Friday Night Lights season 1 thread (1 Viewer)

Sure, there is a bit of irony for a show called "Friday Night Lights" being scheduled on Tuesdays on NBC.

If you like the movie (by Peter Berg), and like high school football, it might appeal to you.

I can't believe its October 3rd already. I'm really looking forward to tonight's premiere.

http://www.fridaynightlightstheseries.com/

Pretty good. They nailed the look, feel and sound of the movie to a T.

Great Premiere! They managed to make the big game emotional and tense even though everything about it we've seen before. The injury, Being down with less than a minute to go. But still the whole town being speechless at the site of their golden boy injured and the great way the Back Up QB was clueless was done so well. The show really displayed how the town lives and dies Football.

I really enjoyed it. Earned a season pass. My only issue is they shouldn't have made that backup QB THAT much of a doophus. The transformation he made literally in the span of one play and one timeout was far too unbelievable.

In a season with more good new shows than I can remember, this is the best first episode of the bunch. If they can keep this level of quality up, "Friday Night Lights" could be an all-time classic.

Agreed, this one really sucked me in right away. I loved the movie and am a sucker for sports flicks and shows so this one is a definite for me. It was also able to pull off some nice emotional scenes without being overly sappy. Looking forward to next week for sure.

I enjoyed this a lot! The dialog was stellar, even though the story itself was a bit trite... not to mention, telegraphed. But, there is so much to like here, I can easily overlook that.

I never saw the film that inspired this series, does the pilot track pretty closely to the movie story-wise?

BTW, I applaud NBC for presenting their pilots with limited commercial interruption. The first half hour of Friday Night Lights really benefited from being presented this way.

I definitely will be watching this in the weeks to come.

I haven't seen the movie, and wonder if I should see it first before watching the Pilot, which will be repeated a couple times this week.

If you haven't seen the film, you should.

It's mostly the same, although they've made some tweaks such as altering the fates of certain characters, and they've moved the setting from late 80's Odessa to the present day of a fictitious town.

I thought the pilot was excellent but I think the main opportunity the series has is that as it continues it will be able to cover issues from the book that the movie didn't have time for.

According to Zap2it, Friday Night Lights got off to a slow start for NBC last night.

It amazes me how viewers ignore quality but continue to embrace fairly meaningless reality fare...

Look, feel, dialogue, acting...all very good.

Unfortunately for me, it was a little too cliche - the star QB gets hurt/paralyzed, the come from behind win, etc.

I hope they mix it up in the future. Do some unexpected things. I will give it a chance to see if they do.

I live in Odessa so its weird seeing this set in Dayton, yet the team and mascot remain the same (albit a different color).

I guess NBC sympathised with us and gave one of the main characters in Heros a place in Odessa, but its ridiculous seeing mountains litter the landscape in that show.

Great start, will definitely continue to watch!

ITA. Considering that Dancing with the Stars clobbered both Friday Night Lights and Veronica Mars in the 9pm slot, I think FNL may soon be competing with VM in the "best show you're not watching" category.

Are people so put off by the idea of a show that involves some characters in high school? I don't get it. I know FNL might put off non-football fans (like me, but I like Kyle Chandler), but the football hook should attract as many people as it repels. One would think.

I really dig the movie and the book and liked this pilot as well. I wish it was one of those shows that they decide to order the complete season up front. I mean its got to be pretty cheap to produce and you would think that TPTB would realize that we are all getting tired of reality shows.

I haven't seen the movie, but I liked the pilot a lot. Is Peter Berg going to direct the rest of the season?

~T

The problem is that the American public isn't tired of them. American Idol, Dancing with the Stars, and Survivor are all huge ratings winners.

So long as reality shows continue to dominate like that, TPTB are going to keep giving us more and more of them. They are much cheaper to produce than scripted dramas that employ actual writers and actors who want to be paid for their effort.

I don't get one thing: why doesn't that loadie get thrown off the team? I mean, he was clearly drunk in that tv interview; clearly a liar when the interviewer asked him about it. Do they not kick him off because he's such a good player? From what I could see, he was mostly annoying to the other team members. But of course, I'm sure the writers will deal with it eventually, but you'd think the coach would have said, 'we've got to rid of this kid; he's stoned; makes the school look bad' by now.

Speaking of annoying, am I to presume that everyone in Texas is a hardcore Christian? From the black guy dropping to his knees in prayer every 15 minutes to the unbelievable kid asking "Do you think God likes football?", I have a feeling we're in the Bible Belt... Can't there be one episode where it turns out there's a Buddhist or Jewish player on the team who gets sick of hearing about Jesus all day, and goes off on someone? That's real drama. FNL was kind of on a superficial level; very naive. There's no such thing as a town so obsessed with high school football that all the businesses shut down to watch a bunch of 17 year olds get their necks broken. I don't live in a town like that--nobody in my family lives in a town like that--nobody I've ever met lives in a town like that, and all my relatives originated from Texas! This show needs a lot more balance; it's very straightforward; no subtlety or irony or real drama. They're playing it by the books and that's why I think it seems trite.

And by the way, they really need to get rid of those hand-held cameras; it gets old. They need to tone down the angle changes by 50%. I couldn't tell what the HELL was going on half the time, and neither could any of you. I guess they're trying to make it look like a documentary, but it's NOT a documentary. It's a drama and deserves to be presented as such. As is, when the coach was giving his speech, didn't ANY of you get dizzy as the camera switched, every TWO seconds, from a front view, to a side view, to a close-up, to the old lady, back to the coach, to a long shot, to a close shot, back and forth and back and forth... WHAT was the POINT of these camera changes???