TV Guide’s Matt Roush Tackles FNL Finale

Question: [FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS SPOILER ALERT] I watched the Friday Night Lights season four finale last night and wanted to share a few thoughts. First off, it was another great season for a show that is in my top five of all time, and “The Son” was one of the most powerful hours of TV I’ve seen. I also shed quite a few tears during the finale. Although I’m still so sad to see him go, it was a wonderful goodbye to Matt Saracen (and Zach Gilford—hope to see him back on TV soon!). My dream for the fifth and (presumably) final season is to have all the characters who’ve left (Jason, Smash, Tyra, Lyla, Matt, etc.) return for a reunion of some sort.

My only major disappointment with season four is that J.D. McCoy was just a one-note villain. I became very invested in his character in season three when we were introduced to this nice, innocent kid under a huge amount of pressure. While I can understand how he’d let it go to his head with so many people worshipping him, I really hoped they’d dig deeper into his character. Jeremy Sumpter is such an appealing actor and it was a shame he was so utterly wasted this season. I certainly would have liked to have seen more of him and less of Becky. Nothing against the actress, but she got an awful lot of face time this season for someone who (strangely) wasn’t even a regular. I understand the focus this season was squarely on East Dillon, but J.D. was one character I really wish hadn’t fallen by the wayside. (Of course, I still wish Santiago hadn’t disappeared without a trace after season two!) Still, it was a terrific season overall and I’m very much looking forward to season five. So glad DirecTV saved this show.—Keira

Matt Roush: Matt Saracen had a great final run, as did Tim Riggins (brother Billy wasn’t the only one in tears at the end). I loved this season for showing us a new side to a town we thought we knew well, and making us care deeply about a new set of underdogs. It’s true that in that process, anyone left at Dillon High was given short shrift, with J.D. in particularly ending up looking like a stock villain out of a bad high-school sports movie. (On the other hand, knowing that Mother McCoy had left the husband, effectively leaving J.D. unprotected from his father’s cold manipulations, could explain a lot.) But this was a season that asked us to look at the overprivileged Panthers as the bad guys, which may have been too far and melodramatic a stretch. (Coming from a town in Indiana not unlike Dillon, which also thrived on sports, I find it odd that the schools weren’t at some point consolidated, but that’s another issue.) Kind of agree with you about the Becky character as well, who despite her baby trauma and vulnerable crush on Tim never rang terribly true to me, taking away valuable time from getting to know more intriguing characters like Luke and Vince and Jess (not to mention Landry, Julie and the Taylors). But this amounts to nitpicking in a season that on balance was transformative and ultimately triumphant.

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SOURCE: TVGuideMagazine.com

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 16th, 2010 at 4:25 pm and is filed under FNL, Season 4. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.