Friday Night Lights: Back from the Brink

High school dramas, like high school itself, have a ticking clock built in. Time passes, graduation looms, characters outgrow their acne years. Beverly Hills 90210 was fun while it lasted, but eventually Luke Perry and Gabrielle Carteris appeared to be starring in an AARP ad.

Last year, in its third season, the high school football drama Friday Night Lights (loosely based on the book and movie) sent several characters on to college and the wider world, with farewells that stayed true to the show's small-town-Texas realism. In the outstanding finale, coach Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler) was ousted through school politics after the Dillon Panthers' heartbreaking loss in the state championships. (See the top 10 TV series of 2008.)

One reason Season 3 could offer that closure was that it seemed unlikely there would be a Season 4. But the low-rated, high-quality FNL has returned on DirecTV's 101 Network (Wednesdays, 9 p.m. E.T.), thanks to a continuation of its cost-sharing deal with the satellite company. (The season will air on NBC sometime next year.)

So where does FNL go from here? The show has an advantage in that it has always been about much more than high school. It's about life in a struggling town where the recession is biting hard, kids grow up early and people rely on faith and football to get by. Also, much more than most high school dramas, it's about the adults — in particular Taylor and his wife Tami (Connie Britton), Dillon's principal.

As Season 4 begins, Taylor gets a new team and new problems. The Dillon school system has been redistricted, and he's been transferred to coach at the reopened East Dillon High, across town and a world away. Whereas Dillon (now West Dillon) was a sports powerhouse, richly funded by alumni who once opted to raise money for a JumboTron rather than classroom resources, East Dillon is overlooked and underfunded. When Taylor visits the school's broken-windowed field house, he's greeted by a raccoon in a locker.

Taylor's fresh start at East Dillon does more than allow for new stories; it highlights the class and race issues that have always percolated on FNL. Tami gets an earful from rezoned parents upset about their kids' being sent to "that hellhole ... with that element." Taylor sees more black and brown faces at East Dillon, including Vince Howard (Michael B. Jordan), a juvenile offender who joins the team through a Cops and Jocks program.

And Taylor's move, pitting him against longer odds, establishes him as the true protagonist of the show. At a time when many of the best TV dramas feature antiheroes (House, Breaking Bad, Mad Men), he's a rarity: an example of classical virtues — integrity, loyalty — depicted without gush or cynicism. His signature locker-room slogan "Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose" would be moving regardless, but the Gary Cooperlike Chandler makes us see the grit and belief with which Taylor delivers it, even when he's pumping up a team he knows probably will lose.

Taylor can be stubborn, hot-tempered and petulant. But he is an actual hero, someone whose virtue is to be respected, not subverted. And he and Tami — whose role is also prominent this season — have one of the most mature, combatively supportive marriages on TV (not to mention, for a 40ish husband and wife in a medium obsessed with young couples, an awfully hot one).

Some of the original students remain, though FNL intends to cycle a few of them off this season as well. Former quarterback Matt Saracen (Zach Gilford) is trying to start adult life in Dillon, having given up art school in Chicago to care for his increasingly senile grandmother; the Taylors' daughter Julie (Aimee Teegarden) may out her parents as hypocrites when she insists on transferring to East Dillon over their objections. And tragic hunk Tim Riggins (Taylor Kitsch) is off to college — if he can overcome his low self-esteem and bad family history enough to tough it out.

Oh, yeah, there's football too, including, in the first episode, a game as dramatic and moving as any FNL has shown. But if you haven't yet watched — the first three seasons are on DVD — rest assured you don't need to know a tight end from a split end to love this show. Come to it with clear eyes and a full heart, and you can't lose.

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