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View Full Version : Friday Night Lights -- October 5th 9 PM


Lumenskir
10-03-2007, 11:38 AM
Seriously guys, why no love for Friday Night Lights?

Is it because you can't fathom connecting to a world that revolves around high school football? That's the amazing thing, because the characters in the show are completely baffled too, and the characters are the great part because they act like actual people instead of constructs that serve to fulfill the plot. Aside from The Wire I've never seen a show with such detailed people, and FNL has only had one season to dimensionalize them. It got to the point that my friend had to remind me that there were actual writers scripting out the lines and scenes, that this wasn't a direct slice of small town Texas.

Of course, most of the immediacy is due to the camera work, which is far and away the best looking on television, network, cable, or prime. It's all on location and digital, but doesn't fall into the Bourne shaky-cam-bitch-ditch, it's just beautiful. Every episode looks like a crisp 43 minute film, and I think I've gotten kind of spoiled.

And the music! And this is besides the great amount of Explosions in the Sky; Any preconceived notions of strutting in to rodeo catcalls and Garth Brooks are dashed away. Daniel Johnston, Iron and Wine, ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, and fuck, they even had an acoustic Killers song in there and I was blown away.

So, yeah, watch Friday Night Lights. It's on at 9 this Friday, and you have nothing better to watch after Avatar is over anyway.

Xaeta
10-03-2007, 08:10 PM
So is Friday Night Lights a really good TV series?
I mean, I LOVE Football, but I'd rather have some opinions before I start trying to watch it...

Lumenskir
10-03-2007, 10:33 PM
The series has met with overwhelming critical acclaim from the very beginning with Virginia Heffernan of the New York Times saying "this new drama about high school football could be great — and not just television great, but great in the way of a poem or painting..."[41] a sentiment that was echoed by the Washington post who called the pilot "[e]xtraordinary in just about every conceivable way."[42] Positive reviews also came in from USA Today[43], the San Francisco Chronicle[44], the Arizona Republic[45], and the Boston Globe[46].

Praise for the pilot has even come from international sources with The Guardian's Jonathan Bernstien calling the pilot "accomplished and engaging" and the Metro awarding it 4 out of 5 stars.[47].
Young members of the Friday Night Lights cast
Young members of the Friday Night Lights cast

Praise for the show has continued throughout its inaugural season with many online journalists using the frequency of their medium to heap regular praise on the show. Matt Roush of TV Guide has dedicated several of his “Roush Dispatch” columns to the show calling the last episodes of season one “terrifically entertaining” [48] while Zap2it.com's "TVGal" has gone so far as to ask her readers to "promise to watch [the last 4 episodes of] Friday Night Lights". [49]. Even gossip columnists have praised the show with Kristin of Eonline saying she "love[s] the bejeezus out of [the show]" [50] and TV Guide's Michael Ausiello calling the season one finale "predictably flawless" [51].
That's just from the Critical Response (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friday_Night_Lights_%28TV_series%29#Critical_Recep tion) section on the show's Wikipedia page.

From my personal experience, I watched the first season pretty much straight through with four of my friends. Only my roommate and I had seen the movie with Billy Bob Thornton (also a good watch, but constrained for time in a way that the show is gloriously not), my friend barely knew that a touchdown was worth 6 points and what downs consisted of, and one was watching primarily because the soundtrack has a lot of Explosions in the Sky. By the end of the 14 hours we had all developed bizarre injokes revolving around Nubs and Crucifictorious and SmaaAASH!, and just a general love of the show.