‘Friday Night Lights’ Revisited

26:05You know, when you start cycling in new cast members, and I would say not always very successfully. No. That's epic. Tough. There's a lot happening. Really tough. You know, but then you get Michael B. Jordan showing up on the show. And that forever sort of burnishes your legacy. So like it was unafraid to try things. Yeah. It was not always successful at it. But I think it's interesting to talk about it in the teen drama bucket because I just don't know that I think the teen drama of it was its most successful aspect. I think it can often be quite good, but you're right. The need to continue to draw more and more plot out of these characters.

26:45exhausts even the characters you may love the most. Even someone like Tim Riggins just gets pulled into all sorts of corners and subplots. It's like, all right, you're sleeping with who now? And you're like a surrogate dad and also the girl next door. It's like, there's just like a lot that they have to do, again, to keep those characters on the edges of the story. But it speaks to something we talked about with Skins, which is like, how do you continue to tell a high school story as your characters are getting older? And the decision of Friday Night Lights, I would say it is like a, you know, of Eric and Tammy Taylor anchored story fundamentally.

27:15But really it's like you have to make the choice of is the show going to follow characters or is it going to follow the construct? Right. And the construct of Friday Night Lights is Dylan, Texas. Yeah. And so it's like we are going to stay here. Lila's going to go off to Vanderbilt. We're going to kind of see her pop back once in a while. Smash is going to go to Texas A &M. You're going to like see his highlights on TV but like we're not really going to hear from him again. We're going to stay here. And so there's some characters who make sense to stick around because they don't have places to go or they don't have a life to chase or like, you know, a college degree to go after or whatever.

27:46But yeah, you have to manufacture reasons for them to be there. And I think most importantly, manufacture reasons for them to still bump into the characters that you actually do care about. Right. In your final season of the show, the only characters who were main characters in the first season who are still main characters are the Taylor family, Eric, Tammy, and Julie. And that's a good season. it is a good season it's i would say you know it hits the highs earlier but it it pretty successfully gets through the reboot learning curve of bringing in that new cast that you mentioned at east dylan um yeah i would say i think that the show developed a bit of a tim riggins problem in that taylor kitsch was like such a popular um you know tim riggins was such a popular character, but it's, yeah, like, what do you do with the character who's supposed to peak in high school?

28:40Yeah. And how do you keep him hanging around after he's done? There are some things that are built into, they cleverly built in the story, and it's always smart to do this in the teen drama. You know, we talked about it in Skins. They've got, you know, Effie Stone, I'm Tony's younger sister, so you can have another generation. Right. And, like, Julie and Landry and Matt Saracen are all younger. Yes. Than, you know, you know, your Jason Streets and your Tim Riggins and your Smashes and stuff like that and your Lila Garrity's. Although in classic teen drama tradition, it's often not very clear exactly what year.

29:14It's a little confusing. Yeah, like, are you a junior or senior or what? A little confusing. But it's like, thinking about could they have done this on Euphoria? Like, they kind of, in the first season, you've got Rue's younger sister played by Storm Reid, who's, Gia, who's like, and she's hanging out with some young kids like in the carnival episode and stuff like that. Like, there is this seed that they planted where they could have done. And if they were doing like the Skins version of Euphoria, season three and season four would be the Gia and her friends season, which is like, how do you let go of Sidney Sweeney and Jacob Lorty?

29:48And Zendaya, that's the problem. And then if it were the Friday Night Lights model, you would keep those older characters outside of high school, but you would still follow Gia and her friends and try to sort of blend in the younger characters into this. and you get your like Luke Cafferty's or your Jess's or your Becky's, et cetera. May she live in infamy. I do think the difference in the thing that Friday Night Lights has working in its favor relative, something like Euphoria, in terms of that kind of handover, is it does make narrative sense that someone like Tim Riggins would just be kind of like stuck in this Dylan black hole a little bit.

30:26That he would have a hard time escaping the orbit in a way where if you wanted to continue telling the story of seasons one of two of Euphoria. You'd have to really tie yourself in knots to get there. Yeah, and it's just a way in which they were trying to make Tim connected to the high school characters. Yes. He's a coach now. He's around. I don't know. Is he having some questions? Don't ask too many questions. Let the fuck up be a fuck up is generally my policy on these things.

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34:19SoFi checking and savings offered through SoFi Bank N.A. Member FDIC. Terms apply. This is the most convincing teen slash least convincing teen question, which we asked about Skins, a show full of actual teenagers. Yes. Not so the case here. No, it is not. Who is your most convincing teen in the pilot episode? I do think it's Jesse Plemons. Yes. In part because he is legitimately one of the youngest members of the cast. I would also say Amy Teagarden, who was 16. Yeah. Julie and Leandry, I agree. 18 and 16 year old actors here. Landry in particular. And maybe it's just like the t-shirt with the long sleeve shirt underneath, like big Ethan Embry energy coming from Landry here.

