Tuesday, January 8, 2008

"Friday Night Lights" 1/4

Here's why "Friday Night Lights" is the best show on television - it takes the broad outline of a plot that could have come out of an episode of "Happy Days" and turns it into Shakespeare. A poorly-animated Tornado levels a rival high school. Dillon does the Christian thing and lets the homeless football team practice on the Panthers' field, use the Panthers' gym, share the Panthers' locker room. Coach Taylor does his best to be a good host. The rival coach is a bigtime asshole leading a team of assholes. The Montagues and Capulets were bad, but they didn't play football.

To rant: This episode, the best all season, reminded me how disturbing it is that everyone isn't watching this show. "Friday Night Lights" combines everything everyone wants out of anything. Bone crunching football, witty dialogue, blindingly hot girls, sweaty man candy, slow-building storylines, love-drunk romantic soliloquies (there were 3 in this episode! 3!), high school drama that's funny, marriage comedy that's serious, crazy old grandmas, newborn babies, annoyingly free-spirited younger siblings, strippers and meth dealers and politicians and schoolteachers. This is a show about America, Capital Fucking A. Not polyethnic mult-cult microcosm-of-humanity America ("Lost," "Heroes"), not glammed-out upper-crust saucy sudser America ("Gossip Girl," "Dirty Sexy Money," "Desperate Housewives"), not aesthetically-perfect modern tragedy HBO America ("The Sopranos," "The Wire"). Just America. God Bless "Friday Night Lights."

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