Friday Night Lights (TV series)/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


The TV series

  • Alternate Character Interpretation: Matt Saracen's actions have been seen in a very un-woobie light in a lot of peoples eyes, as far as showing him as someone who for all of his angst about "people leaving him", he willfully shoves people away from him in order to play the poor pitiful me card to the hilt and will do so in the most vile way imaginable. He fucked his grandmother's caregiver and caused her to leave when he tries to force her into a relationship and most alarmingly, the fact that he sent his father TO HIS DEATH as far as hating his father for returning to help him take care of his grandmother.
  • Award Snub: Finally averted with long-overdue Emmy nominations in 2010 for Connie Britton and Kyle Chandler.
  • Badass Decay: Somehow between the beginning of Season 4 and the end of Season 5, Luke Cafferty goes from being a kid who can play Running Back, Wide Receiver, Quarterback, Linebacker AND Safety more or less equally well (any coach's wet dream) to a kid that absolutely no college of any size is even remotely interested in.
    • Screw college, with those kind of skills the NFL should have been trying to recruit that kid.
  • Crowning Music of Awesome: Uses a lot of the truly epic and beautiful Explosions in the Sky songs that were present in the movie, as well as its own score by W. G. Snuffy Walden.
  • Dork Age: The second season put Landry and Tyra into their own, completely isolated plotline for the first ten episodes that is studiously ignored by the writers at all other times, even while the plot was ongoing.
  • Sophomore Slump: The Tyra/Landry murder plot, Julie becomes a brat, Matt boinks his grandma's caregiver, etc. This has led to some Canon Discontinuity in the third season, as the show itself seems to be ignoring a lot of these things ever happening. Seriously, two of the main characters murdered someone and confessed to it, but after season two it's never mentioned again.
  • Suspiciously Similar Song: The Dillon Panthers' fight song sounds a lot like Notre Dame's fight song.
  • Too Good to Last: A notable aversion; despite being near cancellation about four million times, strong viewer and network support -- network support!! -- kept it going for a respectable 76 episodes.
  • The Woobie: Also Jason Street (kinda, see Wheelchair Woobie) and, to a lesser extent, J.D. McCoy in Season 3.
    • Iron Woobie: Matt Saracen would be a regular Woobie, if not for the fact that just about all of his suffering could have been helped if not for his desire to play martyr.
    • Jerkass Woobie: Tim can be a real asshole but His life sucks a lot.
    • Wheelchair Woobie: Subverted to hell and back by Jason Street. He doesn't want your sympathy, doesn't want your pity, doesn't want to be your mascot, but grows to fully embrace his situation and makes the best of it.
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