Friday Night Lights gets support...

...from, well, a pretty likely source: Sports Guy Bill Simmons.

Despite what I might have said in the past about jumping on team bandwagons, you shouldn't feel guilty about jumping on this one. I watched the pilot when it originally aired, but I didn't love it: too much puke-cam (the camera stopped moving so much in later episodes) and an unspeakable sports inconsistency (Dillon High completes a game-winning Hail Mary that could have happened only on a 140-yard field). Once the abysmal ratings were announced, I assumed the show was doomed and opted not to waste my time with Episode 2. Networks pull the plug so quickly these days, you can be burned by getting hooked on something no one else is watching. Ask my wife, who's still complaining about never having learned the identity of the murderer on FOX's Reunion.

After FNL garnered its critical groundswell, I decided to wait for the late-summer DVD release to dive back in. My buddy Connor, a man who knows how to get things, refused to accept this, mailing me the Japanese import in June. That's right, I have a friend who loves FNL so much, he actually couldn't deal with my being willing to wait two more months to see it. So he called in some connections and possibly violated U.S.-Japan trade agreements so I could catch up. As he predicted, the Sports Gal and I ripped through all 22 episodes in a week, learning the Japanese words for "play," "stop" and "pause" in the process. Quite simply, FNL is the best date show ever, an improbable cross between The O.C. and every sports show you ever wanted Hollywood to make. It's the first show my wife and I have loved equally, but for different reasons. What can be better than that?

I've found myself disagreeing more and more with Simmons lately, but he's absolutely, positively spot on with this one. I love this show, and the football scenes are about Reason #185 why. And The Butterfly loves it as much as I do.

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"Friday Night Lights" or Friday Night Lights?

During a well-deserved rant against the TV network suits, Bob Sassone at TV Squad went off on NBC’s placement of Friday Night Lights on a bad tv night next season:

Yeah, and a new one begins. This is a show about community and family and football, right? So why put it on Friday nights at 10, which is probably the only time slot worse than Saturday nights? It's as if NBC said, "OK, it's not getting great ratings, but we're going to stick by it. Sort of." I've always wondered why NBC doesn't just dump Sunday's Football Night In America and put Friday Night Lights in there instead. Sure, it's up against 60 Minutes, but Sunday night has a built in audience for football, and there's a game on right after. And with dad, mom, and the kids all home on Sunday nights, I think they'd find an audience.

Uh, Bob, here’s why it’s even stupider. What’s going to be happening on Friday nights this fall in every town in America??? It’s called . . . high school football. NBC just took a show with a presumed audience of high school football fans and scheduled it when those people WILL ALL BE AT THEIR SCHOOL GAMES. That’s right up there with ABC scheduling “Ugly Betty” opposite “La Fea Mas Bella” on Univision, a class of idiocy that could only happen in TV and DC. And anywhere else Jim Inhofe lives.

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Deep Thoughts on Friday Night Lights...

When NBC announced they were producing a TV version of Friday Night Lights, I didn't even, for one second, consider watching it. I love football and all, but...I figured the odds were good that this would just be a 'lowest common demoninator' type of show, with crazy, unrealistic characters and far overdone football scenes (like Varsity Blues, only taking itself seriously). However, I started hearing good things about it, and The Butterfly and I watched one of the FNL rerun marathons over the Christmas break, and we were hooked.

It was nothing like what I expected. Realistic characters (including some that are relatively normal-looking...the males, anyway), absolutely fantastic acting, not-so-overdone football scenes...granted, they were still unrealistic (I think they won a game on the last play by running a sweep from 50 yards out...that just doesn't happen), but they weren't unwatchable.

About the cast for a moment: the movie version of Friday Night Lights was on TV this weekend, and I was reminded a) just how mediocre Billy Bob Thornton was in the movie role of the coach, and b) just how unbelievable Kyle Chandler is in the TV role. His chemistry with Connie Britton (the only actress who can legitimately play Irish and Texan...and I guess I should mention that she's getting hotter with age) is the key to the show, and it's fantastic. The subtleties of their interactions bring realism to the insanity that is small town Texas football. Most of the high school characters (in particular, Zach Gilford as unlikely starting QB Matt Saracen and Jesse Plemons as his nerd best friend, Landry) are rock-solid, but Chandler and Britton carry the show and make you care.

Of course, being that it's not a 'lowest common demoninator' show means that ratings haven't been all that great (which is about right, really...I watch it, which means nobody else will...we can't all be trendsetters like berlin niebuhr, who was creepily hooked on telenovelas before anybody else)...which was why it was fantastic to see this:

NBC's "Friday Night Lights" are shining brighter.

A day before the freshman series' season finale, the network on Tuesday ordered six additional scripts of the critically praised but low-rated series.

While this is short of the early second-season order NBC recently bestowed on another struggling rookie, the comedy "30 Rock," the order does strengthen "Friday"'s chances for a return next season.

I realize there's always the need for a new Law & Order or reality show and all, but I thought the point of the spectacle-type shows (like the 26 weekly Deal or No Deal episodes and spinoffs) was to have the money to be able to carry the respectable shows as well?

How naive am I?

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