This Halloween I drove an hour just to watch the season premiere of Friday Night Lights on a fifteen inch television (which is smaller than my computer monitor). And it was totally worth it. I doubt I will travel the distance every week and thus will hold off my weekly commentary of the show until its NBC showing, but here is my first impressions of the final season of the best show on television (spoiler warnings to those who are waiting for the NBC broadcast).
As it has been the last three seasons, it is time to say goodbye to beloved members of the original cast as both Landry Clarke and Julie Taylor, the last remaining original high school students head off to college. The two didn’t get as triumphant send off as previous members (though I suspect both may show up later) they were both appropriate with Landry’s triumphant last waltz of Cruxifictorious and Julie got one last ping pong match in. There was also when last swich-a-roo with Julie offering an epic send off, which I thought she was going to plant one on him, but instead it turned out to be one last trip to the Landing Strip. It’s a shame that Julie didn’t accompany Landry to Grandma Saresen’s house though.
But the heart of Friday Night Lights remains the story of those left behind in Dillon, Texas. Despite only winning two games last season, Coach Taylor has to temper expectations after one of those wins came at the expense of the West Dillon Panthers’ playoff hopes. The team is still a shell and Coach has to put on his recruiting hat and apparently poached the black defensive coordinator (whom I don’t think was ever given a name) from West Dillon, sadly it looks as if Mac McGill may have stayed. He even inadvertently added Billy Riggins to the staff who managed to Coach even more than the assistant that repeated everything he said with Billy quoting of Ronnie Lott.
Coach leaves recruiting of actual players to last year’s standouts Vince Howard and Luke Cafferty. They are enlisted to recruit a stand out basketball player who wears a wool cap despite being in Texas during the dog days of August. Heb may not like football, but the white boy can jump (and apparently catch footballs). And he self admitted free sprit which means he is the likely predecessor to Tim Riggins when it comes to a penchant of skipping practices. Even more expections will have to be tempered after the Lions beat the defending state champs thanks to an injury to the opponent quarterback that had shades of Jason Street to it.
And as downtrodden as Dillon is to live in, no one is more downtrodden than Becky Sproles and somehow her situation got even worse this season. Her mother is now working on a cruise ship and though her father moved back in town to take care of her, he too if off most times on the road as a truck leaving Becky alone with his wife and her baby half-sister. Naturally, things do not go well and she cannot even turn to her only friend who if currently in jail, leaving her to turn to his brother, showing up on the doorstep of Billy Riggins who has a little one of his own. It is sad that the show won’t last long enough to see how Becky overcomes everything and leave Dillon like the characters came before her.
Friday Night Lights airs Wednesdays at 9:00 on DirecTV. You can buy previous seasons of the show on the cheap (as low as $13.49 a season) on Friday Night Lights
. You can also download previous seasons of Friday Night Lights on iTunes. The show will return to terrestrial television in about three to six months.
No comments:
Post a Comment