By Jennifer Litz
Editor
December 10, 2007

Remember “The Wonder Years,” that show where young Fred Savage captured sentiments of the young and old alike with his sagacious, omnipresent inner-monologues? That show worked because people saw themselves in it. NBC’s “Friday Night Lights,” about the goings-on in fictional Dillon, Texas, isn’t too different. When it debuted last October, the media gushed about the show’s true-to-life tone and situations. FNL even snagged a George Foster Peabody award for its first season. The award committee said that “no dramatic series, broadcast or cable, is more grounded in contemporary American reality.”

For West Texas viewers, the connection goes even deeper—first, because of the show’s small-town Texas setting, and second, because much of it is filmed in Austin, with extras and even some regulars hailing from the state. San Angelo native Jason Steele played a recurring reporter role in the first season, for example, and recalls a friendly, family-like on-set vibe.

TV.com and other talking webs are now heralding the show’s impending demise. Word in cyberspace now is that ESPN is thinking of picking it up. Call the FNL production department, however, and it’s business as usual. “The writers’ strike is what’s shutting us down,” says production assistant Bill Lanier. “So if they can get that resolved, we can keep it going . . . we’re not getting cancelled. We had two scripts completed when [the writers] struck, and that’s all we can use.” Will there be reruns? That’s a “network thing,” he says. So is cancellation.

Struggling from the Start

If that response sounds a bit defensive, there’s reason for it. Granted, the show has enjoyed a fan base, which has spurred MySpace pages and fan sites across the Internet. But that base may be too esoteric: though Media Life Magazine listed it as one of the most popular shows for the “affluent” (more than $65 thousand yearly income) market, it has never done very well in Nielsen ratings. Indeed, Michele Greppi, national editor for Television Week, says that if NBC could just get a viewer to watch the show once, they would instantly have a hooked viewer. Trouble is, the network arguably stunted its growth and alienated potential viewers by mismarketing the series. They portrayed it as a football show in trailers and on the Web site, when it’s really more…well, Wonder Years.

“The audience response was never nearly as huge and open-armed as the media critics’,” Greppi says. “And I think the blame for that has to come back to how the show was promoted . . . the network positioned it in the public’s mind as a sports drama. I couldn’t honestly tell you if they thought that’s how it would sell, or if they didn’t understand that would hurt.

“I don’t think of this as a teenage show anymore than I think of it as a sports drama. I think of this as a small town, all ages, drama. I think it shows a lifelike set or range of values, and I thought it did it well.”

Notice how she uses past tense.

Conflicting Values

Now here we are, more than a year later, with NBC’s marketing plan already done, the show already having been renewed another season, and an impending hiatus supposedly having nothing to do with the network’s lack of faith.

But now FNL has something of an identify crisis. Real to life? How real-to-life is a scenario where the lead singer of a Christian band called Crucifictorious accidentally beats his crush’s assaulter to death, then dumps his body in the river—with his good-cop father helping to burn the evidence? Such was the second season’s opener, involving Landry Clarke and sweetheart/assaultee Tyra Collette. This did not go over well with Television Week’s Greppi; she believes it a “fatal blow.”

“There were several different shows this season, that when certain things happened, I felt my stomach turn and my heart break, and I turned back from the series,” Greppi says. “I’m still watching [Friday Night Lights], but they forced me to distance myself.

“I actually think that the plotline this season with the sexual assault and dumping the body was a fatal blow that the show inflicted on itself. Because that was very inconsistent with the show that we fell in love with in the first season. Which was, that everyday life could be very affecting. And all of a sudden, it became another series, another show. There was a couple [Tyra and Landry] that fans had been rooting for. And the minute they [were put] in this situation, it was inconsistent, really, with both of the teenagers that we’ve come to know—especially Landry. It put a cloud over their heads; you couldn’t root for them anymore. So I think they really damaged themselves with the core audience.”

Still, some critics seem unphased by that event. National Review TV/pop culture critic Rebecca Cusey hails the show in an article from October 5 titled, “Friday Night Gets Religion.” The second season had just started up again, and this critic characterized it as “quality drama that shines a light on the human condition.” Cusey mentions the agape love, not “TV” passion, that binds the leading roles of Eric and Tami Taylor. Eric is obviously a devoted family man and coach, and Tami is dedicated enough to him—and the students that she counsels at Dillon High—to stay behind with the children when Eric gets his dream job in Austin. But Cusey is really bowled over by the fact that Lyla Garrity joins a church and gets baptized this season. This critic finds this turn an intentionally “respectful treatment of Christianity.” Cusey’s review mentions nothing about the murder.

Not that critic and audience receptions have ever been the same since FNL’s start. But it will be interesting to see what happens to one of the last series standing that tries, on the whole, to speak to and reflect American values. If there’s no light at the end of the tunnel for “Lights?” “I think it’ll be a long while before we see something like this, smaller and completely heart-felt, again,” Greppi says. Our loss.

For more information on Friday Night Lights, the television series, see the NBC Web site on the show . 

To sample and purchase songs used in the Friday Night Lights episodes by the Austin band Explosions in the Sky, hear them on iTunes .