The people who have told you that you’ve got to watch Friday Night Lights have as much crazy fervor as those who implored you to get into Lost. Well,Lost is over and their fans have calmed down, and plus it’s summer, so it’s my turn to go nuts over a one-of-a-kind, underrated show.
I don’t read many books because I’d rather watch the movie. But even though I was told by my Sports Reporting professor, Jeff Fellenzer, to read Buzz Bissinger’s slice-of-life tale of Texas high school football, Friday Night Lights remains one of the greatest novels I have ever read. And if I ever turn off the TV and throw away my computer to catch up on all the classics and best-sellers, I still will place FNL that high.
I was a broadcast producer for the El Paso Diablos minor league baseball team in 2001. Before each game during the season, one of the play-by-play announcers, Brett Pollock, a man I will be forever indebted to for an internship I still cherish to this day, hosted a sports-talk show where he would interview guests from around the country. Although he nowadays is known more for raging against bloggers, I had the sincere pleasure of booking Bissinger on the show and listening to him look back fondly on his year living in Odessa, Texas, and following the Permian High football team in 1988.
The one thing that struck me most about Pollock’s interview with Bissinger is that he did not intend to write the book he eventually wrote. He thought his novel was going to be like Hoosiers – sweeter, more innocent, and free of moral ambiguity. Instead, FNL became one of the greatest sports exposés ever because Bissinger ripped the veil off the munificent face of prep football. He found that Permian football – with their famous rally cry, “Mojo” – was the tie that bound the community. Support is one thing; academic cheating is another. And a whole other dimension of obedience is assigning a cheerleader to every single player on the team, with instructions about cherishing her “master” so ingrained at the school that it carried the weight of tradition to ensure compliance, like wearing a burqa.
I’m from Minnesota, not Texas, but I went to a football high school, so I felt like I understood the passion that drives some people to take steps they feel is necessary to ensure the program is as elite as it can be. That’s why it felt like such a betrayal to see the movie version of Friday Night Lights, starring Billy Bob Thornton as Gary Gaines, the real head coach at Permian. The two-hour film had to excise many of the socioeconomic issues that detailed the travails of this oil town, especially its race and class divisions. Instead, Bissinger helped director/co-writer Peter Berg (who’s also Bissinger’s cousin) pare down the adaptation to focus on football. And with the exception of a surprisingly vivid performance by country music star Tim McGraw as a bitter, washed-up father abusing his fullback son, this was just another boring, failed attempt to make a decent sports movie.
And then I rolled my eyes when I heard Berg was going one step further and turning FNL into a TV show. When’s the last time there’s been a good sports show on television? Coach? 1st and Ten? Arli$$? But Berg hated that he had to dump the rich details of lower-middle class Texas life in the movie and sought to explore that on a series.
What has happened in the four seasons since has been a minor miracle, quite possibly the most underappreciated show on TV and a sign that if they try hard enough, over-the-air networks can still provide fantastic programming that don’t feel like they need to show Anna Paquin’s boobies and call it “art,” splatter blood on the screen to prove they’re badass, or idolize rich bitches that make fun of people with no money and complain whenever their bathtub isn’t filled with Moët.
Most parts of the show are fictionalized: Permian is now “Dillon,” and none of the protagonists in the book appear in this iteration. But I’ve gotten over the complete transformation FNL has taken from its source material and just accepted its own world. Start with Kyle Chandler, whose Eric Taylor is a man trying to lead a life of honor and truth, even though this season saw him removed as head coach at Dillon and reinstalled at previously closed East Dillon High. The only thing more beautifully anachronistic than Taylor’s heroic attributes is that the show doesn’t ridicule him for having them.
Connie Britton plays Taylor’s wife, Tami, the current principal at Dillon. It’s not every day you see a drama about school politics, and the way her husband was ash-canned from her school adds a juicy subtext. Also, kudos to Friday Night Lights for giving us the most mature and sexiest relationship between a long-term committed couple on television.
The young players add to the fertile life of the Dillon Panthers. They’re led by the magnetic Taylor Kitsch, who’s playing ex-player, and loser, Tim Riggins with a rugged charisma that makes you root for him even though he’s decided to live his life his own difficult way. Until he was written out earlier this year, Zach Gilford made his Matt Saracen into a character of admirable rectitude and quiet sensitivity; his scenes where he’s mourning the death of his absent father in Iraq generated Emmy buzz. And Aimee Teegarden does great work as the Taylors’ daughter, Julie. The interactions between her and Tami as Julie visits colleges (the ensemble usually improvises their scenes and the cameras are handheld, thus implementing a cinéma vérité style you wouldn’t expect on a show about football) feel bracingly real.
In fact, realistic is one of the great qualities of FNL. This season they’ve reintroduced the racial inequities that made the book so fascinating. Dillon is on the right side of the tracks, and the affluent (read: whites) virtually rebuilt their homes in order to be zoned in the “right” Dillon. East Dillon is closer to the poor side of town, and thus the Lions are filled with the less affluent (read: black) students wearing scratched-up jerseys, playing in a pockmarked field and dressing in trashy locker rooms. Their best player, Vince Howard, was put onto the team instead of jailed in juvenile detention. Michael B. Jordon is doing a superb job navigating his character’s maturation process while trying to break from his gang past and learning to deal with his crush dating a white guy – who’s also his teammate.
There is no show that treats the residents of a small, rural, economically depressed American town with such respect and care. And although the few critics of Friday Night Lights deride the high school relationships as soap opera, the young actors are so good at expressing their ardor and their heartbreak. This drama is so great because their problems, whether it’s on the gridiron or in a school board meeting or at a party or around the dinner table, are relatable. We care because their struggles, however inconsequential in the big scheme of things, become our struggles. In a television landscape that’s usually set in blinged-out apartments or penthouse offices, seeing a show in what feels like real America is something special and is worth rewarding.
And finally, the plaudits have come. Although it’s been recognized by many low-level award societies, and even though it has yet to receive a Best Drama Emmy nod, Chandler and Britton were nominated for Best Actor and Actress on Thursday, the first time they have been so honored. (No, LeBron was not nominated.) Maybe that’ll bring the ratings this show deserves.
Unfortunately, you don’t have too much time left. Including the July 9th episode, there are four installments left in the fourth season on NBC. And this fall, DirecTV will air the 12 episodes of the fifth and final season. (They’re shooting the series finale in two weeks!) Meanwhile, the first three seasons are available on DVD. Plus, there’s NBC.com, Hulu. … FNL might be handicapped by being aired on Fridays – does NBC really think ratings would suffer if it were aired on, say, a Wednesday instead? It’s only summer – but with the plethora of vehicles to catch up with, you have no excuse. So I beg of you, I implore you, to give this show a chance. You may never see a drama about good people, people like you and me, trying to make their way through life with the help of family, friends, and football, like Friday Night Lights ever again.