Question: While I agree with your unrelenting support of Friday Night Lights, I do have to disagree with your decision to single Minka Kelly out as the "weak link" in the cast. It seems like it's become a trend to single out actresses (oddly more so than actors) who are cast in unpopular storylines or as unpopular characters. I don't love Minka's storylines on FNL as much as I do some of the others, but I find that her performance in that unpopular role meets the high standard of the other young actors on the show. I heard a lot of people personally deriding Adrianne Palicki — not just her character, but the actress herself — during her slightly meandering first-season role, but now that she is getting to show a range of emotion, everyone is celebrating her talent. The same problem extends to Grey's Anatomy, where Katherine Heigl and Ellen Pompeo are singled out as horrible actresses. Huh? Are they watching the same show I am? Both of their characters have made stupid decisions, acted ...
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Question: I felt compelled to write because of Martin P.'s recent comment about his Texas friends who avoided Friday Night Lights "like the plague." I've lived in Texas my entire life, and I do understand his friends' concerns. I usually cringe when TV shows or movies employ characters supposedly from Texas, because usually the accents, attitudes and, honestly, everything else is completely off. However, I am happy to say that the powers-that-be at FNL have been spot-on. I went to college in a small town very much like Dillon and probably very near to where Dillon is supposed to be located, and from the pilot onwards, I was nostalgic. The accents are perfect. The genuflecting to high-school football is perfect. The slice-of-life approach to family, faith and friends is perfect. I live about an hour from where they film, and so from the opening credits, I just grin, because I recognize the roads and open country and various locales. This show gets it right, and it makes me proud to be a ...
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MacGregor is out and Taylor is in. Chris Mulkey by Bill Records/NBC
Episode Recap: "Backfire"Who didn't have a little flutter in his (or her) heart when Coach Taylor, back in his Dillon Panther blues, stood up in front of that room like nothing had changed and said, "Let's go. Let's have some fun today"? What a way to end an episode that already just seemed to fly by.Aside from that weird, Mafia-like threat from Coach MacGregor ("I have a family, too, and you just remember that. I'll be seeing you again"), Eric's homecoming was nothing less than joyous. Julie and Tami are well on their way to patching things up, especially now that it looks like the grungy Swede might be out of the picture. Matt Saracen has someone back on his side again, and Buddy should probably be considered the town hero.Ah, Buddy. We may have just been witness to the only game in Panther history that Buddy honestly wanted his beloved team to lose. It was quite a sight to watch him hold back a grin as Smash got blocked again and again, leaving Dillon with a humiliating loss on t...
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Eric hopes he can get his old job back. Kyle Chandler by Mitchell Haaseth/NBC
Episode Recap: "Are You Ready for Friday Night?"Is this show about football or hockey? There was so many smackdowns (verbal and physical) tonight, that I think I'm forming bruises in sympathy. What does it say about a show when the characters who are doing the best at the moment are the ones who recently committed murder?That's right, you Tyra and Landry fans — the deed has been done, is probably going to be done again. And it seems like they're genuinely in love. Dillon's former bad girl — who seems to have passed on her particular brand of anger to Julie, but more on which later — is in a relationship with a guy that respects her and won't take advantage, so it's just too bad that the entire foundation of their love is that they killed someone. Their watch-shopping scene was the sweetest and lightest of the night ("it really doesn't look anything like [the old watch] except that they are both watches and have hands and tell time"). Definitely a welcome respite fro...
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Minka Kelly and Scott Porter in Friday Night Lights by Paul Drinkwater/NBC Photo
Friday Night Lights' Minka Kelly, Adrianne Palicki and Scott Porter are among the host of fresh young faces currently taking part in director George Miller's two-day marathon casting session for Justice League of America, says the Hollywood Reporter. Miller has some 40 up-and-comers on his radar for the comic-book-based film, which is looking to fill the costumes of Superman, Wonder Woman (Jessica Biel "passed"), Batman, Flash, Aquaman, Green Lantern and Martian Manhunter. Others on yesterday and today's short list include Adam Brody (The O.C.), Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Grindhouse), Michael Anganaro (Will & Grace), Teresa Palmer (Wolf Creek) and rapper Common.
