I can't wait!!! Darn you NBC! Jay Leno's not even funny anymore...I don't know if it has to do with the format or what? All I gotta say is THANK GOD for DirecTV!!! Without them, we would not even have Seasons 3, 4, and 5, let alone get them early!!! Even though they have a contract, I just don't see NBC even airing Friday Night Lights anymore. Sad.
LOL at everybody downloading it. When no one comments on the episode until the next day, we'll know why. haha
For Your Grammy Consideration: Kanye West for "Heartless" and 808's & Heartbreak Adele for "Hometown Glory" Taylor Swift for "You Belong With Me" & Fearless Maxwell for "Pretty Wings" & BLACKsummer'snight Kings of Leon for "Use Somebody" The Cast of GLEE for "Don't Stop Believin' " Mariah Carey for "Obsessed"
Variety review ---------------------------------------------------- Friday Night Lights By STUART LEVINE
Filmed in Austin, Texas by Imagine Entertainment and Film 44 in association with Universal Media Studios. Exec producers, Brian Grazer, David Nevins, Peter Berg, Sarah Aubrey, Jason Katims; producers, Ron Fitzgerald, Michael Waxman; director, Berg; writer, Katims;
Eric Taylor - Kyle Chandler Tami Taylor - Connie Britton Matt Saracen - Zach Gilford Tim Riggins - Taylor Kitsch Landry Clarke - Jesse Plemons Julie Taylor - Aimee Teegarden J.D. McCoy - Jeremy Sumpter Vince Howard - Michael B. Jordan Luke Cafferty - Matt Lauria
With the Dillon High School graduates now entering the real world, a new group of student-athletes have arrived in this football crazy Texas town. Like a team with an influx of freshmen, the fourth season of "Friday Night Lights" arrives at a transitional juncture. Series, returning on satcaster DirecTV but relegated to summer 2010 duty on NBC, finished last year with what could easily have been a series-ending storyline and now faces the additional challenge of maintaining a high level of quality despite showrunner Jason Katims splitting exec producer duties between this and the Pea****'s "Parenthood."
Since the pilot, Katims has been the creative force of "FNL," and first episode signals he still has lots of original storylines to be mined. Most notable is the change of scenery for Coach Eric Taylor (the always stellar Kyle Chandler), who, despite winning a state title, has been forced out of his old job and reassigned to take over as coach of dilapidated rival East Dillon.
Many of his players -- a majority are minorities, with the school in a depressed part of town that has far fewer acoutrements than Dillon High -- are unwilling to put in the effort needed to become a well-rounded team, and Taylor is clearly starting from scratch.
Just how much Katims and his writers will include former Panthers quarterback Matt Saracen (Zach Gilford) and running back Tim Riggins (Taylor Kitsch) on upcoming episodes remains to be seen. Both are still meandering in Dillon post-graduation -- Riggins discovers he and higher education aren't a good fit -- and having Saracen deliver pizzas after turning down a college scholarship is almost too sad to ponder.
Storylines on those two feel a bit played out, while new characters are intriguing and help the show remain vibrant. Vince Howard (Michael B. Jordan) is one step away from being locked up in juvenile detention before Coach Taylor gives him an opportunity to get off the streets and reinvent himself on the field.
Show's minscule budget has turned into one of its greatest assets, using real-life Austin locales and citizens to bring an authenticity that only adds to the drama.
One doesn't have to be a soothsayer to figure out the season is heading toward a showdown between Dillon and East Dillon. Yet, what has made "FNL" so riveting over its run is that while the town is football obsessed, nothing that happens between the goalposts is as compelling as the journey before the lights go on.
Premiere named "Must Watch of the Week" by Entertainment Weekly ------------------------------------- What to Watch: Must Watch of the Week:
Season Premiere of Friday Night Lights on October 28th 9-10pm DirecTV Ch. 101
Can Kyle Chandler’s Coach Taylor lead his new team, the East Dillon Lions, to victory? Perhaps more importantly, can Friday Night Lights lure more viewers into watching this superlative series? Starting its fourth season this week on DIRECTV (NBC will air these episodes in 2010), FNL is multitasking: Principal Tami (Connie Britton) is taking heat for the high school redistricting, her husband is recruiting new team members (including a troubled lad played by Michael B. Jordan), and the mighty Tim Riggins (Taylor Kitsch) struggles with college life. Will we care as much about the Dillon Panthers when D.W. Moffett’s great bad guy Joe McCoy is running them? And will FNL’s high quality be both maintained and finally rewarded with the Emmys the show deserves?
