friday night lights premiere

Thanks, Gene Shalit Jr.

 

good show. i'll set up a tivo season pass but i think i'll be fine if i miss one here and there.

i agree about the girlfriend of the drunk lineman. she's unbelievable.

my only two complaints: the coach's daughter is the only kid on the show who looks like she's young enough to be in high school. and the backup QB would always be prepared. maybe he'd only be running the scout team but any high school head coach with half a brain would include the backup in all meetings, make sure he knows the plays and instill in him that he's one snap away from being the starter. i laughed out loud when the backup threw the pass that hit the lineman in the helmet though.

 

I would so nail Connie Britton. She looks like a broad who'd be gallons of fun.

 

Just FYI, the USA network is replaying the pilot Thursday at 11PM EST. USA is replaying all of NBC's new shows.

 

But back to Connie Britton ... my God, that chick epitomizes MILFdom. I mean, funbags, a nice bright grill for target practice and long legs ... yep, she'd do.

 

a) connie's a goddess, as i've noted. everyone else needs to back off. she's mine, dammit!! 8) 8) 8)

b) "fnl" is replayed tonight on nbc at 8.

 

I do agree with Guy, the football game played out exactly the same way the second game did in Varsity Blues, the only difference was that instead of tear his knee to shreads the guy has a broken neck. And of course there were obvious defficencies in the actuall football game play, but on a whole not bad. Didn't even know about it until I stumbled across it last night on TV, so I had no preconceived expectations or anything. I will definitely be trying to follow it throughout the season, something to kill my Tuesday nights anyway. If for no other reason than to oggle the girls.

As an aside – I hate how people always bring in the LAO comparison on timelines. If you actually follow the subtitles and scene breaks the investigation and trial plays out over the course of a number of months.

 

I also think it's a bit easier to realistically portray a 48-minute football game than it is to have a show about a trial. The football scenes could have been easy fixes... just have the running back get tackled when he tried spinning inside to pick up a few more yards (would suit his character), have the backup QB spike the ball, then set up the scene where he runs around for 30 yards before throwing one up in the end zone that is tipped or something into the hands of a Dillon player. That's just as exciting and a little more realistic.

 

Just watched it on DVR. Definitely hasn't earned a spot in the season pass list... yet. I'll give it another week or two, but I just don't see where it's going to go from here. I feel like they rushed everything into one episode -- unnecessarily so. Within 60 minutes we're shown the huge star qb throw about 3 passes one of which is picked, we see the backup thrown into the fire and after 2 bad plays all of a sudden he has the poise of joe montana, and for good measure the two players who hate each other are embracing in the hospital (from reading the info for next week it clearly doesn't last, but did it need to even happen). I feel like they could have added 5 minutes so the star could wake up and be fine and everyone told him they won the big game and it could have just been a movie. I think it would have been much better served to slow things down a little, let things develop slower, let us see the rivalry between the FB and RB build, let the star be the star before the inevitable injury, etc, etc and the pay off would be bigger. Just too much thrown out there in the premiere. This DOESN'T set up the rest of the season nicely...
I can't even complain about the football scenes because it's apparent that it is impossible for shows or movies to come anywhere close to realistic.

 

Mrs. Irish made me watch it, and it was better than I thought, but still, not exactly appointment television. Decent characters, great camerawork and music, very cinematic for TV. But lousy football realism. Lousy journalism realism, too. That TV reporter was asking way tougher questions than any small town TV reporter I've ever seen interview high school kids. Dude was acting like he's Mike Wallace.
Seems they laid too many cards on the table too early, as well. It'll be hard to see how this story arc plays out for a whole season (a 25-or-so episode TV season, I mean. It's going to be pretty dull if there isn't a game every week), forget about future years, when, presumably lots of these kids will have to graduate.

 

I've heard more meaty quotes in 30 seconds of this show tonight than in 12 weeks of covering the team I cover.

 

What's promising about this show is that it begins where most football movies end -- with the backup QB coming in and saving the day, the home team pulling out the win at the last second, the star player getting seriously injured, the black kid and the white kid finding a way to work together. I wouldn't want to see that stuff play out slowly over time because it's nothing new. The first episode and the scenes from next week gave me the sense that there's a lot more story here. It had a few flaws, but it could develop into something that's really worth watching.