Adrian Scandle Reviews: Friday Night Lights (FNL)

God Wears a Helmet

Dear Readers - This week's show presented an interesting conundrum for Yours Truly: having to review a show based almost entirely on subject matter that I don't really care for - football. But what I realized through this ordeal is that its not that I don't like football - per se - I just don't like the NFL. Let me explain, for those of you intimate with my past, you may know that I was a "Yell Leader" in high school. Call us cheerleaders and with all the Catholic-Boy prep school suburban angst that we could muster we would deny it to the death. The gig entailed wearing a white and blue striped polo-shirt and khaki shorts/pants while chanting a variety of mostly unorganized and mean-spirited cheers while trying to humiliate the other team by humiliating ourselves more (that sort of Manichean logic seemed correct in the good ol' days- like making fun of the one you wished to date the most until they cried). Anyway, that experience taught me a lot about what football is and what it can mean to a community, particularly if you have a good team. Our team went all state or champions or CCS or something and there are few things better than having the clock down to the final minutes while that guy in your english class passes it to that other guy from your History of the Modern World class for a game winning touchdown in the last game of the season. In NFL, so much of that home-townie camaraderie seems eaten by the souless corporate machine that stamps helmets with logos and throws annoying John Madden quotes at you on giant rotating chyrons sponsored by Nike and Kellogs cereal. It seems the closer to the ground (societally) that football gets, the more compelling it becomes...in my mind anyway. If football is an analogue for the Roman arena, I guess I'd rather see people I know pummelled by lions.

Anthropologically speaking, I find football interesting because like art, theatre and video games, it seems to fulfill some cultural niche that seems so removed from the vital machinations of real life while being absolutely necessary at the same time. It's both extraneous and compulsory. Watching FNL reinstilled that sort of cultural importance of football, of team organization and homosociality that only alpha-male competitive ass-pats can induce. At first I was skeptical, as the opening had me wondering if this was going to be yet another Varsity Blues with such unforgettable lines as "I don't want YOUR life!" And though that movie had its good points (whipped cream anyone?), it ultimately reminded me why I don't live in Texas. But like NFL to good old Bellarmine Bells high school championships, this show differs in that it really gets at the beating heart of how such a "game" can unite or rend a community.

The engaging documentary-style camera work follows an NBC crew following the team (meta, eh!?) before their opening game with a new coach. The acting seems unpretentious and the dialogue almost entirely palatable. Those two distinctions alone should garner a few Emmys in my opinion, but hey, maybe there's no room with Everybody Loves Ramond receiving posthumously? After establishing the ethos of the Texas town that lives football, breathes football and pours football all over their chili burgers, the story finally starts advancing. We find the coach to be an untested newbie (and an actor with some gravitas to boot) and the quarterback to be a handsome all-American God Fearing Saint who carries the team's skills and boosts their morale. There are some blonde girls in crop-tops and like any drama set in the South, inklings of racial tension to be explored further in coming episodes. Sound boring? I thought it would be. The arc of the show really picks up when during the final game (SPOILER ALERT) the quarterback heroically vaults in front of an opposing player (close game at this point) and injures/martyrs himself, ultimately effing up his spine. A scene of hospital workers unceremoniously cutting his helmet off with a saw and incising his back to fix his spine is juxtaposed with the backup quarter back (another toothsome yet inexperienced hulk) trying to rally the team in the final minutes to recover the game and bring honor back to their small fighting town. I actually found myself standing to cheer a team I should really have no allegiance to, were it not for the earlier exposition that fleshed out these characters into actual believable human bodies. The other team was just "the other team," with no story, no narrative, no soul.

The outcome is largely predictable, so I don't even need to spell it out for you, but the execution of the final moments, the careful surgical selection of the scenes, even with a voiceover, seem to cut to the quick of what football is - and should be - all about: pleasing God by winning and bringing honor to families and a community who otherwise would be useless and unimportant....Just kidding- mostly. Like the SlumpBuster's up-and-down championship rollercoaster ride last night, the game comes to represent life; that sometimes the best players get their spines broken, but someone always steps up to carry the ball; sometimes for a win. In our case, thank God, you can replace "spine" with "hammy." Overall the show is less about football and more about a town completely obsessed with something they have created that is now much larger than all of them combined. This game where boys throw pig skin at each other and try to get it in the end zone before the other boys push them down has somehow encapsulated their hopes and dreams and all their possibilities for the future. It's politics with helmets.

All this philosophizing on football has made me a little more straight, so I will continue to watch this show in hopes that there's a good shower scene (which I'm promised there is). But I would recommend this show, given that it made lil' ol me stand up and cheer. It's not perfect and I hope it explores divergent possibilities to expand on the usual sports narrative where the hero always wins or backup quarterback-who-no-one-thought-could-step-up-does-and-proves-himself-to-win-the-big-game-and-woo-the-coach's-daughter scenario, but we'll have to wait in the bleachers through the season to find out. Clear eyes, full hearts and - in the future less predictable storylines - and this show can't lose.