Friday Night Lights: where the men play football and the women's names end in vowels

[bennet_7]

When the new shows started last year, I completely ignored Friday Night Lights. I thought, like many, that it was all about American football.

But this show is so not about football. It's certainly not about football as an inspirational, all-healing, magical force where everyone is a winner.

Nope, in this show there are definitely losers and it is realistic and fantastic and I'm enjoying it so much.

The characters are excellent, the dialog is realistic, the acting is generally pretty darn great and the actors are generally darn pretty. There is even a married couple who love each other and have a healthy relationship and yet are totally awesome and not boring!!! (Because yes, functional people can be entertaining on TV. We're just not used to it.)

Ok, it's a little about football. However, I've actually come to respect the intricacies of the game and I hate sports, especially American football. It does deals with the glory that comes from playing and winning but it also the pressure that comes from losing and just how unprepared the players are for the real world where won't be a career in the game for most of them.

And I was happy to discover that it deals with a disability very close to my heart. In the first episode, one of the characters is paralysed from the waist down. My aunt died in 2000; prior to that she had been in a wheel chair for 15 years (though her paralysis was not the result of an accident, rather a tumor in her spinal column). It's good to see this disability and how it affects peoples lives getting attention on a TV show.

So yeah, I'm really recommending this one for people who like character dramas. Don't be put off by the football.

Comments

[afrocurl.livejournal.com]

Ooh! I'm glad to see you watched it. I marathoned all 18 episodes a few weeks ago and I think you're right about it being a really good character drama with football as a backdrop.

[bennet-7.livejournal.com]

I wish I'd known about this one sooner but it's just been packaged badly. Even the name is misleading. Still, I'm on board now and really liking it.

[miniglik.livejournal.com]

I don't even like character dramas, and I like FNL. It's so, so good. It started a little slow, which I think cost it in the ratings, but some of the more recent episodes were about the best executed hours of television I have ever seen.

[bennet-7.livejournal.com]

I love your icon. So, so true!