The 2008 NFL season may have just come to an end, but the third season of television's best sports drama is ready for kickoff. After flying under the radar on DirecTV's 101 Network for three months, "Friday Night Lights" made its primetime season premiere on NBC in January.
With first-string senior quarterback Matt Saracen (Zach Gilford) challenged by a freshman phenom, and star running back "Smash" Williams (Gaius Charles) recently graduated, obstacles abound for the Dillon Panthers, the high school football team based in small, fictional Dillon, Texas, where pigskin reigns supreme and the gossip flows as freely as the beer.
"Jason has a couple of major new developments in his life," Scott Porter, who plays ex-star quarterback Jason Street, said on NBC.com.
Two seasons ago a freak play left Jason paralyzed from the waist down; ever since, he's been trying to find himself.
"He's got a woman he really cares for that is keeping him at arm's length, which is making his relationship with his son a little bit of a struggle," Porter said.
Inspired by a 1990 biography and 2004 film adaptation of the same name, "Friday Night Lights" does more than keep track of the Panthers' wins and losses. Twice named by the American Film Institute as "culturally significant" for its realism, emotional depth and atypical narrative arcs, the Emmy-winning series has tackled everything from race relations to parental absenteeism.
"That's the luxury of doing a T.V. show as opposed to a movie," Connie Britton '89, who stars in the show, told EW.com.
On the big screen, Britton was the wife of Coach Gaines (Billy Bob Thornton). In the television series, she is Tami Taylor, the head coach's wife and Dillon High's newest principal.
"We get to tell lots of stories over a really broad span of time," she said.
Britton, who has also starred in "Spin City" and "24," has been nominated for a Television Critics Association Award in each of her seasons with "Lights."
With many of the main characters now seniors bound for college, this drama's third season could actually be its fourth quarter.
A perennial Nielsen dud in spite of critical acclaim, "Lights" finished season two at No. 101. None of its episodes cracked the top 50.
Not even Gilford, the star of the show, knows if he will remain with the series after his character graduates.
"I've never really gotten a straight answer," Gilford told The Los Angeles Times.
Kyle Chandler, who plays the no-nonsense head coach Eric Taylor, has some concerns as well.
"My anxiety that ['Lights'] won't come back is definitely there," he told The Los Angeles Times. "[But] I know this is a good T.V. show, and we're proud of what we're doing."
Game time is 9 p.m. on NBC. Naturally, on Fridays.
