Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Last Season

Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Last Season

So last Wednesday was the premiere of the final season of Friday Night Lights on DirecTV. In it Landry and Julie got their show send off.. Which while they'll still be season regulars, does mean that their time in Dillon Texas has come to an end and we'll probably only see them while coming back home on vacation or if there's some family drama I'd imagine.

But as it was, it was Landry's last night and Julie promised him an epic night.. which just ended up leading to the Landing Strip. So I guess it was a regular night for a Texas high school football player. A new surprise to the season was a desperate attempt to keep the Riggins boys in the picture by putting Billy Riggins as a new coach of East Dillon.




Now, for those who need a little reminder, here's who we are following in this little slice of West Texas:

Coach Eric Taylor - Former coach of the Dillon Panthers, now coach of the East Dillon Lions. Was fired from his position at the Panthers as the end of Season 3, and took the job at East Dillon to begin Season 4. Ended Season 4 by managing to pull the Lions together into a unit and manage to spoil the Panthers winning streak.

Counseler Tami Taylor - Eric's wife. Eric's rock. was principal of Dillon High during Seasons 3 and 4, only to be eventually forced from her position after advising a girl of her options following an unplanned pregnancy. Will begin Season 5 as a guidance counselor at East Dillon High.

Julie Taylor - Eric and Tami's precocious and whip-smart daughter. Had one of the great loves of her life with Matt Saracen, and through that love, found she had managed to place her heart in Dillon. Ended up turning down college for the time being because of it, as well.

Matt Saracen - The shy boy who became the heart of the Dillon Panthers and helped lead the team to a State Championship. Refused to leave Dillon upon graduation in order to take care of his grandmother and be with Julie. Following the death of his father, took off to Chicago to chase his love of drawing and painting.

Landry Clarke - FNL's comic relief, a boy who joined the football team to impress his father, and maybe the smartest character on the entire show. Lost his virginity to Tyra Collette in Season 2, was the glue that barely kept the Panthers together in Season 3, and was shifted to East Dillon High in Season 4, only to find love with Jess Merriweather and a simmering rivalry with Vince Howard. Ended Season 4 by kicking the game-winning field goal against the Panthers and was last seen heading towards Chicago, on a plane, with Saracen.

Tim Riggins - the heart and soul of Friday Night Lights as a series. Perhaps the primest example of the overgrown boy kings that much of the Dillon Panthers could be, Riggins has had an entire multi-season arc bringing us moment to moment through his emotional and moral growth. In Season 1, he was a drunk and an angry, angsty type. Through a series of collapses and restructures in his whole entire life - from his best friend being paralyzed to his brother getting married to dropping out of college and ending up as Coach Taylor's assistant on the Lions. When we last saw him, he had - in order to pay for the growing medical bills over his sister-in-law's medical bills (his brother, Billy, had - of course - knocked up his girlfriend, a stripper) and to take care of his future niece or nephew - starting running a chop shop out of Riggins' Rigs, his brother's barely-afloat garage. And that itself had collapsed, as he was arrested and opted to carry the burden of prison time himself, rather than destroy his brother's new life by admitting the truth. Was that was the last we will see of Tim Riggins? Likely not, but nobody is sure.



Luke Cafferty - The Great White Hope of Dillon, The Excelsior of Farmboys, The Lone Star King, got transferred to East Dillon (because that's where he was SUPPOSED TO BE <>), butted heads with the rest of the team - in particular, Vince - and knocked up a girl. Plus he bruised/broke his hip something awful taking care of some cattle with his dad, lied about the injury to Coach (yes, lie to your coach - a man who watched as a kid's life nearly got obliterated in one bad moment, smart move there Luke), and eventually hurt himself so bad he was taken out for the rest of the season. What's staring him in the face: a scholarship to St. Pat's, a life free from cattle rustling and farming. He's coming back a little wiser, a little more humble, and without a bum hip.

Vince Howard - QB 1. Trepidatious gangbanger. A kid torn between two worlds. Vince Howard is FNL's replacement for Matt Saracen, and his storyline is primarily responsible for the turn towards a more Wire-like view of Dillon (ironic, since we all know where the actor who plays him came from). Last we saw of him, his best friend had been shot up, and wanting revenge, he found himself riding around with some baaaaad people, all while his mother remained in rehab. In the end, though, he appealed to his better angels, despite it meaning he might be a marked man off the field as much as he is on it. But he gained the love of Jess. Equal tradeoff between revenge and acceptance? Or will this all end in tears for the man who definitely makes JD McCoy look like the whiny prat whitebread dickwad he is?

