Viewpoints News (Page 2)

Get ready for the small town of Dillon, Texas, to start looking more like Dallas now that NBC's Friday Night Lights is back for a second season.

That means a lot more skin and scandal, observes William Keck of USA Today, and numerous others who have previewed the Season Two debut.

"There are a large number of shower scenes," star Adrianne Palicki, 24, says with an uncomfortable giggle. Her character, Tyra Collete, is first seen in the season premiere licking a popsicle suggestively. Control yourselves, guys.

"We've also had a couple of (nude) scenes in the locker room," adds Adrianne's co-star, Jesse Plemons, 19, whose social outcast character, Landry Clarke, has just reluctantly joined the high school football team.

"The good thing is that Landry's not really okay with taking his clothes off — unlike Tim Riggins (played by Taylor Kitsch). Taylor has been complaining the most about having to take off his shirt."

Adrianne Palicki as sexy, sassy Tyra Collette.

No one's complaining, to be sure, about a second chance to prove themselves after a first season that was critically acclaimed but ratings-starved.

Over lunch, both actors acknowledge that the set was somber the day Emmy nominations were announced. Nary a nod went to the underdog drama.

"It was very disappointing," Adrianne Palicki says. "There was a backlash from not getting nominated — people were furious. So that's even cooler, in a way. Look at how many fans were so angry."

"The feeling now," Jesse Plemons adds, "is let's give them even a better show, so there's no way they're going to be able to pass us up."

 The new game plan: less football, more personal struggle.

Among the drama: Adrianne Palicki's Tyra and Jesse Plemons' Landry enter into a secret romance that, Plemons says, "catches both of them off guard."

The unlikely duo — Tyra the Beauty, Landry the Geek — came together when Landry became her tutor, then came to her rescue after an attempted rape.

"I would love for them to be together," Palicki says. "Tyra deserves a good guy."

There's also a stunning plot twist that we won't get into here.

Plemons, a native of Mart, Texas (outside Waco), has been dating a Texas girl for six months who he says is "beautiful — inside and out."

The single Palicki says she has had many Landrys in her life, but as a high school student in Toledo, Ohio, she strictly dated jocks.

"I had Landrys as friends," she says. "The guys you thought you'd marry someday, but you just couldn't date because it wasn't cool. How stupid is that?"

You may have heard that Season Two of Friday Night Lights kicks off tonight at 9 p.m. Eastern on NBC, giving you the chance to stare at the lovely Lyla Garrity (Minka Kelly, below) on-screen instead of online for a change!

But seriously, folks. This premiere is not to be missed.

The only chance to save FNL from cancellation is to make sure everyone you know gets hooked in a hurry. Just ask Adam Best, a sports columnist from epiccarnival.com and a new Friday Night Lights convert. He writes:

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I recently came down with a cold and ripped through Friday Night Lights: Season One in less than a week.

I'm actually glad I got sick, because otherwise I probably wouldn't have listened to everyone who raved about the show and checked it out. Point blank - it's effing unbelievable, probably my favorite show on TV right now (yes, even including Entourage).

My goal is to spark your interest with this post so that you too will be flat out hooked on FNL, sort of like Travis Henry is on baby making.

Unfortunately - as ESPN's Bill Simmons and others have pointed out at length - most people aren't hooked at this point. Friday Night Lights was snubbed by viewers and The Emmy Awards alike during its first season.

Fans and insiders alike now fear that the series will get canned before the second season even really gets rolling. How could this happen to such a bad-ass series?

Here's how:

• Friday Night Lights the movie (2004) faired somewhat well with critics, but flopped commercially, desecrating the franchise's name in the process. Plus, the classic H.G. Bissinger book has been out since 1991, making Friday Night Lights the series seem like a retread from day one.

• The show was initially marketed - or at least perceived, by many - as a show created solely for football fanatics.

Continue reading this Friday Night Lights analysis here.

Everybody who's ever been a parent, or a teen, or especially a parent of a teen, can relate to the restrained insight of Friday Night Lights.

A Newsday review notes that in the acclaimed NBC series' second-season debut, Kyle Chandler's character is stunned when his crush-riven daughter, Julie (Aimee Teegarden, pictured) resists his inquiring about her life in the months he's been halfway across Texas coaching his new college team.

"What does this have to do with you?" Julie answers flatly, with her teen logic / obstinacy, and some justification.

