Leah Wilson - A Friday Night Lights Companion: Love, Loss, and Football in Dillon, Texas

As a rule, I am a composed, stoic person, constitutionally hard-wired to keep my emotions to myself. This is a byproduct of growing up in the Midwest, I suspect. Its not that showing emotion is a sign of weakness among my family in Central Illinois; its just considered unnecessary, a distraction, too much fuss. If you have a problem, you keep it to yourself, and you get over it. This is not always the most healthy way to live ones life. Lord knows Ive witnessed enough Thanksgiving blowups to know that eventually, inevitably, the tightly wound coils snap. But its the way I was raised, and thats the way Im always going to be. Say what you will, but it works for me.

And particularly: I do not cry. The last time I cried, it was 1982. I was six, Id fallen off my bike into a pile of gravel, and I sprinted home to my mother. She took me into the bathroom, poured rubbing alcohol on my bleeding knee, wiped my face with a towel, and told me to knock it off. Crying wont heal your knee faster, she said, smiling but firm. And crying lets your knee win. I dont remember crying after that, not even at my grandmothers funeral six years ago. I was sad. But I didnt cry. I saw my dad cry once, at his father-in-laws funeral. We followed behind the hearse in silence, and then, suddenly, he burst into a crazed, explosive two-second wail. He then blew his nose, grunted, and said, My underwear must have been too tight there. He hasnt cried since. I dont think theres anything wrong with crying. I just dont do it.

Except. Except.

I do not know why it isthis phenomenon is honestly terrifying to mebut every single time I have ever watched an episode of Friday Night Lights, I damned near start weeping. I dont, mind you; I always fight it off. But as much as I would like to, I cannot deny it. Something about that show turns me almost primal; I find myself doing a lot of fist-biting, throat-clearing, and boy, the pollen count is high today. This is bizarre. I have had truly tragic events occur in my life, and I have not been near tears. But Friday Night Lights just destroys me. It doesnt even have to be a sad scene. The music gets going, the camera zooms in, people start talking... and man, Im just done.

This means something, I think.

Perhaps the most amazing thing about Friday Night Lights is that it is painfully, breathtakingly realistic and yet also exists as some sort of platonic ideal of what human beings can be like.

The show has often been praised for its unflinching handling of hot-button issues like abortion, racism, and war, but even using the phrase hot-button seems like an insult, almost crass, to the show itself, much the same way it might be in life. If someone in your family was contemplating an abortion, you would never think of that decision as a hot-button issue; it would be a family issue, dealt with in personal terms, privately. And thats how it feels when Becky goes through the same situation in on Friday Night Lights. Its not something that has anything to do with politics, or religion, or whatever people on both sides of the debate try to attach to it. Its a wrenching, intensely personal situation, and a decision made (and experienced) entirely by the people involved, not those from the outside. Friday Night Lights made me feel like I was on the inside. Friday Night Lights made me feel like I was part of the family. Friday Night Lights made me feel like I was more a part of real life than actually being a part of real life.

This is what great artand this is what were talking about here, artcan do: It can transport us, make us a part of something that we never could have been otherwise. A large part of the genius of Friday Night Lights is, of course, that it never seems like art; it would never be nearly as powerful and moving if it did. (It is far more interested in telling a story than trying to impress critics... which is probably why they were so impressed, actually.) No, it feels like life. I dont mean life the way that I live it, or you live it, or even as it actually exists. It is, after all, just a television show. But it feels like life, the way we would like to imagine life is, not a fantasy land filled with fairies and ninjas and happy endings, but instead full of huge-hearted, achingly human characters wrestling with tragedy, with fear, with pain... and ultimately winning. There is a hope inside every single character on