Friday Night Lights, Season 1

I'm not sure if there's ever been a tv show that has made me cry. This may be the first. It's a mix of incredibly heart-warming and incredibly honest about the most difficult things (the show starts out, for instance, with the star quarterback getting paralyzed). Almost every episode pushes me toward tears--I have a crush on Tim Riggins and the Coach and Matt Saracen, and I want to be Mrs. Coach.

I've heard this show recommended for ages now, but I stayed away as I was not intrigued about a show 1) about football and 2) about the love lives of high schoolers. I wasn't too big of a fan of the love lives of high schoolers when I was a high schooler myself and am even less interested now.

However, so far, this goes in the top tv shows I've ever seen.

There are a ton of strong women who stand by their man in this show, the coach's wife being the most exemplary. She stands beside him and supports him, she fights with him and she nags him when she thinks he's wrong. And they make up when they're done fighting. The thing is, the only reason this works is because the coach is a good man with high ethical standards. In the midst of the pressures that he faces, his wife reminds him of exactly who he is and what he believes. Their marriage is one of the finest that I've seen portrayed on television.

The show is not starry-eyed or rosy--it shows the complications in people and in football's affect on the town. It highlights what is good in the people in the town, but also where they fail, as well as the difficult situations that they face. The quarterback cares for his grandmother, who has dementia. There are countless broken homes. There are women mistreated by men and children without parents. And people often act badly as a result of their bad situation. But in spite of all this, the show's characters also often act with goodness and generosity.

Football, too, is something conflicted for the town. On the one hand, it brings the town together. It is a pursuit of excellence that involves loads of discipline. On the other hand, it is a flash of brilliance for a couple of years in high school. Former football players often don't finish school or have careers. People get stuck in the town. Football consumes the citizens; they elevate it above other things that are more important.

In the second half of Season 1, there's a lawsuit. That part could have been written by Wendell Berry. It shows the suffering that is caused by a frivolous lawsuit and the way that it tears the community apart. As always, though, the show doesn't provide just one perspective--it also shows the financial need from which the lawsuit arises.

One of the things that strikes me as extraordinary about the Coach as a teacher and a mentor of the players on the team is that he teaches the players, finally, not to just follow and emulate him. He calls them to play and do their best for the people in their lives who they love, not just for him. This takes us back to The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie; Miss Jean Brodie does attempt to form a cult of personality and ask her students to follow her. I think that this is something that separates good teachers from great ones--great ones look for their students to surpass them because they don't encourage their students to simply imitate them; instead, they encourage their students to think and act for themselves.


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