What if they made a great television drama and nobody watched? What if said drama was bolstered throughout its premiere year by rabid praise and die-hard fans and still nobody watched? What if said drama was renewed, along other lesser-known yet more-beloved shows, for another promising year on the air and still no one appeared to view it? Such is the predicament of Friday Night Lights - the profoud, exquisite expose of small-town life that was spun from Peter Berg's 2004 film of the same name (Berg himself brought the concept to the silver screen and he sticks around to exec-produce, as well as write-direct the pilot). But what, ultimately, is the failing of Lights? By all accounts it struggles to find a hearty, a steady, audience; so how can it be that a program with such a negligible fan base be such a critic-winner? Simple: FNL is brilliant. Period.
The series begins much as the film did. It sets up the standard players (though perhaps in a far more crisp, interesting fashion) and then unrolls the standard plot devices: we've got Matt Saracen (Zach Gilford) as struggling QB2 under Jason Street (Scott Porter) - the golden boy of high school football - and their coach Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler), not to mention "Smash" Williams (Gaius Charles) - the cocky runningback - and Tim Riggins (Taylor Kitsch) - the half-drunk fullback. It's a team primed for victory (and not without a healthy dose of pathos)- but also one destined for collapse. Street incurs a tragic accident and whoosh the cards all fall down. With that loose thread, it all begins to unravel and re-thread; the eventual emerging picture? A story told over a multitude of perspectives, refracted through a dozen different townspeople, over a seaons worth of episodes, about one town with one hope, dying slowly.
Yet in that death, rebirth? The quick-change early episodes launch off from the pilot's obvious mechanisms and briskly build a head of steam. Saracen nervously takes the plate as the new QB1; Lyla Garrity (Minka Kelly) and Tim manuever around a wounded Street; Coach Taylor manuevers around a wounded constituency (not the least of which includes the resident honcho-car-dealer and the mayor); his family takes slow root in a new town; Tyra Collette (Adrianne Palicki) takes slow root in an old town; Smash takes a fast route to a new world; and we as an audience are taken along for the ride - one filled to bursting point with pin-point honesty, as true and delicate as all real life and as just as hard to resist.
But, of course, (and as I mentioned to start with) people have. Why? It isn't as though the soap-tropes that would seem to thrive here do, quite the opposite. Or that the cast of Texan men and women are strangled by their own "cliches", because they aren't. No, it is none of these. Could it be instead though that FNL, a football drama that wielded a razor-edge of catharsis for the everyday, simply was too much for its viewers? That is a tough idea to swallow, and one I'm inclined to not particularly trust, but what alternatives are there? Becuase I'm certainly not going to stand around believing the people simply will not view such excellence.
Still worried about that "excellence" bit I've gone on about though? Then look no further to the multi-episode arcs on racism, or sexual abuse, or steroid use, or the War in Iraq for confirmation that Lights, among its more theatrical breathen, is a vision of savy logic and character development - as curious as a wandering documentarian (a notion aided by the shaky camera work - a crafy trick) with twice as much perception and cunning intellect. It helps though that the show is gifted with such a team of writers, foremost of whom is Jason Katims and David Hudgins. Also worth mentioning? The series' phenomenal, phenomenal, cast - old and young actors, veterans and newcomers, who create marvelous, aching performances.
Now close your eyes for a minute and imagine what would happen if such perfectly realized creations all lived together in one town. What do you see - because I know what I see: it's an epiphany, a miracle about one small town struggling, hoping, praying, and living for those bright game nights. Its name is Friday Night Lights and there is nothing like it anywhere else on television today. Savor it.
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