I have always been a fan(and participant) in two things: powerful, well-played dramas on television(and always in film) and sports. I grew up playing ice hockey. Hockey was life. Hockey was religion. Second to spending Sundays with family hockey came at a close second place. All that being said I have yet to find any hockey television show out there. Football is not my first choice of sports I know about. As I just posted last week I am in a fantasy football league and I am the most inept in football knowledge. The highlight for me is making weekly update podcasts that have nothing to do with stats,facts, or anything near that. I make the show to incorporate movie facts, pop culture, and creative ways to poke fun at our league.

I have stumbled upon something as amazing as watching Parenthood(a review soon to come as well). Parenthood really makes you want to be a better dad, better man and better spouse but Friday Night Lights, well, it makes you want to be a better person. The idea for the show began as a book by H.G. Bissinger. The book came out in 2000, and was all about(I have never read it) the obsession with small town Texas football. Football as a way of life, as a way for people to come together. The movie came out four years later starring Billy Bob Thorton as the coach. The movie, directed by Peter Berg, who then two years later started the show with NBC and with producer Jason Katims(My So Called Life, Roswell, Boston Public, and currently Parenthood).

I realize I am 5 years later to this show but it is completely worth writing about because it is the shaky hand cam( sort of like The Office and Modern Family). Friday Night Lights tells the story of how football is not everything. Football is not all their is to life but in the town of Dillon, it is all people hold onto. Football for these characters is what they hold onto to succeed in life. Tuned to the melody of Explosions In The Sky(they do the theme song) the music is almost the best part of the show.

I am turning this into multiple posts because there are 22 episodes in the first season.

Pilot
The first show opens up with Sport’s Illustrated interviewing the famous number one ranked Dillon Panthers. They are considered the best in the state. Coach Eric Taylor(played superbly by Kyle Chandler) is in his first year for this team. Jason Street(Scott Porter) is the anchor of the team, he is QB and he is the future of the team. Tim Riggins(Taylor Kitsch) as the hard-hitting fullback, alcoholic and without parents. The Boobie Miles of the team is Brian “Smash” Williams(Gaius Charles). It seems like Terrell Owens and Randy Moss climbed inside the psyche of a teenager and created this character. The first episode shows these star players playing their opening game and tragedy strikes. Towards the end of the game, in an effort to stop a game-winning run, Jason Street tackles a man and takes him down but while doing so hurts himself. He can’t get up and then the ambulances come and take him away. The coach says “its only football” which seems to be a shocker in the town of Dillon, to even say that. Coach Taylor also says “people are expecting a lot, you have earned this, the right to win.”

I don’t remember exactly what episode this was from but Coach Taylor deserves to be quoted, probably more than anyone else in this show. He says: “we will all fall at some point in our lives and what we have is special, when it is taken from us we will be tested, it is this pain that causes us to look inside ourselves.”

The show spins towards football still being everything but everyone in conflict after Jason Street gets badly injured.