OT: Friday Night Lights

420 · Post by **420** » Fri Jan 12, 2007 8:31 am

I think this show and The Wire are my two favorite things on TV. I hope it finds a home

Good things:

1) The coach and his wife's relationship and repartee
2) The kid's stories: the QB and his grandmother; the halfback's struggle with performance enhancing drugs; the kid from the wrong side of the tracks. Just fantastic stuff that transcends football.
3) The depiction of the town's football madness

Although I haven't seen the latest episode, my own feeling is that the Jason Street story--while great in the beginning, robs energy from the show and creates a sense of gloom over everything else.

Lawyer: "So did you ever learn how to tackle?"
Street: "No...I played quarterback."
Lawyer: "So Coach Taylor never taught you how to tackle?"
Street. "No. I played QUARTERBACK."

I love it!

Killian · Post by **Killian** » Fri Jan 12, 2007 1:41 pm

I can't stand that they used the "Friday Night Lights" title when they didn't stay very true to the book. The book was excellent and the movie at least tried to stay with the general story of the book. From what I have seen (very little) and heard (a lot), this is almost a completely different story. That's fine, but use a different title.

420 · Post by **420** » Fri Jan 12, 2007 1:50 pm

In all seriousness...it really is a great show...lots of good stories.

The book was great. I didn't care for the movie but this series is very good even though it has none of the original characters in the book.

Killian · Post by **Killian** » Fri Jan 12, 2007 1:53 pm

420 wrote:In all seriousness...it really is a great show...lots of good stories.

The book was great. I didn't care for the movie but this series is very good even though it has none of the original characters in the book.

That's what I've heard. I heard the show is very well done, but it is completely different than the book. Fine, but call it something else. They even re-issued the book with those characters on the front.

They changed too many of the key issues in the movie. Like the fact that the coach was an asshole and Booby hurt his knee in preseason work outs, not because the back up couldn't find his helmet.

I'll have to catch the show when it comes out on DVD.

420 · Post by **420** » Fri Jan 12, 2007 2:07 pm

If you're interested in watching this, the whole season up to the last episode is on the web. And it is free. Great show, Another appealing show for the couch potato, is the Unit. Well written.

Friday Night Lights

Killian · Post by **Killian** » Fri Jan 12, 2007 2:18 pm

420 wrote:If you're interested in watching this, the whole season up to the last episode is on the web. And it is free. Great show, Another appealing show for the couch potato, is the Unit. Well written.

Friday Night Lights

I limit my TV intake, but thanks for the link. After being in the shitter for so long, NBC is starting to come back with quality programing. I've heard good things about "Heros" and I'm a huge fan of "The Office".

Cicero · Post by **Cicero** » Fri Jan 12, 2007 2:20 pm

I watched the first 4 episodes and then gave up. I dont need Dawsons Creek/The OC every week. I stopped watching b/c it isn't even about football most of the time. I know football is king in the South, but no school or small town has that much drama.

Killian · Post by **Killian** » Fri Jan 12, 2007 2:32 pm

Cicero wrote:I watched the first 4 episodes and then gave up. I dont need Dawsons Creek/The OC every week. I stopped watching b/c it isn't even about football most of the time. I know football is king in the South, but no school or small town has that much drama.

I'm not knocking you, but have you read the book? If you haven't, you should. Great read for football fans and non-football fans. And it will show you how much drama a little town like that can have.

buckeye_in_sc · Post by **buckeye_in_sc** » Fri Jan 12, 2007 2:36 pm

The show is pretty deece...love the racks on the chicks...

But you got to love the grade school drama sometimes...kid gets hurt in game...paralyzed...lawsuit comes claiming coach should have had him do tackling drills...kid has played football all his life and has never tackled a soul...BWAH...

but the show is like I said pretty deece and I usually watch until poker comes on...

haven't seen the movie but I have read the book...

