Friday Night Lights Archives

Last year, I wrote about how NBC and DirecTV combined forces to keep the great Friday Night Lights on the air.

It was an experiment, to be sure, and at the time I was worried that the numbers might be hurt because people would either wait for the DVD and/or bittorrent the DirecTV episodes while ignoring the NBC broadcasts.

While I think that people did both, the numbers were strong enough that the showed got renewed not for one, but two more seasons. Awesome! And with the DVD of the third season coming out in May, there was time to watch all three seasons all over again before the next one started on DirectTV.

Which, BTW, would be worth it, because the third season was a complete rebound, washing away the taste of some of the more dubious things that went on in the second season. If you were a fan of Friday Night Lights, everything looked great.

For about a week, that is. Despite the fact that they’ll take DirecTV’s money to produce the show and our money for the DVDs, NBC obviously hates Friday Night Lights. Or more accurately, it hates the fans of Friday Night Lights. Why do I say that? According to a recent TV Shows on DVD post the third season DVD is going to contain bastardized, shorter versions of the episodes.

We are now in the second week of one of the more intriguing experiments going on in the television world: the shared production between NBC & DirecTV on Friday Night Lights.

Last year, just prior to the start of its problematic second season, it seemed like Friday Night Lights was doomed, despite the fact that it was one of the best written and acted dramas on TV.

And, in fact, it was doomed, especially as the writers strike cut short the second season just as it was finally beginning to shake off its sophomore slump. It really seemed like there was no way that it was going to come back, and those of us who had fallen in love with it were going to lose something unique in TV history: a show that took a hard, smart look at small-town America and the institutions that that were important to it — including, of course, high-school football.

Cue the last desperate improvisational drive towards the end zone as time is running out and options are running thin.

Friday Night Lights

NBC Says “Screw You” to Friday Night Lights Fans

Will NBC and DirecTV’s “Friday Night Lights” Experiment Work?