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Matt tries to figure out how to deal with the women in his life. Zach Gilford by Bill Records/NBC
Episode Recap: "Bad Things"Regular readers of this blog know that this show make me cry on a pretty regular basis. Tonight's episode was no exception, though I'm not sure what part was most affecting. You'd think it would be Jason still coming to terms with his paralysis after recovering some muscle function, but that's really just par for the course on this show. As usual, Connie Britton's flawless portrayal of a new mother with a crumbling psyche was wrenching to watch. Was there any scene in which she wasn't desperately trying to swallow her sobs? And the thing is, it all seemed so completely organic — there was no screaming or a melodramatic "Why me?" moment. It's hard not to love a show that allows its characters to fully comprehend the ridiculousness of their choices, and when Glenn (the guidance counselor in need of guidance) asked Tami why exactly she and Eric were living apart, her acknowledgement of, "I don't know, that was just my idea, it was just a stupid idea," wa...
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The Taylors adjust to their new situation. Connie Britton, Aimee Teegarden, Kyle Chandler by Bill Records/NBC
Episode Recap: "Last Days of Summer""Welcome back to another glorious year of Panther football." I'm not ready to classify the football as glorious just yet, what with this new Coach McGregor (the anti-Eric Taylor) and all, but the show itself is certainly back and in sublime form.Let us first welcome into the world Miss Grace Taylor, second daughter of Eric and Tami, sister to suddenly moody teen, Julie. Now Eric has another daughter to defend against football players and Swedes; too bad he's a plane ride away in Austin. His new coaching job at TMU is having a deleterious effect on his family and (I'm not even being dramatic when I say this) the entire football-loving community in Dillon, but more about that in a bit. Julie won't talk to him because she considers him to have been an absentee father for the last 8 months, and Tami — Connie Britton, proving yet again how wrong the Emmy voters got it with her incredible performance tonight — is absolutely destroyed that he c...
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Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton in Friday Night Lights by Bill Records/NBC Photo
What more can its devoted critics say about NBC’s Friday Night Lights except to celebrate the fact that it’s back for a second season, which means it has already beaten the odds, at least for now. Not that the odds aren’t still incredibly steep for this eternal underdog in its new Friday time period: 9 pm/ET, when many of those who might savor this wonderful drama’s small-town football backdrop are out enjoying their own high school football matches this time of year. No matter how you watch it — in real time, in your own time via recording or online viewing — you really don’t want to miss it.Friday Night Lights is powerfully entertaining drama, and returning to Dillon, Texas, is like going home again. The characters are instantly familiar as they recapture your heart, especially the Taylors. That would be Coach Eric and wife Tami, unhappily maintaining a long-distance relationship as he adjusts to a new college job while Tami copes with a new baby...
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The latest hookups and bust-ups, per People:• Jennifer Aniston's new mystery beau? Brit Paul Sculfor, a 6-foot-tall, 36-year-old former boxer and construction worker turned model. In other words, he has abs.• Kate and Owen? Splitsville, but "still friends."• Jessica and John? "Definitely over" after their latest makeup/breakup. Jess left wondering, "Hmm, why does he only get back with me for upwards of 15 minutes at a time? And always in a hotel room?"• Friday Night Lights' Minka Kelly? Spied "making out" with Fantastic Four's Chris Evans at a Blackberry Curve launch soiree. (New York Post)• JonBenet Ramsey's father and Natalee Holloway's mother? Dating. (And off I go to feed sordid conspiracy theories to Weekly World News.... )
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“You feel different?” “I do. I do.” I do, too. Has there been a more sheerly exuberant episode of television this season than this? In a way, it was the perfect capsule of this show: Even if someone had never watched this show before, they could fall instantly into its rhythms and story lines just in this one hour. In fact, in looking at the whole season, both the pilot and the finale could be viewed as perfect one-offs. When I said last week that I thought the writers would be bringing their best game, I wasn't expecting for it to be the blow out that it was.Is it possible for a show to be both more than the sum of its parts and have those parts be almost more important at the same time? As wonderful as the episode was as a whole, the individual scenes themselves were so fully developed, they could have counted as one-acts. The pre-game dinner, for instance, with Buddy’s “Eric, I just came by to tell you that I’m gonna miss you, and that you’...
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