Here's an admission for you: I despise football. I hate everything about it. Just having football on the TV gives me a throbbing headache. The sounds of the crowd and the whistles and the commentary make me want to puke. Why the fervent non-love? Well, there are too many reasons to name, but here's a good one: many of the professional players are overpaid, over-glorified thugs.
Another geeky complaint: I have painful, long-buried memories of professional football pre-empting Star Trek reruns on WPIX when I was a kid. I carry those scars to this day...
And besides, soccer is an entirely more fascinating and skill-based game than American football anyway...
So take this non-fan seriously when I write these words: the new NBC program Friday Night Lights offers one of the best shot, best edited and best acted series premieres in the history of the medium. Yes, it's that good. Unbelievably good. Like...feature film quality good.
Friday Night Lights, developed for television by Peter Berg, charts the life and times of a small West Texas town that loves football. The high school football team, "the Panthers," is the non-stop subject du jour on the radio, on local tv, in the papers, at political meetings and in the corridors of the high school. Football is love; football is life; football is obsession.
And this focus makes things really tough for the Panthers' rookie coach Taylor (Kyle Chandler). He must prove himself worthy of the coveted job, and quick. "With expectations like this, the only place you can go is down," he is told during the countdown to the first big game of the season. He is also hounded all over town by citizens who offer him unwanted advice, support...and ultimatums. "We want to win championships," he is reminded constantly. The season premiere follows the events in the small town from a Monday in training to the first Friday night game, and builds up tension so gloriously you can almost forget all this rigmarole is about a stupid game in which people throw and catch a ball, and tackle each other.
But television, like movies, isn't always about whether you win or lose. It's about how you play the game, and Friday Night Lights plays like no other show on television (or any show in television history...). The episode I watched was visually distinctive, to say the least. It appeared to be cut together entirely of "stolen" moments. In other words, the series boasts a nearly cinema-verite look in which it appears footage were grabbed on the fly and not laboriously prepared and staged (which of course, is exactly how it's done...). This brilliant visual palette and conceit captures something essential and true about the life of these townspeople. If all feels spontaneous, anticipatory, portentous, ephemeral...and isn't that the precisely the feelings we experience before we watch any sporting contest, local or televised? Who will win? Who will lose? Who will rise? Who will fall?
But if Friday Night Lights were only great-looking and only concerning sports-cliches, I wouldn't give a damn about this series. Instead, Friday Night Lights is something deeper. It's a window into a weird and fascinating American sub-culture ("This is Texas football," we are informed, with great seriousness). This is a world where Christianity and football are oddly tied together, like Jesus Christ himself dreamed of being a quarterback or some such thing. There are multiple times in the premiere episode wherein religion and sports are conflated into one glorious thing. "Here's to God and Football," one person says, as though he truly believes his team his blessed by The Lord and destined to win. Like God - if there is one - doesn't have more important things to worry about. This kind of hyperbole goes further. The young quarterback, Jason Steele is described in glowing terms as a "super star" and a "great leader." Even this is not enough for the town's myth-building apparatus, which includes the press. Taylor tells the news reporters that Steele's also a man of high moral fiber. Like that's somehow necessary to throw passes, right?
As depicted on this series, the weekly Red State football ritual looks distinctly bizarre...and delusional. "Let's pray" is a common refrain before games, during games, and after games, and yet when Jason Steele falls in battle (on the field) and is replaced by a great new star, he is virtually forgotten. The Panthers win their first game and get a new star to worship, and the old star suffers in a hospital with a spinal injury, his future career destroyed. Whom Gods Destroy?
If I'm not making myself plain, let me put it this way: Friday Night Lights isn't merely about football; it's about the whole culture surrounding football (and in particular, Texas football). As a slice of bizarre, almost alien life, it is unmatched in its sense of observing human life unfold. The premiere opens, for instance, with views of a shabby, tiny house with a trashy front yard and used old car pulling up. This is exactly what America looks like in a lot of places...but we don't often see this unromantic, realistic vision on Hollywood-produced television. Instead, Friday Night Lights visually cues us in to a very important fact: football is an obsession in West Texas because the people who aren't lucky enough to live in the butt-ugly McMansions (which we also see...) instead live in poverty.
It's not that football is their escape...it's that football is their distraction from unpleasant reality. The hullabaloo around the game distracts the citizens from how crappy things are right there in their front yards. And that's kind of sad, isn't it? That we elevate high-school athletes to men of "moral strength," and "superstar" status because they can run and tackle? That we throw our daughters at these men like whores so that we can receive some sense of basking in their greatness? Let's face it, we should be focusing on making certain our neighbors are fed and sheltered and warm. Elevating football to Christian crusade only puts a new spin on a very old game of bread and circuses.
