A Mule Props Up a Foundering Football Team in Gus

I don't much like the cartoon Family Guy, which is usually far too crude and irreverent for my tastes. But now and then I'll watch a bit of it, and years ago, I happened to catch a random segment that has stuck with me ever since. The television is tuned in to the news, and after sharing the headlines, the announcers cut to a preview of the upcoming movie, a Disney flick starring Don Knotts entitled Too Many Ostriches. In it, he appears to be at some sort of preserve, and he stands, abjectly traumatized, amidst dozens of placidly roaming ostriches. "There's way too many ostriches. Why are there so many ostriches?" he moans. "The brochure said there'd only be a few ostriches! This is a terrible vacation!"

I think of this every time I see Don Knotts in a Disney movie, particularly one involving animals. Gus is about a mule, not an ostrich, but it is every bit as ridiculous as that mock movie looks. Knotts plays the coach of the California Atoms, a pathetic football team that is in the bottom of the NFL. Even their halftime entertainment isn't up to snuff, so when team owner Hank Cooper (Ed Asner) hears about Gus, a Yugoslavian mule who can kick a soccer ball a remarkable distance, he has him flown over to California, along with Andy Petrovic (Gary Grimes), the teen who discovered his talent. After Hank's financial backer Charles Gwynn (Harold Gould) coerces Cooper into wagering ownership of the team on its ability to win the Superbowl this season, he becomes desperate to up their chances. His strategy? Let the mule kick field goals.

I absolutely cannot imagine a real-life circumstance under which it would be considered acceptable for a mule to stand in for a player even once, let alone week after week. Then again, most Disney sports movies in the screwball comedy genre play very fast and loose with established rules. Before you decide to watch this movie, you need to accept that it's going to come with a hefty helping of absurdity. Given that Knotts was the one who drew me into this one, I was hoping a lot of it would come from him, but he actually has a pretty minor role that doesn't really take advantage of his comedic genius.

Yes, we get to see a couple of incredulous expressions from Knotts, but Asner is much more prominent here. I would certainly call his the most engaging performance of the movie; he's at his lovably ornery best, launching into tirades at some times, slyly plotting at others. He and Gould have a great dynamic as the two men try to undermine each other's efforts - and Charles' tactics are just as unorthodox as Hank's and considerably more unethical. That Hank would not involve the police when it's perfectly obvious that Charles is sabotaging him is a head-scratcher, though I suppose it might come down to pride. He wants to beat Charles at his own game.

Not being a football fan, I found the football scenes, of which there were many, only moderately entertaining. You can only see a mule kick a ball so many times before the novelty wears off, plus we see a fair amount of regular game play as well. The pacing of the movie seems off to me, right from the choppy beginning, which alternates between stationary credits and regular scenes, with the result that the opening feels interminable. Several of the scenes in the movie seem to go on far longer than necessary, particularly one in which Gus leads a pair of bumbling crooks played by Tim Conway and Tom Bosley on a wild mule chase through a grocery store. It's funny, but it just seems to stretch on too long.

While most of the movie is pure comedy, there's a slightly more serious storyline at play with Andy, a sweet, sheltered young man whose accomplishments have never been acknowledged by the parents who fawn over his soccer star brother. His sense of inadequacy plagues him throughout the movie, particularly after his father suggests that his job of holding the football for Gus to kick could be done by anyone. It's easy to latch onto Andy and wish him a sense of fulfillment as well as a real shot with his dream girl, who is happy to serve as his tour guide but is in a relationship with a macho member of the Atoms.

Gus has a great cast, though many of the actors seem underused. The rivalry between Hank and Charles kept me occupied, as did Andy's struggle to gain self-confidence. I mostly appreciate Gus for the subtle ways he encouraged Andy without the young man's knowledge. Still, the more over-the-top humor is more prevalent. While I found my attention wandering, several of the purely silly scenes made me giggle, so while I don't think this is the best of the zany Disney comedies by a long shot, it's certainly good for a laugh or two.

Fans Say Farewell to Friday Night Lights With Teary Eyes and Aching Hearts

Several years ago, my friend Dan got my parents and me hooked on Friday Night Lights, the NBC small-town Texas football drama that has received critical raves but little Emmy attention and consistently lackluster ratings. This week, we bid farewell to the show that we followed for five seasons. The series went out as it came in, low-key and heartfelt, with the focus on ordinary people struggling to make the best of difficult circumstances.

