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Does anyone here watch Friday Night Lights? (Does Patton Oswalt frequent the forum?)

If so, some good news, and some bad.

That's a shame, because the few times I've caught bits and pieces of the show, I've been impressed by the good taste of whoever chooses their music.

I'm guessing the music changes are due to rights issues but it seems odd they wouldn't have included home video rights when securing the songs in the first place.

Antoine Doinel wrote:I'm guessing the music changes are due to rights issues but it seems odd they wouldn't have included home video rights when securing the songs in the first place.

I still don't get how in this day and age, the studios don't negotiate music rights for the entire thing (broadcast, DVD release, any other future media release) from the start. At the same time, I find it incredible ridiculous that the "struggling" music business continues to act as assholes when negotiating the use of songs on anything. Don't they understand that using their music is more promotion for the band/company?

dx23 wrote:

Antoine Doinel wrote:I'm guessing the music changes are due to rights issues but it seems odd they wouldn't have included home video rights when securing the songs in the first place.

I still don't get how in this day and age, the studios don't negotiate music rights for the entire thing (broadcast, DVD release, any other future media release) from the start. At the same time, I find it incredible ridiculous that the "struggling" music business continues to act as assholes when negotiating the use of songs on anything. Don't they understand that using their music is more promotion for the band/company?

Well Friday Night Lights, even though it has a small dedicated fanbase, has struggled to stay on the air since the series began. I would imagine the people looking at the ledgers were trying to save money wherever possible and if they could secure the music for the broadcast more cheaply if they excluded the home video rights as well, that's probably the route they took. I agree, it's extremely short sighted, but when the studio is scrutinizing everything you do and looking for a reason to take you off the air, I would imagine you do everything you can to prove you're not costing them money.

I think the bigger issue here are the shorter edits of the show making the DVD instead of the original cuts. Why piss off the small fanbase that would've snatched the DVDs up in an instant? I'm sure the diehards are already trading the original cuts among themselves with the news that the legitimate release is going to be shorter.

Well, the show's been renewed for two more years, so I imagine the fanbase is growing and that this might not be a problem for future seasons.

The set contains "deleted scenes," which could very well be the extra minutes from the DirecTV versions

It sucks that we have no DVD releases for The Wonder Years thanks to their haphazard use of famous music.

Dreww wrote:It sucks that we have no DVD releases for The Wonder Years thanks to their haphazard use of famous music.

Or the NBC series Ed and there are many other series that have been ruined by the change of the music when released on DVD. Hopefully, the recently cancelled US version of Life on Mars will have all the music that was used in the show when it is released on DVD later this year.

Dreww wrote:It sucks that we have no DVD releases for The Wonder Years thanks to their haphazard use of famous music.

The Wonder Years unfortunately arrived before the advent of TV on DVD, and there was simply no way the producers at the time could have conceived how popular the format would have become. TV shows on VHS were usually reserved for older series' so they couldn't have predicted the kind of model we have now. Most of the series is streaming illegitimately on various places on the web and the use of music is actually great, but it uses so many seminal period songs (and sometimes many tunes per episode) I can only imagine re-securing those rights for DVD is going to be prohibitively expensive.

Murdoch wrote:For my money this is the best cast in a dramatic series on TV.

[cough]Friday Night Lights[/cough]

swo17 wrote:

Murdoch wrote:For my money this is the best cast in a dramatic series on TV.

[cough]Friday Night Lights[/cough]

Absolutely correct

I did not know that show was still on, but it's too melodramatic for me. I have such a good time watching Justified because of the cast, the writing isn't always great but somehow the cast allows me to look past flaws that would normally bug the hell out of me.

I've never ever understood the appeal of Friday Night Lights.

I don't know how far you might have gotten into FNL, but it's really morphed over the years into The Wire of Texas' sports culture and public schooling system. Not to overly hyperbolize, but some have even called it better than the Sistine Chapel.

Eh, The Wire isn't for me either.

I was surprised to find no thread for Friday Night Lights, especially after a smattering of comments on the forum from people who really love it.

