A Last Chance For Friday Night Lights: The Best Show You Don’t Watch

My first experience with Friday Night Lights was not a good one. I watched the pilot back when it premiered in 2006, and immediately dismissed it. It was shot nicely and the actors were certainly attractive, but high school football? Really? I played high school football, and the most interesting thing that ever happened was my coach nicknaming me “psychedelia” for my fondness of wearing tie-dyed t-shirts under my pads. Thankfully, neither the fondness nor the nickname stuck. But Friday Night Lights seemed to be asking me to get involved with minutiae of a weekly game played by teenagers. Will the sixteen year-olds win this Friday?! Should the coach play the flashy, obnoxious black quarterback or the obedient but mediocre white one?! Who cares. It was like a regular dose of Wildcats, except without Goldie Hawn or the funny rap music. So I thought.

Pee-yoo, what stinks?

We all have TV shows that friends beg us to watch. It’s great when it works out, like The Wire, or Seinfeld, or The Office (BBC). After weeks of refusal you finally catch a few episodes, say “how could I not have been watching this?!”, then call all your friends and harass them to join you. Sometimes though you end up with something crummy like How I Met Your Mother. You finish it and think “this is the crap you’ve been telling me will change my life? You must have a really low opinion of my life.” Well trust me, Friday Night Lights is not How I Met Your Mother. It will change your life. Well, your TV life anyway. I ignored demands to give it a second shot for years, until one fateful night where sickness and Hulu intertwined to result in me watching the entire  first season in one sitting. Then I said those fateful words: “how could I not have been watching this?!”…and now I’m here harassing you to join me.

Friday Night Lights is essentially Beverly Hills, 90210; except written by, for, and about real human beings. Yes, the show is technically about a high school football team, The Dillon Panthers, but that’s kinda like saying MASH was about the Korean War. Remember that moment in high school when you first saw the girl you were certain was the most beautiful woman in the world, and by some remarkable mystery she was actually willing to talk to you? That’s what this show is about. Or the time you realized your parents were just two ordinary people who had as many fears, insecurities, and dreams as you did? That’s the subject of FNL.

Connie Britton and Kyle Chandler

The show’s primary couple, Coach Eric and Principal Tami Taylor (Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton), are the parents we all wished we had, but they’re no Ozzie and Harriet. They’re real people, and the trouble they have raising a family and guiding their students into adulthood goes way beyond the football field. How Chandler and Britton have never won an Emmy, I have no idea. The same can be said for the youngsters. All the high school caricatures are here: the captain of the football team, the head cheerleader, the long-haired troubled guy who scores with all the chicks, the math dork, the (grand)mama’s boy, the senior slut, the obsessed football dad – they’re all featured on Friday Night Lights, but it’s hard to recognize them. They’ve been disguised by great writing and amazing performances. Where creator Peter Berg’s secret farm of gorgeous teenagers who can act is, I have no idea, but if he could give the address to Gossip Girl, Glee, and One Tree Hill, I sure would appreciate it.

Friday Night Lights is a show that takes our lives, takes what we know, and makes it somehow more real, more interesting than we thought it could be. It is, dare I say, the best show that’s ever been made about the American high school experience, and for some reason, no one’s watching it. Probably because you have the same hang ups I did. It’s about football, it’s about Texas, it’s not about me. Well trust me, it is. FNL was on the verge of cancellation six months ago, when DirecTV agreed to co-produce the show and pre-air it’s fourth and fifth seasons before they migrated to NBC. Now there is word that it may be canceled after its fifth year, which would be a shame. All I can say is, start watching now. It’s available for rental and streaming on Netflix, and let’s be honest, you’ve got the time. There’s snow on the ground and you’d just assume be inside, so now you’ve got the excuse. Discover Friday Night Lights, because you’ll miss it when it’s gone. Trust me on this one, as sure as I’m named Psychedelia, you’ll love it.