Clear eyes, full hearts
In a post several weeks ago I mentioned a few of the shows I was most excited about for this new fall season, and among that list I included Friday Night Lights. Truth is, that entry was slightly misleading – although there are new episodes of Friday Night Lights this fall, airing every Wednesday night, the chances you’re actually able to watch them are very slim. Facing the commonplace reality of terrible ratings for a stellar show, NBC made the unusual decision to seek outside assistance in order to keep Friday Night Lights alive. As a result, the show is co-funded by DirecTV, and NBC doesn’t get to air the episodes until well after DirecTV has had exclusive access to the whole season. Which means that if you have DirecTV, congratulations, you can watch the new season of this fabulous show. If not, wait until next spring and be thankful (as I am) that somehow this deal is lucrative enough to keep the show in production. All of which is to say, a new episode of Friday Night Lights aired this week, and I’m loathe to write about it because I’m sure no one has seen it. I’ll probably write about it in detail once it starts to air on NBC, but for now I think I’ll hold off. I do want to take this opportunity, however, to describe in a little more detail why the show’s great and why you should take the time to catch up for the new season next spring.
Yes. I am in love with a show about football.
The first thing I feel I have to mention about Friday Night Lights is that it is a show about football, and I assure you, in normal circumstances, there are few things I care about less than football. I have no particular issue with the sport, but have never found it at all intriguing – large men smash into each other on an otherwise lovely, manicured green field, and I am pretty much hollow inside. I am the embodiment of “meh.” I think it’s necessary to emphasize the full extent of my indifference, because I certainly wouldn’t want anyone to dismiss the show thinking that it’s merely a show about football. I dismissed it for several years under that very same impression, and if I could, I would time travel back to my four-years-ago self and attempt to knock some sense into me.
Truth be told, it is a show about football, but it’s also about American images of masculinity, poverty and betrayal, bodily power and bodily weakness, Texas landscape, youth, and maturity. In the beginning of the show, protagonist Coach Eric Taylor becomes the head coach of the Dillon Panthers, the single bright spot in an otherwise ramshackle and struggling Texas town. Several of his football players become fascinating, problematic, charismatic figures, as Coach Taylor’s wife Tami and his daughter Julie. Many of the excellent plotlines come from the players’ lives, the most heartbreaking of which include Tim Riggins, whose only caretaker is his drunken buffoon of an older brother, and the achingingly sweet quarterback Matt Saracen, who lives with and cares for his ill grandmother. The show revolves around the classic, cliché storylines that any sports fiction must – winning and losing, struggle and heroism, underdogs who pull through – but after witnessing Matt Saracen remind his grandmother yet again that he is her grandson, not her son, winning on the football field pulls an entirely different emotional punch.
Eric and Tami Taylor
The players are excellent, and supply Friday Night Lights with the persistent drama and tears of a high school narrative. But players come and go, and the show’s core will always be Eric Taylor and his family. If nothing else, watch Friday Night Lights for one of the best and most moving depictions of marriage I have ever seen on tv, and the amazing performances by Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton that make it possible. Eric and Tami disagree with each other, at times to the point of electric, wordless anger. They deal with problems that face any marriage, especially when Tami makes the decision to go back to work after working primarily in the home for many years. No matter how frustrated, though, they approach each other, quietly apologize, and move forward. Every day brings new stressors and obstacles, and they move through it with confidence that they will remain whole.
Even setting aside Friday Night Light’s gorgeous aesthetic, pleasantly melancholy score, and rich storytelling, I would watch it just to watch the Taylors be married to each other day after day. Do I sound like I want to be them? I do, a little bit. I’d probably try to do it without the football, though. In my minimal real life experience, it’s never as interesting as it is on Friday Night Lights.