But damn if this isn't a great show...
Another geeky complaint: I have painful, long-buried memories of professional football pre-empting Star Trek reruns on WPIX when I was a kid. I carry those scars to this day...
And besides, soccer is an entirely more fascinating and skill-based game than American football anyway...
So take this non-fan seriously when I write these words: the new NBC program Friday Night Lights offers one of the best shot, best edited and best acted series premieres in the history of the medium. Yes, it's that good. Unbelievably good. Like...feature film quality good.
Friday Night Lights, developed for television by Peter Berg, charts the life and times of a small West Texas town that loves football. The high school football team, "the Panthers," is the non-stop subject du jour on the radio, on local tv, in the papers, at political meetings and in the corridors of the high school. Football is love; football is life; football is obsession.
And this focus makes things really tough for the Panthers' rookie coach Taylor (Kyle Chandler). He must prove himself worthy of the coveted job, and quick. "With expectations like this, the only place you can go is down," he is told during the countdown to the first big game of the season. He is also hounded all over town by citizens who offer him unwanted advice, support...and ultimatums. "We want to win championships," he is reminded constantly. The season premiere follows the events in the small town from a Monday in training to the first Friday night game, and builds up tension so gloriously you can almost forget all this rigmarole is about a stupid game in which people throw and catch a ball, and tackle each other.
But television, like movies, isn't always about whether you win or lose. It's about how you play the game, and Friday Night Lights plays like no other show on television (or any show in television history...). The episode I watched was visually distinctive, to say the least. It appeared to be cut together entirely of "stolen" moments. In other words, the series boasts a nearly cinema-verite look in which it appears footage were grabbed on the fly and not laboriously prepared and staged (which of course, is exactly how it's done...). This brilliant visual palette and conceit captures something essential and true about the life of these townspeople. If all feels spontaneous, anticipatory, portentous, ephemeral...and isn't that the precisely the feelings we experience before we watch any sporting contest, local or televised? Who will win? Who will lose? Who will rise? Who will fall?
But if Friday Night Lights were only great-looking and only concerning sports-cliches, I wouldn't give a damn about this series. Instead, Friday Night Lights is something deeper. It's a window into a weird and fascinating American sub-culture ("This is Texas football," we are informed, with great seriousness). This is a world where Christianity and football are oddly tied together, like Jesus Christ himself dreamed of being a quarterback or some such thing. There are multiple times in the premiere episode wherein religion and sports are conflated into one glorious thing. "Here's to God and Football," one person says, as though he truly believes his team his blessed by The Lord and destined to win. Like God - if there is one - doesn't have more important things to worry about. This kind of hyperbole goes further. The young quarterback, Jason Steele is described in glowing terms as a "super star" and a "great leader." Even this is not enough for the town's myth-building apparatus, which includes the press. Taylor tells the news reporters that Steele's also a man of high moral fiber. Like that's somehow necessary to throw passes, right?
As depicted on this series, the weekly Red State football ritual looks distinctly bizarre...and delusional. "Let's pray" is a common refrain before games, during games, and after games, and yet when Jason Steele falls in battle (on the field) and is replaced by a great new star, he is virtually forgotten. The Panthers win their first game and get a new star to worship, and the old star suffers in a hospital with a spinal injury, his future career destroyed. Whom Gods Destroy?
If I'm not making myself plain, let me put it this way: Friday Night Lights isn't merely about football; it's about the whole culture surrounding football (and in particular, Texas football). As a slice of bizarre, almost alien life, it is unmatched in its sense of observing human life unfold. The premiere opens, for instance, with views of a shabby, tiny house with a trashy front yard and used old car pulling up. This is exactly what America looks like in a lot of places...but we don't often see this unromantic, realistic vision on Hollywood-produced television. Instead, Friday Night Lights visually cues us in to a very important fact: football is an obsession in West Texas because the people who aren't lucky enough to live in the butt-ugly McMansions (which we also see...) instead live in poverty.
It's not that football is their escape...it's that football is their distraction from unpleasant reality. The hullabaloo around the game distracts the citizens from how crappy things are right there in their front yards. And that's kind of sad, isn't it? That we elevate high-school athletes to men of "moral strength," and "superstar" status because they can run and tackle? That we throw our daughters at these men like whores so that we can receive some sense of basking in their greatness? Let's face it, we should be focusing on making certain our neighbors are fed and sheltered and warm. Elevating football to Christian crusade only puts a new spin on a very old game of bread and circuses.
But damn if this isn't a great show...
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