I Totally Love This Show


Friday Night Lights

Now in its fifth and final season, Friday Night Lights is one of my favorite shows.  It really shouldn’t be because I have no interest in football but the show uses football as a setting to tell really great stories about the denizens of Dillon, Texas, the mostly poor small town where the show takes place.  The creators, over five seasons, have created a rich tapestry of characters and stories that have kept me riveted to each and every episode.

The show centers around the Taylors. Eric Taylor is the high school football coach with a heart of gold and this guy is a just a good man. Between the great writing and Kyle Chandler’s performance, Taylor is a multifaceted character that can always be relied on to do the right thing in the face of family, school and societal pressures (in the form of  sometimes ridiculously football obsessed townsfolk).

His wife, Tami (Connie Britton) is a guidance counselor turned principal who deals with everyone with charm and class. She makes mistakes, like in the early episodes when she disapproves of her daughter befriending the town bad girl or when she gets tangled up with the Christians over another girl’s abortion, but always manages to keep things together.  She owns up to her mistakes and defends her actions with aplomb. These are good, humble Christian people in the way that Christians are supposed to be but so often are not. 

Their daughter, Julie (Aimee Teegarden) grows up over the course of the series. We get to see her teenage rebellion and its fallout on her relationship with her parents. She falls in love for the first time and deals with all that entails. In the latest episodes she goes off to college only to make one bad decision after another and its fascinating to watch this little star get tarnished.

The rest of the cast is mostly the students on the football team and their family and friends. We’ve seen players seriously injured, affairs, scholastic difficulties, relationships starting and ending, friendships and some have gone on to college (or to jail) and new kids have come along with new sets of problems just like in real life.

The show is filmed using hand-held cameras and has an improvised feel. The plots are mostly football-related or kitchen sink (minus the stalker story line which rang a little false but had two of the best characters involved) drama and are done really well. The more you watch this show the more your affection for the people in it will deepen.

As it hurtles towards the finish line (look what I did!) in its last season, I’m both excited to see what happens and sad because I won’t be able to see the town of Dillon any more.