Cicero · Post by **Cicero** » Fri Jan 12, 2007 2:50 pm

Killian wrote:
Cicero wrote:I watched the first 4 episodes and then gave up. I dont need Dawsons Creek/The OC every week. I stopped watching b/c it isn't even about football most of the time. I know football is king in the South, but no school or small town has that much drama.
I'm not knocking you, but have you read the book? If you haven't, you should. Great read for football fans and non-football fans. And it will show you how much drama a little town like that can have.

I havent read the book but I saw the movie. I will definitely try and pick up the book. Trust me, I understand that football is gawd in texas and in the South. I know that small towns go beserk and the players are treated like royalty but I just figured the TV show should focus more on football and less on who's dating who. I agree that the show should have been called something else if they werent going to base it around the book.

Laxplayer · Post by **Laxplayer** » Fri Jan 12, 2007 4:18 pm

Hey M200l....how many of those kids are committed to Cal?

buckeye_in_sc · Post by **buckeye_in_sc** » Fri Jan 12, 2007 4:54 pm

what you didn't see was Longshore actually accepting the MVP and Crystal Football...yep even though Cal got the bitchslapping of their lives against UT they were still crowned National Champions...

buckeye_in_sc · Post by **buckeye_in_sc** » Fri Jan 12, 2007 5:10 pm

Quality Heup...quality...you are nailz

the_ouskull · Post by **the_ouskull** » Sat Jan 13, 2007 5:19 am

I hope that nobody else missed THIS gem...

mtool wrote:Another appealing... unit.

I don't watch the show. If I want small-town, football-is-God, high school drama, I'll go to work.

the_ouskull

peter dragon · Post by **peter dragon** » Sat Jan 13, 2007 6:36 am

actually there is a show on Showtime (I dont pay, I dnld it off this internet thingy) called Dexter. Very cool!

420 · Post by **420** » Sat Jan 13, 2007 12:47 pm

the_ouskull wrote:I hope that nobody else missed THIS gem...

mtool wrote:Another appealing... unit.
I don't watch the show. If I want small-town, football-is-God, high school drama, I'll go to work.

the_ouskull

Once again... another brutal post from the "Oklahoma" Indian.

This is exactly why we keep the Indians drunk in America...

The smart ones... may start a casino.

campinfool · Post by **campinfool** » Sat Jan 13, 2007 3:15 pm

I watch the show mostly for the "scenery". Most of the "town" shots are down the street from my house.

420 · Post by **420** » Sat Jan 13, 2007 3:25 pm

campinfool wrote:I watch the show mostly for the "scenery".

ya think...

the_ouskull · Post by **the_ouskull** » Sat Jan 13, 2007 4:09 pm

420 wrote:
the_ouskull wrote:I hope that nobody else missed THIS gem...

mtool wrote:Another appealing... unit.
I don't watch the show. If I want small-town, football-is-God, high school drama, I'll go to work.

the_ouskull

Once again... another brutal post from the "Oklahoma" Indian.

This is exactly why we keep the Indians drunk in America...

The smart ones... may start a casino.

Oh no he di'n't. You done gone and done'd it nows. Cue the music.

For Whom the Chime Tolls -- Lyrics by CDM Enterprises

Picking fights on the board in the early day.
But he's scared deep down inside.
Flapping gum, posting crap in his endless way,
and he fights, it's his right though we think he's gay...
His team's Cal, exactly how, well, we do not know
although he never 'tended class.
Man of One, Test Tube Son, never pulling ho's,
gone insane in his brain from the thing that we'll never know...

For whom the chime tolls...
Tool just posts more
For whom the chime tolls...

Take a look at this board and you're gonna cry,
...and your heart knows it too.
Every post; good or bad, well you find a way,
...to try to have just one non-bitch day.
Stranger now, his response to the CFB,
He's placing his team at 8th..
Calling names, naming names, crying "respect me,"
but it's too late, you're our bitch, that's the way it be.

For whom the chime tolls...
Tool just posts more.
For whom the chime tolls...