Jess Merriweather - If I didn't know better, I'd say Jess is the baby that Julie got switched with. Knows football, loves football, and is - with Julie disappearing - now the angel of Friday Night Lights. First, she guided Landry to a place of self-acceptance and confidence. Then she pulled Vince out of his own ill-thought vengeance, and is cobbling his life back together. She even - with the help of Coach - has bit by bit managed to pull her father, a man who, in the intervening years as a player to his place now as owner of East Dillon's best BBQ joint, lost all love for the game, back into the mystifying world that is high school football. Plus, she's got a sweet-ass bike to roll around on.

Buddy Garrity - the jester of Friday Night Lights, since sending his baby girl Lyla off to college, watched the sinking of something beautiful, his beloved Panthers, into the muck of greed and classism. So he told them off and went Lions on their ass, and brought together a booster club that, slowly but surely, is reinvigorating East Dillon into rallying around their team.



Becky Sproles - Despite nine billion different attempts to sleep with Tim Riggins, she got nowhere. With one meeting with Luke Cafferty, she got knocked up. That little problem got Tami forced out of her job as principal of Dillon High. Becky was the spotlight of drama on Friday Night Lights in Season 4. Last seen giving Tim Riggins one final kiss and one final talk before he shipped himself off to prison. There's still a spark between her and Luke, perhaps? Who knows where FNL's Freida-haired beauty queen will go in this final run.

Billy Riggins - Billy's still Billy. He will remain Billy until the end of time. Unless maybe Tim being a jailbird knocks some real sense into him, like a permanent version of his epiphany at the end of season 3. But then he wouldn't be Billy.

J.D. McCoy - Asshole. Talent. The Makeshift Demon of Friday Night Lights. His dad got Coach fired, Coach seeing Daddy Dearest push him around got his parents divorced, and slowly but surely he's acting out more and more. His future on the series is entirely dependent on where they go with East Dillon vs. Dillon this year, but I can't help but imagine that, after getting beaten on the field at the end of Season 4, he will grow only more into the dickwad he was born to be.



East Dillon and Dillon proper are beginning to collide - the haves and the have nots are now finding that they're pressing up against one another in ways that could lead to an explosion, emotional, physical, and social. The stakes have been raised; the general that Dillon tossed aside in an instant has managed to make a ramshackle team into possible future contenders for State.

So we're left with this final season.. and the fact that we got this far is amazing into itself. Fans of the show faced potential cancellation on so many occasions, the miracle of DirecTV's deal with NBC is probably the only good to come out of NBC's Zuckerburg rule.

Out of all of the original cast it seems like we only have 3 or so that are showing up on any regular rotation this year. We went from Matt Saracen being the main protagonist to Vince Howard in 13 episodes last season. It's only a question of what else changes within the 13 episodes this season before the end. Who we will see from the original cast. The only thing we know for certain is that we'll see it before NBC viewers ever do.

Parenthood Under Friday Night Lights

Parenthood Under Friday Night Lights: Part 1

I'm talking about shows here, people. Don't think for a second I'm actually talking about parenting advice. I mean, wait.. What? I like two shows that I have no interest in the subject matter. Parenthood? While I'm not opposed to the idea of having a family function less crazy than my own, I'm barely in my 30's now and the idea of having a kid is still one that is a long while away from.



Then there's football, which I have zero interest in and I didn't really even know the rules of the sport prior to watching this show. Maybe I've been to one football game in high school and I went to a raiders game that scarred me for life when I was really young, but that seems to be all the exposure that I have had into this subject matter. And yet two shows based on the very subject matter I have no interest in are some of my favorite TV shows to date and it's all because of who is behind it. Jason Katims.

Tonight marks the return of Friday Night Lights. Though if you're like me, you've already watched this season on DirecTV and I must say, it was one hell of a season. If I can take your attention for a few minutes and peak your curiosity on what is one of the best shows on TV right now, right up there with Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Doctor Who, Parenthood, and Treme. If it were still on TV, I'd even invoke The Wire.

Okay, let's not say things we can't take back.

I don't intend to.

What the fu...you're serious. You're actually goddamned serious. Are you...the fucking shows are on NBC!

