Friday Night Lights

Where has this show been all my life?

Heading into the last disc of Friday Night Lights, Season 1, I've been rendered speechless
by how good this show is. Why is nobody watching this? Is it all the football? All the Texas? All the preposterously attractive young peeps in tight outfits and occasional slow motion? (No, it can't be that). I don't know what the story is, but I'm here to tell you that this show is so good, (not sure if I can actually bring myself to type this)...that I actually felt a little disappointed when season 4 of The Wire (aka, Best Show on TV) hit the streets before I'd had a chance to finish with FNL. Obviously, the Wire takes precedence, but still I find myself jonesing for a little FNL. This show is really, really, really good. Like one tiny notch below HBO good. If not better. Friday Night Lights certainly kicks Carnivale's ass. Ditto John from Cincinnati, Deadwood, Extras, and (shudder) Def Poetry Slam.

Usually when I like a show this much, it's all about the writing, the characters and the acting. I could care less what the show is actually about, and FNL is no different. High school football is just a backdrop, FNL's version of the mortuary industry (Six Feet Under), Mormonism (Big Love), or Hollywood (Entourage). Two things are paramount: that the characters are richly drawn, fascinating, three-dimensional "people", and that their world is presented in such a way that the experience takes on something of an anthropological flavor. I'm telling you, regardless of how you consider the sport of football, it's fascinating to become immersed in a culture wherein a town full of grown, otherwise upstanding citizens spend their lives obsessing over a group of children playing a game. Remember your earliest days of having a driver's license, cruising around in your beat-up junker, going nowhere in particular for the fun of it? Well, imagine every radio station on the dial playing talk radio call-in shows devoted to your performance at last week's game. Imagine the mayor giving you a hard time about your hustle. Imagine having a billboard erected in your front yard, trumpeting your name, number and position. Imagine living in a town spilling over with fat, pathetic assholes still basking in the glory of their bygone trip to "State", shoving blocky Championship rings in your face.

Now imagine being the new, young head football coach in a town like this. A football coach whose job, most feel, is owed solely to having served as longtime mentor to the town golden boy, quarterback Jason Street, who promptly gets paralyzed during the first game of the season, leaving the new coach with an untested, meek JV quarterback at the helm and the burdens of small town Texas football on his shoulders. Kyle Chandler is absolutely brilliant in this role. Each episode seems to bring a new layer to his performance as a man living his life in the eye of the storm. I'm going to go all out and say Chandler is treading hallowed TV drama ground here. He's one of the best I've seen, his performance practically Kristen Bell-ian (whose lights out work as Veronica Mars almost wore out my remote control's Rewind button. Chandler's like that, too, full of small asides, gestures, nuanced movements you need to see again, immediately).

And then there's Connie Britton, as Coach's sexy, wise, guidance counselor wife. Britton pretty much matches Chandler beat for beat, and the way they carry themselves is fascinating to watch, great parents struggling to figure everything out, the perfect symmetry of their relationship a testament to both who they are and were, the high school quarterback and the gorgeous Texan blond (cheerleader?) made good. It can often feel like they are the entire town's parents.

One more shout-out: Brad Leland as local businessman, former UT player, head of the Dillon Panthers booster club, all-around sleazy guy, and above all else football OBSESSED Buddy Garrity is just...unspeakably brilliant. Right down to his physicality, fat necked squeezed into tight shirt collar, skin just this side of red and sweaty, that Texas drawl, the perpetual big boy grown up look of him, all snake-oil salesman and defacto spiritual leader to Dillon's football-worshiping zealots. Leland's is one of those delicious supporting performances that makes a show so textured and great.

Friday Night Lights in in no way without its faults. As with any show featuring this many characters, some are more intriguing than others, some plot lines more compelling, some less. A few lowlights:

1. Jason Street, erstwhile football God, now stuck in a wheelchair, is quite possibly the most whiny, annoying character on network TV. I have been known to audibly grown whenever the show cuts back to his plotline. Scott Porter is terribly cast. In a town full of shockingly attractive young people, even his good looks are the most bland. Ugh. I can't stand this guy, especially now that he's gotten into quad rugby and does stuff like get "Peace" tattooed on his wrist in Sandscrit. What is this, the BU dorms circa 1994?

2. Every game, and I mean every game, somehow culminates in the Panthers being down with three minutes to go, only to either a) stage a highly emotional, even more highly improbable comeback, or b) lose in a thoroughly heartbreaking, only on TV manner. For a show about football, the football is the least interesting part.

3. God, I hate Jason Street. Seriously, he's the worst. Man, I wish the injury could have affected his whine bone.

But seriously, this show is amazing. I don't watch a lot of TV, and when I do I almost invariably think everything is dramatically overrated (30 Rock? The Office? Average, at best). But this is good stuff. Now I just need to fly through the Wire and get back to it.