With FNL returning on Wednesday (and I can't wait), I wanted to throw out my ten favorite FNL episodes of all time...so far. I'm just curious to see what other FNL fans would consider to be their favorites.
Here are my top 10: 10. "State," Season 1 finale (the Panthers play for the state title) 9. "Mud Bowl," Season 1 (a comedy-of-errors on the field turns into a dramatic playoff game) 8. "Jumping the Gun," Season 2 (Riggins gets Coach Taylor's wrath for being with Julie, but finds a small piece of redemption) 7. "Tomorrow Blues," Season 3 finale (Eric's job hangs in the balance, in what could have been the series finale) 6. "Leave No One Behind," Season 2 (Matt struggles to deal with everything around him, after Carlotta walks out; Zach Gilford carried this episode) 5. "Hello, Goodbye," Season 3 (Smash Williams says goodbye to Dillon) 4. "Are You Ready for Friday Night," Season 2 (The Panthers implode without Eric, but the real story was the breakdown between Tami and Julie; their confrontation is one of the series' most powerful) 3. "New York, New York," Season 3 (Jason Street looks for a new life, with his family, in the Big Apple) 2. "Underdogs," Season 3 (the Panthers return to the state finals; Tyra's speech and Riggins' final gesture are two of the series' best moments) 1. "Pilot," Season 1/series opener (the hopes, dreams, fears and resilience of a coach, his family, his players and an entire town are introduced to the world...and a devoted fanbase is thankful for it)
What do you think? What are your favorite episodes of FNL so far?
Posts: 1236 | Location: New York | Registered: November 07, 2003
1. Underdogs (season three) 2. Mudbowl (season one) 3. Eyes Wide Open (season one) 4. Hello/Goodbye (season three) 5. Wind Sprints (season one) 6. Pilot 7. The Giving Tree (season three) 8. Leave No One Behind (season two) 9. Let's Get It On (season two) 10. I Think We Should Have Sex (season one)
Congrats Kristen! All the PD haters can (SPOILER ALERT) Suck it!
Peter Berg and Kyle Chandler on the restructuring of 'Friday Night Lights' October 27, 2009 | 12:14 pm
When the third season of “Friday Night Lights” wrapped in late 2008, star Kyle Chandler was under the belief that he’d be hanging up his coaching cleats for good.
The series, which touches on the political, social and familial impacts of a football-obsessed but beleaguered town, carries with it a small but dedicated audience. Last year, it also became somewhat of a network experiment.
Now a partnership between DirecTV and NBC, “Friday Night Lights” had been trimmed last season from a full 22-episode run to one that capped at 13-episodes. Chandler was convinced that number would soon become zero.
“It was fatigue,” Chandler says, explaining the reason for the negativity. “The first year we were up against ‘American Idol.’ The second year was the writers strike. The third year we get cut down to 13 episodes. I just assumed that while we had a solid base, the numbers wouldn’t go out the roof. … I just didn’t expect that we would overcome a network’s desire for something fresh.”
With “Friday Night Lights” set to begin its fourth season Wednesday night on DirecTV’s 101 Network, Chandler is experiencing something he’s never had on the show before: stability. NBC and DirecTV renewed their partnership for a two-season run of 13-episodes apiece, bringing to an end -- at least for now -- the annual stress over a last-minute renewal.
Yet a sense of uncertainty surrounds practically everything else in the world of “Friday Night Lights.” Set in the fictional Texas town of Dillon, Season 4 serves as a major restructuring of the series.
A plot line involving a town redistricting has provided an opportunity to introduce a host of new characters, as well as disrupt the heart of the show. Chandler’s Eric Taylor, fired as the coach of the Dillon Panthers, is now heading the East Dillon Tigers, a team representing a school made up of kids from the wrong (read: poorer, more ethnically diverse) side of town. His wife, Connie Britton’s Tami, remains principal of Dillon High, and its glorious, well-funded football program.
“It’s a little bit of a Horatio Alger story. He’s going from rags to riches, at least he hopefully is,” Chandler says.
