Friday Night Lights update

I haven't posted about this show in quite some time, but I should have. It's quite possible that there is not a better show on TV. 24 is more exciting, LOST is more elaborate and I Love New York is crazier, but you'd be hard pressed to find any show that is more well done that Friday Night Lights.

When it debuted this season, I wasn't even going to watch it. The only reason I gave it a shot at all was because my fellow blogger Josh said he was going to check it out, and he wanted to be able to talk about it with somebody. At first, it seemed almost sort of cartoonish. There was the pretty boy quarterback (Jason Street), the troubled drunk (Riggins), the town sloot (Tyra) etc etc. The show was entertaining, no doubt, but it was entertaining in a sense that I could sit back, pick it apart and poke fun at the characters they were portraying. Definitely an entertaining show, but one that I could probably live without if it was cancelled.

Well I'm past that point now. Somewhere along the way, FNL got a lot more real, for the lack of a better word. The writers make you care about these guys stuck in a small town in Texas. High School football is a huge deal in Texas...it seems to have something like a NCAA D1 following in each town. At first I thought it was kind of corny, but now I think it's pretty cool. There are teams all over the KC metro area, and I really don't care about any of them, even my own alma mater. I guess it's just one of those small town things, but it would be pretty cool to see everyone get behind the same team.

Anyway, for some of these guys, football is their only chance at a better life. Smash Williams is willing to do whatever it takes to be a star, rampant steroid use included. For other guys, like Riggins, it just seems to be an escape from an otherwise miserable existance. Personally, my favorite character is Matt Saracen. Here's an 18 year old kid who doesn't have a mom, his father is overseas in Iraq, and he lives with his grandmother, who has Alzheimer's, or at least some form of dementia...she's just not all there. But he's expected to pretty much function as an adult and a kid at the same time.

I can't go an entire column about this show and not mention how much I love the Coach Taylor character. Kyle Chandler should win an emmy for his role on the show. His interaction with the team, coaches and family keeps me glued to the tv screen week after week. And that's what really makes a show great. When I look at the clock and see that there are only 5 minutes left, it makes me wish that there was still 30 minutes left. FNL always leaves me wanting more.

I've only scratched the surface here, but I PRAY that NBC somehow renews this for a second season. Honestly, it's one of the lowest rated shows on network primetime TV, but NBC stuck to their guns and gave it a full season run this year. For the most part, critics have done nothing but rave about this show. It just hasn't had an easy time finding an audience. I'm no expert, but I sincerely doubt that this show has much of a female audience, due to the fact that the show revolves around football. But it's so much more than that. The first couple of episodes, I was disappointed when there were no football scenes. After all, this is a football show right? But eventually it came to where the football stuff was almost bringing the show down. I used to wonder how they would work this show when the season ends, but they could totally just focus on the characters and ignore football, and I would still tune in.

Ok, the last thing here. The good news is that the racial angle from the last two shows seems to have piqued some interest among casual viewers. It was the second rated show in the 18-49 demo during the 7:00 hour on Wednesday, and had 7.43 million viewers. While that is a pretty pathetic number (10 million is considered acceptable, more or less), it's a pretty nice increase from the previous week's figure of 6.41 million viewers. Hopefully this turns into a trend, because I'm going to be devestated if FNL doesn't make it to season #2.