As the 13-episode-long fifth season begins, Coach Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler) and his wife Tami (Connie Britton), the couple who serve as the cornerstone of the series, are preparing to see their precocious daughter Julie (Aimee Teegarden) off to college. While she is anxious to fly the coop, they’re not having such an easy time letting her go, and it’s little surprise when her sense of intellectual superiority lands her in a quandary early in her first semester. They both have other pressing concerns, however. Tami has her work cut out for her as the new guidance counselor at East Dillon High School, and Eric is under pressure to keep up the good work he did the year before with the town’s fledgling football team, turning these young men into a group with actual winning prospects.

Because this is a high school drama, most of the major players from the first season are no longer in the mix except as occasional guest stars. This season does find excuses to bring back almost everyone for at least one episode, which is nice, but it’s definitely a different group of students getting most of the attention this time around. Chief among these is star quarterback Vince Howard (Michael B. Jordan), who, having overcome ties to petty thugs and helped his mother through rehab, now faces potential setbacks as his volatile father returns home after a stint in jail. By his side is Jess Merriweather (Jurnee Smollett), a kind but tough football enthusiast who, in the midst of caring for her younger brothers in her father’s business-related absence, convinces the coach to take her on as a team manager.

Hard-working farmhand Luke Cafferty (Matt Lauria) tries to swallow his jealousy that Vince is getting his share of the glory and rekindles a relationship with Becky Sproles (Madison Burge), an aspiring beauty queen whose troubled home life leads her to take refuge with mechanic and new father Billy Riggins (Derek Phillips) and his wife Mindy (Stacey Oristano) at the behest of his brother Tim (Taylor Kitsch), who is serving a prison sentence for a crime Billy committed. This is probably my favorite of the student stories this season because Billy, Tim and Mindy have been a part of the show from the beginning, and this arc really shows how far they have come. Billy’s desire to honor Tim’s sacrifice and make a fresh start leads him to seek a role as assistant coach, while Mindy, up until now presented as a rather shallow side character, truly comes into her own as she deals with Becky’s intrusion into her life.

Among the old guard who make just a few appearances, one of the most compelling is Mindy’s sister Tyra Collette (Adrianne Palicki), a thriving college student who, despite overcoming incredible obstacles to make her way in the world, still feels drawn to Dillon. The other is Matt Saracen, the standout character of the first season. That Zach Gilford’s haggard season four performance in The Son, an episode that finds lovable everyman Matt conflicted over the death of his absentee father in combat, did not earn him an Emmy nomination is a travesty; here, his role is understated, but he’s around just enough to serve as a reminder of how truly beautiful the simple things can be. His beloved, mildly senile grandmother (Louanne Stephens) also appears in a few episodes, reminding us of how the show started, mostly focusing on a plucky underdog with a heart of gold who is thrust into the limelight.

As always, the show has a realistic slice-of-life feel to it, with comedy and drama stemming organically from the actors as well as the excellent writing. All of the characters face challenging obstacles, but all have come a long way from when we first met them. This is particularly true of the troubled Riggins-Collette clan and Buddy Garrity (Brad Leland), the fast-talking salesman who caused Eric so many headaches in the first season and is now one of his closest allies. These are people who often make stupid decisions but constantly strive to do better. The Taylors are stabilizing forces in the lives of so many families, though even the solid foundation of their marriage is tested in this season as the show comes full circle. When each of them receives an offer of a dream job, which of them will yield? Or will the pull of geographically disparate career paths be enough to separate the spouses in one of the most touching marriages on television?

When Friday Night Lights began airing, I didn’t pay much attention. After all, I’m not a football fan. But the show is about so much more than that. Chances are that if you go into it with my kind of pigskin ambivalence, you’ll develop a deeper appreciation for the way the sport can build character and bring a town together. More than that, though, you’ll find characters to truly care about whose everyday trials reflect the joys and sorrows of a life lived in community.

