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.

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.