Final Thoughts On Friday Night Lights: A Questionnaire

On Wednesday, we said goodbye to Friday Night Lights. This is a show that will live on in the hearts of all who watched. I wrote a non-spoiler send off earlier, but now myself and Fidoz would like to offer up some insights and thoughts on the show itself. This post will be full of spoilers, so if you haven't watched, pocket this post and watch the show immediately. Be sure and click the links throughout the post as they will send you to some highlights of the show.

How would you rank the 5 seasons of Friday Night Lights?

BCStagg: 1,5,3,4,2. Season 1 was just so perfect. Granted it had a full 20+ episodes to fully develop characters, but so much was accomplished. Because it had so many episodes we were able to get more development as opposed to just another game on the way to state. The Next three are toss ups. Season 5 was a great way to wrap up the series. We finally started to care about the new cast and we got closure on the rest of the old cast. Season 3 was filled with all sorts of drama from JD McCoy taking over Sarecen to Coach being usurped from power. The final shot with Coach and Mrs. Coach on the decrepit field of East Dillon is perhaps THE shot of the series. Season 4 was a good transitional season, saying goodbye to our old cast mates and hello to our new. Season 4 had THE best episode in “The Son” where Sarecen buries his father. Season 2? Well, what can you say about Season 2? Landry went on a murderous killing spree. Lyla finds Christianity...let’s just pretend half of this season didn’t happen. I say as long as Season 1 is first and Season 2 is last, you get no argument here about the middle 3.

FIDOZ: Ranking the seasons is difficult for me because of the way I watched the show. I was a late comer to the series not picking it up until towards the end of season 3. I watched the first 3 seasons back to back to back so they all kind of run together for me. With that said the first season remains the best because it’s where we met these characters we would fall in love with. It was also the only 22 episode season so the writers could be more patient and take their time molding story lines and characters.

Season 3 added the intrigue of the McCoy’s. Joe McCoy quickly rose to the rank of a-hole #1 on my list. J.D. McCoy was that spoiled but talented kid we’ve all known and couldn’t stand. Zach Gilford as Matt is really given a chance to shine as an actor. Smash, Street, Lyla and Tyra all leave the show during the season.

Season 5 wrapped the series up nicely. Maybe a little too nicely as it seems everyone got what they were after in the end. The Epic storyline was more of a diversion and ultimately pointless. I’m no Alan Alda but I thought Jess’s attempt to learn how to become a coach was interesting. Billy and Mindy might be the worst non abusive guardians in the history of television but Billy was absolutely hilarious throughout. My biggest issues with season 5 were that I thought Hastings was an underdeveloped and underused character. I never was able to connect with Luke and by the end of the series I really didn’t like Tim.

Season 4 was bound to be a struggle as they tried to transition from the old cast to the new. The biggest trouble I had with this season was the creation of East Dillon. The stories and characters had been so real I had trouble believing all these athletes that were now on the East Dillon team hadn’t been playing football at all before the merge.

My favorite part of season 4 was finding out that Texas really is heaven and that when you’re killed by the Barksdale crew you get to go to Dillon. If you don’t get that then you need to see The Wire immediately. RIP Wallis & DeAngelo.

Season 2 is by far the worst of the five seasons. There were several story lines I just couldn’t stand. I thought Coach Taylor leaving his job mid season was completely out of character. Then there was the terribly forced Landry/Tyra manslaughter story line. There’s so many pieces of that story line I just can’t buy. I don’t believe that would be Landry’s course of action in the moment and I really can’t believe a smart kid like Landry who’s also the son of a police officer wouldn’t fess up immediately based on the circumstances.

Did you think Friday Night Lights made the correct decision by bringing in new cast members after graduating their first group? Were they successful in this transition?

BCStagg: Yes. Absolutely. The show wasn’t about the kids. The show was about Coach and the town. Yes we loved the characters, but the fact of life is that kids get older and graduate. If we followed all the kids through graduation and at their respective colleges, the show would have become watered down and it wouldn’t have been fair to the new breed. I think the show did a great job of transitioning the new cast in. One of the ways they were succesful was by having Riggins and Sarecen stay around for the start of Season 4 before slowly easing them out. It allowed us to have something familiar to hold on to while learning to love the new kids.

Fidoz: They had to bring in new cast members for the show to remain interesting. Following characters like Lyla, Tyra and Smash off at college was never going to work. They could do that with Julie because she was the Taylor’s daughter. What I didn’t like was the creation of East Dillon. Seems as though troubled teen Vince and the rest of the new characters could have integrated into Dillon High without missing a beat. I didn’t quite get the point of isolating the bad side of the tracks kids instead on investigating the struggle between sets of kids from completely different backgrounds.

What’s one story line you wish the show would have focused more on?

