The best show that nobody is watching is coming back. Looks like Direct TV and NBC struck a deal to share costs… The season will air on DTV first, before airing on NBC mid-season.
This is great great news!
This might be enough to get me to finally switch to DirectTV - this and the Big Ten Network.
Best show on (network) television by a long shot.
Catching up on my backlog of network tv, I just yesterday saw the two epsiodes where the tornado hit and the rival team had to share locker rooms.
Sandwiched in between the stupid murder storyline and what looks to be a stupid “stole money from the drug dealer” storyline, those two episodes basically dealt with nothing but normal highschool stuff. And they were fantastic for it; clearly better than any other episodes this (past) season.
I hope they do more of that.
Happy dance!
Will the writers let the seniors out of school next season? Hope so.
I’m happy too, but this was actually announced some time ago…I guess it’s because NBC released its upcoming schedule that it’s made the headlines again.
Fine, fine. But what about 30 Rock?
The difference is that then the details of the arrangement with DirecTV were not available. What we now know is that the program will first air on DirecTV and only later on NBC.
I never got the love for this show. I am a fan of the book and the movie, which were much more clear-eyed exposes of high school football culture in Texas, but the the television show is just one more turgid teen melodrama. Even the football (what there is of it anymore) is pure cheese from cheeseville. Every game comes down to a dramatic last second play.
If they made the show just about football and dumped all the soapy relationship aspects, I might be able to get interested again. As it is, it seems like the show is engineered to appeal only to teenage girls (who don’t know anything about football).
I’m actually sorry it got renewed. I think the TV shows cheapens a quality book and movie.
I am so glad to hear this is a done deal! This is absolutely my favorite non-reality show that’s on right now. Hoping Taylor Kitsch (Riggins) will be back…I heard he signed onto another show.
Diogenes, my husband is like you…he got impatient when the football story lines went to the back burner. I think they had to do it, though, to try to appeal to a wider audience. The problem is, they went to far with it, and it became a girl show dressed up in a guy show’s clothing. Hopefully, this season they will find a better balance to it.
I was the opposite, discounting it early on mainly because of the incessant shaky frigging camera and nose-hair close-ups. But someone in a thread declared that they’d done away with most of that, and so I gave it another try. I liked it better and stuck with it.
The bits of soap don’t bother me anymore. They’re restricted to the teen-teen relationships.
Look at all the really well done relationships on the show – Tami and Eric, Smash and his mom, Landry and his dad, Matt and his dad and grandma, Matt and Julie, Riggins and his brother, Jason and Eric, Tyra and her mom.
If you leave out the Lyla-Riggins-Street triangle from S1, there really isn’t much that I’d consider soapy.
But I don’t care about any of the relationships. It’s supposed to be about football. I just want to see football. I don’t want to see the coach’s family drama. I want to see how he deals with a cover 2 defense. I couldn’t care less what happens off the field with any of these people.
I’d be more likely to check out ESPN or something for that, not a TV drama.
But the book and the movie were about football and about how obsessive people are about it in certain regions of the country. I just wanted the TV show to be like the book and the movie. The TV show’s just all about who’s taking who to the prom and the “troubled” bad boy, etc. They even went to that stalest of stale story lines – “let’s have a baby!”
Incidentally, network TV would never have the courage to do it, but that Riggins kid should have been written as gay. It would explain everything about his personality – his alcoholism, his emotional problems, eveything. He was clearly in love with that quarterback. That’s the direction which should have been pursued, but no – he’s just the brooding bad boy who isn’t really bad. How original.
OMG, Diogenes, bite your tongue! I am an old married lady with kids. Let me have my Riggins.
Seems like it would be kind of tough to make it exclusively about football and still crank out twenty-something episodes a season. I’d think you would run out of material unless you wanted to get really in-depth with regards to the complexities of the game. To me, that would make a great show, but it would likely be one without wide enough appeal to keep from getting canceled after three episodes.
Like Dio, I loved the movie and the book probably even moreso. I do, however, enjoy the show as well - only not quite as much, and in a different way.
I actually like the football aspect of it, but what I think they really do amazingly well is paint a portrait of real people. Except for maybe the extreme prettiness of most of the teens, I can totally believe that I could walk into a small town in west Texas, and see all of these people talking and behaving pretty much like they are portrayed on the show. That’s what keeps me coming back.
Just think about it, though. Go back to the first season. He’s got the hot blonde girlfriend to whom he shows emotional indifference. he drinks like a fish and is depressed. He’s always got puppy eyes for that quarterback (I’m blanking on his name – the one who got paralyzed), he even goes for his BFF’s girlfriend. If he had been revealed as being gay and being in love with the QB, don’t you think it would have explained a lot bout him?
It also would have given the show an oppportunity to deal with the issue of homophobia (and gay self-loathing) in a conservative, Texas town. How would they deal with discovering one of their football heroes was a friend of Dorothy? It could have been a really interesting direction. Instead, they chose more cliched paths when they weren’t going in completely ridiculous directons like with the murder story.
I did like the murderball storyline, though. I wouldn’t mind even seeing a whole show about a paralyzed former football star being reborn as wheelchair rugby star. That whole subculture is really interesting to me.
OK, yes, I grudgingly admit that it would make sense and be a pretty interesting storyline, from all angles. I always attributed his problems to being parent-less, but having him be gay would put some of it in perspective, as well. And, as you say, deal with a pretty controversial situation, given the setting. But I also like the idea that he and Jason have a bond that’s just about friendship, you know? That’s one of the things I like about the show in general, is that is shows guy relationships from a guy perspective. For instance, the way the coach relates to the kids. The way Buddy Garrity is always trying to unburden his problems, and the coach doesn’t want to really hear about it. The way that the relationship between Landry and Matt has changed since they, you know, started getting somewhere with girls. The way that Jason’s injury affected Tim, the guilt feelings and sense of loss Tim was feeling. I think that showing any kind of emotional connectedness between guys is rare on TV these days, and to show it in a setting where “men are men” is pretty compelling, at least for me. Having one of them be gay would definitely add an even more intriguing layer onto it, but it’s pretty satisfying to me as it is.
The murderball thing is pretty interesting, too, I agree. I love the portrayal of these guys almost needing to get to a higher level of being tough, because of their situation. It’s certainly a world you don’t see much of from the outside.