I Rewatched Season 1 of Friday Night Lights and I Could Totally Fix Tim Riggins Right?
General:
So, I’m currently rewatching Friday Night Lights and it’s kind of ironic because my first exposure to the United States that I remember (I don’t remember the 6 months in Phoenix when I was 3) was in Texas, I’m profoundly unathletic, and I think Friday Night Lights is one of the best TV shows of all time. The thing is, this show is very good at getting people like yours truly who don’t give a damn about football to give a damn about football, and rewatching it made me feel extremely all-American, which is my natural state of being to be sure, but nonetheless.
This piece by Erica Cantoni has lived rent free in my head since 2016 when I first read it, especially this part:
“It’s stitched into Coach Taylor’s duty to the development of these boys – teaching them what it means to be men of integrity, when no one would blame him for leaving them soulless athletic husks. Machines.
I think about masculinity sometimes, both toxic and otherwise, how men are different than women, how boys become men, and how some boys never grow up because nobody expects them to. And then, I get really angry because men, even the good ones, almost never grant women that level of interiority or complexity; a lot of men hold women’s personhood contingent on our malleability, and as someone who’s wound up tighter than a jack-in-the-box, I don’t appreciate it. Our society doesn’t hold men accountable for their behavior, both unforgivable and just plain shitty, and I’m including myself in this condemnation. I’ve bent over backwards to forgive men who did me wrong, and I don’t particularly respect myself for it, which is ironic since I generally take pride in the magnitude of my self-respect and of course, in my feminism.
Friday Night Lights has been called a predecessor to Parenthood and This Is Us but I like FNL better than both those shows combined because there’s a very realistically resigned quality to FNL that isn’t usually present in shows. For instance, the episode “It’s Different For Girls,” Lyla’s horrifically treated by her community for cheating on Jason Street with Tim Riggins, while he mostly escapes scot-free for sleeping with her, and it’s unfair, but the show doesn’t moralize or condemn or make giant sweeping overarching statements about feminism; it just states, the world is different for girls and that’s not fair, but that’s the nature of our reality. Needless to say, that’s a mentality I deeply vibe with, and it’s so rare to see portrayed in media because well, Dhaaruni-brain in its essence isn’t particularly likable.
Untethered Thoughts:
The first Tim/Lyla kiss on Friday Night Lights is LEGENDARY!!!!!!!! She keeps on hitting him as she yells at him about their mutual best friend never walking again, and then he folds her in his arms but doesn’t stop her from hitting him, and she’s crying and he’s finally letting himself cry and he kisses her as if he has no idea what else he could possibly do and doesn’t know what else he can possibly do and I lose it!!! Like, everybody, including Tim and Lyla, knows they will never end up together because them being together would throw out the framework of their very existence, but that doesn’t mean it’s not real.
Tim Riggins saying “Let’s touch God this time, boys” in the pilot made me gasp out loud like I try not to be embarrassingly heterosexual but there are times I don’t live up to my expectations of myself.
The dichotomy between the white church and the Black church, both praying for the Dillon Panthers to eke out a victory, is one I’m not equipped to discuss but it felt necessary to mention. Listen, I live in Washington D.C., so I’m not going to sit here and tell you segregation is fake news, but seeing it on my laptop screen in bright light really gives me pause.
I think it’s very interesting that Coach Taylor is a good man, a wonderful husband and loving father, but still deeply sexist in the way his culture taught him to be. It’s as if he’s working against his upbringing and nurturing at all time, and there are times nature wins out.
Matt Saracen’s father disappoints me, which makes sense since Matt Saracen’s father disappoints everybody, including Matt Saracen. It makes me angry that Saracen’s father didn’t see his son growing into a man, and didn’t care to see it like nothing makes me angrier than parents who don’t love their kids the way the kids deserve to be loved. What can I say, I think kids are good and every child in this world deserves unconditional love. Now, I don’t have much faith that all those kids grow into good and kind and responsible adults, but isn’t it our social responsibility to give them the opportunity to do so?
Buddy Garrity is bombastic and annoying and would have definitely voted for Donald Trump (twice), but the scene where he comforts Lyla during the Gatling game when she confesses that she was unfaithful to Jason made me cry. Buddy doesn’t get angry or judge Lyla, just puts his arm around her and tells her that we all makes mistakes and we grow up from them. He tells her football is only a game but she’s his daughter, and as someone who’s very close to her own father, a much better man than Buddy Garrity for the record, it got to me.
The scene that made me really get Tyra is when her and Billy Riggins roll up to pick up Tim, drunk and bloody, and she just accepts how it transpires as her lot in life. I think Julie is more annoying than the other main characters (with the possible exception of Lyla) because she’s the only one of the teenagers (or “teenagers” given most of the actors were in their mid to late 20s) who has the privilege to act her age. Tim Riggins is an underage alcoholic with a deadbeat brother in a small Texas town and Tyra is the sister of a stripper, and they both had to grow up long before they should have, and that makes them compelling, but it also makes them tragic in a way Julie Taylor isn’t.
Friday Night Lights believes that we as human beings are flawed and ultimately capable of change, but only if we actually want to change, which I really fuck with, what else can I say?