Tonight on DirecTV, Friday Night Lights returns for the last time (or the last time until the final season re-returns for its second run on NBC next year, for which no date has yet been set). I’m going to follow the same practice I did last year: because most Tuned Inlanders don’t have access to this run of episodes (which won’t be on Hulu, &c., until their network run, either), and out of a simple need for blog triage, I won’t review the season until it airs on NBC. I do, however, reserve the right to check in occasionally if there are especially notable episodes or developments.
If you do have DirecTV, of course, I urge you not to miss it. Season 5 sets up more slowly than season 4 (a successful reboot year that immediately threw us into the challenge of rebuilding a football team and community at a disadvantaged school). But I found that season 4 made me care enough for its new characters, with different sets of problems—Vince, Becky, Luke—that I was quickly engaged. Above all,
I’m glad that the best broadcast-network drama of the last five years is getting a chance to end on something like its own terms—even if it took satellite TV to make it possible. FNL fans: have you stuck with the show through the move from West Dillon to East?