Arts & Entertainment

Tonight's TV Tips - Friday, July 8 - Correction

Friday Night Lights takes its next-to-final bow.

Friday Night Lights, 8 p.m., NBC

Usually in this column I expound and expostulate on three shows being broadcast on a given night. But tonight is anything but usual.

Tonight, one of the greatest television dramas in the history of the medium is airing its penultimate episode, and I must dedicate this small space to its eulogy.

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Next week I will likely be too bereft to speak. Five years is not a long time in the life of anything, and five years was far too short for Friday Night Lights.

On its surface, it is a show about high school football in Texas, which is an industry and a religion unto itself. But FNL was never really a show about football. It was a show about a small group of people trying to live their lives in a small Texas town, and football was what connected all of them.

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At the core were the coach and his wife, brilliantly played by Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton, and surrounding them were the teenage players, their families, their friends and their town.

From the get-go the show's writers were ably to brilliantly carve out the personalities of the characters, and give due time to each, so that we knew all these folks as if they were our own neighbors. And we loved them.

In the five years that FNL was on, I cried gallons of tears over the tragedies and trials that these people faced, and literally cheered their victories. And while there were the occasional missteps (Landry and Tyra's murder cover-up and Jason's trip to Mexico are the prime examples) it was almost always perfection in tone and pacing.

There are not many shows that worm their way into your heart the way this show did. Hill Street Blues is one I can think of. Lost is another. If you never watched this show, then I'm sorry you missed it, and I recommend you scoop up the DVDs and immerse yourself in the greatness.

If you loved this show like I did, then we can all think of each other tonight at 8 o'clock, when the end starts, and join in a cosmic group hug. Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose. Absolutely.

Correction: This column originially stated that tonight was the final episode of Friday Night Lights. That episode will air next week. Our apologies for the error.


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