I'm not sure how many of you saw the series finale on Wednesday or if you might be waiting for the network premiere/dvd release in April. Without getting into any detail, I found it one of the most moving TV finales I have seen, though perhaps filled with too many romantic subplots in the episode to give more recent cast additions and returning favorites a resolution.

Trying to convince people to watch Friday Night Lights has always been difficult, yet at the same time, I enjoyed the solitude had in getting to know these characters, which has helped to make the show more personal. My hat's off to the actors for creating such intimate performances, unmannered and always moving (except for maybe Minka Kelly) even when saddled with some of the lesser storylines (season 2's murder).

I compared FNL to The Wire here the other day, and the main reason I say that (other than the obvious parallel of the Taylors finding it nearly impossible to accomplish anything against the established bureaucracy) is the seamless way that the show has managed to transition from one cast to another over the course of five seasons. This is the only realistic way to portray five years of a high school football program, but it's a daring choice commercially. It can be frustrating as an audience member to realize partway through the run of the series that you'll never see certain main characters again, but at the same time, this element of the show makes it so much more rewarding when some of these characters do reappear, or when you get to see characters who have minor, one-note roles early on (i.e. Tyra, Buddy Garrity, Mindy) developed into something else entirely (akin to Prez's transformation from inept cop to motivated school teacher in The Wire).

One thing that does bug me about the show though is how the Panthers/Lions always seem to perform either incredibly or terribly depending on the demands of the plot. I don't know how you get around this obstacle as a writer, given the fact that the appeal of watching a sporting event (to people who find it appealing ) lies in the uncertainty of the outcome in spite of the best intentions of both opponents, whereas in a fictional account focused on one team, our sympathies always lie with them, and every victory or loss (of which there have to be some) feels like a deliberate choice by the writers. But this is rather a niggling point, as the show isn't much about football, really.

Without question this has been my favorite show over the past decade - though perhaps not always the "best" due to those weird subplots in Season 2. I'll also echo the chorus that thinks the show, when its attention is fully-focused, does an exceptional job of capturing the atmosphere of small-town and middle-class America, but I think it also understands adolescence a little bit better than most other teen-based TV shows. I also think swo17's comments regarding the Taylors' constant (and seemingly endless) struggles against the bureaucracy of the typical American school-system are quite accurate. They're certainly an often overlooked aspect of the show, but that also has a great deal to do with how successful the creators have been at subtly weaving those struggles into the fabric of a show that carefully, delicately, and elegantly constructs its prevailing, slightly saturnine mood.

Plus, I think they made me a life-long fan after having Matt Saracen awkwardly approach Coach Taylor's daughter Julie while Beck's "Debra" played softly in the background - pure genius. Obviously, hilarious moments like these, made Zach Gilford's astounding emotional breakdown at a Taylor-family dinner even more excruciating and astonishing to witness in later seasons.

Of course, since sports played a significant role in my adolescence and I spend a great deal of my spare time coaching high school basketball, the subject matter kind of feels a bit more personal.

Broken clock, &c

I'm five episodes into a sincere re-entry attempt and am enjoying this show a hell of a lot more than I did the first time I watched the pilot a few years ago. While I'm still a bit nervous about the cliches that I've seen so far, and that I see coming around the bend, I am enthralled with Kyle Chandler's performance and can't look away. Cutting off my FiOS TV service and being limited to Netflix and Hulu streaming is proving, so far, to be quite beneficial to my entertainment life.

You're about at where it goes from good to great. Several of the series' best characters aren't well-defined at the outset of the series, but they will be shortly-- if I were to tell you Buddy ends up being one of the most compelling characters of the show, or Tyra, would you believe me yet?

Can't wait to finally watch the final season once I finish the westerns list. If anyone spoils it for me, I will destroy you

Ugh, more Buddy? If there's a molestation storyline (look at the guy) around the corner for him, I quit

Buddy becomes fairly awesome, aside from that unnecessary plot in Season 2 (which you have to grade on a curve anyway).

It'll obviously take some time to get through, but I'll certainly post my thoughts in case anyone cares.