Friday Night Lights needs your help!
My previous post didn’t say much about my favorite show from last season: Friday Night Lights. For me, this is probably a top five show. One of the best ever. Why did a show about a small-town high school football team in Texas make for such compelling television? I’ll let ESPN’s Sports Guy Bill Simmons explain:
Quite simply, FNL is the best date show ever, an improbable cross between The O.C. and every sports show you ever wanted Hollywood to make. It’s the first show my wife and I have loved equally, but for different reasons. What can be better than that?
On Aug. 28, NBC released the American DVDs with a “satisfaction guaranteed” gimmick. Now if you continue to ignore FNL, it’s only because you’re trying to hurt me. If you do give it a shot, let me recommend the impeccable acting, the lively football scenes (although they tend to go overboard on exciting finishes), the risky story lines and especially Coach Taylor’s family, the most authentic household in recent TV history. Every nuance is nailed, every hug seems genuine, every fight makes sense, every sarcastic barb and flustered reaction ring true. If there are better TV actors than Kyle Chandler (Coach) and Connie Britton (Mrs. Coach), I haven’t TiVoed them. Pay particular attention to the astonishing two-parter in which an older assistant sets off a racial powder keg before a big playoff game. If FNL were Michael Jordan, Lyla Garrity’s slam-page episode would be the 63-point game in Boston (the coming-out party), and the two-parter would be the 1991 Finals (the moment considerable potential is realized).
Sadly, like other great shows before it (Homicide, My So-Called Life), Friday Night Lights didn’t do too great in the ratings. Part of the problem is that NBC mishandled the show, even airing it opposite Monday Night Football a few times. But, the show is also its own worst enemy, committing two cardinal sins: 1) It’s expensive. It cost more than $2.5 million per episode to make. And that won’t cut it when reality shows can cost less than $100,000. 2) It’s way, way too good. America doesn’t always embrace quality. Sometimes, in fact, they look the other way.
Don’t make that mistake. Here’s Bill Simmons again:
FNL is going to die prematurely because five times as many Americans would rather watch an acerbic British guy belittle dreadful singers on a reality show. I can’t live with that.
So please, please help me and every other FNL fanatic. Watch the show. Spread the gospel. You won’t save the world as they did in Heroes, and you probably won’t prevail in the end, but as Coach Taylor once told his team, “Every man at some point in his life is going to lose a battle. He’s going to fight, and he’s going to lose. But what makes him a man is that in the midst of that battle, he does not lose himself.”
Heed that call. Watch Friday Night Lights.
you see my lj yet?