Friday Night Lights
Just a little favor...

I am here to beg, borrow and steal one hour of your time. As you know by now, I watch way too much television. I haven’t even touched on some of the shows I’m watching on here yet, so it is probably much worse than you even imagine. So given that I’ve peeked at quite a few new shows this season, more than I ever have before in fact, my plea for any particular one over all the others should have at least a little bit of weight! I need you to watch Friday Night Lights. If you prefer to go the route of assuming that I’m obviously half nuts, and that prompts you to consider whether you want to hear me rant and rail if one of my absolute favorite shows gets cancelled so maybe you better watch? That’s fine too. I know a few weeks ago, I was lamenting the loss of Smith, but this is a much more serious occasion we’ve arrived at here. I really love this show, but there’s also the fact that it will be a serious loss for those of you that don’t even know yet what you’re missing! There is so much crap out there on television these days, and even though I will gladly watch most of it, I am aware of what I’m giving up when I do. Since watching this show, I’m even more aware.   

I hate football, let’s just be clear on that. I’ve never willingly watched a football game in my life. I went to a high school game once, but I was seventeen and there to watch things other than the game, I assure you. I don’t have one clue as to how the game works, nor do I have a clue why any team receives points when they do. I also have no desire to learn. If you like football, I can’t imagine you’ll have any problem with the show…if you don’t, well, I’m proof that it doesn’t much matter. Sometimes there’s a game in an episode, sometimes not. While football is obviously the center of this town, the town is more the center of this show. Rather maybe it’s the living, breathing need these residents have for something to grasp on to. In the town of Dillon, that something is football and has been for many, many years. Many of these adults are past players, living it all again through their children. If you’re not involved in football, you might as well grab a seat in the back of whatever room you enter, because you’re so far from relevant it’s not even funny. I’ve read and been told that the writers have true football towns nailed, and I have no doubt it’s true. You watch and you can absolutely *feel* how probable the whole thing is, it’s like that proverbial snowball rolling downhill wiping up everything in its path…there just isn’t really any escape from it for these kids nor most of the adults surrounding them. I’m sure it’s also true that there are people in such towns that don’t have a care for football and of course in reality that doesn’t make them irrelevant. I’m pretty sure though that if you get inside those that consider football the be all and end all, those outsiders don’t even exist. Inside that world, everything past the stadium bleachers is irrelevant.

The peek inside the mechanics, politics, and hypocrisy of the high school game is astounding for someone like me, who didn’t grow up with it. It’s fascinating, emotional, and sometimes frightening to say the least. I’ve long had mixed feelings about how society handles children in sports…kids that for the most part just want to play a game, in the same way they’d painstakingly build a sand castle only to dump a bucket of water on it or stomp up and down over it and look equally as happy doing either. It’s one of those things that every parent has to find their own peace with, and I wouldn’t even consider that my feelings on the subject are more correct than anyone else’s. Viewing this show though, is a really interesting expedition into your own thoughts on it. They have done a fantastic job of showing all sides. There are boys that will benefit greatly from the discipline, camaraderie, and responsibility of being involved. There are boys who are already so burdened that you wonder how any added pressure can be advisable. Some are there because they love it, others because their daddy was a star in his day, and still others because they’re just searching for something that means something. Then of course we have the females in their lives, which are by the very nature of the game relegated to a sidekick position – maybe for life. They cook for their boys, the cheer them on, and they respect that the number one position in that boy’s life has already been filled.

The key to this show stealing your heart is its unique ability to straddle the line between comfort and discomfort. Comfort because it gets back to a version of values, family, faith, loyalty, and friendship like we haven’t seen on television in awhile. Popular shows of late trend toward criminal justice, forensics, disaster, etc., or toward over-the-top soap plot lines. I’m not knocking it; I love several of those shows. Watching them makes me all the more ready though, to step back for an hour a week to watch something that makes me laugh, cry, wince, and just *think* about something that actually does go on in the real world. The discomfort comes in with that fact - this does actually happen in the real world. Does the coach push them to hard? Do their parents create an environment where there are not enough choices when it comes to a definition of success? Are almost impossible expectations a way to keep kids out of trouble or a way to pressure them into it? What are the adults around the game teaching these kids by their actions?

Lest this sound too heavy, let me assure you that all that I’ve gone on and on about so far is but a part of the big picture. This is a high school show, with all the predictable players (and for me, that predictability is part of that whole comfort thing). If you went to high school, you’ll recognize these kids. You may not like them all, but you’ll know them. Younger audiences will relate, the rest of us will watch and shake our heads at what these kids have yet to learn. It’s something of a trip down memory lane: there are the kids you couldn’t stand, the ones you thought misunderstood, and the ones you may have wished you could be part of. The rebel, the girl that seems satisfied to sleep her way around, the good girl that you know is going to fall so hard off that pedestal one day (step one was cheating on her freshly paralyzed boyfriend with his best friend), the coach’s daughter (which I suspect is a category unto itself in a town like this), the star quarterback, and the kid who has to step into his shoes after an unexpected injury. A young man whose only parental figure is in Iraq leaving him the caretaker of a grandmother with Alzheimer’s. This kid already has the weight of the world on his shoulders, and now he’s faced with an entire town reluctantly placing what they seem to think is all their hopes and dreams on him as well. I can hardly look at him, a bundle of nerves and uncertainty, without wanting to hug him and these people are broadcasting their surety of his inability to pull off being their hero over radio waves.

That brings me to their coach, Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler). The guy that has to balance it all out: winning, losing, pushing, expecting, demanding, and encouraging. Football is business in this town, and his job is on the line with every move he makes, all the while he’s depending on kids – sixteen and seventeen years old - to play out the moves that will hopefully make everyone happy every Friday night. Of course, every time someone is happy, there is another team at a low point; another town in a fury over a loss, and another coach wondering if he has a job come Monday. The show portrays a realistic marriage in a realistic setting, these people worry about money, worry about their jobs, fight over him expecting her to entertain half the town at a football party at a days notice, struggle with how to parent in this environment, and struggle with how to handle a town that will turn on them on a dime. It doesn’t shy away from the inescapable two-facedness that exists…maybe on all sides. It doesn’t shy away from the fact that while we’d all like to think everyone makes decisions based on what’s best for the kids, there’s no way they actually can every time; not in this environment. That is the catalyst for this show, and it’s a very powerful one. At surface it’s the perfect blend of sports and soap, something she can enjoy relishing and he can pretend to watch only for the mud and hard hits. Underneath, it’s a lot more.

Give it one hour; I really don’t think you’ll be sorry. After that you can catch up on every episode on NBC.com . Actually, go catch up first, that would be all the better. That way you can give that hour at your leisure. Friday Night Lights airs on Tuesdays at 8PM, eastern. Watch! Tell everyone you know to watch! Take pity, I’m still in shock that I just spent an hour “fan girling” a football show! 

-Sherry
SherryEOS@comcast.net