The Unusual Life of Friday Night Lights

Brooklyn native Jason Katims admits he was an unlikely choice to take over as Friday Night Lights showrunner from Peter Berg, the writer/director of the feature film and the TV series pilot. He didn't have any background in the world of the show. He hadn't read the book, hadn't seen the movie, wasn't a football fan, and had never set foot in Texas.

What the writer/producer did have was an instant reaction to the "thrilling piece of work."

"I was very seduced by the world," he said during his Master Class at the recent Banff World Television Festival. "It really hit me when you see the shots of all the stores and restaurants closing on game day, and everybody in town making their way to this place on Friday night—which is Shabbas, of course. That is really what it was to me. Football is this spiritual thing, this coming together of a community, which is what makes it so powerful and makes it such a great backdrop to the show. The show is ultimately about the people in this town, people trying to do better and make their lives better."

Another thing Katims doesn't have: DirecTV. That might have to change, given the fact that his show was perilously close to being canceled until NBC co-chairman Ben Silverman "brokered this really creative deal with DirecTV to make the finances work."

That deal means the satellite company will air the third season beginning in October, several months before its NBC broadcast. It also means the audience will be able to catch up with the Dillon Panthers eight months after they left off, beginning with a new football season and a new school year.

According to Katims, the Panthers are coping with the loss of star player Smash, who is himself coping with an uncertain future. Quadriplegic ex-quarterback Jason Street is coping with fatherhood. And Tami Taylor is coping with a new job that puts her in conflict with her husband's: school principal. "She's going to change the world, and she immediately comes up against football," Katims said. "It's the world of academics, which is overlooked and underfunded, versus the overfunded and Dillon-obsessed world of football, which her husband runs."

Despite what he feels was the network and studio's genuine passion for Friday Night Lights, and despite his shock that he never got the call to resume their truncated second season after the writers strike, Katims is pragmatic about the fact that he almost didn't get to explore those stories. "At the end of the day there is a dollars and cents reality to it. No matter how good your show is, if it's not getting the viewership the network thinks it needs to sustain it, that's it."

He has some experience with that scenario. Critical and cult favourite My So-Called Life, canceled after one season, was his first television series. He credits creator Winnie Holzman with teaching him how to find the adolescent voice within himself. "A lot of us who choose to be writers never grew up anyway," he joked.

"My So-Called Life and Friday Night Lights are really bookend experiences for me," he added. "They were very similar in a lot of ways. They both had a sense of tapping into the inner lives of these people, very intense and real, with small but extremely passionate audiences."

Article Author: Diane Kristine Wild

Diane writes about boring things during the day, pop culture things by night. She also runs the TV, Eh? website, a compilation of news and information about Canadian television. Follow her on Twitter @deekayw for more random thoughts.

Visit Diane Kristine Wild's author page — Diane Kristine Wild's Blog