The Good
A solidly acted show that seems to create the world on which it’s based.
The Bad
I thought there might be more special features. Weird packaging.
Friday Night Lights: The First Season presents us with 22 episodes from the maiden season of this show. While looked at from purely a football perspective, I am sure that there are a lot of people that don’t see much ground for this show to cover. However, Friday Night Lights is more than that. It’s about the people on the team, their relationships, as well as new Coach Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler) who seems to constantly be having to prove himself.
We open with the “Pilot” episode and find that there’s a lot of speculation about what the Dillon High School Panthers are going to be able to do in this new season. Things haven’t been going so well and there are many people that have already written this team off. Also, there’s a certain amount of tension amongst the players, where race and intertwining relationships are always bubbling at the surface. “Crossing the Line” sees the pressures of football, school and life playing out against the psyche’s of various team members. Some are considering taking drugs to help them and their bodies get them through, while others find that their love affairs are never as solid as they thought they were. Lastly, “Mud Bowl” continues to examine the pressures that these players face as they get money from outside influences. Coach Taylor doesn’t like what he sees but considering what he is up against, he does his best to make something good out of a bad situation.
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Overall, Friday Night Lights: The First Season plays as pretty compelling television. While I still don’t think that there’s anything that new or groundbreaking about the main story (ie. football triumphs), that never got in the way of this show being interesting. I always found the characters to be engaging even if I knew what I was watching was scripted.
Features
Behind the Lights: Creating the First Season of Friday Night Lights
This featurette opens with certain cast members talking about how this show isn’t about the heroes you normally see but, rather, the every day ones. After this we are treated to the production crew sitting around a table patting themselves on the back, and this feeling seems to be the vibe that pervades much of this featurette. Peter Berg who originally directed the movie upon which this show is based, discusses thinking he was done with football stories and then days after wrapping production on the Friday Night Lights movie, he wanted to come back again. We hear from cast members who repeatedly talk about how “real” this show is (even though I don’t think it’s that real), and we also hear about what this show was trying to achieve. Yes, it’s about football but it’s also about a lot more.
Deleted Scenes
Video
Anamorphic Widescreen - 1.78:1. This show looked really good. It has that cinema verite, fake documentary look that took me a little while to get used to, but there’s something about that style that makes it very easy to juggle all the characters and story lines. It’s almost as if having seen so many documentary films, we come to accept the little tidbits of all the character’s lives that we are seeing here. While at times I thought things looked a little too slick (the production design and the actors), all in all I think the look of this show could translate very well to HD-DVD.
Audio
Language: English Dolby Digital 5.1. Subtitles: English. The sound was good but not great. This isn’t a slag on the way it was mastered, there was just very little about this release that really grabbed me in the audio sense. I probably shouldn’t have watched it on my dinky, 13" TV with one speaker, but that’s what happened. I will say that when they employed the distorted guitar and other such scenes over the football practices and games, I think that totally works to take viewers out of the reality that this show is trying to offer.
Package
A vinyl, cardboard covering slips over the piece of artwork that houses all 5 discs in this set. The front cover showcases all the main cast members with Coach Taylor in the center of them all. This piece of artwork opens like a book to reveal more images from this show. The back of this covering gives us another shot of the cast (the young folks only), a description of what Friday Night Lights: The First Season is about, a Bonus Features listing and Technical Specs. This covering then pulls off and reveals one piece of artwork that lists out where the shows are on each disc, where the Special Features are and it also offers up more pictures of the cast. While I like my packaging to feel a tad more sturdy, all in all this wasn’t that bad.
Final Word
I was quite surprised with how much I liked this show. When it first started I was a little put off by the shaky camera and all the references that were made to present day issues. However, once I got passed that I was able to really key into the pressures that the team and the coach were up against. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to try and turn a team around, to bring home championship seasons for an entire town, and then constantly have people second guessing you the entire time. As for the players, there’s the usual problems with girls, school, family, etc. Yet, I liked that this show didn’t offer, nor did it go for, easy answers. What Friday Night Lights presents is a solid look at youth and adult culture. As I have never been in Texas for any longer than the time it takes to go through it on a tour bus, I can’t say for sure if they got things right. I will say that I liked what I saw and I found the storylines compelling and imminently accessible.
Friday Night Lights: The First Season is a most own for sports fans and those who just want to watch compelling, well conceived stories.
Friday Night Lights was released .