Chandler says he called the writers and personally thanked them after reading Season 3’s finale. “If it were to come back, there was a whole new show,” he says. “If the show didn’t come back, they ended it really nicely. I don’t want to say it’s more fun to play, but it’s more fun playing this guy now than still playing the other guy.”
Executive producer Peter Berg, who directed Season 4’s first episode, as well as the 2004 film that was inspired by Buzz Bissinger book, plans to have a bigger input the next two seasons. No longer a "cheerleader" on the sidelines, he says, Berg is eager to see "Friday Night Lights" explore such timely issues as job security.
“On a macro level, what’s great about the new direction of the show is we’ve completely pulled the rug out from underneath this family,” Berg said. “They’re displaced and they’re on entirely unfamiliar turf. They’re going to have to rebuild and reinvent themselves. We’ve sort of destroyed everything that was familiar to this family. That’s very true to the culture. Three or four years is considered a long run as a head coach. It’s not uncommon for these coaches to have to pick up and relocate their families.”
Show-runner Jason Katims, meanwhile, has his hands full developing “Parenthood” for NBC (look for Stephanie Hunt, who plays indie-rock bass player Devin on “Friday Night Lights,” to appear on that series as well). Yet fans may remember that the last time Katims juggled two shows – in 2007 with “Bionic Woman” – “Friday Night Lights” suffered, getting off its realistic course with a murderous subplot.
Berg, however, says he has stepped up his involvement. He speaks of wanting to help define the course of the show over the next two seasons, and had a hand in casting the new characters. Among the newcomers in the first episode are Madison Burge, whose Becky Sproles is said to get close with Tim Riggins (Taylor Kitsch), and Russell DeGrazier’s assistant coach Stan, who Chandler’s character meets in a dead-end job at Sears. DeGrazier is relegated to little more than comic relief in the first episode, but Berg teases that there’s “a big surprise with Stan later in the season.”
Like last season, some favorites will be leaving.
Chandler spoke to Show Tracker in the midst of filming Season 4’s seventh episode, and relayed that he had just finished shooting his final scene with Zach Gilford’s Matt Saracen. Gilford’s character had turned down enrollment at the Art Institute of Chicago to stay in Dillon and care for his ailing grandmother, as well as continue to date the coach’s daughter, Aimee Teegarden’s Julie.
Fans shouldn’t get too attached to the relationship between Matt and Julie. Says Berg: “Young love doesn’t always last, right? It feels great in the moment, but you have two very young people here. … I always say to all the young actors when they sign up for the show that they should look at this as a temporary gig. You don’t want to be playing a high school football player for 12 years.”
Of course, a decade-plus probably run isn’t in the cards for “Friday Night Lights,” but few expected the series, one that typically averaged somewhere between 4 million and 6 million viewers on NBC, to make it to five seasons.
“The DirecTV deal was a quite success for us,” Berg says. “It speaks to the potential for any show like ‘Friday Night Lights,’ which has a strong fan base but is struggling to put up big numbers. That’s about 99% of the dramas right now.”
USA Today Review --------------------------------------------- Friday Night Lights DirecTV's 101 Network, Wednesday night, 9 ET/PT * * * out of four
By Robert Bianco
As every high school football coach knows, it's tough to replace great talent.
That goes double for Coach Eric Taylor, who lost not only his best players but also his team, having been maneuvered out of Dillon High and exiled to hard-luck East Dillon.
But it's also the task faced by TV's best slice-of-life drama, Friday Night Lights, a still-remarkable series that has prolonged — if not quite improved — its life by innovative cost-sharing and cost-cutting.
The sharing part is why this former NBC series will once again premiere on DirecTV, with NBC repeating the run sometime next year. As for the cuts, you won't notice them in terms of production values, because the show's shot-on-location, bare-bones, handheld look has always been integral to its reality-driven storytelling style.
But you will notice them in a cast that, while still centered on the excellent and Emmy-undervalued Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton, has gone through considerable changes in the supporting roles.
Though Zach Gilford (who plays Matt Saracen), Taylor Kitsch (Tim Riggins), Aimee Teegarden (Julie Taylor) and Jesse Plemons (Landry Clarke) remain, Adrianne Palicki's Tyra, Gaius Charles' Smash, Minka Kelly's Lyla and Scott Porter's Jason are either gone for good or reduced to guest status. In their places are some new East Dillon students (including actors Michael Jordan and Jurnee Smollett) who may someday pop, but don't tonight.
