June 15, 2010 – After five network-aired episodes of its fourth season, Friday Night Lights, the critically-acclaimed, viewer-challenged drama about Texas high school and football may have jumped the steer. Lauded by critics for its realistic portrayal of Middle America and deep personal exploration of its central characters, the pile of writers/co-executive and executive producers that compose its direction, have succeeded at putting its audience to sleep by heaping extreme doses of joyless plot lines at every turn. It has become as confusing as the relationships of those pictured above.

For those wise people who chose to ignore this show on NBC back in 2007 while it sought its time slot and audience, and resulted in its being slated for cancellation, you may have been right all along. A near miracle chain of events rescued the show, not the least of which was Hollywood’s desperation for programming.

Somehow, someone took a look at the early seasons, the critical laudits, the appealing story lines, the terrific casting and characters, the history of the franchise from successful book to movie, a talented TV production team, the appealing demographics from 18 to 54, and a new digital model was founded — satellite provider Direct TV would share production costs with NBC and each would share non-competing broadcast schedules.

Not only was the series rescued after the production was stopped due to the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike, it was extended for what will be a five-year run of 13 episodes each. The fourth season recently aired its fifth NBC broadcast episode. Somewhere the producers and especially writers Patrick Massett and John Zinman lost their connection to the inspirational triumphs that dominated the earlier storylines and now have turned Dillon, Texas into a bummer.

Drawing such conclusions at episode five, with eight remaining, could be risky and trecherous critiquing. But predictability, slowness and sadness has taken over the FNL writing room. Since the season is “in the can” as they say, and I haven’t seen it, I’ll go out on the limb and predict that if episodes 1 to 5 are any indicator, we can expect a mostly mopey, left-to-our-own-conclusions resolution of the warm characters from Dillon.

Everything starts with Tammi (Connie Britton) and Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler) who now work at separate Dillon high schools, Tammi as principal of the West Dillon Panthers and Eric as a teacher and football coach of the recently re-started East Dillon Lions. Despite what is in every paper in America today concerning education funding and tax cuts, the disparity between East and West is as clear as the Lions’ mud-dust, patchy field and the Panthers fieldturf stadium. It’s logic like this that the writers want educated viewers to believe in to further their plotlines. In one town, with one tax-base, one school has everything and the other has nothing. Apparently we are supposed to believe its the Texas high school boosters that make the difference. What a mountain East Dillon has to climb. Woe is the Lions.

This logic continues through the cast plots and makes for a deluge of suffering for Dillon East. West’s QB lives in a mansion and drives a new Jeep, while it took three games (all losses) to find an East QB and his mom may be a crack whore. There is a lot of time spent on relationships where one partner is older than the other. Last week, Julie Taylor (Aimee Teagarden) watched her beau Matt Saracen (Zack Gilford), a graduated, one-time coach Taylor QB, drive off to who-knows-where? Certainly no place logical. Maybe he’ll get a job on a BP oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico?

The writers wasted our time by introducing John Diehl as a Eric-Taylor-replacing-father-figure-famed-local-artist, a foil to fledgling artist Matt, who seemed to have some promise to move a character holistically beyond high school and football, but fumbled. The writers did succeed in giving Gilford a tour de force script concerning the death of his father, which may be award-worthy, if not, at the very least, succeeding in sending him away from FNL on a high note concerning his acting ability.

Tim Riggins (Taylor Kitsch) struggles with the loss of football in a more typical way. In the same episode as Matt parting from Julie, Tim parts from Lyla Garrity (Mrs. Derek Jeter) who is busing her way back to Vanderbilt, while Tim views his dim future with babes throwing themselves at him. Up to now, Riggins is another bummer in a sea of bummers. He is a reluctant former hero, who realizes he may have peaked in high school and it seems to bother him. Trusting the writers to lead him home is another matter.

The writing on the show has not had any success with any former players. There’s a wheel-chair-bound former quarterback being a sports agent in New York City, and a running back having success at Texas A&M, but after that, nothing.

Riggins’ plot line will be a challenge to the writers, but after five episodes there’s no sign this will end up pretty. Expect his auto shop to go south and for him to get in trouble with Becky Sproles (Madison Burge), his landlord’s underage daughter.

The most underused character in season four is Landry Clarke (Jesse Plemons), smartest guy in school, Matt’s best friend since they were five, former garage band leader with a quirky girlfriend who has vanished into lesbianism, placekicker, mostly second stringer and less-than-middling athlete that coach Taylor calls “Lance,” forced to Dillon East by districting, son of the police chief who’s likely to never appear again, and self-defense killer who commanded episodes in the past, not-to-mention the inspirational boyfriend to Tyra Colette (Adrian Palicki) who he helped tutor into the most unlikely University of Texas acceptance ever and off the show. Landry remains one of the writers possible redemptions. There may be a reason he was tutored by Matt and practiced throwing a football into the tire target in Matt’s yard.

As said above, the Dillon East Lions haven’t won a game, the radio guys are picking on them and the Panthers use them as humorous material. Perhaps we are moving toward an East-West showdown? I wonder who wins? The writers have given the viewers the joy of a state championship and the agony of coming up two points short for another.

A showdown between East and West with Panthers golden-boy and and hated QB J.D. McCoy (Jeremy Sumpter) going against Landry and season four’s new stars Vince Howard (Michael B. Jordan) and Luke Cafferty (Matt Lauria) is the inevitable finale. An episode where lovable and hatable Buddy Garritty (Brad Leland) could (along with Eric Taylor) exact some revenge from villainous rich-guy Panther booster/overboard sportsparent Joe McCoy (D.W. Moffett).

For those of us faced with committing to another 21 episodes we are holding out hope that some semblance of the old “feel good” will resurface. Decision making may be suffering from the 13-person writing team and the three executives that were there from the start, Brian Grazer, Peter Berg and David Nevins. I envision artful arguments about logic, about what a viewer can take away without being said on the screen, about providing a glimpse of real life and spontaneity. But this is a crew that has cast the ugliest baby in the world to play the Taylor’s infant daughter, Gracie. Can we trust them to provide us with 21 more?