Friday Night Lights - The First Season

I am a huge fan of One Tree Hill, October Road and The OC so I was hopeful that Friday Night Lights would be on the same level as these titles. It started off a bit slow but once I got into it I really enjoyed it! Is it as good as OTH, October Road or The OC? Well it comes pretty darn close!! Can't wait to watch Season 2!!!!

I love this show! The writing for this show is smart and the actors are wonderful! If you watch this thinking you are getting a show about football you are only touching the tip of the iceberg. Trust me when I tell you that you will fall in love with this show set in a small town in Dillon, Texas.

This is probably one of the best shows I have ever written. It's absolutely wonderful that they focus on the community aspect of a town and integrate football and relationships into it. The men and women are gorgeous so that makes it even more fun to watch. The acting for the most part is just spectacular. I hope it's around for a long time.

Friday Night Lights is a show which is unorthodox glaringly because it focuses on a seemingly boring subject: high-school football in a small, rural, southern town. The reason an audience has eluded this show is precisely because of this seemingly boring premise, yet the ardent defenders of this show will sensitively cite character development, themes and "heart" of the show. Another reason critics dislike the show is because of the jerky camera which resembles amateur camera work, or even a drunkard fooling around behind the scenes. The plan of the producers was obviously to make the show more "realistic" by doing the extreme close-ups and the like, but they failed heavily.

For my money, I refuse to care about the aforementioned criticisms of this show because I feel that my criticism of this show should be the only reason why people dislike this show. In my view, the most obvious affront of FNL is how it disparagingly stereotypes red-state Texans!!!! Whether it's their Christian religion, their southern accents, their passion for football, or their small-town folksiness, white, Christian Americans are being ridiculed in this show because FNL is an elitist show made by Hollywood liberals. In fact, the only reason this show is so popular among critics (read: liberal shills who vote Democrat) is because it reinforces, in its discriminatory stereotyping, the views of liberals on the coast of people in red-state, "flyover states."

Here are some abominable examples of abusive, liberal-elitist stereotyping in FNL's 1st season.

First and foremost is the way many of the actors absolutely parody the southern accent of their characters. Lyla Garrity sounds like a bimbo-ish airhead with her perkiness. The Matt Saracen (does anyone know Saracen means "Arab" or "Muslim"; how PC can you get!) and Landry characters epitomize what liberals on the coast think of Southerners. This is demonstrated inarguably by the way the actors have their characters speak in their southern drawls. Matt's always insecure and like "Uuuuuh, hi there J-J-Julie (Coach Taylor's daughter)!" His best buddy, Landry, relentlessly utters lines like "Uuuuuh, h-h-hi there, Tyra. D-d-do you want suuum help wit dat?" The point is that the liberal actors intentionally speak their southern accents to make Texans look as inbred, dumb and uncouth as libs stereotype them to be!!!!

Another maltreatment is how FNL shows these red-state Texans in social/cultural situations which are often at odds with the Christians they are.

For instance, the Lyla character is a Christian as is her dad, Buddy, yet both are written by the liberal writers to be such personal hypocrites with their cheating on their respective significant others. Lyla, of course, cheats with the lowlife miscreant Riggins while her dad is thrown out of the house by his wife after he admits to an affair. These story developments aren't defensible enough to be cited as mere plot devices; it's inarguably blatant that they're meant to derogate Christians as hypocrites, and one can almost imagine the gloating schadenfreude the liberal writers experienced while penning this BS.

In criticizing this shabbiness of a TV show, I cannot omit the egregious exaggeration of "religiosity" that's skewered by the writers. Again, one can just imagine the sadistic, liberal-slanting writers gloating with malice when they contrive scenes which show the characters in prayer, such as before a big game. The way the mocking writers derogatively portray Texans is almost like the unflattering movie Jesus Camp where Christians are misrepresented as "Jesus Freaks" and general radicals. This is irrefutably established in scenes showing characters like Smash and his fat momma praying with their eyes closed and mouths open as if in rapture.

Yet another unforgivable trespass is the abuse of the Iraq war veteran (Matt Saracen's father) to make a barely veiled attack against the Iraq war policy!!!! The context of the episode arc featuring Matt's father was to disparagingly mischaracterize Iraq vets as returning to troubled homes without enough money to make ends meet. Viewers WILL remember that Matt's father wanted to move the family out of town because he couldn't afford healthcare for Matt's senile/demented grandma and even took a job as a used car salesman.

Completing the lib-elitist stereotypes is an episode dealing with racism where Smash is allegedly defamed by one of the assistant coaches due to his black skin color. Of course, subordinating to the liberal ideology, the assistant coach looks like a bigot full of hatred while Smash is doubtfully portrayed as a courageous "martyr" who stands up for his "rights" despite the fact that his actions actually hurt his whole team!!!!

