Friday Night Lights: The Second Season

Highly recommend this series even if you aren't a football fan. A little edgier than season 1. Missing final 6-7 episodes due to writers strike, but knew this before ordering. It should be interesting to see how season 3 begins. The 15 episodes in this season were all very good.

The DVD is great! I highly recommend getting to get all caught up before we go back to Dillon to see what the kids have been up to.

I love this show. I bought the first series on DVD, then watched the whole 22 episodes in five days. I was so hooked, I took a day off work to watch the whole of Season 2 straight through. What a disappointment. Second seasons are always hard, and you have to give credit to the writers for taking chances. Unfortunately, the risks don't pay off. The writing in this season doesn't compare to Season 1. Stupid, stupid storylines.......turn away now if you don't want spoilers. How ridiculous was the Landry/Tyra murder plot? Riggins having to move in with ferret keeping meth dealer? Jason going to Mexico to get injected with shark stem cells to walk again? Dreadful! Obviously they threw everything into Season 1, assuming the show wasn't coming back, then when the show got renewed they had to start with a blank page, and it really shows. Season Three will be make or break for FNL. If they get back to the level of Season 1, this show has the potential to be huge. If we get another Season like this one, it'll be the last. And more Matt Saracen! My favourite character by a mile, and his scene with Coach in the second to last episode is far and away the best moment of the whole season. Watch this only if you're a fan, if you're starting make sure you're watching Season 1 first............

With significantly less football in the second season and much more drama its hard not to feel that FNL has followed in the same footsteps as many other teen-based shows. In the first season almost all the drama of the show revolved around football, making it a stand-out from other teen dramas, that are centred around coming of age stories. The second season is much more coming of age, with character development occuring almost entirely outside the football arena. A new arrival on the show, Santiago, brought the possibility of exploring how football and community based sports can help children from violent backgrounds assimilate back into a normal life but has been barely touched on, though this may have been due to the interuptions caused by the writer's strike. Similarly, Streets' recovery and adjustment into life in a wheelchair is also a minor storyline this season, with one one or two episodes touching on the problems this character faces as he finds himself floundering after the loss of his football college dreams. In fact, the characters from season one, who interacted so well together then, have now been split off into seperate storylines, each hardly intersecting with the others. This season, while still very good, lacks the grit and guts of the first season, but hopefully there is still time to recover.

The only reason I didn't give season 2 a 5-star is because it ended a little abruptly (writer's strike side effect) so I wasn't completely satisfied with where we left things off in Dillon. But it does make me excited to see where and how it picks up at the start of Season 3. Thank you, thank you, thank you to whichever intelligent Execs elected to renew for recognizing true all-around TV excellence (writing, acting, camera work, everything!). There are way too many shows out today that lack creativity, actor chemistry, and any form of talent; Friday Night Lights puts them all to shame. Every show should dream of coming close to being as good as this one!