Glee Lives Up to Its Name in its First 13 Episodes

Last May, around the time LOST and American Idol were wrapping up, FOX provided a preview to whet my appetite for fall television, making me a little less annoyed at having to wait until January for the return of my favorite shows. Years ago, I watched The Glee Club, a season three episode of The Wonder Years in which a naive teacher tries to turn Kevin and his fellow eight-graders into a functional choir, and to this day I think it’s one of the most disastrously hilarious television episodes I’ve ever seen, so I figured that Glee, a series seemingly born out of a similar premise, had plenty of potential. Except boy, can those kids in Glee sing!

Glee, created by Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Ian Brennan, is an hour-long musical dramedy that, like Ugly Betty and Pushing Daisies, seems just a step away from reality. Of course, there’s the bursting-into-song-in-the-middle-of-the-hallway thing, but there’s also the outrageous behavior of some of the characters, none more so than Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch), the demented cheerleading coach who is a veritable fount of startling statements. Ruthless and competitive, she immediately sees red when idealistic Spanish teacher Will Schuester (Matthew Morrison) decides to revive the Glee Club he so loved when he attended McKinley High School a decade and a half earlier. She fears that if the club succeeds, it will divert both resources and acclaim away from her “Cheerios,” and there is nothing she won’t do to sabotage Will’s efforts.

But Will is one determined guy. With a passion for music and for making a difference in the lives of troubled teens, he assembles a ragtag team of misfits, only just enough to qualify the group to compete at Sectionals in the mid-season finale. (Frankly, this is one of the most unbelievable aspects of the show for me. After seven years of American Idol and three installments of High School Musical, I can’t quite accept that only a dozen students in the entire school want to join the Glee Club, and that nearly everyone else in the student body regards each member of that club as the epitome of loserdom.) Most prominent among his singers are Finn Hudson (Cory Monteith) and Rachel Berry (Lea Michele). To a certain extent, I think these two get a little more screen time than they deserve, to the exclusion of their equally talented castmates. But there’s no denying their talent.

Finn is cut out of the same mold as Troy, the basketball-dribbling crooner Zac Efron plays in High School Musical. His game of choice is football, and at the beginning of the series, he is most definitely one of the cool kids. But when Will overhears him singing in the locker room shower, he knows he can’t let that talent slip out of his fingers and reels Finn in through his laughable gullibility. He stays, though, because he really does love to sing and finds it freeing to spend so much time among people who accept him for who he really is. Finn, who has been raised by his devoted mother and a series of her boyfriends, is an incredibly sweet-natured boy who is gentlemanly, courteous and ethical. When faced with the choice between being hip and being considerate, he nearly always chooses the latter. Unfortunately, his easy-going, overly trusting nature leads him to be taken in by his not-nearly-as-perfect-as-she-seems girlfriend Quinn Fabray (Dianna Agron), whose contemptuous treatment of him throughout this first half-season despite his stalwart loyalty to her is the biggest strike against her.

Rachel isn’t quite as lovable as Finn, simply because she is such a diva. A Barbra Streisand wannabe, she’s spent most of her young life preparing for stardom, under the watch of her doting dads, who we have yet to meet. Consequently, she is incredibly talented but equally unpopular. The more she seeks attention through methods like going online and posting a steady stream of videos of her singing, the more derision she invites. She seems to have been born to be the Glee Club’s star member. But that doesn’t sit so well with the other singers in the group, who are tired of always being upstaged. Scarcely an episode passes in which Rachel does not severely grate on my nerves, but the feeling always passes, since in many ways she is a very kind-hearted girl. She harbors a thinly veiled crush on Finn, and, considering how he is being taken advantage of in his existing relationship, it’s hard to resist rooting for the two of them to have a shot together, especially when they clearly have so much natural chemistry.

