Easily Entertained

I got caught up in the Bravo marathon of Friday Night Lights recently. (It is normally broadcast on NBC.) I can’t say I was surprised I liked it, since it is filmed in and around Austin and it had been getting very good reviews. I can say I was very impressed with it.

You wouldn’t expect it, but this show isn’t really for football fans. Well, maybe. In lots of ways it’s what I think of as a traditional tv drama. It is not an hour-long comedy drama, an episodic medical/forensic/police procedural drama, or a serial kind-of science fiction-y show. There are good and bad examples (in some cases — far too many) of all of these genres on tv right now. You could also classify almost all TV into people at work or people at home. Some combine elements of the two really well.

Friday Night Lights is a “people in a town” show. You could try to be more specific and call it a “people who watch high school football” show, but it’s set in Texas — where all the people in the town watch high school football.

The major characters (in their primary groups) are:

The coach, his wife — the school guidance counselor, and their teenage daughter who is not a cheerleader and would never date a football player (unless…)

The former quarterback, who (I’m assuming) became a quadriplegic through an on-field accident, his girlfriend — the captain of the cheerleaders, and his best friend — also a football player (in some position I know nothing about) and the resident poor, parentless, failing-in-school but getting away with it because he plays football, bad-boy-with-floppy-hair character.

The unexpected new quarterback, who works at a fast food restaurant, supports his grandmother with Alzheimer’s while his Dad is in Iraq, and has a long way to go before becoming a traditional “Quarterback” and awkwardly dating the coach’s daughter, and his best friend, a non-football playing smart-kid who sings a scream-metal band with a vaguely satanic sounding name, even though he has short hair and is the type the guidance counselor would stick with tutoring the previously mentioned bad-boy in English.

Of course there is everyone else on the team, as well as in town. There are a whole gaggle of other football players who are just as well-drawn, even without as much screen time. You could easily use a single episode of the show to demonstrate the difference between stereo-types and archetypes. How do you allow the quarterback to date the pretty captain of the cheerleaders, while still making them three-dimensional and real? Then how do you do that for almost every character on the show?

The families range from traditional-yet-realistic to completely screwed up — the coach’s family being the former. I’m surprised that this show is not one of the most successful new tv shows of the year, especially in the so called “heartland.” Although it acknowledges that some teenagers have sex, drink, and do drugs — but don’t always get pregnant, die in a car accident, or overdose, it’s a show that compassionate conservatives should be supporting. Probably the least screwed up kid on the show, is the daughter of the happily married coach and school guidance counselor. Friday Night Lights is about as far from Hollywood Liberal as a really well written, character based drama can get, even without the football.

My dilemma is… would my mother like this show? She wouldn’t, but then my mother won’t watch rated R movies or the Nightmare Before Christmas and really didn’t like Star Wars all that much. I can’t even say that I’ve programmed it into my DVR for the entire season. But then I’m weird to begin with.

This show is perfect for any (non-Mormon) family with teenagers to sit down and watch together and then have a conversation about the show… or their real lives. It has something for everyone (romance, action, family dysfunction, and football!) who doesn’t pay attention to the “Viewer discretion is advised warning.”

… as long as NBC doesn’t cancel it before they find it.