(7,00C, Tuesday, NBC)

FNL, like the movie of the same name, is about highschool football and its importance to small (well, really, any-size--it's just that there's almost nother else in the small ones) town Texas. Having grown up in south Texas, in a small town that turned out en-masse for the Friday night football games, and spending plenty of time in high schools recently (teaching PSAT workshops), Friday Night Lights is equally cringe inducing for the stuff it gets right as the stuff it gets wrong.

Lets start with wrong, first, because, frankly, it's more fun. The problem with shows about high schoolers is that you've got to use actors that are older, most times, for a whole host of reasons, but that everyone can tell the difference. Alright, that's fair enough, suspension of disbelief and all that. Where FNL fucks up is that its actors that play the teenagers range in age from actual teenagers to a bit older than that. (Not quite 23yo. James Vanderbeek as HS Freshman fucked up, but still.) And so that's a little distracting.

And, lets face it, Texas (and Texans) get off on being up-tight and self-righteous. So when the fullback shows up the first practice half-drunk from the night before, he'd get tossed off the team. Making kids and their parents sign code of conduct forms before the start of the season is common, and there's just simply no way he wouldn't've been kicked off the team right then and there, for drinking at all, not just for showing up drunk. There's a lot of don't-ask-don't-tell that goes around in Texas for that reason, but if you show up drunk, there's no way coach can avoid it, particularly once a local reporter starts asking questions about it.

And no one actually toasts to 'living large in the state of Texas. Texas forever.' We get it, they're from Texas. Texas is more like background noise to Texans than something to be actively praised. Sure, you get it a lot out of older people, but they're people that moved here because of their idea of Texas or people who feel threatened by other states. HS kids simply don't have the knowledge of the world to be the latter, and they can't be the former: they didn't move to Texas out of their choice but out of their parents'. Anyway, my point is: Texas is something you're a part of and you don't get uppity about defending until someone starts slagging on it. It's like your older brother: he may not be the best, but fuck anyone who's going to say so. So no-one toasts to that kind of crap. Insignificant, I know, but it rankles.

Alright, now lets talk about what the show gets right: yes, Texans are that obsessed with HS football. Not every team has a chance to win state, but that much talk does go into the ones that do, particularly the ones that are also in the middle of no-where, like Odessa-Midland.

And, yes, high school kids are that stupid, petty and vain. That's just the way they are. And the way we were when we were them. Don't deny it. It might not be pretty, but it's the truth. The part where the coach's daughter shoots down the backup quarterback and his friend's lunch invitation? Oh, man. That brought me back.

And, yes, when the QB gets injured, whether superstar or not, whether it happened on the field or not, everyone goes to the hospital. Everyone. And there's a pall over the school for days. Days. I know this 'cause my sophomore year, our quarterback got in a car accident and for two days almost everyone involved in atheletics or Mormonism was down at the hospital, 24/7. And most other people that even vaguely knew him came and went during that time.

And they do pray, all the time.

And Connie Britton did turn out to be awesome as the formerly-slutty-seeming coach's wife. So very well done.

And finally, the hilarious bits: the town mayor advises the superstar QB to listen to early Black Sabbath, because it will make him mean. Hilarious.

The sheer volume of things this show gets right makes it a little uncomfortable for me to watch. But, so far, at least, if you'd like to know what it's like to HS in South TX? Watch the show.

Preliminary grade: A-, but I am, I think, the target audience.