Friday Night Lights

[ratcreature]

This series is really kind of bleak. I mean, I like that for once tv did not back down from the abortion via a convenient miscarriage or the like, so I appreciated how that turned out, but I mean overall, the way you can feel the characters falling down some cliff (like the Riggins with this chop shop scheme, or Vince getting back with his gang to pay for his mother's rehab), but you can't see any alternatives for them either.

I guess I'm shallow, but I think I like my tv more on the escapist side, rather than having to see character after character have their really modest dreams and ambitions crushed by this kind of unrelenting reality. It's not that it is over the top or anything, or that there are no bright spots at all for the characters and for some of course more than for others, but that actually makes it worse in a way, precisely because it is believable. Kind of like with fanfic I can enjoy character whump, but not so much realistic stories of a character dealing with an illness and medical treatments with their ups and downs and so on, like you'd encounter in everyday life.

Comments

[kass]

I'm fascinated by this post! I definitely see where you're coming from -- I think Vince's situation in particular is a pretty bleak one -- but I actually see hope in store for many of the characters. I love the way that these characters are working hard to redeem themselves, to create what they need in their lives. It's definitely more on the realist end of the spectrum than some of the other shows I love, but I love how real the characters feel and how real their lives seem to me...

[ratcreature]

I think I'm reminded of these 19th century novels detailing the daily misery in a naturalist fashion. I mean, I get that it is partly due to the current US debates, but I find it horribly depressing that several major characters turn to crime because they need medical care for example. It's like Emile Zola on tv, which is kind of unlike the usual US tv, because normally that is always very much about people as makers of their own fate etc. and it works for them, which I don't really agree all that much with (probably the general European perspective that makes us all "socialists" in the US rhetoric) but in fiction it is really quite charming if you don't mind the propaganda aspect. Only you know nobody there will turn Marxist en masse to end their misery, like they ought to, because they are in Texas and sort of brainwashed in that regard.