Word: taylorisms
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...year, in its third season, the high school football drama Friday Night Lights (loosely based on the book and movie) sent several characters on to college and the wider world, with farewells that stayed true to the show's small-town-Texas realism. In the outstanding finale, coach Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler) was ousted through school politics after the Dillon Panthers' heartbreaking loss in the state championships. (See the top 10 TV series...
...about much more than high school. It's about life in a struggling town where the recession is biting hard, kids grow up early and people rely on faith and football to get by. Also, much more than most high school dramas, it's about the adults - in particular Taylor and his wife Tami (Connie Britton), Dillon's principal...
...Season 4 begins, Taylor gets a new team and new problems. The Dillon school system has been redistricted, and he's been transferred to coach at the reopened East Dillon High, across town and a world away. Whereas Dillon (now West Dillon) was a sports powerhouse, richly funded by alumni who once opted to raise money for a JumboTron rather than classroom resources, East Dillon is overlooked and underfunded. When Taylor visits the school's broken-windowed field house, he's greeted by a raccoon in a locker...
...Taylor's fresh start at East Dillon does more than allow for new stories; it highlights the class and race issues that have always percolated on FNL. Tami gets an earful from rezoned parents upset about their kids' being sent to "that hellhole ... with that element." Taylor sees more black and brown faces at East Dillon, including Vince Howard (Michael B. Jordan), a juvenile offender who joins the team through a Cops and Jocks program...
...Taylor's move, pitting him against longer odds, establishes him as the true protagonist of the show. At a time when many of the best TV dramas feature antiheroes (House, Breaking Bad, Mad Men), he's a rarity: an example of classical virtues - integrity, loyalty - depicted without gush or cynicism. His signature locker-room slogan "Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose" would be moving regardless, but the Gary Cooperlike Chandler makes us see the grit and belief with which Taylor delivers it, even when he's pumping up a team he knows probably will lose...