Friday Night Lights - State, 1.22

If Friday Night Lights ended now, right after season 1, I would be content with having experienced one of the Best Seasons I Have Ever Watched. I just want to slow clap for this series after every episode.

Season 2! Allons-y!

P.S. dillonpanthers.tumblr.com! Made to showcase the beauty of lens flares/composition/beautiful people of FNL.

Friday Night Lights - Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes, 1.19

I can't even deal with how good Friday Night Lights is. I'm in that state of post-episode euphoria. Perfection! Usually I'd wait to calm down, but I have to get this out now.

First of all, this series is absolutely breathtakingly gorgeous. I started capping pretty scenes during this episode, and found myself pausing and going back to get shots I missed. I now have a whole desktop full of screenshots I'll probably add to this post later. Wow. I'm a sucker for lens flare and the way this show uses light is stunning. And the organic, yet somehow very measured and artsy composition of each shot. I don't even knowww.

Secondly, how do the writers do it? How can they write such perfect characters and relationships? This episode, the back-and-forth between Tyra and her mother was heartbreaking and so real -- you can feel how trapped Tyra is, and how damaged her mother is, and the heated emotions forged out of that frustrating relationship just ignite like fireworks onscreen. The climax argument in the car about living a better life, then the screech of the truck's tires on asphalt, then Tyra's mother storming into the Father-Daughter dance, ending with Tyra laughing and dancing... Absolutely. Brilliant.

Another winning relationship in this episode is of course Coach Taylor and his daughter Julie. The conversation in the car brought me to tears. The acting!

And Lila ramming that car into her father's auto dealership? I can't express how much I love that. I'm not a big fan of Lila, mostly because of her annoying relationship with Jason. But I could definitely warm up to her if she continues being such a badass. Sweet girl comes out of her shell (like she did last episode when she got drunk and really opened up to Jason -- I liked her then, too) because she can't take it anymore. I dig that a lot.

Another thing I dig is a plain and simple love story, and this episode offered an amazing one in Tim and his next-door neighbor. First off, Tim Riggins with a kid is incredibly attractive. And I guess the kid's mom isn't immune to his charms. The development of this unexpected side story was so simple, yet so compelling and real. It reminded me of Tyra's brief encounter with the businessman from LA in one of the first few episodes of this season. So gooooood.

Finally, the adorable, wonderful scene on the football field at night. Jason, Smash, Matt, Tim. Jason mentoring Matt. Matt fretting about getting caught. Tim and Smash explaining their problems with girls. Everything about these scenes really got to me, because I know what it's like to be on a quiet football field at night, and at dawn, and it was, of course, shot just beautifully.

I can barely be coherent about this show. It's just perfect. And I can't express that very well, I suppose.

ETA: Actually, I just made a tumblr: dillonpanthers.tumblr.com

Friday Night Lights - Git 'Er Done, 1.05

I cannot even deal with how good Friday Night Lights is. I've only seen five episodes. Sports dramas make me incredibly emotional. It's an absolutely perfect show. Perfect, as in no flaws. Impeccable.

Take episode five, Git 'Er Done, which I just finished watching. It flowed seamlessly -- from Jason's quiet recuperation scenes, to Tyra's Los Angeles fling, to Mr. and Mrs. Coach's conversations... with a perfect lead-up to Friday night: a scene in which Lila visits Jason in the hospital right before the game, and is followed in by Coach Taylor and the rest of the team. A quiet prelude before the big game. FNL does quiet very, very well. It's harder to do quiet and familiar than loud and boisterous, in my opinion... the late afternoon scene with Coach Taylor and his wife, for instance; he talks to her, articulating the sides of his dilemma, and it's incredibly real and intimate. The lighting is only what comes in through the school office windows, so there is lens flare and dust and coarse shadow across faces; the couple interrupts each other, and it's so loving, and you really get the feeling they are perfect for each other, because the understanding between them is palpable, the chemistry so strong, that you're left with the impression that maybe you shouldn't even be watching these real people have this quiet yet important moment.

