I tried to watch the show once before and the first few episodes didn't grab my attention so I ditched it. Shea Serrano (Ringer, NoSkips) has talked about the show numerous times so a few weeks ago when I was all out of new stuff to watch I saw it on Paramount+ and decided to give it another go.

I was wrong my first time around and the show is really good... ...but what I can't wrap my head around is how Brad Leland (Buddy Garrity) and Jesse Plemmons (Landry Clarke) never won individual awards for their roles.

Leland in particular has won me over completely. Just incredible performances episode after episode.

Plemmons is someone I was expecting to dislike because of his deranged behaviour in Breaking Bad but he really delivers with is portrayal of Landry.

On season 4 now.... ...have some issues, but still watching.

Goddamn, what a show. I grew up playing football in Texas. This show was basically perfect.

Looking at this episode, I felt that the scene where Smash drove all the way to Alabama to plead with the coach to give him a scholarship after losing it from TMU was good, but shouldn't the coach have been more surprised that he suddenly showed up out of the blue at Alabama?

It was essentially "Hi Smash," and no real surprise. I thought that the coach finally losing his temper and telling Smash that the guy from California has his position, that nothing is going to change that, and that Alabama doesn't play second fiddle to anyone was a good reality check for Smash. Essentially, nobody in football is irreplaceable.

In real life, I thought a coach should be non-committal and poised, but now that I think about it, Smash really needed a reality check and the yelling was the only way to get through to him.

What do you think?

Why is this child so evil? First she cheats on Matt with deadbeat loser number 1, then she’s awful to her parents (who are basically the best parents in the world) for the entire season, and now in season 5 she’s hooking up with married deadbeat loser number 2? Who RAISED THIS CHILD because it definitely wasn’t Coach and Tami. My wife and I can’t deal with her. We really wanted her to get the season 1 Lyla treatment in season 2, which is probably pretty mean to say but cmon! She saw her nice, loving boyfriend and the fact that his father is in Iraq and his grandmother’s Alzheimer’s is getting worse and worse every day and she said “wow let me go cheat on this guy!” GOD. I’ve never believed in hitting your kids but wow maybe the one smack Tami gave her in season 2 wasn’t enough.

In season 1 when Eric says he wants to give up the TMU job to stay with his family in Dillon because of the new baby coming, Tami says no. That coaching college football is his dream and he can't give this job up.

When he was offered the Shane State head coach job towards the end of season 5, he only took the meeting for Jason Street and he didn't seem that interested.

He hated press, scouting, and political BS. He seemed embarrassed being on the cover of that magazine in season 5. He was never chasing glory or money. But that's what college football would be.

The man we saw loved the game, loved coaching, and loved helping kids.

Do you think he ever became a college football coach? either Division I or lower? We see him coaching at Pemberton High School in Philly at the end of the show.

I will say with him, it would have to be head coach or nothing. We didn't see much of him at TMU, but it didn't seem like he would fit into the culture there that cared about winning more than what was right.

I genuinely don't know. Would just appreciate hearing your thoughts. It's something I thought about after re-watching the show. He's only about 45ish when the show ends, so he has a lot of life and career choices left ahead of him.

I'm 50/50. I could see college teams offering him a job just like Shane State did. He's not after glory, but the show also showed Coach appreciating when others saw how good he was - he's human. I do think there's also a part of him that is interested in the challenge of coaching at a higher level because he wants to see whether he has what it takes.

Edit: 100% sure he was coaching at Pemberton High School in Philadelphia - feel free to fact check me. It's obviously a super brief scene and I only know because I just watched it, but look at the field - it's definitely not college stadium/field. And look at the players - crappier uniforms and younger kids. I think this shot was meant to imply that Coach took on another challenge like East Dillon and he's going to do what he does best.

Season 1 - 8.0

Season 2 - 7.9

The rest of the seasons track just how I would rank them but shocked to see season 2 sitting at 7.9.

I'd rank season 1 higher and season 2 *much* lower.

One of my favorite quotes from the show. For a show that centers around football but not completely about football the dialogue matters a lot. This show is not inky written well there’s a lot of communication with adults and kids that’s pretty realistic. Kids won’t tell you everything and you have to dissect and read between the lines. Then you have to be pretty straight forward because you can’t expect them to that for you. This show was excellent at that. Fantastic work by the staff.

Maybe I just don’t get it because I live in a large Canadian city buuuut hear me out.