While Quinn, the straight-laced daughter of strict parents, is to be pitied for the unfortunate situation in which she finds herself, what’s deplorable is the way she deceives Finn and doesn’t even treat him with a greater degree of respect for standing by her after she informs him that he is the father of her unborn baby, even though he, out of respect for her religious convictions and role as the president of the Chastity Club, remains a virgin. Clearly the boy needs some remedial biology. Quinn, having made a stupid mistake while intoxicated, cheated on Finn with his best friend Noah “Puck” Puckerman (Mark Salling), a macho football player who uses his pool-cleaning business to snag cougars. Though joining the Glee Club brings out his sensitivity, he’s definitely the bad boy of the bunch.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is Kurt Hummel (Chris Colfer), described by one character as looking like “an eleven-year-old milkmaid”. With his soft, high voice and acute attentiveness to the world of fashion, he reminds me of Justin, the flamboyant nephew on Ugly Betty. Like Rachel, Kurt has dreams of singing glory, though he fears that pursuing them too far might pain his father (Mike O‘Malley), a widowed mechanic. Throughout the season, he navigates the rough waters of his identity, trying out football in an effort to please his very masculine dad and struggling with his unrequited affection for Finn. He also must figure out how to deal with the amorous advances of Mercedes Jones (Amber Riley), a plus-sized tour de force who pours her soul into her songs and is most disdainful of Rachel’s leading role in the club. Sassy but sweet, Mercedes has a deep kinship with him. Among the club members, she’s one of the most likely to extend a spontaneous hand in empathy.

While there are twelve students in the club, the only remaining member who has been fleshed out much to date is Artie “Wheels” Abrams (Kevin McHale), a deep-voiced boy with thick glasses who has been relegated to a wheelchair since he was in a car accident several years earlier. His lower register is so much deeper than anyone else’s in the group, it makes a wonderful impact upon the harmonies during group numbers. His unique situation is the focus of Wheels, arguably the most touching episode of the series thus far, which has Will insisting that the members of Glee Club come to school in wheelchairs in order to truly appreciate what he must go through each day; in a subplot, Sue reveals her softer side after she recruits a student with Down Syndrome to the Cheerios. The five remaining members include bubble-brained Brittany (Heather Morris), stuttering Tina Cohen-Chang (Jenna Ushkowitz), cheerleader Santana Lopez (Naya Rivera) and football players Matt Rutherford (Dijon Talton) and Mike Chang (Harry Shum).

While managing the dynamics of this diverse group of students, Will, a starry-eyed educator who already has earned a place among a list of inspiring fictional teachers, has his peers to deal with as well. Whenever Sue antagonizes him, he finds himself in the office of Principal Figgins (Igbal Theba), a mostly competent, ethical administrator doing his best do get by with limited resources. He thinks Will is crazy for starting up Glee Club again but grants his permission anyway, with certain conditions. Though he sometimes proves a stumbling block, more often than not he is in Will’s corner. Occasionally, Will comes into contact with Sandy Ryerson (Stephen Tobolowsky), the eccentric former leader of the Glee Club who now comes across just a hair shy of sociopathic. Eventually teaming up with Sue, he becomes a sort of shadow villain as the season progresses.

And then there is Emma Pillsbury (Jayma Mays), the guidance counselor who enjoys an easy rapport with Will and shares his concern for each member of the student body. Innocent and doe-eyed, she tries to hide her deep desire for her married co-worker, but it’s an open secret, particularly since there are times when the affection seems mutual. While burly, taciturn football coach Ken Tanaka (Patrick Gallagher) attempts to woo her away from Will, it’s clear even after she begins to date him that she only has eyes for the charming Glee Club director. And of all the potential romances on the show, theirs is the easiest to root for, given their extreme compatibility and tenderness. Except that Will is married. But his wife Terri (Jessalyn Gilsig) is so thoroughly shrewish, it’s hard to imagine how he ever could have fallen in love with her. His marital situation reminds me of the fairy tale-like It Could Happen To You; evidently both parties have changed since high school, and she took a turn for the worse while he honed his altruism. When she embarks upon a deception as audacious as Quinn’s in an attempt to salvage their deteriorating marriage, it seems even rockier times are inevitable for the couple.

While we mostly see the same people week after week, certain episodes have allowed for the addition of guest stars. My favorite among these is probably Victor Garber as Will’s supportive dad, though Kristen Chenoweth’s appearance as April Rhodes, a washed-up high school diva, is a nice salve after Pushing Daisies was so mercilessly cancelled and Josh Groban’s cameo as himself is a hoot.