BCStagg: I’m tempted to say more of Matt’s mom, Shelby Sarecen because I love me some Kim Dickens, or the evolution of the size of Gracie Bell's forehead, but I’d have to go Santiago. In season 2, Buddy sort of adopted a Latin linebacker and got him to play for Coach Taylor. If we would have stuck with Santiago I think it would have solved 2 gaps in the show: the lack of a Latin presence, and the lack of a defensive presence. It’s hard to imagine a small town Texas school without any Hispanic kids. It was almost distracting. I know that Riggins and Luke played both ways, but we really never got a taste of a good defensive story. In season 1, the defense brings the team back by shutting down Voodoo Tatum, but we don’t know any of them, so it meant less to us. Having a defensive player we care about could have lead for more flexibility in the football story telling so it wasn’t just the offense winning with hail mary after hail mary.

Fidoz: I would have liked to have seen a different approach to Street’s acceptance of his condition. I always felt like they were rushing his rehab and transition from one career to the next. When he left the show he hadn’t been out of high school two years and had been a paraplegic rugby player trying out for the national team, making a trip down to Mexico to find a magic cure, a car salesman and ultimately working for an agent in New York. I slower development and struggle with his new situation would have added greater depth to the character. As it was, I barely cared about Street by the time he left and even less so when he came back in season 5.

What’s one story line you wished the show would have spent less on or left out altogether?

BCStagg: The obvious answer is the Landry murder plot. It just didn’t fit the show. Tyra getting raped and Landry defending her is one thing. Maybe he could have just beat her within an inch of his life and he we just never see the traveling rapist again. But if I were to pick something not in the season we shall not speak of, I’d say it Julie Taylor’s affair with the married TA. I know it’s sort of the catalyst that drove her to Matt, but I never really liked it when the show ventured out of Dillon, unless it was for an away game. I also, found it a bit unbelievable that Julie would do such a thing, and then we had the intolerable “I’m not leaving the house” moments. It just distracted me from my final season.

Fidoz: This one is easy. I hated the Landry and Tyra manslaughter storyline. It was by far the least organic story line of the entire series. I felt like they were trying to manufacture drama unnecessarily. That was just one of the problems with the doomed second season.

Did you have any pet peeves when it came to the show?

BCStagg: This is hard, because nothing bothered me outright about the show, but if I had to pick something, it’d be that they would give away surprise cameos by listing the actor’s name in the guest starring credits at the opening. I always knew when Sarecen was going to come back. I also find both the Shane State and Braemore job offers for Coach and Mrs. Coach both highly implausible. I didn’t like how they never even brought up JD McCoy again. Unless he transferred, he and Vince will be competing for QB1 on the Super Team. All they needed to do was drop 1 line about what happened to him and we would have been clear.

Fidoz: I had a couple of things that just drove me crazy. The first was Tami’s go to move. It seemed like at least 45% of Tami’s lines somehow involved “you need to ________ because it will improve your college application.” I know she was a school counselor but from my experience it was never that hard getting accepted into college. This is coming from a guy who participated in nothing during high school and had an atrocious attendance record.

The other thing I couldn’t wrap my head around was how easy it was for all these 16-17 year olds to just walk into bars and convenient stores and get served alcohol. I grew up in a small Texas town and it took careful planning or an older sibling to score like that. I can see 17 year old Becky waitressing at the Landing Strip but an 18 year old Landry getting past the door is much less likely. There were just way too many scenes with underage characters hanging out in bars drinking.

Who was your favorite character not named Eric or Tami Taylor?

BCStagg: This is an easy one. Matt Sarecen. I’ve never identified so much with a character in my life. He was never quite the best at anything, but he always tried to make good with whatever he was given. He was complex in that he always worked for a living and took care of his sweet grandma with dementia because his father was in the army. Sarecen also had the two of the best moments in the show. One where Coach threw him in the bathtub and Sarecen cries that every one leaves him. It was a rare moment for Matt where he was completely candid. The second is perhaps the best moment of the show where he buries his father. The blood coming from his hands as he shovels dirt onto the grave with him crying, it just doesn’t get any better than that. I always root for the underdog. And Matt was just that. Always nice to see the good guy get rewarded. 


Fidoz: To me there’s really only 3 choices Matt, Landry and Buddy. Matt was much more a star of the show than Landry or Buddy. I loved every uncomfortable discussion he had with coach or someone in authority. I vacillated back and forth on whether I loved Buddy or wanted to punch him in the gut. I think most people did including Coach Taylor. I’m going to have to go with Landry though. The terrible manslaughter story arc not withstanding, Landry was television gold whenever he was on screen. Whether it was putting Matt in his place, showing mad skills with the ladies by landing both Tyra and Jess or rocking the pants off of Dillon as leader of Crucifictorious, Landry was nails.