Friday Night Lights

[Bee]

woohoo!

[FrogMan]

awesome news, I'll now watch the last four shows that I have recorded with a lot more enthusiasm!!!

FM

[JeeberD]

Excellent! I wasn't too worried, but I'm very glad to hear that it's official...

[Emiliano]

Great news!

[Dr. Sak]

NBC needs to keep this on one night and not keep switching it like they did in the beginning of the season.

[ISiddiqui]

Very good news. This was one of my favorite shows last season.

[Dr. Sak]

Friday Night Lights moves to Friday nights at 10pm next season. Thankfully I have TiVo

[Jas_lov]

Ugh. Law and Order dropped off significantly in that spot. I thought FNL drew a more younger audience so why would they move it to that spot? I guess there's not much competition, but it will never become a hit show on Friday nights at 10. They even moved Law and Order: CI to USA so they should have put it on Tuesdays before SVU or Mondays before or after Heroes.

[spleen1015]

I think this will hurt the show.

[ISiddiqui]

Originally Posted by bsak16

Friday Night Lights moves to Friday nights at 10pm next season. Thankfully I have TiVo

Fudge.

That may be the death knell. You don't move a show based on Friday Night Football to Friday nights. And you definately don't move a show based on teenagers to 10 PM.

[Joe]

FNL just got boomtown'd.

[Pyser]

starts tonight! psyched!!

[JeeberD]

I have to work tonight, but have the DVR set. Been looking forward to this a LONG time!

[larrymcg421]

I finally caught up with this show over the offseason. Great stuff. Can't wait for the premiere.

[FrogMan]

I never got to watch the end of last season. Had it recorded then never got around to it. Will record tonight's episode and I'm gonna pick up season one in DVD tonight though and will start watching it soon.

FM

edit: and by "end of last season" I don't only mean the finale, but something like the last 4-5 episodes... shame on me... Will get to it though.

[Icy]

Awesome, i loved the 1st season, watched it late, once it ended as i had to wait for it to appear in torrent sites with english subtitles. I can underestand enough to follow the plot, but have a hard time catching up all the chat between the actors.

I hope the torrent and subtitles will be released soon, else i'll try to watch it in the NBC website.

[TazFTW]

Uh oh, with the way the show has started it looks like there will be limited interaction between The Great Eric Taylor and The Saracen.

The Landry/Tyra subplot looks like it could suck hard. Although some of the critics that have seen the next few episodes say that the end result is passable.

[digamma]

disappointed by the first episode

it is available at yahoo tv for those who didn't see it

[Pyser]

wow, i really dont like a number of directions the show has gone

and i HATE the landry/tyra story turn. HATE. the one thing this show has always been is very realistic of high school life. this is 90210 shit.

dont mind the turn in julies character, though, when you remember she's 16.

[Anthony]

i don't watch this bad show, but i read that the biggest change in this show is that they're basically taking out the sports element and are making it The O.C. w/ Football Pads. there'll be some shots of football practice and whatnot, but it won't be about the games.

[ISiddiqui]

Originally Posted by Pyser

and i HATE the landry/tyra story turn. HATE. the one thing this show has always been is very realistic of high school life. this is 90210 shit.

I think it really depends on where they go with it. It could be ok and with the writers they have, I think they can save it. But having Landry just keep chasing Tyra all season would have gotten old. This at least accelerates some things.

Would be interested, though, in seeing how the Tennessee Terror deals with players like Smash and Riggins. He seems to want to run Riggins until he pukes, but Street is right, he just won't respond. If anything, he'll try to get back at the coach by blowing an assigning on purpose during a big point in the game when the coach tries to tell him that it's all on Riggins.

[larrymcg421]

There were some good moments in this one, but I was also disappointed by the episode. The problem with the Landry/Tyra story is that Adrianne Palicki is just not a very good actress. The same can be said for Minka Kelly, and I expect her storyline to go nowhere also.

The best moments were the scenes between Coach and his daughter. That was some great stuff.

Here's to hoping the show will get better next week.

[Joe]

Originally Posted by ISiddiqui

I think it really depends on where they go with it. It could be ok and with the writers they have, I think they can save it.

I hope they have a lot of episodes in the can before the WGA strike.

[Dr. Sak]

Okay a few lines in this first episode floored me. One was when Landry said to Matt, WWRD. What would Riggins Do and then Matt said about Riggins being the captain of the S-S Ta Tas. Hilarious.