As I lectured earlier in my thesis, the reason critics (read: liberal agents planted in the media) love FNL is because it reinforces all the demeaning stereotypes of white, red-state, Christian Southerners. FNL questionably depicts all characters in Dillon to be basically white trash from broken homes, white trash who drink and copulate excessively, and white trash who are economically destitute. All the lowest, unflattering tangents are here, whether it's driving pickups or wearing ballcaps or polishing shotguns.

I got into this show for 2 reasons. The first one is I love football. The second one is that I loved the movie.

Now I didn't think this show was going to be nearly as good as the movie, since it's not based on a true story and it's on a TV budget... not a movie budget. But I still wanted to give it a try. And man am I glad I did. Friday Night Lights is MUCH more than just some dumb football show. Yes it does have football and yes it's centered on football, but in all honesty, it feels like football is just a secondary to the great story that we have going on right before our eyes.

Coach Eric Taylor has taken the reigns as the new head coach of The Dillon Panthers football team. QB#1 Jason Street is the golden boy on the team. He's supposedly one of the best quarterbacks that's ever been seen (according to Notre Dame at least). A close second to Jason would be Brian `Smash' Williams. The star running back that can actually back up the big mouth he has. Smash is also a star player that WILL be going somewhere someday. The Panthers are littered with talent in other spots as well, but a curveball is thrown to them in their first game of the season and Jason Street has to leave the game only to be replaced by the somewhat shy Matthew Saracen. Can Saracen help lead the team and win them and Coach Taylor the first game of the season? Well, watch the show and find out...hehe.

Coach Taylor is played by Kyle Chandler. His wife Tami is played by Connie Britton. I seriously do not think they are even acting when you see these two together. I completely forget I'm watching actors. They meld together so seamlessly you would think they are actually married. You can see the love in their eyes when they talk to each other on just little things like grocery shopping. You can see the hurt in their eyes when one of them slips up with the wrong thing said. You can see the irritation in their actions of having to explain themselves to one another because they've been together for so long. And even though they have their faults... they have the type of relationship most of us look forward to having one day (hopefully). Julie Taylor, their daughter, is played by the ever so cute Aimee Teegarden. She is perfectly matched with her parents. Even though she acts a little to smart for britches (like my grandpa used to say), she is still a really good daughter... who Matthew Saracen has a secret crush on. It's great to watch this high school romance happen between the two. It seems almost real to me. Saracen always starts to talk, only to come out with half sentences before she walks off, because he can barely keep his head straight when she's around... lol... I love it. These two relationships on camera work so well that you really do just fall back into high school again as a teenager. Plus, and boy have I been there, the relationship between Coach Taylor and Matthew Saracen has to be some of the funniest stuff to watch. Poor Matt gets in from Coach on AND off the field.

That's only two things I love about this show with much more going on that I won't really go into great detail. But you have Tim Riggins who is the `misunderstood bad boy'. Sounds pretty cliché but it he pulls it off pretty darn well. Then you have Lyla Garrity, the beautiful (and oh is she ever) cheerleader/church girl that is going to marry Jason Street one day. She's slowly being pushed away by Jason because of what he's going through. Her life and future is changing drastically, and sadly, around her. Tyra Collete is, what I'm thinking at least, the school bad girl (drinking and sex of course). Her home living is a mess due to her mom and her school life is bad because she's always with Tim Riggins and she's just doesn't care about school. Or so we think. Another funny character is Landry Clarke, the best friend of Saracen. Just about every part he's in has me laughing.

Friday Night Lights deal with a lot of high school issues such as love, sex, family, drugs, and friendships. The one thing that I just did NOT care for AT ALL was the few episodes on racism. A friend of mine said the same exact thing to me the other day when he got done watching the show. That's the only thing I just did not like at all about this show. It seemed like it had no actual ground to be brought up. Like it was forced on us. And it was basically one coach vs. all the black kids (kids... not parents) on the team. It was completely idiotic and just seemed out of place. Ah well.

I thought the show was going to be cancelled after the second season, but thankfully it's still alive and made it into the third season. I just don't see how TV execs can cancel such a good show when they don't even have any idea of where to put it on TV. The first time was up against American Idol (I believe)... and the second time is on Friday Night. Um. Don't you think your main targeted audience would be OUT on Friday Night watching high school football games or going out and hanging out with friends? Hmmm... smart thinking TV execs.

As for this DVD set, it's got some good extras on it, according to my friend. Sorry I haven't gotten around to them yet. But for 20 bucks... this is a STEAL of a deal.

Support Friday Night Lights. Don't let another good TV show get cancelled again (I miss you Arrested Development!)