Friday Night Lights: Texas Forever

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Five years. Seventy-six episodes. One town.

Friday Night Lights came to an end this week with “Always”, an extended goodbye to the East Dillon Lions and Dillon, Texas as a whole. Although it was about state, in as much as the the entire show is about football, it focussed on the characters that got us there.

Bringing Zach Gilford’s Matt Saracen back into the fold, a substantial portion of the episode was devoted to the Taylor’s eldest daughter Julie. Throughout the season and the entire show, Julie has had her moments, but none quite compare to what the finale brought us. After reconnecting in Chicago following Julie’s college meltdown, Matt asks her to marry him, to affirmative response. With a combined age of just thirty seven, the Taylors have some reservations and what unfolds was pretty spectacular viewing. With Julie pointing to her a parents as a prime example of how young marriage can work out, there is a pretty big emotional punch to be packed by the whole situation. Still subtly fighting over their respective job offers, Tami and Eric are really on the brink of what a marriage can take, and whilst their daughter looks at them as the perfect couple, they’re far from it.

Warning the two young lovers that marriages are far harder than fairy tales, Tami and Eric ultimately back their daughter’s decision and turn to themselves to provide us with even deeper emotion for the episode. After eighteen years of following Eric around the country, Tami wants her turn in the spotlight with her chance to be dean at a Philadelphia college. When Eric still can’t give up on Texas, she caves, suggesting that she’ll never win the fight against football, but in the face of the state championship and the emotion that goes with it, coach Taylor is the one who compromises. Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton both got themselves nominated for Emmys this year and it’s moments like that one that let you know why. It took four years for the academy to even notice that this show existed, and their nominations two years running barely make up for any of that.

Taylor drama aside the Riggins’ had their moments too this week. With Billy on his way to state, Tim just trying to figure out his life and Mindy being an emotional wreck over Becky deciding to return home to live with her mom now that the house is overflowing with people, it too got pretty intense. Tyra and Tim are a long-running staple of the show and the return of Mindy’s sister was perfectly timed last week. Their scenes in the finale were some of the best, being the only two characters that didn’t really have an investment in the outcome of the game, but also two of the oldest characters of the show. The two have a love story that has always been fairly dysfunctional, but the finale left us with them looking to a very positive future that may, or may not involve each other.

The last two seasons of the show wouldn’t be what they were without the members of the East Dillon Lions – specifically Vince and Luke. Vince being the superstar gave him more screen time, but both of them stepped up to new levels of maturity that almost made you feel proud to have watched them. After being cold to Becky, Luke makes up with her and expresses a desire to be together forever, whilst Vince has his emotional moments with both Jess and coach Taylor. When push came to shove though, a show about football really needed some football, and state didn’t disappoint. The pre-game build up and coach Taylor’s prayer were intense enough, but slow-mo football to guitar music is a sight to see. With three seconds left on the clock, the Lions needed a a massive touch down to win and we’ll never know who caught the pass. The game ended without really ending, as Vince’s pass faded into the future with coach Taylor in Philadelphia. The episode concluded with a montage of the future of our central characters: Vince playing for the Panthers sporting his state ring, Luke joining the Army, Matt and Julie living in Chicago, Tim and Billy building a house on Tim’s land and the Taylors living happily in their new lives outside of Texas. Post credits, the main cast put in their two cents about the show that they’ve been a part of, and here are mine.

Friday Night Lights is one of the best shows I’ve ever had the pleasure of watching. Friday saw the end of a television era with its close. The episode itself was phenomenal, but Friday wasn’t really about the hour-long special, it was about the show as a whole. Over the last five years, Friday Night Lights has done something that I’ve never seen another drama do. The show consistently captured real life in the most perfect way, making every second of everything matter that much more. Long running dramas will always find a way to captivate their audience, whether it be with suspense, action or depth of emotion, but no show that isn’t just a rip-off of this, will ever be able to make as compelling viewing out of going to school, going to work and playing football.

I won’t go into every little detail about what makes the show as good as it is, but to anyone who has ever seen it, the broad concepts of its greatness should be fairly apparent. Never falling back onto ridiculous cliches that we see every day in television shows, Friday Night Lights took us through what growing up is really like. It showed us the emotional highs and lows of high school alongside the depths of what being a parent, or really any adult on the planet is like. Every single character was relatable and not one of them doesn’t deserve a mention. The inhabitants of Dillon, Texas aren’t your neighbors, they aren’t you, but they’re about as close as any fictional characters are ever going to get to the real thing.

The writing on the show was excellent throughout, the acting incredible and the result is a body of work that should be seen by everybody walking the face of planet Earth. You’d struggle to find anyone that can’t relate to this show, and even those that didn’t would struggle to not enjoy every single moment of it. Friday Night Lights’ only problem is that it had to end. That ending was fairly perfect however. Not dragging everything out, not time jumping to the future for five seasons and slowly draining the life out of a once great thing, the show took us to a high that we’ll never have to come down from. I can’t say that Friday Night Lights is the best show that has ever been on television or even the best show that I have ever seen, but I can say with absolute certainty that it isn’t going anywhere for a very, very long time. People who have seen it will watch this show again, people who have never seen it will discover it and wonder what the hell they were doing when this was on air and the rest will hear about it and be told that they need to see it.

Dramas that rely so strongly on their characters and not the situations that they’re put in don’t come around often enough. Following Friday Night Lights’ conclusion, they’re probably about to get even rarer. Competing is not really going to be an issue. It will just be about trying to keep up.

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