I'M brutal? You're the dumb fuck putting "Oklahoma" in quotes when you're trying to rag on me, poorly I might add, and then running around the board trying to play Grammar Cop? By putting "Oklahoma" in quotes, your statement would seem to be implying that you're questioning whether or not I'm from Oklahoma. I am. I also live there.

This isn't the World of Warcraft, tool. That faggy chain mail that you sport "recreationally" won't stop an arrow.

...don't think I'd scalp ya though. It's too cold to collect lice this time of year. Now go fucking sulk and leave the talking shit to the big kids, k?

the_ouskull

420 · Post by **420** » Sat Jan 13, 2007 4:17 pm

I think the Indian snapped.

Someone call the feds...

King Crimson · Post by **King Crimson** » Sat Jan 13, 2007 4:36 pm

i didn't think the movie version of FNL was all that great. i thought it, too, monkeyed around with much of what made the book an interesting sociological journalism kind of thing.

the movie is largely emptied of the participant-observer perspective of the writer (who was from the East somewhere) in favor of a sympathetic (though somewhat tragic) view....in addition to a variety of inaccuracies shaped to make "a sports movie".

420: for someone who has claimed in the past (provided 420 isn't someone's m2 troll) to possess a fairly "enlightened" NoCal superiority in things relating to our relative crudity and low-brow limits here on the CFB board with regard politically correct matters of gender, ethnicity, etc......still, you display an astonishing amount of prejudice as well. I'm part Cherokee, so fuck yourself. maybe you are not only a moron, but a hypocrite as well.

aren't you Jewish? is that something you want to bring into play......because it's on that small-minded, cultural stereotypical, and essentially bigoted level your little snipes about Native Americans operate.

this is the last i will say of this.

Shoalzie · Post by **Shoalzie** » Sat Jan 13, 2007 4:48 pm

That show looks like The OC meets Playmakers.

the_ouskull · Post by **the_ouskull** » Sat Jan 13, 2007 9:14 pm

Shoalzie wrote:That show looks like The OC meets Playmakers.

Exactly. I liked Playmakers as it was. I don't need the High School version.

the_ouskull

Terry in Crapchester · Mon Jan 15, 2007 5:15 pm

Cicero wrote:no . . . small town has that much drama.

Never lived in a small town, I take it?

I live in a town with only about 7,000 people or so. And I can tell you that there's plenty of drama to go around (although the only reason I know this is that my wife is really plugged in to that sort of thing).

For example: our village has a police department. Recently they hired a female police officer for the first time ever. Another male police officer, also recently hired (and formerly our plumber before he became a police officer) started hitting on her, and apparently the two were found in a squad car without their uniforms (or anything else, for that matter) on (dude is, or at least was, married, btw). Long story short, she eventually cuts the relationship off, and he starts stalking her, calling her 300 times in a single day. Both of them wind up getting fired, and his wife files for divorce.

SoCalTrjn · Post by **SoCalTrjn** » Mon Jan 15, 2007 6:10 pm

Never seen the show

I'll watch 2 and a half men on CBS, and Bullshit on Showtime, everything else I'm oblivious to

the_ouskull · Post by **the_ouskull** » Mon Jan 15, 2007 9:37 pm

Typically, when people have nothing else of visceral substance going on in their lives, they create drama to fill the void. Very, VERY few people that work full-time, "real" jobs, have kids, and / or are married, have "drama" in their lives. Not all... but very few. (And by "real" jobs, you can interpret that however you like, but we all know, more or less, what is, and is not, "real." I made a LOT of money tending bar over the years; enough to support my T1B addiction, amongst others, and to help put me (back) through school... but I would have never considered it a "real" job.)

the_ouskull

Terry in Crapchester · Mon Jan 15, 2007 9:44 pm

Skull,

I suppose that depends upon your definition of the word "drama." There are some things that in a sense are mundane, such as divorce, death of a family member, serious illness, etc., but they can shake your life to its very foundation. In a very real sense, that is "drama," and it could happen to anyone.