Kim Wetter

I am Obsessed with Friday Night Lights Again

For those of you who haven’t seen Friday Night Lights, I will try to make this post with you in mind. For those of you who have seen it, let us pause for a moment of silence for the greatness that was FNL.

I will admit I didn’t help the ratings of Friday Night Lights in the slightest. I didn’t watch it while it was on NBC, I didn’t buy DirectTV to show my undying support for the show. Hell, I barely knew it existed. The first time I finally watched an episode, it was nearing the end of the third season (Read my Season Three Finale recap). I had been told of the greatness and was told I should be psyched to be covering it for my job. There could be a plethora of reasons why I was unimpressed for my first couple episodes I saw, the largest of which would be that it was for work. Not only does that make watching a TV show work, but I had gotten quite good (duh) about finding the A plots and B plots in an episode to better structure my recaps. Because of this new skill I had acquired, I walked away from Friday Night Lights feeling as if it were too structured and predictable. I totally and completely missed the point.

I’ve come to appreciate many shows I could count as formulaic. Concepts such as A plot and B plot exist because this is how television writers tell stories. But I turned my nose up and scoffed at the critically acclaimed darling. I thought I saw through the hype.

This will be one of few times I will fully admit how wrong I was. (Did you hear that Emily? I was wrong. You were right.) Friday Night Lights is a masterpiece.

I recently started rewatching season one with a couple friends who have never seen it. The first misconception is that you won’t like it if you don’t like football. You don’t have to like or even understand football to watch and want these characters to succeed. Season one has our heroes set up as the underdogs. They don’t have it easy and never will. You want them to win because you trust in the strength of their character. Your heart breaks when theirs do.

There’s a certain amount of truth to the way Friday Night Lights is written and acted. The teenagers are awkward, people make terrible decisions and compromise is never easy. At the end of the day, the show must go on. Whether things are going well or utter shit, a game will happen Friday night and you’re gonna win or lose but you have to play. It’s the perfect metaphor for the drama surrounding the games in these character’s lives. (Like most of my blog posts, the entire post should have been written around this one sentence. It could be an entire thesis. Instead, I will just say it and hope that you understand it as truth.)

If that doesn’t make you want to watch, you probably don’t like dramatic television or television in general. Otherwise, I expect the rest of you to log onto Netflix (or your friend’s Netflix account) and take a gander. You won’t be disappointed.