So I decided to rewatch the show (still love it and find it great), however maybe because I’m older now but I can’t stop thinking of how living in Dillon legitimately sucks. You have grown ass adults holding up raised fists showing off a high school championship rings at community conventions, all the restaurants are just shitty fast food places, you have guys in their 60s spending an afternoon watching teens PRACTICE for a football game. Also what parent wants their daughter to be a rally girl baking cookies for a player she’s been assigned too… This “rural” town isn’t even a real town in the traditional sense but instead a place full of parking lots and store plazas that sits at the intersection of a bunch of highways.

I’m not trying to sound pretentious I but seriously can’t help shake this feeling of how pathetic life in Dillon really is.

I don't even know if it was intentional by the writers. This sub has discussed how some of the things they (mostly Tami) have said about when they met don't line up. I'm sure some of it in season 1 was an accident and then it probably became intentional to never have their parents show up or the typical things TV shows use for drama.

It allowed us to see them as the incredible adults that they are who lift others around them up and to focus on their lives as they are now.

Coach says once that his dad pressured him a lot when it came to playing and he could never live up to it. That's the most revealing thing I think he had said about his dad. I personally imagine that Eric is a lot like most of the boys he coaches - he was good, but not good enough to play in college. So he put himself through college and spent about 16 years grinding it out on small teams in Texas before getting the chance to be the head coach in Dillon when both he and Tami are about 40.

But not going into that story gives him this authority as a coach that really makes his character more compelling.

Same for Tami - I imagine they both came from working-class families in Texas. I know one episode said they met in high school when the guy that Pete Berg plays says he cheated on Tami in high school and he accuses Eric of telling her. In another episode Tami says they met in college. In the finale, Julie implies they married around 19? To be generous with the differing timelines, you could say they knew one another in high school and dated a bit, broke up, but went to colleges near one another or the same college, and then got serious while in college and got married. Tami talks about sleeping with a few men other than Eric and her mother telling her she would go to hell if she had sex outside of marriage.

I think it's better we didn't meet their families. We know just enough to show that both of them are trying to be better parents than they had and trying to have careers that they weren't ever sure they could have. I think both are surprised when colleges want them and we're meeting them as people when their professional dreams are taking off.

And that mystery allows us to just meet them where they are in life. So few dramas do that. They do the family episodes where we meet the parents. They do flashbacks. They use storytelling crutches.

This show resonates so much with me because it's such a no-gimmicks shows. Just straight story-telling in the present.

I never really understood the Matt not being a great QB thing. I mean yeah he was a back up but he was behind one of the best highschool quarterbacks in the country. In his career at Dillon he lead them to 2 playoff berths 1 State championship and a hell of a comeback and close loss in their second State championship appearance. A smaller D1 or at the very least a D2 program would have definitely been interested.

And I think Coach felt that and thought about that when it came to the finale and signing that 5 year contract. That sweet moment where Jess comes into the locker room in the finale and tells Coach that working for the Lions has been the best time of her life - that's the moment, I think, when he makes the final decision to put Tami first. It pushed him over the line. Because that's what he wants to be doing - making lives of kids like Jess better.

Because what he built with the Lions was truly beautiful and not replaceable with a Panthers super team. Because he remembers how the Panthers treated him since season 1 - after Jason Street was paralyzed, they thought about firing him and probably would have if he did not win State. Then the dirty tricks and pushing him out because he could not be bought by JD's father in season 3. Then they went out of their way to try to undercut the Lions at every turn by destroying their field, releasing the criminal records of minors, having players suspended, etc.

I don't mean to say he's holding a grudge, we know he's above that, but I think in that moment he wants to chose the positive - and that's putting Tami and his family first - over going back to a team that treated him badly and put money and wins over the lives of students.

And then they went after Tami - who turned the high school into a blue ribbon school and who cared about those students more than anyone. Tami who changed the lives of so many students. They harassed her into giving up her job.

The town harassed both of them at different points for losing games or for giving girls advice on how to deal with a pregnancy.

I know that they said the coach had a 5-year deal, but I truly think the powerful people at Dillon would have turned on him again. I know a contract means he would have gotten paid, but coach loves football and loves these kids and he has his pride in doing good work and being a good coach, he would not be happy to sit around and collect a paycheck.

I hated seeing the Taylors pay so much for being just good people. Not only was following Tami just a beautiful moment for one of the best marriages ever on TV, but I honestly felt so relieved for them to move to a bigger city that I hope was kind to them. I grew up in a small town and know how they can ostracize people, and that's what we saw with the Taylors. At the very least, Philadelphia is a big city where they would not experience everyone against them.

