Friday Night Lights – Season 2

Archived review: I had this to say after the first nine episodes of the second season (up to "The Confession"):

My discovery over the Summer, last year's do-no-wrong show has now done some wrong, but is still an absorbing experience every single week. Sure for the second season they chose some dodgy and highly contrived plotlines you would only expect to see in TV's more sensationalist TV dramas, but this is a show with actors talented enough to make up for the writers' mistakes. It's still the most consistently well-performed show on TV, with Connie Britton shining as wife-and-new-mother Tami Taylor. Her character may be a bit more disagreeable this year, but it's given the actress some amazing emotion to showcase. Given the show's quick production schedule, there's fortunately another six episodes left to be shown next year. Unfortunately, ratings have still been poor for this phenomenal show, so it looks like that's all we'll ever get. Shame. It's the show I've chosen to watch every Saturday morning rather than doing the sane thing and lying in, so it must be good!

I wrote this after the season had ended early, again thanks to that good old writers' strike:

Only six more episodes have shown since I last reviewed this one, so I don't really have anything new to add, except that I'm glad it's managed to survive thanks to NBC finding a smaller cable channel to cut a deal with. It's coming back for a third 13-episode season next year which, granted, is fewer than we got this year, but at least they'll be able to prepare for it from the outset and hopefully we'll have a much more focussed and football-driven season, devoid of some of the more contrived plotlines and vaguely melancholic tone that were unfortunately adopted this season. Perhaps the writers' strike actually did some good after all!