RtC: "Friday Night Lights" (2006-2011)

Adapted from a book and a movie, Friday Night Lights was a TV-show unlike anything you've ever seen before. How a show could start its airing by a voice on the radio talking about the local high school football-team, to become a show with more heart than any other... It's quite a ride, including a writer strike threatening its existence, a strange collaboration to air it twice around and some misguiding marketing, just to mention a few of its behind the show problems.

I love FNL, I love Dillon and I love quite a few of the characters on this show. With those simple facts I'll move on to the whys, the greatness and the heart and soul of a community.

FNL isn't about football, and because it isn't about football it lost out on a lot of fans in its original marketing as a show about football. FNL is about life. Its drama the way drama should be; with a core to draw from, but spreading its wings to include an ensemble cast taking on real life problems. While they do get melodramatic some times, they mostly get away with it because of their big god-damn thumping hearts.

FNL is also produced and shot interestingly. They offered their actors a lot of freedom with their lines, cues and movement, while still being scripted, and then shot it with three cameras in a one-take mind. On one side some might say it doesn't really look that great because of this, as there's almost never that perfect lightning of all characters that other shows strives to get. But the rewards are awesome for those who take the real life feel and dialogue/scene-realism over the esthetics. It just feels a lot more raw and powerful.

Developed to TV by the feature film director Peter Berg (who happens to be second cousin of the book's author Buzz Bissinger) and heavily influenced by Jason Katims (Roswell) as writer, executive producer and show-runner.

And then there's the casting. It's an amazing ensemble for a TV-show, and whether it's leading star Coach Taylor (Kyle Chandler) or small time support Billy Riggins (Derek Phillips) on screen, it sure feels like the characters and not actors. I guess I've mentioned something like this before, but Kyle Chandler did, week in and week out, shine as Coach Taylor; making Brad Pitt's performance in feature film success Moneyball look kind of shabby. I should also mention Connie Britton as Tami Taylor, Adrianne Palicki as Tyra Collette and Taylor Kitsch as Tim Riggins. These four are probably the stand-out performers overall, even if I personally got a soft spot for Aimee Teegarden as Julie Taylor as well. It shouldn't be forgotten that nevertheless this is an ensemble performance more than anything.

Season one is the only one with a full length season, running 22 episodes, and it's by far the strongest one as a result. In fact; when it comes to drama you're hard pressed to find a better first season than this. How a town can be defined so quickly and its characters taking on such a diverse set of problems is inspiring. Is it really possible to fall in love with a town so obsessed with high school football? Sooner or later you might find out Dillon is a hard town to shake, whether you saw it coming or not.

Season two got butchered by the writing strike, and as a result ended cliffhangerly with only 15 of the ordered 22 episodes produced and aired. For a while the show was in real danger of being cut after that, but somehow it managed to come back in half-season format for three more seasons. Overall the second season might be my least favorite one, and it wasn't just because of the way it got cut. It had more problems than just that, but it picked itself up and managed to come back with even more momentum.

I'm not going to go into detail about each season, but rather pray you check it out for yourself. If you like drama, this is the show for you. Or if you like coming of age stories, there's quite a few of them here. Even if it's really not a football show, but a show around the team's players, coaches and boosters, you should still check it out if you like football or even any other sport... It's just that good, you don't need to like many of its elements to fall completely in love with the heart of it all.

Sure... It's also flawed and it had the potential to be even bigger, even better and so on and so forth. Still. You really have to search high and wide to find a show with more heart than this golden piece of Texas. And that's also why the overall comes out better than the sum of its pieces...

★★★★★ Season 1
★★★☆☆ Season 2
★★★★☆ Season 3
★★★★☆ Season 4
★★★☆☆ Season 5


★★★★★ Overall Quality


★★★★★ Revisit Value

FNL is one of those rare shows I've followed from the beginning, and loved it a little bit more for each week. You can't put a quality- or value-stamp on that, but there's no doubt it's something special the few times a show manages to be something like this for you. When you can't wait to watch what happens next week. When the time between seasons is agonizingly long. When you revisit the show's aired seasons before the beginning of each new season. FNL has been that show for me for years, and coming back to it is like revisiting old friends. I can't believe more people didn't follow this each and every step, but it's not too late. There's still a lot of quality entertainment to be had, even if you came late to the party. Friday Night Lights is highly recommended, and I'll miss it deeply.

I also like to mention there's rumors of a feature film to come, and I'm really looking forward to the day Berg and co again take on something new in this journey.

RtC: "Firefly" and Serenity

For the past three days I once again ran from the Alliance with Captain Mal Reynolds and his Serenity-crew. Here's when I last wrote about "Firefly" back in March.

The story of "Firefly" is interesting. It aired back in 2002, while Fox spent two months ruining it back then, amongst other failures airing it in the wrong order, and that should have been it from Joss Whedon's Sci-Fi Western-ish-outlaws. Ah, well... The Browncoats aren't likely to lay down without a fight. The devoted fan-base made numerous attempts to resurrect it, and in 2005 a movie was made to tie up some lose ends.