I hope they made it back to Texas at some point or they live near their grandkids now, but I was happy for them to leave Dillon, honestly. If the powerful people in Dillon had paid either of the Taylors what they deserved or treated them well, I would feel differently.

Curious if anyone has an opinion on this. It's the rare time in a show where I was not sad to see the main characters leave a town.

When Matt asks him for his blessing to marry Julie, I knew he would be pissed. They are still teenagers and holy shit was Julie anything but a stable adult in season 5. I'm sure it seemed insane to him and to a lot of fans. Matt is truly the adult in their relationship. But, I was surprised there wasn't any recognition of their history as coach and player. Matt's just a good person to the core. A teenager who single handedly took care of his grandma with such love? And like Matt said in season 3, he did everything the coach asked of him as a player.

I was and still am surprised that there wasn't a line like "I know you are a good person" or anything. It was like they were strangers. Coach is always going to side with and pick his daughter against any boyfriend or husband, but his really pissed reaction seemed like a missed opportunity to acknowledge their history. Jason, Tim, Smash, Vince, etc. all got some kind words from Coach in their last scenes together, but Matt got none. What do you think about that choice?

Edit: This is not meant to nitpick this show. I'm just doing a rewatch and have no one to talk about it with and I find this moment really interesting. Coach's speech would actually be hilarious if it was aimed at someone who didn't deserve her or that TA she had an affair with, but it was Matt, who was always good to her.

I get that not every thing in the show football wise is gonna be super realistic or accurate, and honestly getting super nit picky about that stuff takes away from what the show is trying to accomplish, but to me, football wise it’s really dumb that they’re trying to force Saracen out of the starting job as soon as jd shows up. I mean, I understand that he’s supposed to have crazy arm talent and what not but Saracen was the quarterback for their state championship winning team and is a senior. I just think it’s super unlikely something like that would happen in real life. Jd has the next 3 years to start. In real life I’d imagine that they’d just have him sit for the year and come in next year and start.

I'm a new watcher and I just got to season 3 currently on EP1 still, but I seriously thought I missed an episode or an episode got removed from s2. Santiago just disappeared, church boy and lyla, lyla living with buddy, landry murder plot not being touched on, smash's injury, and Jason's possible baby?? 😭 I legit REWATCHED s2 Ep15 because I thought I dozed off or missed something.

That relationship basically never happened and she didn't even say bye to Tim when she left for college. Landry was by her side through EVERYTHING and was even back in Dillon for Christmas in the final episode and the writers didnt think they should at least cross paths? COME ON!

As i get older and as I myself graduated college about three years ago, I totally understand Tim's desire to not want to play football and go to college.

It's really bothering me to see Lyla and Billy practically forcing him to go to San Antonio state even tho he just wants works at Billy's garage, ain't nothing wrong with that.

Please without spoilers, as I am currently on season 4 episode 4 on my first watch, tell me that JD and Joe McCoy get what’s coming to em.

Tell me they do and then describe to me exactly how much dopamine flooded your system in fine detail :)

for my Lanterns fans…

I'd forgotten how splendid "Friday Night Lights" is! It's difficult to accept that it ended 15-years-ago!

As I rewatched season five, I'd forgotten plenty of stuff. Whatever the episode title was, when Mindy become sullen about the pregnancy, her second, she acted as though she had to make do with that. She doesn't want another child. I doesn't want to be away from work, again. I just shouted at the screen, "get an abortion"!

I'm not a Texan. But I've heard nothing in the series from Mindy about being against abortions.

I am into season 2 and am so glad to have read here that it is not a great season. I almost gave up but am pushing through.

It took me all those years to start watching. I am not a football fan but I am cheering them all on like I am the greatest Panther's fan out there.

It definitely brought me closer to football and also to small town American life. Friday Night Lights feels so quintessential American to me. The struggles, Highschool life, home life, the good family that also has its challenges, the poor family, the ones without parents. It is so different from a European life-style and family life/school.

I am orginially from Europe and although I have lived in the US for more than 20 years, this show brings me back to how I used to view and experience the US right when I moved here. I lived in a small town like Dillon without the football though (but rather military lifestyle). It was a huge adjustment for me.

So much was foreign to me. It is not what is portrayed in your everyday movies. No glitz and glam but real, everyday life. That kids would just live on their own, or are taking care of Grandma, or not being allowed to drink until they are 21. So many things I learned back then and rewatching the show is in a way like revisiting my first year of living in the US.