Friday Night Lights Revisited

I don't know that I've ever expressed my love for Friday Night Lights here.

With the noted caveat that I haven't actually seen a lot of really good shows on TV (Sopranos, The Wire) it's my belief that FNL is the best show to ever be on TV. When I finally get around to watching The Wire I'm willing to give it space in my mind to usurp FNL, but no other show I've heard described really has any hope of taking its place.

I'm currently watching season one again (the first rewatching), with the aim of watching all five seasons in a much more compressed time period than the five years it took to make it through the series originally. I recall when I watched it the first time through that there was usually some moment in each episode when my body would tingle with joy and emotion in ways that film or TV had never been able to affect me before (you can read that as usually once per show I was on the verge of tears if not crying outright). On second viewing it happens even more, but at different moments. It's all the little things between Matt and Julia when they first start to date. It's the joy and giddiness in Matt's eyes as he introduces his dad to coach for the first time. It's Mama Smash cupping Smash's face in her hands. It's Tim and Billy breaking furniture as they curse and fight each other. It's Tim standing in Buddy's office asking a favor for the first time not for himself, but for someone else. It's watching Tammi and Coach work through everything. Each of these little moments now come with so much built in history. On the one hand it's sad not to be able to experience the show the same way all over again, on the other hand it's so much better this way.

I think more than any character the experience of watching Matt has been altered the most; I see the seasons sprawl out before me with every move he makes. Each individual joy, triumph, heartache, and challenge cease being singular events, instead they encompass a lifetime, like looking at a picture of a child when just a baby and instantaneously missing their childhood and looking forward to some grand event that they've yet to attain (graduation, marriage, their own children); what you feel in that moment isn't a moment at all but a lifetime, a life, a person. And though it probably sounds delusional I'll say it anyway, I care for and about Matt like a real person, or as close as I ever have for a character I know is 100% fictional. Which is really to sing praise to those artists who created him, the writers, the director and Zach Gilford (by the way, on rewatching it becomes plainly absurd that he never won an Emmy for his acting.)

I know it's just a TV show, but it's also great art.