Exactly. It's a neglected show on NBC. This is a football show, right? And they had the Super Bowl in 2009? Not one ad for this show played during the game.

...Go on.

Look, I'm not going to pretend that this is just like the shows I namedropped (although perhaps you could draw some parallels to Treme). It's not grim or edgy, the lead protagonist isn't all that mysterious, and as near as I can tell (I wouldn't be surprised if somebody challenged me on this), there isn't some grand theme being laid out like "the triumph of the institution over the individual".

So exactly what does this show have going for it?

Straight up, the best developed cast of characters this side of David Simon, making for the some of the most emotionally arresting television you've ever seen.

Okay, I'm intrigued, what's the show about?

The short version? It's about a high school football team in West Texas.

Okay, okay, hold up. High school? You're trying to tell me that one of the best shows on TV travels the same fertile ground as the early years of fucking One Tree Hill?

Oh, no, this is mostly different.

Mostly?

We'll get to that, but before you make up your mind, hear out the long version:

High school is indeed silly for most of us. It's kind of a social training ground that we push through before we move onto college and beyond, dealing with bigger issues that are usually worth complaining about, even if the problems we faced back then seemed so daunting at the time. The same feels true about most TV shows that focus on teens. They seem to have these big problems, but they're young and their families are well off; you watch shit unfold, and sometimes you can't help but ask "In the grand scheme of things, what the fuck is the big deal?"

Dillon, Texas, the fictional town where the show is set, might as well be in the middle of nowhere. Most of the people who live in the town hover somewhere between lower-class and middle-class. Most of these kids aren't going on to college because their families can't afford it - their best hopes lie in scholarships. Otherwise they're going to take a bullshit job in this backwater town, and they're most likely going to die doing it.

To the lot of us, high school is the beginning of a hopefully long journey. Friday Night Lights takes us into a far-too-real world where high school is as good as it's ever going to get for most people. And the way to make the most of it is to play football.

As I mentioned, Dillon is pretty much somewhere in the vast expanse of West Texas. The nearest city is about a two hour drive, and that leaves its residents with very little to do for recreation, aside from minor things like going to movies, bars, strip joints, or just getting drunk in some abandoned area and shooting shotguns. The most excitement this town sees is during a Friday Night Football Game.

During football season, the town's mood for the week depends on whether their high school Football team, the Dillon Panthers, wins or loses on Friday night, and the town's mood during the off-season depends on if they can bring home a State Championship. To give them the best possible chance at success, the team boosters raise gobs of money for football programs to train kids from a young age and give them all the best equipment, forgoing all other educational needs. The rest of the town does favors for team members when they're winning and shuns them when they're losing.

All of this has the intended effect: the team is good enough to build a massive reputation and attract scads of college recruiters to the town, enticing players with full scholarships to their universities. This feeds the machine even further; parents want the best for their kids, and the best shot they have at a future outside of Dillon is through being on a great football team.

Ultimately, the hopes and dreams of this entire town rests on the shoulders of a bunch of 14-18 year-old boys.

And they don't always handle it that well.

Damn...that's...damn.

Yeah, I know.

That can't just be it, though. What else can you tell me?

Culled mostly from my DirecTV experience:

• I mentioned that the show had an amazing cast of characters; allow me to go into more detail.
  
  Now I can't get into everybody. It's fucking impossible. The weakest link in the chain is made of steel, and who it is always depends on who you ask. Frankly, everybody kicks ass in this show. From Matt Saracen as the proverbial good kid with the world on his shoulders, to Tim Riggins as the badass fullback who would probably be The Dude if he wasn't built like a goddamn tank, to Landry Clarke as the goony kid fronting a Christian speed-metal band (Crucifictorius), to the girl he worships, Tyra Colette, afraid of turning into her white trash mother and sister...I don't know how to go on with this cast. We haven't even gotten into Jason Street and Smash Williams. You'll discover them as you get into it, and you'll pick your favorites. If you really want to know more about other cast members and their appeal, feel free to ask in the thread if you don't mind dodging spoilery season 4 discussion (you can always PM me if you want).
  
  There is one guy I can and want to focus on, though: the de-facto leader of this ensemble, the one that embodies the very soul of this show.
  
