Texas forever

Ignore anyone who ever said television is bad for you. Ignore all the rumors that television makes people dumber. Television does not make anyone dumber-bad television makes people dumber.

Remember the movie “Friday Night Lights,” released in 2004? Well, that movie has evolved into a TV show, which might actually be one television’s greatest creations in the past few years.

Ever since its premiere on NBC in 2006, “Friday Night Lights” the TV show has blown minds. Set in the fictional West Texas town of Dillon, “Friday Night Lights” looks like it is a basic football drama, but if the watcher can get over the shaky, documentary-type filming, there is an original series lurking around.

Except-nobody watches it.

According to the Nielsen ratings, “Friday Night Lights” has consistently placed below 50 in the rankings for both the first and second seasons. The lack of viewers has sadly forced the television show to scramble to find funding for a third season. DirecTV was the highest bidder, so “Friday Night Lights'” third season appears commercial free Wednesday nights on DirecTV-and can also appear on a laptop if you know where to look.

However, “Friday Night Lights” will make a triumphant return to NBC in January to finish out the rest of the third season. It’s time to step up to the plate guys, and watch television gold-pure gold.

There’s Tim Riggins, the sexy running back who might have some sort of a drinking problem (but he is still sexy-if you don’t believe me, look him up), Matthew Saracen, the whiny, often misunderstood quarterback and all the rest of the pretty, pretty people. “Friday Night Lights” might be, in fact, full of coma-inducing pretty. We should be forever thankful that this TV show is in our lives.

A Sept. 30, 2008 article in The New York Times stated, “It seems especially apt that ‘Friday Night Lights’ should return to television for its third season just when any prospect of a brighter economic future has come to seem like a fool’s prophecy.”

The article goes on the state that “Friday Night Lights” portrays small-town living “poetically.” This is one of the parts of the show that makes it brilliant-the power to make the viewer want to pack up and go root for the home team in a town where football is not only a way of life, but the blood that circulates through people’s veins.

Watch the first episode of Season One, and you will raise your Solo cup along with Riggins and original quarterback Jason Street when they cheer, “Texas Forever.” This sounds cheesy, but after watching the show I dare you to tell me it is actually cheesy. I dare you. If you have never expressed an interest in watching football before – real or fictional – this will convert you, but mostly just to fictional TV football. Arguably, it is the best kind of football, in all reality.

“Friday Night Lights” is in no way just a guilty pleasure. Even though the ratings are low, it is good television. For one thing, bad television is anything on MTV and “Friday Night Lights” is not on MTV-therefore, it is a good show by default. My list of guilty pleasures is about a mile long so I know a guilty pleasure when I see one.

We all must work together to keep “Friday Night Lights” on the air. The show returns to NBC this January. Turn on the TV and check it out. I promise you will not be disappointed. Winter break is coming up – a perfect time to watch the first and second season on DVD. It’s just so much pretty, mixed with epic football footage and plot lines that make “Gossip Girl” seem like “Dawson’s Creek.”