To be fair, while cash may be the main precipitating factor behind the shifts, it's not the only one. The change also reflects the show's desire, forced though it may be, to follow life's normal progression. Kids grow up, graduate and leave town. And that switch has been hastened by the plot upheaval that finds Eric trying to revive the football program at a new, dirt-poor, competing high school.
Even so, to think you can shrink and cut the cast without consequence is not just foolish, it's insulting. It's an insult to the writers, because it implies a character introduced in one hour can be as rich and real as one they've spent three years developing. And it's an insult to the actors because it implies their contributions were valueless.
Yet much that was great remains — in the cast members who carry over, and in the show's desire to detail the struggles of everyday life in small-town America. Is Lights the show it was when it began? No. But it's still better than most anything else on the TV field.
Salon review --------------------------------------------- Friday Night Lights embraces the agony of defeat
Coach Taylor and his scrappy new team of losers are still cause for celebration during the show's fourth season
By Heather Havrilesky Oct. 27, 2009
"Y'all look like a bunch of dumb-asses out there!"
Coach Taylor is at his wit's end. After a few triumphant seasons as head coach of the Dillon Panthers football team, he finds himself trying to rally together a brand-new team at a brand-new school, East Dillon High, after the town is redistricted. The field is brown and dusty. The players have never played football before. (Um, wouldn't a few of the good players have ended up at the new school?) Some of the players have criminal records. Others are unaccustomed to being yelled at, or unwilling to run grueling drills in the withering Texas heat.
Although Taylor (Kyle Chandler) may be facing a losing battle for the first time in his career, in its fourth season, Friday Night Lights (premieres 9 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 28, on DirecTV, airing next year on NBC) is just as thoughtful and restrained as it's ever been, with its focus firmly planted on the small-town disappointments of ordinary people.
Thankfully, one of the show's best characters, Matt Saracen (Zach Gilford), who received a scholarship to arts school in Chicago, chose to stay in Dillon to take care of his grandmother. "You're the only person who's never left me," he told her at the end of last season. "I'm not gonna leave you." Despite his talents, Matt takes a job delivering pizzas, and naturally lands on the front doorstep of Dillon star quarterback J.D. McCoy (Jeremy Sumpter), the guy who was gunning for his spot for so long. J.D. has slowly but surely transformed from a naive, alienated rich kid to a certified dick (we knew he'd get there eventually!).
OK, so the rich kid thing is a little cartoonish – while everyone else in town lives in ramshackle little dumps with scrubby front yards, the McCoys inhabit a gigantic mansion. Who knew Dillon even had a nice part of town? And admittedly, some of the scenes in the first episode where jerk quarterback flirts aggressively with Matt's girlfriend Julie (Aimee Teegarden), then engages in shouting and fisticuffs with Matt, do feel a little bit like a flashback to the stereotypical high school clash ("Welcome to the O.C., bitch!"). But there's a major difference: The underdog in this picture had his day as a celebrated hero, and now he's delivering pizzas to them.
But that's a trajectory that Friday Night Lights (and the book and movie before it) always set out to trace. High school football stars are heroes in small American towns, but when those glory days are over, what are the kids left with? A pitiful few get football scholarships to college, and a tiny fraction of those eventually go pro. The rest pin their hopes on terrible odds, buoyed along by a cheering crowd, but then wake up one day as nobodies in a place with few job opportunities, wondering what to do next.
Tim Riggins (Taylor Kitsch), who once looked determined to go to college, sits in class for about three seconds before bailing on the whole thing. Obviously Riggins isn't exactly a scholar, but what is he going to do in Dillon, beyond getting drunk, getting batted around by mean rednecks, and sleeping with high school girls? ("What's it like being the guy who used to be Tim Riggins?" one stranger asks him.) This is why longtime characters like Brian "Smash" Williams (Gaius Charles), Jason Street (Scott Porter) and many others had to leave the show -- how many stories about rudderless high school graduates in a small town can you service at once?
