The End of Friday Night Lights

Just like that “Friday Night Lights,” one of the best television dramas of all-time, is over and you didn’t even notice. On Wednesday, February 9^th, we witnessed Coach Taylor take the field for a final time in the small town in Dillon, Texas, ending a saga full of drama on and off the field as well as on and off the screen.

Five years ago, the series premiered on NBC and after a brilliant but under watched first season, the show feared cancellation. After airing its first of what would eventually be three series finales (it was supposed to be cancelled after season one, season three and eventually ended after season five), the show was renewed and put on the TV graveyard shift of Friday night. Again faltering in the rating, they came up with a unique proposal in which the show would air on two networks, The DirecTV Network in the fall and NBC in the spring, thus being able to sell double the ad space. The show then churned out three more seasons in this deal, each more impressive than the previous.

The fictional town of Dillon felt entirely real after being able to watch its growth and hardships for five years. Starting with the more affluent side of town, we watched our favorite West Dillon Panthers graduate and we moved on the fall in love with the gritty underdog East Dillon Lions. In the end, the show created an incredibly deep and impressive show universe, keeping track of players for years after they graduated from high school and left Dillon for greener pastures.

In this way, Friday Night Lights was more than a football show. It was a show about the affect football has on the growth of young people, both positive and negative. It was a show about a town that needed the thrill and discipline of football to overcome the hardships of working class life.  It was a show about power, status, and leadership that was defined through its professional, personal, academic, and athletic relationships. If there is one thing to say about Friday Night Lights, it is that it is a show with heart.

And it is that heart that made the final episode so successful, because in the final minutes, as we watched all the characters we’ve gotten to know so well over the years follow the trajectory of a slow motion ball in flight, all we need is a facial reaction to know the future of that character. We didn’t need to know whether or not the Lions won, we didn’t need to see “two years later” written on the bottom of the screen, we didn’t need text epilogues over the credits because from the incredibly true, realistic, and human character development that the show put forth during its five year run, we really knew these people.