Get Ready For a Sexier Friday Night Lights

Get ready for the small town of Dillon, Texas, to start looking more like Dallas now that NBC's Friday Night Lights is back for a second season.

That means a lot more skin and scandal, observes William Keck of USA Today, and numerous others who have previewed the Season Two debut.

"There are a large number of shower scenes," star Adrianne Palicki, 24, says with an uncomfortable giggle. Her character, Tyra Collete, is first seen in the season premiere licking a popsicle suggestively. Control yourselves, guys.

"We've also had a couple of (nude) scenes in the locker room," adds Adrianne's co-star, Jesse Plemons, 19, whose social outcast character, Landry Clarke, has just reluctantly joined the high school football team.

"The good thing is that Landry's not really okay with taking his clothes off — unlike Tim Riggins (played by Taylor Kitsch). Taylor has been complaining the most about having to take off his shirt."

Adrianne Palicki as sexy, sassy Tyra Collette.

No one's complaining, to be sure, about a second chance to prove themselves after a first season that was critically acclaimed but ratings-starved.

Over lunch, both actors acknowledge that the set was somber the day Emmy nominations were announced. Nary a nod went to the underdog drama.

"It was very disappointing," Adrianne Palicki says. "There was a backlash from not getting nominated — people were furious. So that's even cooler, in a way. Look at how many fans were so angry."

"The feeling now," Jesse Plemons adds, "is let's give them even a better show, so there's no way they're going to be able to pass us up."

 The new game plan: less football, more personal struggle.

Among the drama: Adrianne Palicki's Tyra and Jesse Plemons' Landry enter into a secret romance that, Plemons says, "catches both of them off guard."

The unlikely duo — Tyra the Beauty, Landry the Geek — came together when Landry became her tutor, then came to her rescue after an attempted rape.

"I would love for them to be together," Palicki says. "Tyra deserves a good guy."

There's also a stunning plot twist that we won't get into here.

Plemons, a native of Mart, Texas (outside Waco), has been dating a Texas girl for six months who he says is "beautiful — inside and out."

The single Palicki says she has had many Landrys in her life, but as a high school student in Toledo, Ohio, she strictly dated jocks.

"I had Landrys as friends," she says. "The guys you thought you'd marry someday, but you just couldn't date because it wasn't cool. How stupid is that?"