Then things get worse. After she's been out half the night chasing a guy, dad arrives to retrieve his teary girl, who finally pours forth in the car.

Turns out she's just mortified that if she makes nice in this podunk town of Dillon, Tex., she'll end up like, yes, her parents.

The Season 2 premiere episode of Friday Night Lights presents her admission a bit too easily, and eloquently, but that's not the point.

The miracle here is, as they say about the frog who sings off-key, not how well it's done but that it's even done at all. Television doesn't deal with the heart anymore as acutely as this show does. Maybe TV never did.

• The way Chandler and long-distance wife Connie Britton look into each other's eyes, with innate knowing and bedrock devotion.
• The awkwardness of those desperate-to-mature high-schoolers, whether it's how to touch a girl's arm the first time or how to rebuild trust after they've stupidly slept together.
• And there are the adults they grow into, sometimes without growing at all. Friday Night Lights boldly lets characters screw up unspeakably or stew in silence, revealing volumes more than words ever could.

This is that rare case where the spin-off surpasses the original, writer-director Peter Berg weaving thicker webs here than he could in his 2004 feature film.

Continue Reading...

Buzz is already building online about the mother of Friday Night Lights spoilers, a seemingly unthinkable plot twist that those who have already watched the Season 2 premiere online are certainly well aware of.

While trying not to give too much away, but this is a plot development that may be really divisive to the show's fan base. The plot twist near the end has ignited controversy and disappointment from some.

Some fans feel it yanks a show that's built on a very effective, realistic feel into the realm of contrived, melodramatic plot devices. Why did they go there?

Is Friday Night Lights really willing to punt (so to speak) some of its best qualities in a quest for better ratings? Is this a good move?

We have our opinions and those of you who have seen the Friday Night Lights plot twist surely have yours. Here, Matt Roush of TV Guide weighs in:

In a perfect world, we could delay discussion of the troublesome plot twist until the show premieres this Friday. But since NBC opened the door by making the episode available early to enterprising fans, we can't.

Continue Reading...

Can the best family show on the tube find a family audience? The Cincinnati Post, which has been taking a look at each night of the new TV season, sure hopes so.

Finally, NBC moved Friday Night Lights to Friday in a no-brainer.

NBC previously switched the show from Tuesday to Wednesday last fall, clueless that it already came branded as perfect Friday night family viewing.

A touching, wonderfully acted small-town family drama, centered on a high school football team, FNL was rudely ignored by the Emmy Awards and has found a similar fate among viewers.

Just looking at the ratings, NBC would not have been blamed for axing the show.

But it's good... so good that even a cold hearted, network realized it was hard to kill off this kind of quality... at least without giving it another chance.

It's time for those who complain about the lack of solid family dramas on TV to give Friday Night Lights a chance.

Last year it used its microcosm of small-town life to poignantly explore family dynamics, teen sexuality and drinking, marital infidelity, racism and, of course (but only peripherally), the allure and pressures of high school football.

It did so with incredible sensitivity, using a small town's passion for football as a metaphor for a number of very real issues facing American families.

Kyle Chandler's Coach Taylor and Connie Britton's mom make for the sanest and most compassionate parents on TV, not to mention a role model marriage.

There is plenty of trash on TV these days, but there is one series, writes Jordan Williams of Lubbock Christian University, that stands above the rest - and not just because it takes place in the author's native West Texas.

Here's what this fan writes in the LCU student paper ...

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Late last semester I was supposed to be writing a massive 15-page research paper for a certain professor, so I did what I did best - I procrastinated.

Instead of opening books, I pushed the power button on my remote and found myself at the start of a little show called "Friday Night Lights."

After that full hour was up, tears were streaming down my face. I cry pretty easily, but never have I cried during a prime-time television series.

This one, my friends, got me from the get go. That episode I saw was the fantastic season finale ("State") and since that day I have been hooked.

"Friday Night Lights" takes place in the fictional town of Dillon, a small place that lives and breathes football, as most towns in West Texas are wont to do.

Coach Eric Taylor (played by a phenomenally good looking and terrific actor Kyle Chandler) is the head coach of the Dillon Panthers, a team struggling after its star quarterback Jason Street (Scott Porter) is paralyzed during the first game of the season, and during the first episode of the series.

Jason Street was their meal ticket to the state title game, but now all is lost... or so it appears. The future of the season lies in the hands of young Matt Saracen (Zach Gilford), who has never in his life taken a snap on the gridiron.

