Francesca's Focus: Friday Night Lights

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If you've been following my tweets (@AccordingToFran) for a while or have been reading my blogs as of recent, you would know that my obsession with the television show Friday Night Lights is real and eternal. I decided to start the show on a whim about a month ago on Netflix because I had heard nothing but good things about it from others on the inter webs. I was skeptical at first because 1. Texan accents (I'd like to point out that I am now ridiculously attracted to a good Southern drawl) and 2. football. I don't like football. It's too long and I don't like how people get in trouble for tackling people. Isn't that the point of the game? I digress, I didn't expect myself to fall in love with it. I've never been more wrong about something in my life since I took the math section of the SATs for the first time.

This show is not about football. It is a show that incorporates football, but it is not a show about football. It is a show about family and community, through and through. The story follows the Taylors, in which the husband is a high school football coach with a supportive wife and typical teenage daughter who seems to hate moving for her father's job. Coach Taylor's (played by the ever-so-handsome Kyle Chandler) newest opportunity it head coach and a public high school in the fictional Dillon, Texas, a town who loves football more than anything else in the world. The rural area struggled with many issues, including racism, family values, dwindling budgets, and the many struggles of Middle America.

For five seasons, you are lead on a journey through five different football seasons, each different than the next. You go through the ups and downs of life in the season, each bringing out a new issue in the team or in the lives of the characters. Everybody has their own internal struggles and it's interesting to see how each decision can affect others. The issues that went on during this show were real and raw, most still occurring today three years after the series ended.

If you need any reason to watch this show, I have two words for you: Taylor Kitsch. I guarantee by the end of the first season, you fill fall in love with Tim Riggins, despite his various (and plentiful) faults. In fact, I can guarantee you will fall in love with every single character on that show, even if you don't want to. You will be frustrated as all hell by some of them, but mostly because you want the best for them. This show sucks you in and makes you feel for the characters and what they're going through. I felt legitimately upset when it ended because for the month, or however long it took me to finish it, it was like I was living in Dillon, Texas. And now I'm back in reality in Cleveland and it's weird.