Monday, October 15, 2007

Friday Night Lights


Quote of the day:
“Hatred, for the person not engaged in it, is a little like the odor of garlic for one who hasn’t eaten any.”
--Jean Rostand

Last night, Merrie and I watched one of the best things we’ve seen in months. I say “things” because I’m lumping movies and TV shows together.

It was the first episode of the first season of “Friday Night Lights.” This is an especially wonderful episode in a wonderful series. If you haven’t seen it, my advice is to to immediately add it to your Netflix list. Or immediately drive to your local video store to rent it.

Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.

We had watched a couple of the shows a few months ago at the end of the season, and we both liked it. So, as the second season got under way, we decided to take a look at the start of season one. I’m happy that we did.

When you read the description of “Friday Night Lights,” it’s easy to dismiss it as a likely bunch of hokey pap. But hokey pap it is not. Pokey haps, perhaps. But not hokey pap.

The show centers around a high-school football team in a Texas small town. See what I mean? Why would I want to watch that? Before I saw the show, I had visions of a cross between “7th Heaven” and “Rocky.”

But the series is uncanny in somehow creating an extraordinary synergy among the actors, the writing and all its production elements. The result is a show that, as Nancy Franklin said in the New Yorker, does not feel like a TV show at all.

It feels real. In fact, this may be the realist-feeling, most genuine TV show since Sanjaya was voted off “American Idol.”

Or of the last few years. Take your pick.

These are real people with real joys and sorrows, real triumphs and failures, and real strength and weakness. Very gently underlying it all is a fragile web of connection. It’s a community.

And this is not a show about a small town in Texas.

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