I Have No Idea How to Feel About the ‘Friday Night Lights’ Reboot
Are you ready for some more football? In terms of a “Friday Night Lights” reboot, I have no idea if I am.
As first reported by Puck and confirmed by IndieWire, a reboot of NBC’s “Friday Night Lights” series is in the pitch stage at Universal Television. “Friday Night Lights” is one of those titles the studio is always looking to mine, a person with knowledge of the situation told IndieWire; OG series creator Peter Berg, its showrunner Jason Katims, and producer Brian Grazer are on board. Should we be?
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“Friday Night Lights” was an incredible show that ran from 2006 to 2007 on NBC. The only problem is “Friday Night Lights” ran for five seasons between 2006 and 2011.
OK, so it wasn’t all bad in those later years; for many fans and critics, it wasn’t bad at all. It is a Season 4 episode (“The Son”) that’s widely considered the best of the series, and the series finale is often lauded for landing the plane. But I’m still not over what happened in Season 2 — and what happened to Season 2.
The writers strike of 2007 shortened the second season of “Friday Night Lights” from 19 episodes to 15. The series wasn’t ready for the work stoppage, which lasted just over three months, and four hours of story were just abandoned. It was weird then, and it’s much weirder now given the way we consume TV. A streaming binge of “Friday Night Lights” rolls Season 2 right into Season 3, and without the context of what happened nearly 20 years ago, the transition can feel like a fever dream.
The unintended Season 2 finale aired on February 8, 2008, just four days before the WGA strike ended; “Friday Night Lights” returned for a third season on October 1 of the same year. Between those dates, enough time had passed for the Dillon Panthers, once again under its on-again/off-again Coach Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler), to not win another championship. But we don’t see that happen. We also don’t see what happens with that whole Landry-killed-a-guy thing.
The short version is that Landry (Jesse Plemons) killed the dude who assaulted Tyra (Adrianne Palicki). Landry and Tyra nearly became an item amid their shared secret, but with the disappearance of Episodes 216-219, it was never spoken of again. Landry did not go to jail for manslaughter, he just kept playing criminally bad football. (Plemons is a great actor, he’s just not that great an actor.)
I’m not sure if it’s fair to call the Landry murder a jump-the-shark moment — after all, this was just the 31st episode of “Friday Night Lights”) and Fonzie (Henry Winkler) jumped a shark in the 91st episode of “Happy Days” — but it was wildly melodramatic for a series about teen football. Most critics will tell you that “Friday Night Lights” was able to regain its footing, and that in a way, the strike may have saved the show from its big mistake. I’m bad at compartmentalizing.
Landry breaking bad a few years before Plemons joined “Breaking Bad” is universally accepted as the low point of “Friday Night Lights.” Perhaps Katims, Berg, and Co. deserve the chance to reboot the series and see it through. (The new WGA contract with the studios expires in 2026, so let’s think ahead this time.)
Or maybe we just don’t need to reboot a very good reboot.
Just two years before “Friday Night Lights” premiered, “Friday Night Lights” the movie, directed by Berg and released by Universal Pictures (the film-studio sibling to Universal Television), came out. And that “Friday Night Lights” (2004) was based on “Friday Night Lights” the book (by Buzz Bissinger, 1990). “Friday Night Lights: A Town, A Team, and a Dream” tells the real story of the 1988 Permian High School Panthers football team from Odessa, Texas, as they make a run towards the Texas state championship. As far as I can recall, none of their defensive backs kill a guy.
In 2011, Berg told TV critics that a “Friday Night Lights” sequel film — well, a film sequel to the series — was in the works. The plan was abandoned by 2013. In 2018, Variety reported that a new standalone film inspired by Bissinger’s book and produced by Grazer, was in the works. It certainly looks like that has since been abandoned.
So here’s a thought: Can we just let sleeping Panthers lie? Oh wait, I forgot I’m trying to reason with the same company that is presently rebooting its reboot of The UK’s “The Office.” ‘Round and ’round we go.
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