Friday Night Lights is an Excellent TV Show

In Esquire, Chuck Klosterman wrote:

Friday Night Lights is such a brilliant, effective TV show that — sometimes — I don’t enjoy watching it. Very often, I will feel on the verge of tears throughout an entire episode; it is the most emotionally manipulative show ever made. Part of it has to do with its brilliant use of music; if you play Explosions in the Sky loud enough, the process of hanging drywall can be a life-altering experience. But the larger reason Friday Night Lights is so moving is the way it taps into all the conservative impulses most mediacentric intellectuals try to ignore. The show’s moral code is so traditional and pure that it borders on cliché. It’s reactionary in the best possible way. Whenever I watch it, I find myself thinking, I bet my parents would love this.

Yeah, I bought the DVDs for my parents. In Walking the Dinosaur (pretty fun read!), Klosterman wrote:

Here is a show about a high school football team in Texas, packaged as a melodramatic soap opera. While certain aspects of the program are legitimately well done by any standard (most notably the relationship between the head coach and his wife), much of the action involves implausible characters doing unbelievable things... But even when the on-screen action is ridiculous, it always has a physical impact on me — the combination of the music and the imagery consistently makes me feel like I'm on the verge of tears. Friday Night Lights can make my stomach hurt, even when my mind says "This is silly."

You can read more by Klosterman at ESPN. But the point is that the above was written before the most recent run of episodes, which are incredible. Here's Sepinwall, with minor spoilers

Most dramas, even the really good ones, will take you so close to the characters' emotions and no closer, as if they fear the audience will grow uncomfortable if there isn't some distance between themselves and the characters. (Based on the show's microscopic ratings, those other shows are probably, sadly, correct.) But the improvisational, documentary-style aesthetic that Peter Berg created in the film and the series pilot, and that Jason Katims, Jeffrey Reiner and company have continued over the last three-plus seasons, shatters any kind of barrier between viewer and viewee. The actors are encouraged to let everything hang out, to let us feel the fear that Tami might be feeling as she has the sex talk with her daughter, the anticipation and joy that Smash has when he gets the call from Texas A&M, the heartsickness that Eric feels when he tends to his shell-shocked troops at halftime of the Lions' first game.

Most of the actors on the show are great at this (it's no doubt part of why they were cast), but few are better at it than Zach Gilford, who owns every minute of his greatest spotlight to date.

I also recommend the FNL podcast, which is possibly my favorite examplar of the medium. Blake and his cohort may as well be residents of Dillon, they analyze the show without a hint of skepticism or suspicion of subtext. Applebee's, a sponsor in earlier seasons, does not (yet) feature in Season 4. "I assume it's still there," Blake informs. Other lines of inquiry: "What were your favorite one liners from the episode?" "I anticipate many battles between Tami and Joe McCoy. How do you see that playing out?" and "Red just looks funny on Coach Taylor. What do you think?" It's either the most in character analysis of any television show, ever, or it suggests that perhaps Friday Night Lights may find a wider audience yet.

For Adriana and I, the show is instant waterworks, uncommon for us. All time, we're not quite in The Wire territory yet, but we're well past Sopranos and Mad Men, and sneaking up on Twin Peaks.

Comments

[Michael Sippey]

[this is good]

And -- OK OK! Uncle! I'll start watching from Season One. Can't believe I've missed this much already.