No spoilers here, since NBC viewers won't see the finale of Friday Night Lights for about half a year. But DirecTV subscribers -- the ones who spent Wednesday night watching the final episode of the five-year drama about family and football life in a small Texas town -- witnessed a loving, thoughtful, inspirational ending to an equally loving, thoughtful and inspirational series. The only thing that put the bitter in its bittersweet is that it's over, for good...
Executive producer Jason Katims wrote the finale, and trusted his actors to deliver the goods whether with sparse lines of dialogue, or in wordless but evocative montages. The intelligence, the class, was everywhere in the last episode, down to the way the show's two biggest questions were handled: Would the Lions win state? And with both Connie Britton's Tami Taylor and Kyle Chandler's Eric Taylor entertaining attractive job offers, who defers to whom?
Again, no answers here. But the way both of those issues are handled are perfect examples why Friday Night Lights, among those who have revered the series for years, are so sad to see it go -- yet so happy to have seen it at all.
The young actors and actresses on this show have been brilliant from the start, and certainly ended things that way. The more mature actors and actresses, even more so.
Over the years, on separate occasions, I've interviewed both Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton for NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross.
If you like, as a farewell of sorts, you can listen back to my conversation with Chandler, from April 2008, by clicking HERE -- and/or my conversation with Britton, from June 2010, by clicking HERE.
Clear voices. Full hearts. Can't complain -- except that NBC never treated Friday Night Lights with the respect it deserved. A show this excellent deserved a few more years.