Woah, kinda got carried away there.

Anyway, I also wanted to mention Tyra's brief affair with Connor, the businessman from Los Angeles. Their scenes this episode seemed like interludes to the rest of the episode, which was dedicated to preparation for Friday night. She's not a principal character (yet?) and her scenes hardly acknowledged football. The show so far had portrayed her as the football jock's bitchy girlfriend, but this episode showed a different side of her and hence propelled her characterization and likability lightyears ahead of, say, Lila. I'm a hopeless romantic, so I loved this micro-love story: small-town girl fed up with small town meets guy from big city. It's been done, but the fact that it was done with Tyra's character -- and so sweetly, too -- is intriguing. He leaves at the end of the episode, but you can't help but ache with her because she connected with him more than she ever could with her ex-boyfriend Tim, or anyone in Dillon for that matter. Connor thought her cynicism was interesting and he obviously fancied her, but you also know he had his own life in LA. He leaves, and Tyra is in a strange place -- she is unsatisfied with her town and her dead-end life, the only person that could have understood that is gone, so where does she go from there?

Kind of got carried away there, too.

Finally, these are really, really fine actors across the board. Connie Britton and Kyle Chandler were Emmy nom'd this year, and rightfully so. Minka Kelly is annoyingly cloying most of the time, but I suppose that's her character. Everyone else supporting is just grand and completely believable.

I'm SO glad I have 70+ episodes left to watch! I don't want this show to ever end!

ETA: The writing on this show is solid, but what really makes it stellar is the acting and directing. With a weaker cast and a less stylized shooting style, this show could have easily bombed.

Friday Night Lights - Wind Sprints, 1.03

Explosions in the Sky over football players sloshing through knee-deep mud in the rain. It should be disgusting, but instead it's triumphant.

Friday Night Lights - Pilot, 1.01

Overcast, and the first strains of First Breath After Coma transcend muted hoots and whistles and claps as cameras pan at varying distances across a grey field where a team scrimmages. Football is loud and brassy, with garish cheerleaders, mud, the muffled crack-ing of shoulder pad against helmet or abdomen or shin, torn-up grass and more mud. I don't like football. But I like Friday Night Lights.

I've raved about how much I adore overcast ("Sad is like happy for deep people," and its muted, worn tone), and that aforementioned scene is what sealed the deal for me. Brassy and garish FNL is not. Everything I hate about football is pulled inside out, and predictably I like this side better. Crowds are obviously loud, so FNL softens them. Instead of fanfare for a fight song, Explosions In the Sky provides an atmospheric backdrop for an adrenaline-packed game; there isn't a slow moment, and we don't need to be bombarded with booming declarations of Yeah! This Is Football! by way of noise or gritty close-ups. Art doesn't tell you what you already know, it shows you a different way of looking at life, at ordinary things like football culture in middle-America.

So, FNL is kind of like artsy, anti-football. Which I dig, a lot.

Thoughts:

• First Breath After Coma plays again in the hospital scene. First thought: Wow, this is awesome. Again. Second thought: Is this Grey's Anatomy?
• Love the handheld camera work. Organic. Very shaky, though. Even more so than BSG's 33, I think, which is saying a lot!
• Good use of music in TV really excites me. I freak out over this kind of thing. Usually for American shows it's the song choice and placement (like The Who on Freaks and Geeks, or Edward Sharpe on Community, or anything on Grey's Anatomy or Chuck), and on British shows it's more the way it's used dramatically (recurrence of Damien Rice's Delicate in Misfits; that subtle drone-y piece over Freddie and Cook's conversation in Skins). Not to say British shows don't choose good music, too.
• It's kind of funny how much the quality of writing on this blog has decreased. You can track the wax and wane of my writing finesse and lack thereof by checking the months I write a lot of posts, and the ones in which I don't. Yuck.