Nonetheless, the real glory of Friday Night Lights is its uncanny ability to take something that shouldn't really make a TV show -- regular people, butting up against life's major disappointments -- and squeeze stories and characters out of it that resonate beyond the dusty limits of Dillon County. We may have seen Riggins fall on his face drunk and Saracen grapple with his grandmother's health problems one too many times before, but there's always some fresh way of approaching a well-beaten path that these writers find for the show's best characters. Just look at Coach Taylor, with his team full of broken, inexperienced players, crestfallen over their limited chances at victory. There's no way this team will make it to a state championship, but somehow it's hard not to suspect that we'll get lots of moments straight out of the Little Football Player That Could movie Rudy -- former sidekick Landry (Jesse Plemons) finds his footing on the East Dillon team, former naysayers and screw-ups become big Coach Taylor fans, former criminal Vince (Michael B. Jordan -- yes, that's Wallace, the teenage drug dealer-turned-informant from the first season of The Wire) transforms into a star running back before our eyes.
All of which probably sounds predictable if you've managed to miss the first three seasons of this fine drama (sure, even the much-maligned second season had its moments). But the writers of Friday Night Lights, even when they're challenged with reimagining Rudy, know how to make us believe in the heartbreaks and small victories these characters face. And after all these years, when Coach Taylor looks out over the heads of his new team of mediocre talents, outcasts and misfits, and whispers, "Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose!" you'll still want to storm the field and prove him right.
Chicago Tribune review --------------------------------------------- Coach Taylor faces a challenge as Friday Night Lights returns
by Maureen Ryan
Coach Eric Taylor of Friday Night Lights (8 p.m. Central Wednesday, DirecTV's 101 Network; * * * ½) has had his share of ups and downs, but Season 4 of the show finds him as down as he has ever been, professionally speaking.
Even when things weren’t going well for the Dillon Panthers, the high school football team he led with sternness and compassion, Taylor (Kyle Chandler) still had excellent facilities and an extensive staff at his disposal. Money wasn’t really a problem for the Panthers, a perennial powerhouse in Texas football.
Of course, Friday Night Lights has always been about much more than football: This fine ensemble drama has used sports as a vehicle for telling nuanced stories about race, class and family. Though the Panthers, occasionally get their moments in the sun, Dillon is usually a place of reduced expectations and limited options.
So it comes as no surprise that the new season of FNL sees Taylor going through the kind of involuntary retrenching that many Americans are experiencing. The nice stadium, the lavish equipment budget and the extensive staff are gone. Thanks to redistricting and some maneuvering by his detractors, this season Taylor is coaching the East Dillon Lions, a poorly equipped and unskilled squad.
You can judge Taylor's contentment level by how much he stalks around with his jaw clenched, and there's a lot of sideline stomping as the season begins. But as usual, Kyle Chandler makes the charismatic Taylor's frustration compelling. And the question of the season, as always, isn't limited to whether Taylor can make the team competitive. It's also about whether he can turn undisciplined boys into men. Dramatically speaking, it's all to the good that the coach has his work cut out for him.
Taylor's wife, Tami (Connie Britton), has her own set of challenges -- as principal of Dillon High School, she receives an avalanche of criticism about the redistricting (parents see East Dillon as a second-rate high school). As if that's not enough to deal with, prominent Panther boosters think they run the Panther football program. Despite her down-home friendliness, the shrewd Tami isn't about to allow that.
It'll be interesting to see how FNL manages the post high-school era for several of its characters -- a transition that has often led to choppy, disjointed stories on other shows that have featured characters navigating those years. This season, both Tim Riggins (Taylor Kitsch) and Matt Saracen (Evanston's Zach Gilford) are still kicking around Dillon, where their prospects seem less than exciting.
"How does it feel to be the guy who used to be Tim Riggins?" a high schooler asks the former Panther star, who seems unmooored without Taylor's guidance.
Saracen decided to stay in Dillon and care for his grandmother rather than attend art school in Chicago, and dealing with the outcome that choice is proving difficult. But then Saracen's life, especially, has consisted of tough choices and a narrow range of options. Four seasons in, I still find myself wanting the world to give this hangdog kid a break.
Julie Taylor (Aimee Teegarden) and Landry (Jesse Plemons) are still in high school, and a new roster of young characters joins the cast this season. If a few of them prove as memorable as Riggins or Saracen, FNL will be in good shape.