If these characters were not so engrossing, both in terms of how they are written and how they are portrayed, we might not be so eager to embrace their musical stylings. As it is, however, the performances that fill each episode are a treat. Sometimes exuberant, often character-revealing, these musical numbers are not limited to the members of the Glee Club, though the students and Will are responsible for the majority of the songs. Will gets an unusual amount of time in the spotlight in Acafellas, when he forms a quartet, though perhaps my favorite of his performances is the hilariously icky mashup of Don’t Stand So Close to Me and Young Love, sung in an effort to dissuade Rachel from developing a schoolgirl crush on him.

Kurt soars as he battles Rachel in Defying Gravity, Puck gets a big smile out of me with his upbeat rendition of Sweet Caroline and Mercedes gives Jennifer Hudson a run for her money with her version of And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going. Finn and Rachel wind up with a duet in just about every episode, but it’s hard to beat their impassioned performance of Don’t Stop Believin’ from the Pilot. Of the group-oriented numbers, my favorites include the supportive Keep Holding On and Lean On Me; the heartfelt Imagine, performed with a deaf choir; the riotous Single Ladies dance put together by the floundering football team; and Proud Mary, which includes some rather impressive wheelchair choreography and puts Artie in the spotlight.

If you didn’t get to see Glee while it was on, I recommend giving it a shot on DVD. The second half of the season doesn’t begin until April, so you have plenty of time to catch up. With its captivating characters, complex plots that broach issues faced by many contemporary teens and exhilarating musical numbers, Glee is a show that truly lives up to its title.

I Said Over and Over and Over Again, This Film is Gonna Be a Drag

When Groundhog Day first came out, the idea of a man living the same day over and over again was novel. Since then, the concept has been run into the ground, particularly when it comes to Christmas. Huey, Dewey and Louie relived the same disastrous Christmas day until they got it right. Elmo wished for perpetual Christmas with calamitous consequences. Christmas every day sounds good in theory, but in practice it's a little different.

In Christmas Do-Over, there are no established characters reliving the most wonderful day of the year ad nauseam. The hapless protagonist is Kevin (Jay Mohr), a self-absorbed jingle writer who couldn't be less interested in spending Christmas with his son, Ben (Logan Grove); his former in-laws, Trudi (Adrienne Barbeau) and Arthur (Tim Thomerson); his ex-wife, Jill (Daphne Zuniga); and her new boyfriend, Todd (David Millbern). But he does his duty, ever so begrudgingly, knowing it's just for the day. Little does he know just how long that day will last...

Christmas Do-Over first aired on ABC Family. As a made-for-TV movie, it doesn't need to try very hard. It's an obvious rip-off of Groundhog Day every step of the way, and watching it just made me aware of how skillfully that Bill Murray film was done. But as silly as this movie is, it's still fun to watch, and in general it works pretty well.

Kevin starts out completely obnoxious, doing his best to make a nuisance of himself so he can rub in everyone's faces how disgruntled he is at being a part of this celebration. He remains irritating throughout most of the movie, but of course he finally starts to wise up and turn into someone a little more tolerable. He gets some help from the adorable Ben, who is one of only two people who is genuinely glad to see him initially. The other is Granny Conlon (Ruta Lee), Jill's feisty grandma who has a tendency to hit on her ex-grandson-in-law. Mostly, though, he has to muddle through on his own, navigating this perplexing scenario in which, no matter what he is doing when Christmas Day ends, he always finds himself back on his in-laws' porch, ringing the doorbell and dodging a football thrown by a couple of snickering neighbor boys.

Because the bulk of the day's activities occur within the home, there's a lot less opportunity for Kevin to interact with the community at large, so there's a lot less breathing room in Christmas Do-Over than in Groundhog Day. Mostly, he does exactly the same things over and over again. He doesn't spend one huge chunk of time learning a foreign language, another learning a musical instrument, another learning an art form, yet another studying the goings-on of all the townsfolk so he can be in the right place at the right time to turn into everyone's hero. Kevin does get involved in the community to some extent via a town fair, but there's still not a whole lot that changes from day to day. As repetitious as Groundhog Day is, this movie is much more like a broken record.

The acting is pretty corny, especially from Millbern, as Todd ends up looking like a complete goon by the time the movie is over. My brother and I agreed that the most entertaining character in the bunch is a wacky-looking elderly neighbor (Jack Axelrod) who pops by to warn everyone that the road is out. Sadly, he only shows up a couple of times.

