Friday Night Lights (2004)

Did you remember that Billy Bob Thornton (Coach Gary) is in this one? I didn't.

For the most part, I guess I'm not a big fan of this genre of movie -- the football team that overcomes all the obstacles, or in the case of this specific movie, maybe doesn't.

Is/Was west Texas this much into football? Is football really all towns like Odessa have? That's really sad, as is the idea that your life peaks in high school, and after that, all you have is your high school football ring. (And what about the male cheerleaders? The movie shows that there were some. How were they treated in high school and the local community?)

According to the notes at the end of the movie, many of the kids on this team would go on to have at least some minor success in football at the college level. That makes me think that maybe life doesn't peak in high school after all. Maybe it just feels like that in the moment, although Charles (Tim McGraw) is definitely an example of a guy that peaked in high school and then lived out the rest of his life as a loser.

But even Boobie (Derek Luke), the kid who tears his ACL, would go on to play college ball. Maybe none of them made it to the pros, but it's interesting that other than for maybe Boobie, the pros was never really the goal. They all seem to know that they're really big fish in a small west Texas pond, and when they reach the Championship game, they know they're toast. They're good, but they're no match for the team they're up against.

It's the shooting of the championship game that brings this movie down a notch for me. Actually, I thought they did a pretty good job of capturing the hits on the field. Those looked good, but the play calling, the clock, and to a more limited extent, the shots of the crowd, were all weak.

In this championship game, Odessa falls way behind. They somehow claw their way back to within 6 points. The other team had a chance to kick the field goal to go up 9 with just a minute or two to go. Instead, they go for it. Now maybe this is explained by the fact that this team never kicks field goals. But not even when it would put them up by two scores? Come on.

I also wondered why they decided to tell the story of this team and not next year's team. Some of the players would be back the following season, as would Coach Gary, and it seems like they could have told the story of next year's team better, incorporating some of the "lessons" they learned from this year's team.

Rating: 2.5/5 stars

Comments

"Digging for the Truth" Experiment #4 -- The Federalist Radio Hour

I first heard of Sean Davis last week. He created an online magazine called The Federalist in 2011, and he currently has about 500,000 followers on X. It was about last week that he posted something amazing. He suggested if the Supreme Court doesn't rule the way they should, not only should Trump just ignore the ruling, if they keep obstructing the administration, he should just dissolve the Court altogether. And I thought, wow. This guy is saying outrageous stuff like that, and there's an audience for it. So, I decided I'd listen to an episode of The Federalist podcast: April 17, 2025 -- Deportation, Due Process, and Deference to the American People (40 minutes) https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deportation-due-process-and-deference-to-the/id983782306?i=1000703904873 In the 40-minute conversation, the host and guest discussed why due process wasn't required for illegal immigrants. The case of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia was mentioned for a brief second, but...

In Utero

In 1994, I wore my In Utero shirt to college. I’d walk down the hall, and people would look at the shirt. I still remember a professor looking at it, not apparently hip to the scene. She asked, “Bret, is there something you’re trying to tell us?” I had no idea what I was trying to say. Kurt Cobain had just shot his head off with a shotgun. Before that life-changing event, I hadn’t been the biggest fan of Nirvana, but I did recognize the immediate impact “Smells Like Teen Spirit” had on music, or at least on MTV. Nirvana had seemingly killed and buried Hair Metal, and they had done it single-handedly. What exactly was this “Alternative” sound? It was weird, because soon it felt like everything was “alternative,” and that didn’t make any sense. Once everything is the same, how can it be anything but standard, normal? Nirvana was okay, but at least at the time I was wearing the merch, I was much more into Offspring and Green Day and Tool. And that’s about as far as I went into...

I Must Betray You -- Ruta Sepetys

I appreciate the pacing. The author's epilogue includes her mission statement -- historical fiction as a way to keep history alive. Romanis is an obscure place, but she hopes people reading the book will take an interest in its history. She also makes the point that there are no clean endings. So, the evil dictator and his wife were killed, but the problems they created didn't magically go away, the country still had to find its way and move forward, and it was a process.

The Writer's Poke

Search This Blog