"Friday Night Tykes" Episode 4 Recap: God Don't Like Ugly

It’s a thing of beauty when a running back trucks a defender. #FridayNightTykes pic.twitter.com/oTI7gd3TWZ

— Friday Night Tykes (@tykes) February 1, 2017

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Sure, two teams will be facing off in vicious, bloody, armed conflict in Houston this Sunday, with pride, money and legacies on the line. But it’ll be, at best, the second most significant football event in Texas this year. Because no Super Bowl could ever hope to match the importance of a week of Texas youth football.

This week’s “Friday Night Tykes” featured a new team, more nasty coaching conflicts, gallons of bad blood, class warfare and the worst display of America’s youth being pussified by coaches in our nation’s history.

*We get introduced to Marlon Joplin, head coach of the newly-formed team, the Outlaws. Not to be confused with the old Outlaws, who left TYFA to join the Snoop League, Joplin named them Tha 210 Outlaws (note: that’s not a typo). Kind of in that way that Spinal Tap was once called The Originals, but there was already a band name The Originals, so they called themselves The New Originals. Anyway, Joplin explains how he once did federal time for selling drugs and points out the six different places on his body he’s been shot. Like a lot of things in Texas football, the CORI check system is way different than other places.

*Joplin explains how starting up an expansion team left him with zero equipment and no money, and Tha 210 Outlaws are $20,000 in the hole. Later we see the regular Outlaws new, 25-foot high inflatable, Outlaws player the team will run through. That little lawn ornament cost $3,000. And once the balloon is inflated, one player points out the thing everyone was thinking, with the honesty only a child can speak: “Coach, is he light-skinned?”

*Chris Davis, the TYFA commissioner, Venom assistant coach and Human Clenched Fist, who at the end of last week could barely contain his rage at his nearly comatose head coach Corey Jefferson, is sitting at a bar waiting for Jefferson. Who proceeds to ghost him. Later at practice, Jefferson shows up (late) with no explanation, no apology. Davis blames himself for ever naming him head coach in the first place and vows things are going to change, practically wringing his hands like Gollum taking to himself about killing the fat Hobbitses. Later we see Jefferson mumble something to Davis about how “I overslept bad,” to which Davis gets on all fours, grabs his hand and says, “Come! Smeagol will show Master the way.” Just another coward trying to pass himself off as an Alpha Male.

*Marecus Goodloe of the Original Outlaws gets plenty of face time once again. Only now he’s stressed by the pressures of being the OC on a team that is obsessed with winning. As opposed to his old gig of head coaching the Colts, where he got to joke around more. Left unsaid is that his stand up set consisted of incomprehensible Texas drawl that requires subtitles and getting 9-year-olds to chant “Fuck the Rockets!” Anyway, in their game against a team we haven’t seen before but retired the trophy for Best Name, the War Eagles, Goodloe is toggling between indecipherable mumbles and the word “fuck.” Another coach punctuates a score with “That’s what you gotta do! Do what I fucking asked you to do,” the Texas middle school version of “Do Your Job.”

*But the absolute stars of the episode, and the one that’s going to win Emmys for Best Reality Series and Outstanding Performance by a Naive Cuckold and His Emasculating Shrew of a Helicopter Wife for Paul and Lori Hurt of Venom. Where do I even begin to review this pathetic piece of performance art? Their game against the Tha 210 Outlaws was over before it began. Which is to say, when they come out through yet another giant inflated toy, a bouncy house in the shape of a Venom Helmet to face a team that’s in debt a much as a down payment on a house as Marlon Joplin stares at the Hurts with the same sinister half-eye look he used as part of his mating dance in the pen.

*Paul sends in the first play, and the quarterback has no idea what the signal means. Joplin laughs. A kid gets tackled and Lori complains about a dirty helmet-to-helmet hit. A scene that will be repeated on literally play. Kid gets hit. Kid goes down. She tells the kid it was a dirty hit. Kid cries. Kid gets hit. Lather, rinse repeat for the entire game.

*Or to be more accurate, for the entire demi-game, because Lori, once she’s done threatening the ref by telling him she’ll withhold his game check, starts demanding Venom just take a knee. On every play. And it’s the second quarter. In between giving the players milk and cookies, putting a warm wash cloth on their necks and putting Nick Jr. on for them, she pays respect for a long Tha 210 Outlaws TD pass with “They think they’re perfect. This ain’t no NFL team!” and “God don’t like ugly.” Later she comforts her wounded warriors on the sidelines by cooling them in the shade of her massive, white trash, Kroger’s store brand fake eyelashes.

*But the real lowlight comes at halftime, when she convinces Paul to just refuse to send the team out for the second half. And you can actually hear the sound of the kids’ souls shattering into a million, irreparable pieces. But not content to just turn a collection of boys with hope for their futures into a collection of permanently broken quitters, she hides the team inside the big bouncy helmet and lies to them. “They’re so scared of us,” she says “They don’t wanna play no more.” Then she forms the boys into a pair of lines and suckles them to her breasts, two at a time.

*Paul spends his last remaining moments owning a penis by refusing to even send them out for a postgame handshake. Then once he tells the official and an incredulous Tha 210 Outlaws coaching staff they won’t shake hands, Lori says they will. But to a person, the boys don’t actually shake hands with Joplin. One mom on the winning side put it best “Is this the Girl Scouts or TYFA football?” Although that’s unfair. The Girl Scouts have dignity.

*Finally, Lori completes her complete and utter destruction of American masculinity by refusing to pay the referee, threatening to call Child Services on the entire league and penning a four page email to Davis complaining about the whole affair. Which is not easy to do when you’re carrying your husband’s dick on a chain around your neck. And Davis tells us Venom has tapped out at halftime three times already on the season. I weep for my country.

Next week: A coach appears to physically attack a kid. It just keeps getting better.