Friday Night Lights: So I've never seen the movie, I don't like sports movies in general, I don't like football in general, but somehow this one drew me in. Perhaps it's the high school aspect, gotta love the teen shows. But yeah, the Texas high school football culture is totally foreign to me, I grew up in a big city and my high school didn't have its own field. So on the one hand I find it hard to believe that an entire town can get obsessed with a high school team, that news crews follow them around, that even drunk kids would say sappy stuff like "Texas forever," but hey, it's all kind of fascinating in that respect.
But the plot isn't really what was so good about the pilot (it was actually pretty predictable), it was the execution. It seemed almost like a movie, shot documentary style. The music was perfect. The cast, mostly unknowns except for Kyle Chandler who I loved from his Early Edition days, was superb. And man does this show have heart. I mean, I'm getting all cheesy just talking about it! The first half of the show was just kind of a curiosity for me, the first part of the game I lost interest, but as soon as Street, the quarterback, went down, man did things get intense. The total silence when he didn't get up, the quiet backup QB being unexpectedly forced into the game, the eventual win, the praying, everyone anxiously waiting at the hospital, seeing Street, the coach going in and comforting the parents and reaching for Streets hand...I practically felt like I was there.
I'm bumping House off of my DVR list for this! (That'll be switching timeslots at some point anyway I think.) I've read that upcoming episodes will be more relationship driven and won't all be structured around the week leading up to the Friday night game, so hopefully I won't have to be bored by the actual football stuff too much.
Runaway: The only new drama on the CW and it's very, well, WB-ish. And by default, I liked it. It's a little high-concept, obviously a result of the success of shows like 24 and Prison Break and all that, but it's still a family drama with teenagers. The concept worries me a little, though. I mean, how long are they going to be on the run? There's a mystery involved here too, with Donnie Wahlberg's character trying to find out who set him up and who's the real murderer, and I don't want to be waiting forever for that to be solved. But once it is, they're not going to be runaways anymore. Well, unless they come up with something else, which might be a little preposterous. And it's not like this is 24, I wonder if they actually have an interesting solution to the mystery planned out. I always seem to worry about these things when I see pilots. Anyway, the flashback stuff seemed kind of poorly done and the whole guessing passwords thing seemed stupid to me, but other than that, I liked what I saw. Although Leslie Hope with long hair is pretty much unrecognizable. I seriously thought that was some other woman for a little bit there. Dustin Milligan is supposed to be like the next WB...ahem, CW hunk, I think, but eh, I don't think he's anything worth drooling over. Sarah Ramos is super cute as the younger sister, although I wonder if she's going to end up grating on my nerves. I'll probably watch for awhile to see where they're going with this. Although I don't know how many people are watching...might be the CW's first cancellation.
No comments:
Post a Comment