I like the whole Lyla storyline with being "born again". It isn't far fetched to think that someone that has been through a lot in the last year, especially finding out about her father, would do something like this and try to change everyone around her.

I with hold my comments on the Landry/Tyra storyline till i see more. Tyra is smokin hot but if you notice they never show the couple ditching the body over the bridge.

Also I think the new coach's days will be numbered. He will lose control of the team, lose a few games and some how Eric will be back at Dillon.

[spleen1015]

I don't think the guy is really dead.

[JonInMiddleGA]

http://www.medialifemagazine.com/art...ght_Lights.asp

NBC moved its critically acclaimed drama “Friday Night Lights” to Friday night for the show’s second season, hoping the symmetry between the name and its logical new location would help build an audience on a less-competitive night, a year after the show struggled on Tuesday and Wednesday.

While “Lights” did manage to finish second in its very weak timeslot for its season two premiere, its numbers weren’t all that promising.

“Lights” averaged a 2.1 in adults 18-49 at 9 p.m. Friday, according to final Nielsen numbers, just behind CBS’s critically derided new vampire drama “Moonlight” in that demo while drawing 6.5 million total viewers. That made it NBC’s least-watched program of the night.

The timeslot competition included two reruns, ABC’s “Private Practice” and Fox’s “K-Ville,” as well as CW’s “Smackdown,” which does well in the younger 18-34 demographic.

But the lighter competition didn’t boost “Lights’” average. The show was slightly off from last year’s season average of 2.2 and was down 22 percent from last year’s premiere, which averaged a 2.7.

Perhaps some “Lights” fans didn’t know the show had moved, or maybe it was actually hurt by Friday night’s generally low viewership levels. Whatever the reason, NBC will probably want to see stronger results to keep the show on the air.

“Lights” could still see a kick-up in viewership when digital video recorder ratings are released in a few weeks. The percentage of DVR households in Nielsen’s sample has more than doubled since this time last year, and media people expect seven-day-playback ratings to influence networks’ decisions on what to keep on the air.

Meanwhile, “Moonlight” saw a sharp decline from its opener, dipping 19 percent from a 2.7 last week to a 2.2. Media people were surprised the show, whose pilot was reshot shortly after May’s upfront, had debuted so strongly.

[ISiddiqui]

It amazes me that network execs or the article writers don't particularly realize that FNL may have been hurt because it's primary audience may have been at high school football games, which happen to be on... FRIDAY NIGHTS!

[larrymcg421]

Based on the season premiere, theyre not going after football fans.

[ISiddiqui]

Well, they are going after football fans and their significant others . Non football fans aren't going to tune in initially, I don't think. Unless a football fan is watching it and they are on the couch.

[Joe]

yeah they will, it's the OC with a backdrop of football

[digamma]

We were talking over the weekend and decided the show might now be more aptly titled "Sunday through Thursday Night Drama and Romance."

[larrymcg421]

Exec producer Jason Katims explains the reasoning behind last Friday's disturbing plot twist: "What we want to do is not turning into a murder mystery or 'CSI,' but it's basically these two teenagers in a position where it leads to this incredibly intimate storyline between these two characters that would never -- their relationship would never become as intimate as it does if not for this event. It really becomes this story, like all 'Friday Night Lights' stories, about character, about two people trying to deal with it, what they've done, all the guilt and everything would happen to them, and that the two of them get more connected than they ever would have.

[Karlifornia]

I haven't watched this show at all, although I want to.

Judging from the reaction here, it appears that the channel (NBC, is it?) knows that a drama about football ain't gonna fly with John and Joan Q Public, no matter how great and multi-layered it is. They may be choosing to chase ratings. Talk about Occam's Razor. Shitty for everyone, except MTV watching teens.

[ISiddiqui]

I wouldn't entirely discount that theory. I know that moving a show to Friday nights is a death knell. It's the final resting place before cancellation and FNL didn't do very well on Tuesdays (I think it was Tuesdays) last season. So maybe they are adding something to draw in viewers to prevent cancelation.

[Dr. Sak]

I think FNL started on Wednesdays but got moved to Tuesdays last season. I remember they kept moving it around to new days and time slots and that can hurt a new show if no one knows when it is on.

[Jas_lov]

The Friday move could also mean that they plan on keeping it on that day for a while and hiding it because ratings are never good on Friday nights. NBC did this with Homicide: Life on the Street. But I hope that the show doesn't take too much of a turn away from the football field, but it appears that may be the case. Well, it was a great show for 1 season at least.

