Friday Night Lights Returns
May. 7th, 2010 11:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shipperxYeah, I know its entire season has already aired on DirectTV (and I know a bit about Riggins fate) but, I haven't watched the season yet so it will be new to me.
From TVGuide Online:
From TVGuide Online:
It’s Friday night in Dillon, Texas, and football fever is running high. The fans are screaming but something’s different: The playing field is raggedy and Coach Taylor’s team is losing 24–0. These aren’t the champion Panthers that Taylor (Kyle Chandler) led in Friday Night Lights’ first three seasons. These are the East Dillon Lions, and the coach’s attempt to make a real team out of these players is at the core of Season 4.
“We’re reinventing the show,” says exec producer Jason Katims. “So we’re introducing a completely new set of characters and a new place—East Dillon High. As tough as it was to say goodbye to Smash, Street, Tyra and Lyla, we had to be real, let them graduate, and go where they really would go.”
One holdout is former gridiron great Tim Riggins (Taylor Kitsch), who’s hanging in Dillon after losing his girl, Lyla, and ditching his football scholarship. His future could be summed up by one character’s offhand remark: “Didn’t you use to be Tim Riggins?”
Says Katims,“In one way, Tim is very lost, but in another way he is quietly determined to make good decisions and grow up.”
Season 4 picks up right after the news breaks that some Dillon students would be redistricted to run-down East Dillon. That resentment boils over in the premiere as kids not zoned for what’s now West Dillon are publicly escorted out. Later, when Principal Tami Taylor (Connie Britton) makes no exception for a promising player, the powerful Panther boosters, led by Joe McCoy (D.W. Moffett), become Tami’s enemies.
“The question is: Can Tami strike a balance between being principal of West Dillon and the wife of the coach at East Dillon?” says Katims.
Her husband has his own problems. Coach Taylor has to convince a community—poorer and more ethnically diverse than his old one—that football has any value. With no budget and little support from the principal, he must mold undisciplined, unmotivated kids into a cohesive squad, raise money for equipment and uniforms and even paint the sidelines on the deteriorated field himself.
“It’s a brand-new world for Coach Taylor, with a whole new set of obstacles,” says Chandler. Those obstacles include helping his wife through a school scandal and backing her while she works with the people who got him fired last season, including McCoy. “He’s the Darth Vader who wants to bring me down,” says Chandler.
It’s also a rough transition for Friday Night Lights’ teen philosopher Landry Clarke (Jesse Plemons), who is feeling isolated at East Dillon with his love, Tyra (Adrianne Palicki), gone and his BFF, Matt (Zach Gilford), graduated. “Landry is out of his comfort zone this year,” says Plemons. “He’s still waiting for Tyra—though that could change this season.”
Plenty of change is on the horizon for the coach’s daughter, Julie (Aimee Teegarden), too. “This is Julie’s senior year, so she has a lot to figure out—where to go to college and the future of her relationship with Matt,” says Teegarden. “Some of the scenes I had with Zach are so realistic, I got a little teary-eyed.”
As always, the individual stories are sheltered under an overarching football banner, namely “the growing rivalry between the two Dillon teams,” says Katims. Not surprisingly, the Lions will play the Panthers in a David-versus-Goliath matchup toward the season’s end. But the prize this year is not a trophy—it’s pride.“That final game is not about going to the state championship, because the Lions would never get to state,” adds Katims. “But the whole season leads to what happens there.”
Changing a critical darling is always risky, but the ingredients that make FNL as mouthwateringly authentic as Texas barbecue remain. The drama hasn’t abandoned its gritty cinematography, its semi-improv acting style or its humane stories that seldom ring false, attributes that endear Friday Night Lights to a small but intensely loyal group of viewers.
As Plemons says, “The underlying thread of the show is the same. It’s still about these people and this town.”
Touchdown!
“We’re reinventing the show,” says exec producer Jason Katims. “So we’re introducing a completely new set of characters and a new place—East Dillon High. As tough as it was to say goodbye to Smash, Street, Tyra and Lyla, we had to be real, let them graduate, and go where they really would go.”
One holdout is former gridiron great Tim Riggins (Taylor Kitsch), who’s hanging in Dillon after losing his girl, Lyla, and ditching his football scholarship. His future could be summed up by one character’s offhand remark: “Didn’t you use to be Tim Riggins?”
Says Katims,“In one way, Tim is very lost, but in another way he is quietly determined to make good decisions and grow up.”
Season 4 picks up right after the news breaks that some Dillon students would be redistricted to run-down East Dillon. That resentment boils over in the premiere as kids not zoned for what’s now West Dillon are publicly escorted out. Later, when Principal Tami Taylor (Connie Britton) makes no exception for a promising player, the powerful Panther boosters, led by Joe McCoy (D.W. Moffett), become Tami’s enemies.
“The question is: Can Tami strike a balance between being principal of West Dillon and the wife of the coach at East Dillon?” says Katims.
Her husband has his own problems. Coach Taylor has to convince a community—poorer and more ethnically diverse than his old one—that football has any value. With no budget and little support from the principal, he must mold undisciplined, unmotivated kids into a cohesive squad, raise money for equipment and uniforms and even paint the sidelines on the deteriorated field himself.
“It’s a brand-new world for Coach Taylor, with a whole new set of obstacles,” says Chandler. Those obstacles include helping his wife through a school scandal and backing her while she works with the people who got him fired last season, including McCoy. “He’s the Darth Vader who wants to bring me down,” says Chandler.
It’s also a rough transition for Friday Night Lights’ teen philosopher Landry Clarke (Jesse Plemons), who is feeling isolated at East Dillon with his love, Tyra (Adrianne Palicki), gone and his BFF, Matt (Zach Gilford), graduated. “Landry is out of his comfort zone this year,” says Plemons. “He’s still waiting for Tyra—though that could change this season.”
Plenty of change is on the horizon for the coach’s daughter, Julie (Aimee Teegarden), too. “This is Julie’s senior year, so she has a lot to figure out—where to go to college and the future of her relationship with Matt,” says Teegarden. “Some of the scenes I had with Zach are so realistic, I got a little teary-eyed.”
As always, the individual stories are sheltered under an overarching football banner, namely “the growing rivalry between the two Dillon teams,” says Katims. Not surprisingly, the Lions will play the Panthers in a David-versus-Goliath matchup toward the season’s end. But the prize this year is not a trophy—it’s pride.“That final game is not about going to the state championship, because the Lions would never get to state,” adds Katims. “But the whole season leads to what happens there.”
Changing a critical darling is always risky, but the ingredients that make FNL as mouthwateringly authentic as Texas barbecue remain. The drama hasn’t abandoned its gritty cinematography, its semi-improv acting style or its humane stories that seldom ring false, attributes that endear Friday Night Lights to a small but intensely loyal group of viewers.
As Plemons says, “The underlying thread of the show is the same. It’s still about these people and this town.”
Touchdown!