I didn't watch it until earlier this year for the very first time. There had been rumors all over the 'verse about this show; word of mouth speaking about the greatest mistake ever made in Television, the worst cancellation ever, best show ever made and so on.  I kept saving it for a rainy day, somewhat reluctantly as these kind of word of mouth usually tend to be exaggerated. Boy... was I ever wrong.

This time I went into another rerun remembering it as one of the greatest shows ever made, if not the very best. For the first time in my life I've had to get hold of a TV-show in BluRay-quality. It's worth every disc or GB to have it available in the very best possible quality. I walked into it with a maximum score of 6 on my old TV-show dice, a ranking system I'll leave behind forever from this day despite not having decided on which to begin with, and a 10.0 on TV.com (as one of just two shows). In other words. This is the shit.

Whatever "Firefly" lose in surprises and suspense on reruns, it takes back tenfold in how well the characters stay true to their core throughout the short-lived series. There's no doubt creator Joss Whedon knew his characters very well, and used that to the advantage of the show as often as possible. It comes natural when Jayne changes his mind about helping strangers, as soon as he's told they're whores, it comes natural when Simon talks about another kind of life and Kaylee feels insulted when Serenity is spoken ill of. It comes natural when the patron says the girl is a witch and our Captain replies: "Yes, but she's our witch." "Firefly" is packed with excellent writing and a cast that delivers in every role.

There are some highs that far surpass most others; like The Hero of Canton in Jaynestown or River's dance quickly learned in Safe. Scenes where the creator and writers show a sublime understanding of their created 'verse as well as characters. Moments that last in memory long after the final end credits.

Whedon did so much correct with this show, it's a mystery anyone could pull their plug. The futuristic worlds and moons, the dual language of English and Chinese, the moving home giving them endless opportunities thanks to their created 'verse, reavers, war veterans, outsiders, a wide range of diverse characters, and arch mysteries surrounding several of the leads, just to mention a few of the highlights.

There were plenty of brilliant choices made to assure the possibility of a long lived show that could keep the quality high, and most important of them all was the melting of a familiar setting in Serenity with the endless possibilities within terraformed moons and planets. The fans would always feel home with the bridge, the cargo area or Kaylee's machine-room, but only the imagination could stop them from doing whatever they liked on a moon far far away. That's just impossible to do in any other genre than Sci-Fi.

Not all characters got to blossom, and we'll forever have to wonder what kind of stories Shepherd might have got into with his mysterious status and knowledge. Wash got to fly impressive and even be jealous, but what kind of story was in his past? Mal, Zoe and Jayne got to be the catalysts, the fighters and the leading trio most of the time, but every member of the crew filled important roles, both with the storytelling and the possibilities. It's a shame Whedon & Co never got to explore more of the possibilities.

When it comes to the 2005-movie ending the story of our beloved crew; Whedon took on an impossible job to give his fans some sort of closure. It couldn't possibly be done in a single movie, and he stumbled (as had to be expected), but he got there. That's an impressive feat. He managed to take the reavers into the story, tie up the mystery of River and deliver a couple of fighting scenes that are remarkable in several ways. I've rated the movie on its own earlier, which isn't easy on the back of a TV-show storyline, but I think it's much fairer to rank it along with the episodes we got from the show and keep in mind Whedon never got a fair chance to develop it as it should have been.

"Firefly" isn't perfection, all episodes aren't amazing and all stories aren't able to keep you on the edge of your seat, but overall all we can do is rate it based on what we got served and don't blame Whedon for Fox' mistakes. It might not be perfection, but I wouldn't be surprised if this is as close as we'll ever get in my lifetime. It's the show every other show have to compare against, and the best evidence quality doesn't ensure a long healthy life.

★★★★★ Overall Quality
★★★★★ Revisit Value

Revisiting the Classics: An Intro

Once upon a time I dedicated time to keep blogs running about the movies I watched and the TV-shows I followed, but I finally gave in to the reality of too much time being spent writing rather than experiencing. For those interested in a walk down memory lane my thoughts can still be found in Motion Pictures on the fly and Zap Zapper ZapperLife. I'll never go back to that, but it's still easy to follow my movie-ratings thanks to My Criticker-account. When it comes to TV-shows, the few worthy of special mention will be written about here sooner or later. TV.com, IMDB.com or the likes just doesn't seem good enough to keep up all the TV-show scores on.

I do however spent quite some time revisiting movies and TV-shows I love, and from now I'll give back something about those in a new column simply named Revisiting the Classics. I'll give an introduction including how many times I've seen it, how it scored previous to the revisit in mention and so on and so forth. It might be somewhat more spoiler-ish than my former reviews ever were, but then again these are already classics in my book and you should visit them prior to me writing about them.

There won't be a minimum requirement for me to include something into this column. Not a minimum Criticker score, not avoiding extreme guilty pleasures or genres that generally suffers in quality. These classics are all in my mind well worth your time, but not all of them will be a new "The Wire", "The West Wing", M, Raiders of the Lost Ark or the likes, but some might rather be just another trip down to "Dawson's Creek".