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Up until last fall, I did not watch Friday Night Lights. I mean, what in the world did I want with a fictional Texan high school football team? However, while waiting for cable to be hooked up in a new apartment, I found myself with nothing good to watch. So, with Netflix and Hulu's help, I mainlined the first couple of seasons of FNL and fell hard for the fictional Texas high school football drama.
You have to understand, I watch only one football team. It's the same team I've watched my entire life. It's the team that taught me the rules of football at a very tender age. It's the team whose fight song I knew before our national anthem. Though I grew up in Minnesota Gopher territory, I am a Michigan Wolverine through and through. Cut me open and not only will I bleed maize and blue, but you'll find a block "M" stamped on my heart. So you can understand how strange it was for me to find myself yearning after another, albeit fictional, football team. But yearn I did and yearn I do.
With the new fall season approaching, I started thinking and planning what beers I'd be sipping while drinking in the faces, accents, and antics of Landry, Matt Saracen, Tim Riggins, and Coach Taylor. Yeah, but then I was brought back to earth by the news that while Friday Night Lights was due back on the air on October 28th, only those with DirecTV would be able to watch. The rest of us poor schlubs? Have to wait not until January 2010 -- which would be somewhat bearable -- no, we have to wait until SUMMER 2010!
Summer? I'm not in the mood for football in the summer! Football is wool sweaters and amber leaves. Football is rich, beefy chili on the stove, and the smell of the heat kicking on as pumpkin ales are crack-popped open. Unless we're talking about the players, football is NOT for shorts and sweating and icy drinks.
According to NBC president Angela Bromstead, the reason for this revolting development is that not enough people are out there watching this awesome show to justify fall placement. I could get deep into a rant about the how such a stupid network decision might drive away even more viewers, as is so often the case when shows are bounced from one time-slot to another, but I'd rather ask all of you non-watchers: What's wrong with you?! And as a follow up: Why you gotta ruin it for the rest of us?
Okay, okay, so it did take me a few years to get into Friday Night Lights, and while I wasn't exactly dragged kicking and screaming to the Dillon Panthers football table, I did have to hit cable rock-bottom in order to start watching it. But I'm here to tell you all that however you get to it, this show is so very worth it.
Here are my five reasons for watching Friday Night Lights:
1. Football. I started jumping up and down and screaming, "Go! Go! Go! GO ALL THE WAY!" at a fictional football game. Okay? That's drama.
2. The opening credits. This is not shiny, happy Beverly Hills living high off their daddies and their dollars. This is gritty, financially-depressed Texas with trailer parks and chain link fences, and they wear their hearts on their Dillon Panthers lawn signs. In the 30 seconds of the grey-tinged opening credits, you fully grok the heartbreaking reality that in Dillon, Texas, the teen football players aren't the only ones who have a lot riding on each game. Football gives this town something to live for.
3. Landry Clarke. Don't take anything from the fact that my husband calls him the "albino Matt Damon," because Landry is probably my favorite character on television right now. It took me a few episodes to realize that I needed to listen hard to everything actor Jesse Plemons said and study his expressions, because his humor and delivery are so subtle and so understated that you might miss some gems if you aren't paying attention. However, going back to rewatch certain scenes with a new eye to Landry was just like eating Pepperidge Farm cookies. You think you've eaten down all the layers but no! There's yet another paper-cupped layer of crunchy deliciousness.
4. Coach Taylor. Oh, Coach Taylor, if you had been my varsity tennis coach in high school, I would have turned my lukewarm skill into a Serena-screaming career.
