‘Friday Night Lights’ is the best thing I streamed this week
‘Friday Night Lights’ is the best thing I streamed this week
Coach Eric Taylor has a special place in my heart, especially when the fall rolls around.
Autumn is my favorite season of the year. I don’t enjoy hot weather immensely. and I’m fortunate to live in a state where fall colors can get especially stunning. As a huge football fan, fall is also a favorite season for obvious reasons. And in that vein, every time the fall comes around, I schedule myself for a rewatch of “Friday Night Lights.”
The show first came on TV when I was in high school, so there’s no denying it’s got a nostalgic spot in my heart. But the reason I continue to come back to it, year after year, is that the show just holds up — it really does. I’ll give more of my thoughts on why, and why it was my favorite stream of the week.
“Friday Night Lights” is a drama series set in the fictional town of Dillon, Texas. The show centers on the town high school’s football team, the Dillon Panthers, a group with high expectations and powerful personalities who are the responsibility of the tough but paternal Coach Eric Taylor. As the team manages the pressures of those expectations and the challenges of growing up, Taylor continually confronts a Texas football culture where winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.
Jumping back into “Friday Night Lights” immediately reminds me how compelling all these characters are. The show has a large ensemble cast, and it’s a credit to each actor that each character’s storyline is continuously interesting throughout the first season and beyond. The biggest standout from the show’s early years is probably Jesse Plemons, who went on to receive an Oscar nomination for “The Power of the Dog.” But “FNL” launched the careers of a huge number of actors, most notably Michael B. Jordan (Vince Howard), Taylor Kitsch (Tim Riggins), Adrianne Palicki (Tyra Collette), Zach Gilford (Matt Saracen), and Minka Kelly (Lyla Garrity).
Kyle Chandler’s Eric Taylor and Connie Britton’s Tami Taylor are the heart and soul of the show, and even in the show’s rougher seasons, they keep things moving. Both were nominated for Primetime Emmy Awards for their roles in the series in 2010 and 2011, with Chandler winning in the latter year. The amount that these characters care unceasingly is what makes them so watchable in my eyes, and that trait carries through five seasons that see other characters come and go.
The writing of the show over those five seasons is hit and miss. The first season sets the table incredibly well; it’s the quintessential Texas football fairy tale in every way, with the star quarterback going down with injury, the young charismatic coach wrangling a team of wayward kids all the way to the state playoffs, and the plucky backup quarterback leading the team to ultimate glory despite all the challenges.
The reason this relatively by-the-book plot works in Season 1 is that the actors are fantastic, the characters themselves are well-written, and the divisive issues of race, pressure on young athletes to succeed, and other truly adult storylines that the show isn’t afraid to confront carry viewers through in style.
But the tandem of series creator Peter Berg and de facto Jason Katims took the show off the rails at times. Seasons 2 and 3 of “Friday Night Lights” were uneven at best, and featured sometimes-insufferable storylines (Landry murdered a rapist and his cop dad helps to cover it up? How did we get here?). It is a testament to the middling quality of these seasons that they did not receive any Emmy nominations, whereas the show garnered at least two nods in Seasons 1, 4, and 5.
To the credit of Berg and Katims, they essentially rebooted the show in its fourth season, retaining Chandler and Britton and essentially replacing the rest of the cast. Once again, their eye for young talent was sharp when they brought Jordan to the show in Season 4, and he shines brilliantly for a pair of seasons that support him with renewed writing juice.
There are some moments when the show feels dated, but not many. Most of the issues portrayed in the drama are relatable to everyone in some way or another; rest assured, if you’re a first-time viewer, this is not a silly teen drama with unreal problems…most of the time. Usually, the show is deeply earnest, as it makes clear when the character set up to be the superstar hero quarterback is paralyzed during a game in the show’s pilot.
The streaming rights of “Friday Night Lights” can fluctuate, to the dismay of fans. It’s available on Prime Video at the moment, but it’s an NBC Universal property, and I’d imagine the company will pull the show back to its own streamer Peacock when the in-progress series reboot gets closer to launching. If you’re a fan, or new to the show but are intrigued enough to try it, jump on it before it’s gone!
Prime Video
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