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Of all the great things about television, the greatest is that it’s on every single day. TV history is being made, day in and day out, in ways big and small. In an effort to better appreciate this history, we’re taking a look back, every day, at one particular TV milestone.
IMPORTANT DATE IN TV HISTORY: October 28, 2009
PROGRAM ORIGINALLY AIRED ON THIS DATE: Friday Night Lights, “East of Dillon” (Season 4, Episode 1) [Watch on Netflix]
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT: The five-season run of Friday Night Lights tends to cleave itself into two distinct halves in the memory. There’s the half where Coach Taylor coaches the Dillon Panthers, with stammering Matt Saracen as his QB and glistening Texan god Tim Riggins as … whatever position Riggins played when he wasn’t taking his shirt off. The second half was after Coach Taylor was punted to go coach the under-funded, no-tradition-of-winning East Dillon Lions. (The memory wants to make these two halves coincide exactly with the series’ move to DirecTV, but that happened in season 3, with one more Dillon season to go.)
The start of the fourth season of Friday Night Lights was in many ways a rebirth. Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton were still there to anchor the show, but with pretty much the entire teen cast having moved on — only Taylor Kitsch, Aimee Teegarden, and Jesse Plemons were still around as full-time cast members — the show needed new blood. The most significant of these cast additions would be Michael B. Jordan as Vince Howard, eventual East Dillon star quarterback. Though it didn’t start out that way.
The funny thing was that with its near-cancellation, with its banishment to DirecTV, with its rebooting of the story and rehauling of the main cast, this season was when Friday Night Lights really began to get the respect it deserved. This was the year that nabbed Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton their first Emmy nominations (Chandler would go on to win after season 5). And most importantly, the show made us care about those East Dillon Lions as much, if not moreso, than the original Dillon Panthers. As far as second acts on TV shows go, Friday Night Lights nailed theirs.
[You can watch “East of Dillon” on Netflix.]
Joe Reid (@joereid) is a freelance writer living in Brooklyn. You can find him leaving flowers for Mrs. Landingham at the corner of 18th and Potomac.
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