Friday Night Lights

In life, it’s important to have goals.  I’ve only set very few over the years so I can focus on each in turn.  The first was to go to Oxford – something I decided at the age of about eight apparently.  Once that was achieved (it was expensive, and they still email me asking for money that I am never going to give them), the next was to become a published writer.  Still haven’t managed that, but I think one out of two in my 34 years is a pretty decent strike weight.  A completion rate of 50% is better than 0%.  So, while number two eludes me, other interim goals crop up.  One was to buy a flat, and that dominated the last ten years before this summer’s eventual Help To Buy transaction, and another was to watch all five series of Friday Night Lights.  And now, everybody, I have finally delivered that goal.  So let’s all read my blogpost about it.

First things first, I should declare my lifelong aversion to team ball sports.  I grew up in a household where football wasn’t a thing.  My dad’s only sporting interest involved filling our home with the bone-chilling screech of Formula 1 tires and Murray Walker’s whiny exclamations every Sunday, with many a roast dinner soundtracked by what became two of my least favourite sounds.  With nobody realising I was short-sighted till my teens and my appalling hypermobility-linked proprioception, taking part in any sort of PE involved me not only being unable to see any balls that were launched at me, but also an inability to position my limbs to intercept them successfully.  My adult life therefore is an extension of my childhood home: sport is not a thing.  I save hours every night by not having to watch soccer matches, and I replace the office chat I see pursued around me about whose team beat whose and which players will lift what cups by having an actual personality.  However, I love dramas about sport.  It’s a theme for good narrative tension, like zombies (see The Walking Dead) and prisons (see Prison Break).  Let’s be honest, I’ve written fondly about Footballers’ Wives, and probably repeated most of those points here, so Friday Night Lights falls into that category.

The show is based on a book that had already become a film.  I’d loved the film, so I remember adding the first series to my Lovefilm list back in the dark ages when DVDs were sent back and forth in the post.  I got through the first two series and then, pow, I couldn’t for the life of me get hold of the subsequent instalments up to and including the final fifth season.  This caused years of discontent, as everything about the show was brilliant and I was desperate to see what happened to the characters I so dearly loved.  The later series were available on a friend’s Amazon Prime account, but you had to pay for each one.  As a Millennial, paying for content is a cause of great internal conflict, so I kept my pennies and my anxieties about what becomes of the Dillon Panthers football team.  Finding out became a lifelong ambition.  But, with the new flat came the decision to get my own Amazon Prime and by this point all series were included in the monthly subscription.  I could finally complete my task and achieve my goal.  And the outcome?  This amazing piece of writing for all seven of my regular readers.

Let’s cover what the show’s all about.  We are talking American football here.  Set in the state of Texas, where this sport is a religion, the end-of-week evening illuminations in the show’s title refer to the significance of high school football matches in small-town America.  I’ve only been to Austin in Texas, so this is sadly not something I’ve experienced first-hand, but this can go on the list of lifelong goals now.  Our heroes are Coach Eric Taylor (the cracking Kyle Chandler) and his wife Tami Taylor (the equally cracking Connie Britton) – these wonderful characters are the heart of our show.  I might be in my mid-thirties, but I am available for adoption to these two.  With the whole town holding its breath for football wins each Friday, the sporting fixtures in their own right generate gripping drama.  But this is then compounded by the human stories around the sport, from the ever-evolving dynamic between Coach and Tami, to the players, their families and their friends.  The whole town of Dillon feels tangibly brought to life.

A word of warning: the whole thing is filmed in wobbly cam.  It’s as if the camera operator was trying to bat away flies throughout each shoot.  This gives an intimacy to the portrayals which is heightened by the quality of the performances throughout.  The show launched the careers of Taylor Kitsch and Michael B. Jordan, but you’ll recognise faces from an array of your favourite US dramas.  I’m going to focus on some of the peripheral characters whose actors’ names never make the emotive opening credits but whose work lifts the whole thing.  There’s Brad Leland as Buddy Garrity, a role that initially irritates before elevating itself to favourite position.  I also finished the show with a deep appreciation of Stacey Oristano as Mindy Collette.  There are too many more to mention, but the quality is consistent.  Sadly, one other element of consistency is the Taylors’ daughter, Julie.  She is annoying and stupid throughout.

On my part, I’ve also maintained the consistent approach of never understanding the rules of American football.  So much of the drama can hinge around things like who is the quarterback or how many yards are left, but not knowing what these really mean is no barrier to the show’s power.  Most remarkably of all, though, is each season’s ability to build on the previous while still finding a fresh direction.  Somehow, over the years, I ended up watching the third series twice, but it’s the perfect shift between the very different dynamics (which I won’t actually describe here as that would be giving spoilers) of the beginning and end of the programme’s lifespan.  I do remember thinking the finale to the third season was the whitest thing I had ever seen (and I grew up in semirural Surrey), but the subsequent series shift in focus to reflect and include a more holistic view of American culture.  And then, either way, your heart breaks as everything draws to a close and your life must continue without any news episodes.

So I’ll chalk up Friday Night Lights as another chapter in my love affair with America.  I’m even writing this from a Chinatown hotel room in New York, wondering why the US hasn’t got the memo about waste as plastic bags are given out freely here still and the entire hotel breakfast was an exercise in plastic landfill generation (disposable crockery and cutlery…).  But I’ll also chalk it up as an exemplary contribution to the canon of quality boxsets.  Intense drama, plausible characters, a subject matter that isn’t overdone and, even though I’m conflicted about this as I wanted more, it ends before it runs out of steam.  No matter the day of the week or the time of the day, I cannot recommend Friday Night Lights enough.