At first, I thought this was a Hallmark movie, but when I realized it was at least as crude as it was warm and fuzzy, I figured that couldn't be right. The humor is PG-rated but awfully immature, and there's an unnecessary smattering of bad language. But some of the laughs are genuine, and I won't deny there's a feel-good element to it, though one person's pleasure probably equals another's pain in this case, and I'm not entirely sure how I feel about that. Not badly enough that I regret renting it. It was reasonably cute the first time around. But I won't be watching Christmas Do-Over over and over.

You Don't Have to Be a Football Fan to Love Friday Night Lights

Fall is in the air, and football season has begun. While I've always enjoyed autumn, I never gave the pigskin much thought, but I know a lot of my classmates got pretty excited about high school football. Their enthusiasm pales, however, in comparison to that of the townspeople of Dillon, Texas, where the television drama Friday Night Lights takes place. For Dillon residents, supporting the Panthers is a matter of civic pride, since it is the only football team in town. Most businesses shut down on the day of a home game; the stadium is the only place to be.

It is into this community that Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler) comes as the new head coach of the Panthers. Expectations are high; the team has done very well for itself in the past, and the current starting quarterback, Jason Street (Scott Porter), is one of the most talented athletes recruiters have seen in years. The pressure is intense enough even with this golden boy in the lead, but when a tragic accident puts Jason out of commission, Coach Taylor must scramble to keep the team in the running for the championships, and himself in a job. That means trusting in sweet, shy, stuttering second-stringer Matt Saracen (Zach Gilford), who has his hands full as it is holding down a job and looking after his beloved grandmother (Louanne Stephens), who slips in and out of dementia. Nervous and bumbling at the beginning, Matt gains confidence over the weeks without sacrificing his deeply ingrained sense of integrity.

While the show focuses most prominently on the twin journeys of Matt and his coach as they try to become comfortable in their new roles, we also watch several other characters develop. Initially, Eric's wife, Tami (Connie Britton), struck me as a bit of a bubble-head, but that first impression soon corrected itself. A patient and caring wife and mother with occasional bursts of temper that match her husband's, she finds her place in the town when she takes a job as school counselor and begins advising students, who benefit greatly from her concern. Her new job occasionally causes friction, however, since she sometimes finds herself butting heads with her husband on certain issues, like the school looking the other way when football players cheat on tests. His daughter Julie (Amy Teegarden), meanwhile, is 15 and full of attitude, an intellectual whose determination to have nothing to do with the sport that obsesses her dad falters as Matt gradually works up the nerve to ask her out.

As Jason learns to adjust to life in a wheelchair, his solid relationship with perky cheerleader Lyla Garrity (Minka Kelly) begins to crumble, despite her faithfulness in visiting him daily at the hospital and in rehab. Meanwhile, he wonders bitterly why his best friend, surly Tim Riggins (Taylor Kitsch), hasn't come to visit; when he finally does, their friendship is tested after Jason discovers a shattering secret. Other notable students include bad-girl Tyra Collette (Adrianne Palicki), Tim's on-again, off-again girlfriend; Smash Williams (Gaius Chales), a hot-shot who is probably the most likely remaining member of the team to go pro; and Landry Clarke (Jesse Plemons), Matt's nerdy best friend who dishes out bad dating advice while pining over Tyra. Tim and Tyra remind me a lot of Daniel and Kim from Freaks and Geeks and follow a similar progression, while Matt's struggles to keep his new status as football star from going to his head recall Clark in season four of Smallville.

All of these students have problems, and we often see the parents taking an active role in helping their children through their difficulties. The Taylors present the best example of a mom and dad supporting each other and their child, and indeed they wind up playing parents to dozens of students throughout the year. Eric can holler with the best of them out on the field or in the locker room, but he is fair, and he values respect and hard work. He does sometimes get a little too caught up in his job, however, and that's when it's up to Tami to remind him how important family time is. Apart from the Taylors, my favorite parent is Smash's mother, Corrina (Liz Mikel), a widow and devout church-goer who raises her children with a firm hand tempered with expansive affection.

