LITTLE ROCK — The important thing to remember is that by all rights Friday Night Lights should have died several years ago. It didn’t. TV critics and a fanatical fan base kept it alive.
The much-lauded but ratings-challenged NBC series never generated enough viewers to justify lasting beyond one season, but somehow it has managed to hobble along for four, thanks to creative cooperation between the network and satellite provider DirecTV.
For sharing the cost of production, DirecTV gets to air the episodes first. Once the 13-episode season is over on DirecTV, NBC will show it.
The fifth and final season premieres at 8 p.m. Wednesday on DirecTV’s The 101 Network.
The family drama centers on life in Dillon, Texas, and its high school football team. Season 5 opens with the start of a new school year. Coach Taylor (Kyle Chandler) finds himself an outsider in the world of Texas high school football.
Meanwhile, Tami Taylor (Connie Britton) joins her husband at East Dillon High doing what she does best,guiding students.
Season 5, which finished filming several months ago, will feature the guest star return of several characters from past seasons. Fan favorites Jason Street (Scott Porter), Matt Saracen (Zach Gilford), Landry Clarke (Jesse Plemons), Tim Riggins (Taylor Kitsch) and Tyra Collette (Adrianne Palicki) will return to Dillon throughout the course of the season.
Palicki, who will appear in the final two episodes, moved on from FNL to a big-break starring role on Fox’s Lone Star this season. Unfortunately, that drama withered and died after only two episodes.
If things go as they did last year, FNL’s final season should air on NBC starting in May.
The problem with the series from the beginning has been myopic viewers. Due to its series name and gridiron setting, millions of potential viewers not all that into football have missed a heart-warming family show that captures the drama of life in a small town.
How snake bit is Friday Night Lights? Last week ABC Family yanked the show’s reruns off the air due to low ratings. The reruns. How sad is it when even reruns get pulled?
Fellow TV lovers, Friday Night Lights has been nominated for numerous Emmys and won an American Film Institute award, a Writers Guild of America Award, nine awards from the Television Critics Association, a People’s Choice Award and a Peabody Award for Broadcast Excellence.
The results: My fear is that television producers, unrewarded by financial success, will be hesitant to bother with other quality programs for as long. Plugs will be pulled at the first inkling of viewer disinterest. Heck, they already are.
Meanwhile: NBC has given a full-season order for three shows that debuted recently. The dramas The Event and Law & Order: Los Angeles and the comedy Outsourced are guaranteed to last at least one season.
None of these is setting the world on fire, but at least they have improved the ratings in their respective time slots. NBC is still hurting from a fourth-place finish last season and can ill afford to cut loose many shows.
NBC’s Jimmy Smits drama Outlaw, however, has already been banished to Saturday nights to fade away and die.
The Event airs at 8 p.m. Monday, Law & Order: LA is at 9 p.m. Wednesday and Outsourced airs at 8:30 p.m. Thursday.
North to Alaska: Are you champing at the bit to traipse around Alaska with Sarah Palin? You have to wait until after the elections.
Palin’s new eight-week TLC travelogue, Sarah Palin’s Alaska, doesn’t kick off until 8 p.m. Nov. 14. The trailer, however, is already on the air.
Palin’s best line: “This is flippin’ fun. I’d rather be doin’ this than [be] in some stuffy old political office. I’d rather be out here, being free.”
In the trailer’s 30 seconds, we see Palin and family (Levi Johnston wasn’t invited) dog sledding, four-wheeling, hiking up a mountain, fishing, avoiding mama grizzlies and shooting fireworks.
I’m not sure, but I don’t believe we can see Russia from here.
Premiere: Hollywood Treasure debuts at 9 p.m. Wednesday on Syfy. The reality series deals with showbiz and pop culture memorabilia collecting.
Joe Maddalena, the world’s largest auctioneer of original movie, television and pop culture collectibles, is host. Guest stars include Dawn Wells (Gilligan’s Island), Richard Hatch (Battlestar Galactica), Erin Gray (Buck Rogers) and the legendary Stan Lee.
The TV Column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. E-mail:
Style, Pages 30 on 10/26/2010