lirazel | Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can't Lose

I wasn’t very taken with Friday Night Lights during the first several episodes; it was good television, but I wondered what everyone was raving about.

But now that I’ve gotten through the season, I have to admit my defeat. I love this show.

It makes me miss high school football so badly. I’m not a sports person, by any stretch of the imagination. I am hopelessly uncoordinated and tiny to boot, so no sport comes easily to me. And I don’t watch any of them either. But there’s nothing in the world like a high school football game in a community that really cares about them. Nothing like spending hours before the game painting shirts and your faces with your friends and then tailgating. Nothing like the build-up to a game with a rival. Nothing like the band and the smell of popcorn and all the people screaming their lungs out. It’s a false feeling of community and union, maybe, but for two hours you really feel like you are absolutely one with the people around you.

Like I said, maybe it’s a shallow, bankrupt American substitute for real community. But that doesn’t mean I don’t miss it. And this show just absolutely takes me back there. Every single episode.

But the most interesting thing of all is that this is the first time I’ve ever been watching anything—television, movies, whatever—and recognized my life in it. Now, I’m not implying that I’m from a small Texas town completely obsessed with football; I’m from a sizable Tennessee city that has a passion for football, yes, but isn’t nearly this far gone (well, some people are, but we avoid them as much as possible). But there are moments in this show—people, conversations, places, events—that could have been taken verbatim from my life. I know some of these people. I’ve experienced some of these things. I’ve definitely had some of these conversations. Whoever’s writing this understands “red state” or flyover country” (or whatever you want to call it) mentality so very, very well. My life isn’t nearly this extreme, but there’s such truth in this sometimes.

It just reminds me that we nearly never small town life on television, and if we do it’s either idealized (a la “The Andy Griffith Show,” which, to tell the truth, I adore, or “The Dukes of Hazzard”) or demonized (you know how people always talk about country/southern/small town people like we’re all racist, uneducated, redneck idiots). And even though I did grow up in a city (technically), my life is so much more like small town America’s than it is like most cities or even the suburbs as they’re shown on sitcoms.

Those boys on that football team—I know them; I went to high school with them; they're in college with me now. I swear that Matt is a mixture of two of my cousins. Seriously. And I know girls just exactly like Lyla and Tyra. And Coach reminds me so much of many of the men I know. Tami reminds me so much of my aunt with the way she holds people together and is always giving of herself. And I can see the fragility that I didn’t realize was there underneath my high school friends’ bluster in Smash.

These people are more real than in any reality show—ever. There are times I can barely stand to watch because it’s too real and painful and intense. These people hurt each other and let each other down and watch their dreams get shattered, but they love each other, too.

Jason’s story is the worst—or best, I suppose; I can’t really decide. I have an uncle who’s in almost exactly his position—an accident back in college made him a quad with partial use of his hands. He’s the most generous, cheerful person I know—he brings joy to everyone’s lives despite the pain in his own. There will be moments I’m watching Jason do something so simple—getting in and out of his chair, eating or trying to reach something high up—and I’ll find that I’m crying—tears streaming down my face—because I’ve seen my uncle struggle at those exact same daily tasks a million times. It’s so very, very real.

So that’s it. The reality of this show that’s completely unlike any I’ve ever seen. And it’s totally won me over.