This little show, however, does not only revolve around football.

In fact, football takes a backseat most of the time. The most compelling stories are those of the players and the stresses they go through; Saracen as the man of the housem caring for his Alzheimer's ridden grandmother while his dad is in Iraq; Coach and his wife (the fantastic Connie Britton) and daughter Julie (cute Aimee Teegarden), who make up the greatest family ever portrayed on TV, and the town folk, who are just plain football obsessed.

Continue reading this article here ...

With just two weeks to go until Friday Night Lights returns, the critics are lining up to chime in on what many believe is a hidden TV treasure.

Earlier this week, we heard from ESPN's Bill Simmons, the sharp-tongued, often cynical columnist who loves his sports, and who is urging more and more viewers to keep the "Lights" on for this year and beyond.

Now, Akron Beacon-Journal critic Rich Heldenfels has shed some light on the Season 2 premiere. He does not give away a crucial plot point of the first episode, but he does describe how this important story development may harm the future of Friday Night Lights, in his opinion.

His column appears below. We'll keep the details to a minimum before the jump, but beware: herein lie some spoilers, at least in the broad sense.

Is Friday Night Lights still capable of greatness in its second-season premiere? Yes. Is there anything to worry about? Also yes.

So much that was good about the show is still very good. The Taylor family, for starters, which now has a new baby to deal with, as well as Eric's being far away, at his new college coaching job at TMU.

When Tami Taylor (Connie Britton) goes in labor, Eric has to fly home. And what he finds is that the baby is just one of the challenges facing him; daughter Julie (Aimee Teegarden) has gone all snotty in his absence, for several reasons.

The Julie-Matt relationship has taken an interesting turn, as have the lives of Buddy and Lyla Garrity, Tim Riggins, Landry and Tyra, and Jason Street.

In fact, the show is so stuffed that Street's new dilemma is presented very quickly, and we hardly see Smash Williams (Gaius Charles) at all.

Continue Reading...

If last year's memorable TV phrase was Heroes' "Save the cheerleader, save the world," this year's to be "Save the show," writes Bill Simmons of ESPN.

NBC is damned close to burying Friday Night Lights, the popular columnist writes, which would be a shame on a number of levels, but none more serious than this one: It's the greatest sports-related show ever made.

Every nuance is nailed, every hug seems genuine, every fight makes sense, every sarcastic barb and flustered reaction ring true.

If there are better TV actors than Kyle Chandler (Coach) and Connie Britton (Mrs. Coach), well, he sure as heck hasn't TiVoed them.

Returning for its second season on October 5, it's a fair bet that Friday Night Lights will be canceled for good by Christmas.

And when it is, it's going to be because of people like you.

Bill Simmons, a sports and TV fanatic whose defense and passionate plea to save Friday Night Lights appears in the new edition of ESPN the Magazine, feels confident about making the following three generalizations:

No. 1: You're reading this magazine because you like sports.

Okay, maybe you're killing time in a doctor's office, or stumbled across this in an airplane seat pouch, sandwiched between a barf bag and a catalog. But I'm going with the odds: If you're reading ESPN The Mag right now, there's a 96 percent chance you like sports, a 3 percent chance you're killing time - and a 1 percent chance you're stoned and think you're reading Rolling Stone.

No. 2: If you like TV, you wouldn't knowingly turn your back on a great show.

I know, that sounds like a quote from Joe Theismann. But most rational TV fans will cave once a show generates enough buzz, either because their curiosity is piqued or because it's on cable with an "N" or an "SSC" in the ratings. Hey, I've been there myself: I held out on The Sopranos and The Wire.

No. 3: If Nos. 1 and 2 are true, there's an overwhelming chance you'd love Friday Night Lights and a decent chance you aren't watching it.

And if that's the case, don't you owe it to yourself to rent Season 1, Disc 1, and try the first four episodes? Look, if Friday Night Lights doesn't make it, we're just going to get more Grey's Anatomy spin-offs (Private Practice), a CSI for every city and 20 Deal or No Deal clones.

You shouldn't feel guilty about jumping on this bandwagon. I watched the pilot when it originally aired, but I didn't love it: too much puke-cam (the camera stopped moving so much in later episodes) and an sports inconsistencies (Dillon wins via a Hail Mary that could happen only on a 140-yard field).

Continue reading Bill Simmons' column ...