Lyla's affluent parents strive to keep a stable home for their children, but her father Buddy's (Brad Leland) philandering makes that difficult; Jason's parents are so desperate to provide for Jason in the face of his costly medical bills that they decide to sue Coach Taylor for their son's injury. Tyra's mother (Dana Wheeler-Nicholson) is deeply devoted to her daughter but tragically addicted to men who take advantage of her, and she does nothing to foster Tyra's opportunities to further her education. Tim lives with his brother Billy (Derek Phillips), who generally is a bad influence but at least is there for him, which is more than can be said of his father (Brett Cullen, who's appeared on LOST and Ugly Betty, two of my other favorite shows), who only shows up long enough to remind Tim what a lousy role model he is. Similarly, Matt's dad (Brent Smiga) spends most of the season off-screen, and his arrival from Iraq causes more problems for Matt than it solves, at least initially, but his grandma, even at her least lucid, remains warm and loving.

Each episode juggles all these storylines and characters quite well, aided by a jerky cinematography style that I initially disliked but that grew less distracting for me as the season progressed. There are many scenes in which several of the key characters are scattered across a room or a field, and often the camera will pan away from one conversation to another occurring feet away. This seems to happen especially often in the beginning, when there is a need for us to get to know the different characters as quickly as possible. Later episodes tend to put more focus on characters' individual paths, and there is plenty of room for them to make mistakes and mature; writers Peter Berg and Buzz Bissinger see to it that most characters do plenty of both.

Several of the characters - most prominently Lyla and Smash's family - are vocally Christian, and it seems most of the townsfolk attend church, which is refreshing to see, though it doesn't prevent anyone from getting into sticky situations. More than half a dozen characters are unfaithful to a spouse or significant other over the course of the season, and there are instances of bullying, violence, unethical practices, racism, underage drinking, theft and drug use. Such mis-steps have consequences, however, and most characters are considerably wiser at the end of the season than they were at the beginning.

Friday Night Lights is a slice-of-life show that demonstrates how a town can be both divided and united by a passion for football and how times of change and trauma help to build character. Though the show was snubbed by the Emmys and didn't manage to rein in a large audience, it has another chance to find its footing this fall, and I hope it does because whatever accolades it receives are well-deserved. I probably won't be spending any time at the football stadium this autumn, but I'm all too happy to get into the spirit by watching Friday Night Lights.

A Pair of Matthews Steer Moving Masterpiece We Are Marshall

Matthew Fox just can't seem to get away from plane crashes. After getting to know him as Jack, the man largely responsible for maintaining some semblance of order amongst the castaways on LOST, my friend and I were eager to see him deal with the aftermath of another airline disaster in his new movie. Only in We Are Marshall, a true story of tragedy and triumph, his character survives the crash only because he wasn't on the plane.

Seventy-five people in the Marshall University community, including all but four members of the football team, boarded a plane back to Huntington, West Virginia on that foggy November night in 1970. As their town awaited their homecoming, the air was calm, Kelly's Heroes at the theater, Cracklin' Rosie on the radio. And then, time stood still for an announcement. Seventy-five people in the Marshall University community had been lost in an inferno just miles away. The town would never be the same.

As one of the team's coaches, Red Dawson (Fox) - who reluctantly takes on the role of assistant coach when the team is rebuilt - might well have been on that plane. Instead, he went home by a different route on official business. While everyone in the town grapples with grief in the ensuing months, his is more acute than most as he lost so many close associates, so many promising young athletes, so much faith in his ability to protect his players. Whenever I gazed into that tormented face, I almost expected that in the background, I would hear the strains of Empty Chairs at Empty Tables, the lament young revolutionary Marius sings in Les Miserables after realizing that all of his comrades have died in battle. There is darkness and conflict behind Foxy Matthew's steely eyes - so much that it's a lucky thing we have a Matthew of more mirth to balance him out.

Matthew McConaughey tends to be a bit of a goofball in his films. Here, as incoming head coach and father of three Jack Lengyel, he brings a welcome lightness to the proceedings, initiating most of the movie's funniest moments. But the humor is the result of folksy charm from a big-hearted man who volunteers to rebuild the football team after empathizing with all those bereft families. His way of doing things is sometimes unconventional, but he's passionate and effective. He's also very handy with a metaphor; his apt comparisons help him to get his way on several occasions. Though he is a stranger in this town, he learns what he can about the deceased and encourages his players to honor them by getting out there on that field.