  As far as television role models go, Kyle Chandler's Eric Taylor is less in the tradition of a Bill Adama and more like Atticus Finch if he was a hardass Texas football coach instead of a passionate Alabama lawyer. He's got a dry sense of humor, a great heart, boundless energy, and the ability to pull a St. Crispian's day speech directly out of his ass when necessary. His character flaw? He's the nicest, most respectable alpha male in Texas, but he's still an alpha male. FNL likes to remind us every now and then that Taylor is not above copping a bull-headed attitude to a situation or even throwing down to defend his family's honor (with his face).
  
  And for the record, his wife Tami (played by Connie Britton) kicks just as much ass and is a wonderful character in her own right.
  
  
• One thing I have yet to touch on: the presentation. The cinematography is mostly handheld, and the shooting is usually on location. The crew has as many as three cameras rolling at once for any given scene, allowing the actors to improvise as if on stage (as opposed to blocking out their movements to keep their performances in the proper areas of the frame). This lends a more realistic air to the proceedings, and the dialogue is written to further enhance the presentation: it's quotable, but it's not a Whedon-esque quip-fest.
  
  It sounds gimmicky in its own right, and of course those of you who are violently allergic to handheld camerawork are going to wish that we all went and fucked ourselves, but after a few episodes (if not the first episode you see) it feels right.
  
  
• Are you from Texas and tired of how Hollywood constantly seems to get Texas wrong? This show is perfect for you.
  
  

Okay, all that sounds great. So what's this "mostly" business about?

There was a brief slump in writing quality during Season 2. It was still great television, but the spoiler-free version is, it started playing to baser instincts. A lot of people who watch it after Season 1 end up hating it. Honestly, I'm not one of them - I was able to enjoy it for what it was, and there are a few other people that feel the same way - but I do agree that it's a weaker season overall.

If you go ahead and watch this show from the beginning, I still recommend you try to push through season 2, as there's a few memorable performances and scenes that make it worth your while.

Season 4 of FNL shares some similarities with season 4 of The Wire. New location, new stars, new situations - fans of each show came into the respective seasons with reservations which seemed reasonable at the time but turned out to be unfounded.

I'm not going to spoil much except to say that Zach Gilford and Michael B. Jordan are phenomenal this year. Everyone is as usual, but these are the two standouts to me. Also, the crew continues to use authentic Austin TX locales for Dillon haunts. Keep an eye out for a certain BBQ joint and see if you can't find it in Google maps like I did.

Okay, sold. How do I catch up?

• If you have Netflix, all three seasons (1, 2, and 3) are available for instant viewing.
  
• Episodes are available through iTunes (link takes you to the first season in SD, check links on the right hand side for links to HD episodes and other seasons), the Playstation Network, and XBox Live for $2 a pop ($3 in HD). Great way to give the show a trial run if you've got pocket change to burn.
  
• If you absolutely have to buy the DVDs...
  
  • Seasons 1 and 2 are available for $19.99 each.
    
  • Season 3 is available for $22.99.
  I won't say these are all awesome deals for TV shows, but compared to other box sets, it's a fucking steal.

Now, go watch and enjoy.

I'll touch on Parenthood come Monday, a day before a new episode airs....

Friday (Night Lights) - I'm In Love

Friday (Night Lights) - I'm In Love

Last week Friday Night Lights had its DirecTV season finale for their fourth season. That's right.. Four seasons have already come and gone and this show is still on the air. It's one of those shows that is critically praised but no one is watching and so it should have been canceled after the first season, but like great shows like The Wire - something odd happened, It didn't get canceled.

Season 2 started up and I have to say, it wasn't the best season. You could tell the writers were trying to appeal to the viewers and compromising their story telling ability to try to get ratings. Some of the things that happened in the first 1/3rd of the season just point to that. But as quickly as that change happened, it stopped and corrected itself.



It stopped caring about ratings and just got back to telling a great story. So when the second season was about to end it was considered dead in the water and was not expected to be renewed for another season. It was that show that was too good for regular television. Which is why DirecTV decided to help pay for it to stay on the air for a third season if they were allowed to show the episodes first. And just like that, this underdog of a show got a third and what everyone assumed would be final season.

The third season continued to crank out great stories and the character development was amazing. This was one of those shows that didn't hang on to characters if it was their time to go. The third season ad a lot of characters walk off into the sunset as their story dictated. It was also was one of the best seasons of the shows. DirecTV aired the episodes without ads and they were unedited. Something that when they finally aired them on NBC were cut down and some music was changed.