The show certainly has a lot of ground to cover in its 13-episode fourth season (which is set to air next summer on NBC). This year, the challenge is to create fresh, interesting story lines for new and returning high school characters, integrate the post-high school crowd into the show and mix the stories of the East Dillon team with those of the Panther players. It’s a tall order, but in the early going, the show seems up to it.
Besides, haven’t we learned that Friday Night Lights is usually pretty good at pulling off the underdog win?
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Alan Sepinwall review ----------------------------------------- Friday Night Lights season four review
Sepinwall on TV
One of the trickiest dilemmas facing any show on the bubble for renewal is how to end your season. Do you go with a cliffhanger, essentially daring the network to cancel you and risk upsetting your small but loyal audience if you don't get renewed? Or do you play it safe and wrap everything up, even if that means there are no stories left to tell?
The third season finale of "Friday Night Lights" handled this problem as elegantly as I've seen, brilliantly serving both masters. It ended with Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler) ousted from his cushy job as coach of the mighty Dillon Panthers high school football team, and stuck with a demeaning new gig coaching at run-down East Dillon High, just re-opened after decades of disuse.
It was a perfect having-it-both-ways ending. If the show ended, then most of the teen characters had graduated high school, and the shot of Eric and wife Tami (Connie Britton) standing on the abandoned East Dillon field seemed a lovely final image for a show about characters fighting to overcome humble, difficult beginnings. And if it came back, we'd have a new status quo that would allow the writers to take the show in new directions.
As it turned out, NBC and DirecTV were able to extend their content-sharing deal for both a fourth and fifth season. (The upside is that one of TV's best dramas stays on the air; the downside is that if you don't get DirecTV, you won't be able to see new episodes on NBC until sometime in 2010, most likely the summer.) And based on the two fourth-season episodes I've seen, producer Jason Katims and his writers are reveling in the new situation they set up last year.
Most of the characters are still in play, even Panther alums Tim Riggins (Taylor Kitsch) and Matt Saracen (Zach Gilford), but moving many of the regulars to East Dillon High has added some real juice to the show, at a point when the natural lifespan of a drama suggests the material might be getting a bit stale.
Worn-down facilities, no boosters or budget to speak of, and a pathetic roster of talent — a situation Eric, ironically, helped create as the Panthers' coach, when he approved a gerrymandering plan that would keep all of the town's best football prospects on the "west" side of Dillon — has dramatically increased the series' underdog quotient. In seasons past, Eric's biggest problems might have been having to rely on a green backup quarterback, or settling a feud between his superstar tailback and his star fullback. Now, he has a team where the players barely know what a huddle is, where the most experienced player is former Panther benchwarmer Landry (Jesse Plemons), where his top lieutenant is an over-eager Pop Warner coach he meets in the appliance department at Sears, where his only player with any discernible talent is a budding juvenile delinquent named Vince (Michael B. Jordan, whom fans of HBO's "The Wire" will recognize as doomed corner boy Wallace).
By stacking the odds so heavily against our beloved coach, the writers have constructed a world where any tangible progress, however modest, feels like a huge moral victory. And late in tonight's season premiere, the team's pathetic early state sets up one of those spine-tingling moments that no show on television does as well as "Friday Night Lights."
The East/West Dillon split also helps the show jump a hurdle that's felled many a past high school show that's reached this stage. Most high school series just follow their characters post-graduation, often contriving reasons for them to all attend the same college, and the stakes never feel as high, or the drama as interesting. But because this show's leads are the two adult Taylors, we stay in Dillon — and in the world of Texas high school football, it's plausible that certain kids, even star players, would never get very far out of town. And by moving to a new school, and one where few of the kids have organized team sports experience, it becomes easier and more natural to introduce a bunch of new characters, several of whom have nothing to do with the team.
(It's at this point that I should add the usual caveat that, while "Friday Night Lights" is about a football coach and his team, it's about so much more than sports — small-town politics, race, class, family and romance, among other topics — and it's a shame that the title and setting scare away so many viewers who would love the show.)
Other than Vince, the newbies are being slowly worked into the narrative, which puts even more of a burden onto Chandler and Britton, two superb, underrated actors more than up to the task. Chandler gets to play an Eric who's more desperate and unsure than we've ever seen him — he has an explosion midway through the premiere that's terrifying, given how composed he usually is — but he's still fundamentally the decent, wise man we know. And Britton gets to play a Tami who — as principal of West Dillon High, not to mention the chief proponent of the controversial redistricting plan — has to hide behind a false smile more than ever as she's attacked from all sides. Chandler, Britton and the writers have created the most realistic, nuanced and simply appealing married couple on television.
