The “Friday Night Lights” television show is now remembered as one of the most beloved series from the mid 2000s.
An extension from the 2004 movie that was adapted from the 1990 book written by Buzz Bissinger, it dramatized the various storylines of people in the fictional Texas town of Dillon centered on the high school football team.
Head Coach Erick Taylor and his wife Tami led his Panthers players both on the field and off through their various life problems during five seasons.
Despite struggling with ratings while it was airing, it was one of those shows that everyone who did watch did not just like but love, including critics as it was nominated for every award show in existence.
As the 2010s saw streaming services revolutionize the way people watch television, many have now seen the show through one of these services years after its last season aired in 2011.
With the series centering around not just high school football, but specifically Texas high school football, I figured it was my obligation to give it a shot in high school since I had never heard a bad thing said about it.
I admit the first season wrapped me up in the ride of the Dillon Panthers and the various storylines, but some second season storylines had me rolling my eyes and put a stop to me wanting to continue to watch the series.
Only when thinking back at some of the earlier plot points in season one did I realize the show was just too dumbly unrealistic the whole time and I just never noticed.
I realize every great television show is full of unrealistic things people look past all the time. Only on television can a character go from one major plot line to the next and not have a mental breakdown.
While some real people live hard or eventful lives, go look up your favorite television character’s biography and wonder how they are so relatable after going through all that.
I can suspend my disbelief most of the time, but when it comes to sports I know too much to just turn off my brain sometimes.
The Dillon team needs to win one more game to make it to the state title game.
In real life, athletic directors at both schools negotiate the site of each playoff game. Usually both want the game be as equal a distance drive for each school as possible, but also taking into affect what school district stadiums will be open to hosting the game and how much they will cost.
“It is all about negotiation,” Bowie Athletic Director Cory Mandrell said. “Some coaches are real laid back about it and some are a pain in the butt about certain things.”
The only home field advantage is one that is agreed upon, but usually does not happen and certainly not in the state semifinals.
In the show, Coach Eric Taylor is determined to keep his home field advantage. A wrench is thrown into that at the beginning of the episode 20 called, “The Mud Bowl.” A train not only derails but explodes near the school. Get this, the train was carrying vaguely dangerous chemicals.
School officials say the school grounds will have to be empty for at least a week, which means the Panthers will not be able to play in their home stadium. No mention on how the kids will continue to have lessons that week though. That’s not important.
Playing the Brant Vikings, the fictional Brant must not be too far from Dillon because the coaches meet in person at a proposed stadium. While it is not Brant’s stadium, Coach Taylor accuses the other coach of having ties to the stadium that might give him an advantage somehow.
In desperation, he sees a plot of farm land with someone’s cows on it is available for lease in Dillon and gets to work with his team making it a football field. When Brant’s coach objects, Taylor gets officials to sign off by reading vague rules that it meets field expectations and goads him into agreeing by saying the field conditions will not matter.
I argue it apparently does if you went to the trouble of going through the logistical nightmare of constructing a makeshift field, stands and lights on a cow pasture.
The field factors in another way because all of a sudden it starts raining hard and does not let up until the end of the game. The grass field becomes a mudpit.
I think the whole reason for this episode was the camera crew really wanted to film one of these types of games in all of its glory. It delivers as the players uniforms turn brown and the players slip and slide all around.
The final score is predictably low as the Panthers win on the final play of the game as quarterback Saracen dives into the end zone to make it 14-8.

To read the full story, pick up a copy of the mid-week edition of the Bowie News.