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It's a sad state of affairs when a show as good as
"Friday Night Lights" (based on the popular movie and bestseller
that profiled a small town in Texas and the obsessive culture
that surrounds high school football in these rural communities)
can't find an audience. Part of the problem could be the
shaky camera work. Yes, I know that some people praised
"Cloverfield" for the same technique and that shows like
"The Office" use the same approach but in their case there
was a legit reason for doing it--the first is that it's
told from the point-of-view of a dofus with a camcorder.
The second is because a documentary is being made about
life in a typical American office. In both cases the conceit
works. It could have worked for "Friday Night Lights" as
well except that it happens ALL the time. It was distracting
even more so than those other examples mentioned (and "Battlestar:
Galatica" selectively uses the technique). I suspect that
persuaded audience members with motion sickness to abandon
the show. The writing during the first season was shaky
at times as well but its as if a writing version of Steadycam
came into play. So the show took the initial hit of the
audience abandoning it. NBC tried a different play hoping
for yardage with the audience and got nothing. ***
Maybe I'm in the minority here but I really liked this
show in spite of its annoying tendency to use technique
to sell the authenticity of what we saw. The grainy high
definition video footage was enough of a selling point and
the producers should have abandoned the camera seizures
early on but, hey, that's life. Nevertheless, the quality
of the writing on the show was extremely good and Kyle Chandler
as coach Eric Taylor and Connie Britton as his wife Tami
Taylor were always appealing and gave strong performances
even when the material (or jittery camera) wasn't always
up to part. ***
If you can get past the bouncy camera work, "Friday
Night Lights" has some terrific episodes. The second, shorter
season (due to the Writer's Strike) lasted only fifteen
episodes but they were darn good episodes. The Emmy Award
winning show opened with the Panthers football team without
coach Taylor who was contemplating a job at Texas Methodist
University at the end of season one. He takes the job and
leaves his team and his pregnant wife adrift. His daughter
Julie is hit even harder than most everyone else. SPOILERS
BELOW: ***
Needless to say Coach Taylor returns to the Panthers
quitting his new job at TMU. That means he has to mend fences
and patch holes in a leaky relationship with his wife and
daughter. That remained much of the focus for season two
(although there were other highlights as well). The show
didn't really have a big cliffhanger for season two (because
of the shortened season) but did have a number of unresolved
plot threads. Fans will find some of this frustrating (all
two of you not including myself) but the show still manages
to stand even with these threads left dangling in the wind.
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Image & Sound:
As with the previous season, "Friday Night Lights"
looks pretty good. The high definition digital videotape
and techniques used to add grain to the show could be seen
as a negative by those expecting the pristine look of film
or a more conventional TV show. It's not. That's the way
the show looks simple as that. There are occasional digital
artifacts that crop up like mosquito noise but it's not
everywhere and on the whole isn't all that distracting.
Audio sounds extremely good keep in mind this is primarily
a dialogue driven show and we can understand what everyone
is saying. ---
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