The new coach of a small town Texas high school football team tries to deal with local pressure to bring home the state championship, while his players cope with issues of their own.

CRITIQUE

Friday Night Lights is one of the best series to come on TV in years, and it’s a shame that so few people have discovered it; it’s a miracle that NBC reviewed it, given that it didn’t even finish in the top 100 in the ratings.  Why it didn’t draw a large audience is fairly easy to see; the preconception that it was essentially a football show likely put off many women, many who would likely have loved it, while this is really a perfect example of a show that, once you miss the first half-dozen episodes, it’s hard to jump in the middle of.

There aren’t really any stand-alone episodes here, just continuing storylines that set something up in one episode that might not get a dramatic payoff until 5 or 6 episodes later.  But the result works, particularly on DVD, when you can just sit down and immerse yourself in the lives of these characters.

The main character here is Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler), who moves his wife Teri (Connie Britton) and 15-year-old daughter Julie to Dillon, Texas, where Eric has gotten his first head-coaching gig.  The series starts off focused on just a handful of characters, from the Taylor family to starting quarterback Jason and his girlfriend Lyla, to running backs Smash and Tim and backup quarterback Matt.

Jason’s serious injury in the first episode is really what drives the whole first season, as the team has to deal with the loss of their best player, Jason has to cope with his rehab and his relationship with Lyla, and other characters are forced to make choices in response to this as well.  But the series also nicely expands as it goes on, really adding an ever-widening array of characters, from the teens’ mostly-dysfunctional families to others that they come into contact with along the way.

What really makes this work is how real it all feels.  There are no perfect characters here, and no evil ones, just human beings trying to figure out their lives, making mistakes and then having to deal with the consequences.  The episodes are shot in a realistic, almost-documentary-like fashion (though this is never distracting; quite the opposite) while the actors completely inhabit their characters.  The writers aren’t afraid to really push these characters either; there are a slew of well-rendered episodes here, and everyone gets a chance to show multiple facets of these people, who ultimately are more compelling just because we believe that they exist, and we are really made to care about their lives.

Ultimately there are no missteps here, just a solid string of episodes that deal with some serious subjects (crippling injury, racism, teenage sex, alcoholism, steroids, mental illness) in moving and non-preachy fashion; there are no easy answers here, no convenient reversals, just characters trying to grow up and figure out their lives (which goes for the adults as well as the teams).  This is a series that is well-worth checking out.

THE VIDEO

Friday Night Lights is presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen.  The visuals are crisp, even when the image isn’t; some of the lighting isn’t great (on purpose), but it all largely works very well. 

THE AUDIO

Friday Night Lights is presented in English 5.1 Dolby Digital.  Dialogue, music and sound effects come through clear.  The only subtitles are in English for the Hard of Hearing.

THE EXTRAS

The 22-minute Featurette Behind the Lights is a solid behind-the-scenes documentary, shot during the filming of the last episode of the show, which gives an appealing look at the cast and the process of putting the film together.

18 of the 22 episodes each have several minutes of Deleted Scenes, which were cut purely for time; there are a lot of scenes here that are so strong that one wishes they’d edited them back into the shows, but watching them afterward works too.

FINAL THOUGHTS