The new season isn't perfect. Riggins and Saracen often seem to be appearing in their own separate shows (though I would watch a spin-off built around Tim and his knucklehead older brother Billy, particularly if it was a half-hour comedy). And Panther QB JD McCoy (Jeremy Sumpter) turns from misguided-but-decent kid to obnoxious jerk in such an abrupt, over-the-top manner that he may as well hit Saracen over the head with a folding chair, WWE-style.
Overall, though, it's a privilege to have this gem of a drama back on television, even if the business deal that's keeping it alive means that fans without a satellite dish will have to wait months to see these episodes.
"There's a joy to this game, is there not?" Eric Taylor asks his fledgling team shortly before its first game.
There's definitely a joy to this series, no matter how dire things get for its characters.
Matt Roush review --------------------------------------- Friday Night Lights: The Dillon Jungle
By Matt Roush October 27, 2009 10:37 PM EST
There are no miracles in Dillon, Texas. A star quarterback gets paralyzed, he stays in the wheelchair (but he does eventually find a way out of town). The star coach gets dethroned by deep-pocketed opponents, he doesn’t find an easy landing across town. That’s the way of the world, and why Friday Night Lights is so special. You want reality TV? This show delivers the dramatic goods with painstaking authenticity each week, and even when it isn’t trying to make you cry, you can’t help but get emotionally involved in the lives of these instantly recognizable and compelling characters.
The real miracle about Friday Night Lights is that I’m still writing about it as it enters its fourth season. Consider it a gift from the satellite-TV gods as DirecTV continues its support of a show that NBC would have jettisoned after its second year because of poor ratings, worse scheduling and a lamentable apathy among the viewing public for TV that doesn’t conform to traditional high-concept formula. Even better, we don’t have to fret all season long about the show’s fate, because DirecTV has committed to a fifth season of 13 episodes. (This season’s episodes will air later on NBC, though maybe not until next summer. NBC’s prime-time real estate being so valuable these days, don’t you know.)
This season of transition gets off to a powerful start as all of Dillon is rocked by a redistricting plan that will find some of the former Panthers joining Coach Taylor, against their will, in the relatively shabby “hellhole” of East Dillon High, home of the forlorn and ragtag Lions. A town meeting overseen by the coach’s wife Tami, Dillon High’s beleaguered principal, is about as civil as your average health-care-reform town hall.
Tempers are raw everywhere, in town and on the practice field, and short fuses detonate frequently in this brawling season opener as we rejoin the lives of (among others) recent graduates Matt Saracen and Tim Riggins, who are coping with life outside the high-school spotlight about as well as you’d imagine. Especially when a rich-kid punk like J.D. McCoy (Saracen’s QB replacement, who still hasn't gotten over Coach Taylor taking him out of a pivotal game) starts crowing, “This is my Dillon now.”
There’s conflict aplenty this season, but the heart and soul of Friday Night Lights, as always, can be found in the struggles of the Taylors: Coach Eric (Kyle Chandler, commanding and careworn), wife/principal Tami (Connie Britton, always a breath of fresh attitude) and even their daughter Julie (Aimee Teegarden), torn between two schools and clashing loyalties.
As Eric labors to build a team, which means instilling discipline and self-esteem that is in dreadfully short supply, there’s none of that fake, forced uplift you find in clichéd sports movies. When he lays down the law to his unruly new players, not everyone wants to hear it. The locker-room pep talk before the first game is as stirring as you’d hope, all about the glories of Texas football, “the pride that it gives us and the respect that it demands,” but that doesn’t make it any easier to take the field when the odds are so stacked against you.
There are no miracles in Dillon, Texas, except for the one that allows us to keep watching this profoundly moving series about a small town that feels so real you can almost smell the chili. As the first episode ends, on a brutally uncompromising note, hearts are heavy with burden but also full with promise.
I can’t say how the Lions will ultimately fare, but I predict another championship-quality season for Friday Night Lights.
in the season premiere, Coach Taylor assembles his new team at East Dillon as Tami adapts to the new atmosphere of West Dillon. Matt deals with life as a townie. Tim is inspired by a class lecture.
