the episode — Buddy Garrity publicly breaks up with the Panthers, Vince and Luke chafe against each other and against Coach Taylor’s treatment of them, and Saracen finally has a breakthrough with Richard Sherman (another character I’m not sure I get) — but I paid the most attention to Julie and Tami’s conversations about going to church. It is, in some ways, such a clichéd conversation — teenager has doubts about organized religion, parent tries to keep the teen engaged because letting them out of church could mean letting them out of the family entirely — that you wonder at first why it was worth the screen time to dramatize it. It’s given added weight, however, by the subtext of Julie’s burgeoning doubts about her relationship with Matt. She seems to be wondering, on some level, whether Matt thinks of her the way she is starting to think of God: as someone you maintain a relationship with because you’re supposed to, even though you feel like you’re outgrowing them. I’ve had mixed feelings about Julie Taylor over the course of the series, but I think this is a season in which she begins to take life much more seriously, and she becomes a more interesting character as a result.

The promo for next week indicated that the tension between Vince and Luke comes to a head in the next episode, and also that Saracen will get some news that leads to what’s probably the strongest episode of the entire season (two weeks from now). Looking forward to it!