Stadium Shade and Summer Sun
Friday Night Lights (2006-2011)
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
Friday Night Lights isn't a show about Texas, teenagers, or even football - although it benefits from all of those things - so much as a show about a husband and wife. It's a show about parents geared towards twenty-somethings who, by and large, haven't raised kids of their own, and there is wisdom about the right things to say in bad situations, and honest-to-goodness advice about a great many everyday decisions and ordeals. It might ring flat to my folks (I don't know, they've never watched it), but "6 a.m. sharp means 5:45" is a line for everyone.
Keeping Eric and Tami at the forefront excuses the worst of many absurd, and sometimes offensive, subplots, which range from Buddy's struggles with a young Latino he adopts (who simply isn't there at the start of Season 3), to Landry's homicidal streak, to the creation of a predominantly African-American east-side Dillon where Coach transfers and, yes, helps restore a sense of community pride. In those moments, it's nice to meet new kids - Becky, Vince - and watch them get drunk or ask out a boy for the first time. It's good to get back on the field for some of Coach's sage advice, and it's sweet to see Tim kick around the dust of his little patch of ill-gotten land.
HBO, like AMC, is popular for television about people we don't encounter in our day-to-day life - mobsters, vampires, ad agency executives - who nonetheless say something about the people we do. And I love those shows (well, not The Walking Dead); I like escapism and swords. In Friday Night Lights, Eric and Tami talk about moving, but always come home to a small, ordinary home in a tree-lined part of town. They have bills to pay, but they don't shout about them, and when Coach needs to host a barbeque, they find a way to make it work. The Taylors' failings don't make them monsters, and aside from Landry, death on Friday Night Lights is simply, and overwhelmingly, something encountered and dealt with as the people left behind are best able to do.
In some ways it's perfect television, a show I love to hate and love to love. Its rotating cast, with the notable exception of Santiago Herrera, arrives and moves along as gracefully as Don's pitch for a Carousel. Sometimes it rains on the football field - a heavy, warm rain - and if Friday Night Lights were filmed anyplace other than Texas, the camera couldn't convey that as well. I miss Texas hill country, sure, and occasionally the oddness of my long-ago high school days. I never played football, but I watch it, and the best camera work in five seasons comes at the very end, as graceful as can be. The people we love the most - who deserve our love the most - aren't famous, but we hold them dear.
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
Friday Night Lights isn't a show about Texas, teenagers, or even football - although it benefits from all of those things - so much as a show about a husband and wife. It's a show about parents geared towards twenty-somethings who, by and large, haven't raised kids of their own, and there is wisdom about the right things to say in bad situations, and honest-to-goodness advice about a great many everyday decisions and ordeals. It might ring flat to my folks (I don't know, they've never watched it), but "6 a.m. sharp means 5:45" is a line for everyone.
Keeping Eric and Tami at the forefront excuses the worst of many absurd, and sometimes offensive, subplots, which range from Buddy's struggles with a young Latino he adopts (who simply isn't there at the start of Season 3), to Landry's homicidal streak, to the creation of a predominantly African-American east-side Dillon where Coach transfers and, yes, helps restore a sense of community pride. In those moments, it's nice to meet new kids - Becky, Vince - and watch them get drunk or ask out a boy for the first time. It's good to get back on the field for some of Coach's sage advice, and it's sweet to see Tim kick around the dust of his little patch of ill-gotten land.
HBO, like AMC, is popular for television about people we don't encounter in our day-to-day life - mobsters, vampires, ad agency executives - who nonetheless say something about the people we do. And I love those shows (well, not The Walking Dead); I like escapism and swords. In Friday Night Lights, Eric and Tami talk about moving, but always come home to a small, ordinary home in a tree-lined part of town. They have bills to pay, but they don't shout about them, and when Coach needs to host a barbeque, they find a way to make it work. The Taylors' failings don't make them monsters, and aside from Landry, death on Friday Night Lights is simply, and overwhelmingly, something encountered and dealt with as the people left behind are best able to do.
In some ways it's perfect television, a show I love to hate and love to love. Its rotating cast, with the notable exception of Santiago Herrera, arrives and moves along as gracefully as Don's pitch for a Carousel. Sometimes it rains on the football field - a heavy, warm rain - and if Friday Night Lights were filmed anyplace other than Texas, the camera couldn't convey that as well. I miss Texas hill country, sure, and occasionally the oddness of my long-ago high school days. I never played football, but I watch it, and the best camera work in five seasons comes at the very end, as graceful as can be. The people we love the most - who deserve our love the most - aren't famous, but we hold them dear.
posted by NPK at 10:50 PM
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