Friday Night Lights
By Alvaro André Zeini Cruz
“I was living in a devil town; I didn’t know it was a devil town”. These verses are from “Devil Town”, a song that animates the promotional teaser in the third season of “Friday Night Lights”. No, the series does not take place in a suburb terrorized by psychopaths like Wisteria Lane in “Desperate Housewives”, nor does it try to unravel the hypocrisy behind the refinement of Beverly Hills, Orange County, or even the affluent Upper East Side of NY, scenery of “Gossip Girl”, another contemporary teen series. “Friday Night Lights” fits into this genre, but with exceptions. Simply because the conservative Dillon, a small fictitious town in the interior of Texas, is precisely the opposite of what television has tried to portray lately to teenage spectators. It is a peaceful town, with hardly any entertainment, where the only hobby is, at first, a real passion.
In Dillon, high-school football on Friday nights is a serious event; its players, teenagers between the ages of 15 and 18, are big stars. Therefore, adolescence is not a phase to be lived between impulsiveness and the limit, as shown in the aforementioned “Gossip Girl”, certainly influenced by the English series “Skins”, the most recent predecessor dealing with the cruel world among teenagers. For the young men in Dillon’s Panthers it is even simpler: it is only about football and how this passion motivates them towards a future that is quite distant from their limited hometown. This is exactly where things get complicated: the passion is transformed almost unexpectedly into another obsession; the series confronts its own characters with a new reality that maliciously destroys the course they are trailing with no chance of restoring things, only enabling the possibility of an adaptation. This concludes the storyline of quarterback Jason Street (Scott Porter), who after an on-field accident, is obliged to follow his career as a coach to continue working with the sport that he really enjoys. Or, of Smash William (Gaius Charles,) a boy who, during his whole life, tries to deal with racial prejudice through persuasion and a false self-esteem, and whose future is compromised precisely when he reacts aggressively to racist provocation.
The accident with Street right in the first episode of the series, opens space for the ascension of another character, Matt Saracen (Zack Gilford), an introspective boy who was abandoned by his mother, and whose father is serving his country in Iraq, therefore he is obliged to live under the tutorship of his grandmother, who is showing the first signs of Alzheimer. Saracen, who had never left the bench, not only has the chance of becoming a star in the team, but finds in coach, Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler), some sort of father figure. But even for someone like Saracen, who does not have much to lose, things could change. On the other hand, there is Tim Riggins (Taylor Kitcsh), the bad boy and stud, but with character, who has been lucky at times, but has never taken advantage of this, reaches a moment of total lethargy when he realizes that high-school has gone and with it the position as star of Dillon’s Panther.
This brief description of the path of some of the characters already outlines much of “Friday Night Lights”. More than a teen series, it is a story in which young people are catapulted into stardom and, with the same velocity, are discharged of that position, and in which the happy end is not so simple (like in Juno, a recent film that addresses the teen universe through this ironic idea that happiness is never complete, that something always happens along the way). But it is, however, a story in which a passion (in this case, for absport) could take a completely different turn, after all, the dedication of coach Taylor is not much use to the team, or of his wife, Tammy Taylor (Connie Britton) to the school where she is a head teacher, when the feeling of the small Dillon, regarding sport, seems to cross a very dangerous line, challenging moral and ethical dilemmas, which also concern the education of the young people seen in this scene.
Thus, we find a divided Dillon in the fourth and current season of the series. On the one hand, West Dillon, which only has good memories of a past that is recent, while its former heroes (Riggins and Saracen) wander lethargic and inertly through the city.
On the other hand, East Dillon, the poorest area that sees its school being reactivated, as well as the former team, now led by Eric Taylor, who was kicked out of the Panthers due to a conflict of interest by the city’s “big shots”. The passion for the former team had become a type of cancer, well-defined recently in a recent episode by one of the characters. Now, they just need to reinstate the inactive Lions, even though problems, such as lack of motivation, financial and educational difficulties, and criminality are clear obstacles towards that goal. The idea of cooperation, of team work, are present, as they have always been, in a very positive way in the series, even though, individually, each character has to face unavoidable situations, thus having to give up on plans and dreams. There is a certain feeling of pessimism, which gives some reality to the plot. The truth is that we see West Dillon sinking in the middle of pride and obsession, while East Dillon fights against all odds to get to the top. Football, an iconic sport for the United States, serves as the centerpiece for this story, which is an interesting American chronicle, in a microcosm that has hardly any wealth and exuberance that we are used to seeing/believing. The series shows the socioeconomic problems openly (the housing crisis is even addressed in one of the storylines), the fanaticism and limitations of a small, peaceful and conservative city. There, we find a curious and flip side view of the American way of life.
contact: alvinho_azc at yahoo dot com dot br