[ISiddiqui]

On the other hand, the writers may have foreseen this anyway, regardless of ratings, because Coach Taylor was going to get the job in Austin, which means the football aspect of the show is a bit less compelling (as much as the players dealing with the "Tennessee Terror" may be interesting, I'd imagine it wouldn't be as compelling as Coach Taylor trying to work with the boys... I doubt the new coach would work hands on at night with the guy who just got thrown into the new QB role as Taylor did last season).

[Pyser]

i wonder if the show shot themselves in the foot by giving coach taylor that college job

maybe they thought there was no way they were coming back for season 2, and just went for the best possible storytelling in season 1, consequences be damned.

[ISiddiqui]

Perhaps that and after winning a state championship, where do you go, especially when you have the same main characters.

[Icy]

Just watched it (had to wait for subtitles) and i'm really disappointed. I like some background behind the football plot, in fact that was the great thing both from the original movie and the 1st season, but this first chapter was too much stuff outside football, specially the Tyra/Landry story and the one with the cars dealer daugther becoming a chistian soldier. I guess they ran over of new ideas as standard football backgrounds.

I wonder if they should have graduated most of the 1st season players and start a new season with freshmen, with new stories around them, but standard stories that any kid in high school can live, and no CSI fantastic ones. I wonder if the next will be some extraterrestrials abducting QB1.

[JeeberD]

So the main thing that ticked me off was, ummm, the dude attacked Tyra. Not once, but twice. Then he punched Landry. He was walking away when Landry hit him, but a claim of self-defense would still work pretty well, especially for a cop's son.

My wife never watched FNL with me last year, and I tried to get her to watch this episode. Yeah, she says I can have the show all to myself now...

[Pyser]

ok...wait wait wait.

coach taylor isnt the head coach at the college? was this always known, or am i just dumb??

[Galaril]

Originally Posted by Pyser

ok...wait wait wait.

coach taylor isnt the head coach at the college? was this always known, or am i just dumb??

Yeah, I thought he was going to at least be a offensive coordinator but qb coach?????????? This and the too much off the field stories have me worried this one may have jumped the shark.

[ISiddiqui]

Yep, it was always known (at least by me) that he was hired as the QB coach.

And while the dude attacked Tyra, Landry did kill him with his back to him. I'm not sure self-defense will work all that well especially since its obvious Landry hit him in the back of the head. And it doesn't matter all that much to how Landry feels about it either.

[JeeberD]

Originally Posted by Pyser

coach taylor isnt the head coach at the college? was this always known, or am i just dumb??

What, those have to be mutually exclusive?

Yes, they said last year that he was offered the QB Coach position...


Poor Saracin. At least the writers will have him banging the hot latina nurse before the season is through the way things are going...

[Icy]

Just saw chapters 2 and 3 and things are going better and i'm liking the show again. The only things I don't like are the murder and the new found chistian faith, but the rest of the stuff is credible enough. I'm also liking the college stuff that coach Taylor is being into, it seems now that he will be back to Dilon, but i would prefer the show to follow two different paths, the high school and college football ones, with different issues etc, but please, not fantastic stuff, just stick to football and college/high school life.

[larrymcg421]

I'm not really happy about where things are headed. The murder storyline is just so bad, and apparently they're going to keep it up with this whole watch nonsense. And I can't believe they let that Tyra joke (about the murder) stay in the final version. Nobody in the entire creative process could see what a horrible moment that was?

Also, I don't like how the new coach has been made a one-dimensional villain. It would be more interesting if there was some grey area there, and it wouldn't be so simple for Coach Taylor to come back.

I wouldn't mind the religious thing if I thought they were serious about it, but I fully expect them to have Lyla give in to Riggins (or someone else) eventually. It doesn't help that she's such a bad actress.

I think the writers kinda lost their way by straying too far from last season. It was a gutsy move, but they weren't prepared for it. I think things will get better when Coach is back and they start focusing more on the natural Taylor family dynamic and Matt Saracen, which was what made last season so great.

[Galaril]

I am quickly losing interest in this one with too many moving parts and none working well feeling.

[ISiddiqui]

It seems next week Taylor's taking over of the job hits a snag, after he quits the college job (who does that, make sure you have the job first!). Maybe the rest of the boosters are glad that Buddy isn't the boss man anymore.

[ISiddiqui]

Woohoo! Actually football drama. Coach Taylor making everything better!