At the end of season three I was ready to let go. The show had given three amazing seasons of television that so few have enjoyed and most of the story lines were finally wrapped up... Then something happened in the last five minutes. Something that at the time it was unknown if it would come back for a fourth season but it changed me from being able to let it go to wanting there to be a fourth season so badly as the potential for the story was so strong. A few months later it got the green light that DirecTV not only wanted to do a fourth season, but a fifth one.

The fourth season just ended and I have no felt the love for a show and how amazing the quality of the production and the writing has been since Arrested Development or The Wire. It's come out that the fifth season will be the last one but to be honest, with this show that looked like it was dead on arrival for a network television show in the first season, I can more than happily be able to let it go at season five.



So you're probably asking what makes Friday Night Lights so good? I think it's a multitude of reasons. The very basic one is that at its core it's simply a family drama. But saying that is like calling The Wire a police procedural about Baltimore. There's so much more to it that just wraps itself around the characters. Friday Night Lights revolves itself around the students of West Dillion, Texas and shows you how life is like for these people in this small town that glorifies high school football.

Maybe I like this because growing up in Los Angeles, the whole concept of a small town appeals to me on a certain level. The certain amount of dilapidation around the edges of everything in town that just walks the line of being one or two tough economic struggles away from being a ghost town, but with enough life to carry some character. Which of course leads to the tales of struggle from the inhabitants trying to make it out of there.



It's sort of like listening to really long episode of This American Life. You get to hear the story of all these characters that feel so real and draws you in to learn more about it. Even if it's something that's not your intimidate interest or that if paraphrased to a simple sentence wouldn't hold your interest, it's the story telling in that tale that just grabs you and never lets go.

I've driven through Texas when I was moving back from Florida and that vast open scenery is one of those things that this show does so well. They also pair the visuals of this larger than life, and yet smaller with life areas together with the music selection. I have to compare it to Six Feet Under in terms of how perfect and how much thought was put into the soundtrack for the show. Which I would also relate to This American Life. As both have a very good selection of music as segue onto the rest of the story or a different one altogether.



So when season 3 was re-aired on NBC with some songs changed due to editing down for time, I wasn't very pleased with it. Specifically one scene that was a montage of various characters and whatever story arcs they were going through and Bixby Canyon Bridge by Death Cab for Cutie was playing over it just making it such an even bigger emotional hit to the viewer.

I've already compared it to The Wire in some aspects, but let me take it on to another level. Both shows had five season. This past season had a couple of actors from The Wire show up and become permanent characters on the show. Which only hammered home how much I love this show. Both shows are critically praised but that praise has not translated to any increase in viewership. While it's only on season 4, they have all remained consistently strong because the writers.



So while it may sound strange to compare an HBO show about police chasing drugs to a show about high school football in a small town in Texas but I'm willing to bet that history will look back at the 2000's and these two shows will be the examples they use. I can easily say that this show has the best Husband/Wife dynamic going for it that I have seen on television. Which with the fifth season being the last, I can see the demand for both Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton in acting roles will go up after this show ends.

Don't believe me on how good this show is? Why not read it for yourself from Variety;

As "Friday Night Lights" nears the conclusion of another winning season -- little seen, but enormously satisfying -- the parallels keep growing to another program that ranks among TV's best of the past decade, "The Wire."

A cursory glance wouldn't suggest any obvious connections between the two, other than perhaps enthusiastic critical acclaim that didn't translate into viewers -- a trait that, alas, hardly qualifies either for membership in an exclusive primetime fraternity.

"FNL" is at its core a family drama, with high-school football and the yearning to escape small-town Texas life as its poignant backdrop. "The Wire" represents the great American novel for television, using the hopelessness of the drug war to chart the decline of a major U.S. city -- in this case Baltimore -- as eroding institutions break down and fail citizens, from the cops to city hall, the schools to local media.

As you can tell from that article, I'm not the only one comparing the two shows. Maybe there's something more to it than you think and perhaps you should give this show a chance. The first three seasons are on dvd. While I'm not a fan of the DVD set for season 3, the story is still there and it's still as amazing viewing than anything else on television.



It's the reason why I'm telling you about this now. While season 4 hasn't shown up on DVD yet, NBC will air in April. Which leaves you plenty of time to rent, netflix or just find it somehow find it online to watch before season 4 starts. You should get on this train before it takes off so you can praise the show as much as I do to others who haven't ever given this little show the chance it deserves. You wont regret it.

Clear eyes, full hearts, Can't lose!