Coach Taylor
Tami Taylor
Julie Taylor
Jason Street
Buddy Garrity
Lyla Garrity
Landry Clarke
Tim Riggins
Matt Saracen
Tyra Collette
Smash Williams
I love these characters and so will you after only a few episodes of this exemplary series.
I Hate Football (or at least I'm mildly disinterested in it)
It all stems from the time I spent in Lethbridge, Alberta. I was in Grade 8 and for whatever reason I decided to try out for the football team. I could have become a stoner like my friends but I thought that team sports was the high road.
I think it was the appeal of walking down the hall wearing a team jacket and having people like you, without ever knowing anything about you. Even though I didn’t feel much affinity for these small town types I still wanted them to like me. Fucked up but hey? The need to belong is strong no matter what bastard-child-of-a-subgroup you belong to.
At the time I was 13 yrs old, 6 feet tall and around 140 pounds. Not the best profile for such a rough sport. So, me and a couple of my other weakling friends tried out. They too, shared my survival strategy.
I made the final cuts, just barely. I was on the special team. I think I was a safety. I got all of 5 minutes playing time.
The only bright moment in this soul-crushing endeavor was when the coach looked back at our practice tape, showing me barely getting out of a dog pile with my life and said: “Leickner’s got a lotta jam.” This moment of victory was short lived as one particularly beefy redhead took it as his main goal to drive that jam out of me during each and every subsequent practice.
It should be mentioned that this redhead was fond of sadistic locker room games. One of his favorite tricks was to grab the punier kids by the neck and squeeze until they passed out. These kids figured it was some kind of initiation rite so they willingly allowed it to happen. This asphyxiation ritual was both bizarre and terribly frightening to my teen eyes but I managed to avoid it. I don’t know how.
Before I started football I wasn’t afraid of anyone but after one season I was afraid of everyone. I now knew what pain was; whereas before it was an abstract concept. If I stayed in Lethbridge (and not moved to Edmonton, where they didn’t have a junior high league) I might have gone on to play the next season and on through to high school. This would surely have turned me into a narrow-minded jock and most likely someone my current self would hate to be around. So what did I get out of that six months? Several welts on my forearms and a lot of self esteem issues.
And why am I addicted to the TV series, Friday Night Lights?
Every other sports drama perpetuates the notion that there are special people in the world that deserve public adoration and that people need to be inspired through exclusion.
But FNL is critical of those accepted views and questions things like: what’s important in life and what happens if you don’t fit into the world around you. No one is purely good or evil everyone has their moments when they feel the pull of the dark or light side. FNL is all about hard choices and no right answers. This is a smart-as-fuck show and it pushes the gray areas to the fore.
FNL is also filmed with the eye of an artist, which would totally be lost on a lesser sports series. All the camera is handheld, through long lenses and very immediate in it’s feel. The town’s folk that aren’t into this sport-as-religion get ample time to voice their opinions. This is a football film for people who hate the smell of pigskin or the feel of a jockstrap.
I also love the movie this drama series is based on but this series goes so much deeper into the sick psyche of middle America. It presents alternatives for people who are trapped in this suffocating world. After finishing the first season I can't wait for the next one to start up. I have grown very fond of the characters and want to know more about their lives. So many things have changed since the first episode that you want to see what more could possible change in the upcoming shows.
This show has received terrible ratings this last year but they are bringing it back for another year because the critics and the network know how important it is; sometimes there is justice in the world. The 13 year old in me that winces every time someone on the show is tackled is very grateful for this show that director Peter Berg has created.
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