The football aspect of the movie plays much like a typical inspirational sports movie. The team starts out a mess, consisting mostly of freshmen (thanks to a concession from the NCAA), some of whom have never played the sport before. The few returning players grow quarrelsome with all these newcomers wearing jerseys that only months before belonged to their friends, little caring about the history behind them. But as the townspeople powerfully demonstrate early in the film, seeing their beloved football team in action again could do wonders for this bereaved town, so they have to pull themselves together. And with Jack on the job, help has a tendency to come from unexpected sources.

Notable personalities include Nate Ruffin (Anthony Mackie), who bears the burden of his survivor's guilt by straining against his injured shoulder in an effort to lead his teammates to victory; Annie Cantrell (Kate Mara), a lovely young waitress who, as the fiancee of one of the doomed players, strives to assuage the sorrow and loneliness of his father (Ian McShane), one complimentary dessert at a time; and perhaps my favorite character, buttoned-up university president Donald Dedmon (David Strathairn), who struggles to settle upon the most respectful course of action in the face of such tragedy and eventually learns to let passion overtake propriety for the sake of a grieving town.

The film's two-hour running time teeters toward the over-long but doesn't cross the line. Rather, the story's gradual unfolding allows us to witness the changes that occur over the course of nearly a year as well as get a glimpse into the complications involved in starting up a football team nearly from scratch. Appealing aerial views of this coal town surrounded by mountains add to the film's beauty, as does the soundtrack, peppered with such mellow classics as Gordon Lightfoot's If You Could Read My Mind and Cat Stevens' Peace Train.

In one of We Are Marshall's earliest scenes, the ill-fated coach impresses upon his team that winning games is the only thing that matters. By the end of the film, we get the sense that this isn't true anymore. While a win is always something to strive for, Jack and Red have foresight, laying the groundwork for future champions. For now, the most important thing is just taking the field, unified, proud to play a part in the continuance of this team's legacy. We Are Marshall aspires to be a movie about perseverance, about recovering from an unfathomable ordeal and somehow finding beauty in the ashes. It succeeds.

Remember the Dream

As the week beginning with Martin Luther King Day draws to a close, it seems an opportune time to turn the spotlight on a recent film which is a reminder of the struggles and triumphs of de-segregation efforts in the not-so-distant past. Remember the Titans, which chronicles the true story of a newly integrated high school football team in Alexandria, Virginia in 1971, is a powerful movie that demonstrates the strength to be found when unity triumphs over the stigmas of diversity.

The bulk of the movie takes place in the form of a flashback to 1971, when the death of a black student precipitated the integration of the city's two high schools. In an effort to accommodate the incoming black athletes, a new coach, Herman Boone (Denzel Washington), was hired to head up the Titans, the high school football team, much to the dismay of current head coach Bill Yoast (Will Patton), in the running for the city's Hall of Fame because of the Titans' excellent track record. The movie begins and ends in a cemetery in 1981, guided by the narration of Yoast's fiery daughter Cheryl, who was nine years old (Hayden Pannetiere) in 1971.

As new head coach, Boone faced many difficulties, the most harrowing of which was the task of convincing the white and black teammates to cooperate. The first team member to bridge the racial gap was Louis Lastik (Ethan Suplee), a gentle giant with a love for Motown music. The other teammates came around more slowly, forced to get to know one another by their relentless coach. Once star player Julius Campbell (Wood Harris) and Gerry Bertier (Ryan Hurst) learned to work together, the others followed quickly, and by the end of football camp the team was actually acting like one.

The rest of the movie deals with the lack of understanding by the rest of the Alexandrians upon the return of the newly integrated team and the teammates' struggle to remain united in the face of their still racist town. The youths had finally learned to see past their differences, but their parents were not prepared to accept the change. Winning became more important than ever because one game would cost Boone his leadership position. For Yoast, however, a winning season for the Titans under Boone would mean the loss of his nomination to the Hall of Fame.

Because this is a true story, the struggles of its main characters are especially poignant and speak to us as we remember the dream of Martin Luther King. Life does not always provide the happiest of endings, and Remember the Titans is not without its tragedy, but the way in which the team stood together to rise above it ends the movie on a victorious note. This marvelous movie is a powerful reminder of how far we've come and how far we have yet to go before all people are "judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."