"I think EVERYBODY loves Football."
WRONG.
I'm not big into any kind of -balls, and I particularly dislike what I (admittedly in an idiosyncratic manner) perceive as the slow nature of Football, but I still spell the word with a capital F with the care of the superstitious. And I love "Friday Night Lights", how about it? I watched its first season intermittently- given the way it was handled by its parent network, NBC, that was the only way anyone watched it. Now DirectTV airs it with a promise of an extra two seasons, (again with a schedule so disjointed it might have been a side-lined quarterback's femur). That makes that for a relatively long-running, 5 season show that no one ever talks about- but I'm joining in.
It's impossible to figure out WHY such small fandom from Peter Berg's direction and writing on a pilot powerful enough to proudly bump shoulders with its originating Billy Bob Thornton movie, (also directed by Berg.) This is a show about the same Middle America that complains it's always being neglected in television portrayals: L.A. and New York and all-purpose, no-geography suburbia replace it. Well, here you are Middle America, and your religion is Football and Mass takes place on Friday Nights and the State Championship is the Holy Grail. But this is no religion for the meek and saintly: you gotta be able to crush God to a pulp if you wanna win. That pre-game prayer is only a propitiary ploy. The local chapel is closed on Friday evenings- and it ain't no Sabbath thing. When a drunk high school player toasts: "Here's to God, and Football", it's pretty clear which one of those items is just getting lip service. And when a woman from Dillon, Texas tells new coach Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler): "You're gonna kill them, coach, give them Hell", she's not being metaphorical.
Before the big game, Taylor is completely deaf to his wife, Tami (Connie Briton), and her campaign for a new house, as well as to Julie (Aimee Teegarden), his "brainy" teenage daughter who reads Moby Dick and tells us, we couldn't guess, that the whale is the state trophy and Dad is Coach Ahab. (She doesn't tell him how the book ends, and he clearly isn't going to read anything short of Vince Lombardi's memoir.) But the show is not critical of that, it gets it: its alliance, too, is with the goal line.
The way football brings everyone together even as team egos strive to pull the players apart is INDEED inspiring and more energetic that many a Church meeting. (BTW, energetic Church meetings are always cause for alarm- a lynching mob follows not soon after.) Who's in the team? There's "Smash", (Gaius Charles) the trash talking Muhammad-Aliesque quote-dropper, ready to endorse Adidas, Nike, AND Reebok: his heart and greed are big enough for it all. There's Jason (Scott Porter), the golden quarterback whose career (apparently) ends just as the show begins. There's Tim, (Taylor Kitsch, who went on to play Gambit in "X-Men Origins: Wolverine.") Tim starts out as the team-mate bashing drunk who expels alcoholic fumes during interviews- and who, realistically, hopes Jason makes it big and sends him 1% of his paycheck to save him from the oblivion that inevitably follows football players who don't make it to college. There's Matt (Zach Gilford), the sweet back-up quarterback who likes Julie and will obviously have to man up and step into the game- all kinds of game.
There's the hottie duo of light Lyla (brunnete Minka Kelly) and dark Tyra (blonde Adrienne Palicki)- they fight over guys but one does wish the guys would quietly back up and leave them to make nice- amorously, if they have to.
And then there's Football, overpowering all-mighty Football.
ABOVE: The girls from "FNL", Minka, Adrienne and Aimee. The one to the right looks like she's 14, so don't allow yourself naughty thoughts. They're all supposed to in high school anyway, so you're a pervert if you looked. Pervert! You looked, didn't you?
It's ok, you're forgiven, I sympathize: Like I said, I'm not big into -balls.
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