34:58Well, you're speaking my language now. It's really not an accident how you got in the Landry pipeline. But there is an awkwardness to him that I think is deeply recognizable. And especially like, you know, whatever you may make or judge in Tim Riggins, like he is a confident, self-assured, like warrior poet in this episode compared to Landry. And, you know, Street's obviously a Boy Scout, but is like a senior, more polished, more put together until the moment his whole life kind of falls apart. So it's like all these other characters feel and look quite older. But Landry does, there is something about him that is so nervous and anxious and unsure, maybe except when he's talking about Crucifictorious, that is just like very teenage and convincingly so.

35:37Christian Speed Metal Band. They dropped in the first episode, Crucifictorious Forever. Why don't I have a Crucifictorious shirt? We should get some. I guarantee you they're available. Oh, I know they are. Okay. It's just the color scheme. Like, I like the design of the Crucifictorious shirt. But the color scheme is kind of like a, it's like a Christmas green and red for some reason. I'm sure you can get a black shirt in a metal tradition. Maybe because of Jesus. Okay. Scott Porter was 27. You know, Christmas straight to Jesus. That must be the reason for the color scheme. Crucifictorious. I'm with you.

36:10Jesus is ever present in their mind. Okay. I hate to be the one, spoiler alert, that's not when he gets crucified. What? You know, it's crazy. Not on his birthday? Maybe. Maybe we fudge the details. Okay. It's not even his birthday, Rob, to be honest with you. Okay. Scott Porter, who plays Jason Street, was 27 years old. Taylor Kitsch is 25. And Zach Guilford, to be honest, he's 24. He looks younger. He looks a little more teenage. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, it's Plumman's. And the Landry's, again, Landry fits into that. Those are the guys that I was friends with in high school, and that's who I relate to.

36:46And I love Landry forever. It's the best. Grandma Saracen being like, Matt, you need new friends. I'm like, Grandma, that's the only time you've ever been wrong. Grandma Saracen, you're a perfect person, but that's the only time you've ever been wrong about anything. It's such a funny line, though. Her introduction to this episode is really great. Oh, my God. She's perfect. She really is perfect. Yeah. I wonder how much of this casting stuff is sort of chain reaction, too, where it's like, I don't know the order of events in terms of who they found first. Oh, do they start with Scott Porter and they're like, ooh, let's cast around him?

37:12Yeah, if Scott Porter's best friend looks like he's 15, it would be really weird. And I think most crucially, I would say Taylor Kitch and Adrian Palicki. That's not what high schoolers look like. And it would be very weird if he was dating a girl who did look like what a high schooler looks like. So let's talk about this. So like one of the prompts I had was what do the episodes do to push the limits of the kinds of stories we see about teens on television? And other than that sort of like burden of expectation, the entire town's identity is riding on you. Yeah. I think it really just comes down to Tim Riggins waking up shirtless on the couch, surrounded by beer bottles.

37:46And then Adrian Pelicki as Tyra comes in and like lays on top of him wearing his shirt, you know, and that's just sort of like this is an ordinary. It's Tuesday morning or something like that for these these kids. Can I read a section from the New York Times review? This revealing sound cue comes when Tim Riggins, the hard living running back, wakes. Oh, he's a running back. Wakes up on a bachelor sofa where he's passed out, the sticky sound of his skin on the leather, as well as the creak of the furniture under his weight. This person was really feeling this metaphor. It reminds you of the role of leather in Texas, those tan hides that are native, of course, but also not especially comforting in the hot Texas weather, sleeping on it, sheetless scenes for young athlete in training, yet another act of stoicism or sacrifice, or possibly in Tim's case, just arrogant indifference, whatever it takes to play high school football.

38:33I just thought that was like a person really up their own ass in the moment. Shout out the New York Times. But there's a long and rich history of New York Times writers writing about Texas in exactly this fashion. So it's part of a great tradition. When I got to the role of leather in Texas, I was like, oh. Are you kidding me? Okay. But Tim Riggins shirtless on the couch, Tyra sandwiched on top of him, surrounded by so many bottles of Lone Star, was, is an indelible, what are the teens up to? You know, when the interviewer, this sort of like mockumentary format of this pilot episode is like, excuse me, Tim, I think I can smell alcohol in your breath.

39:11No, you don't. Absolutely not. What are you talking about? That's as far as it really feels like it gets inside of this episode in terms of like, what are the kids up to? They're drinking and having sex. Like, seems pretty tame compared to Euphoria. Yes. I mean, this episode has a lot on its mind and its heart in terms of what it wants to explore. And so it's like, we're going to throw out, you know, the empty beer cans. We're going to allude to like maybe there's some racism within the team. But really, we're trying to tell like the Jason Street and surrounding story here. It's not racism. Tim Riggins just hates Smash.

39:41Doesn't care if he's from Saudi Arabia. Honestly, you know what? As maybe racists go, I thought it was a compelling argument. But it's really just he could be from anywhere. But I legitimately hate this man. And I'm telling the local news about it. Okay. Rob co-signs Tim Riggins. Not what I said. Comments about Smash. Got it. Okay. Can I read you another line from the New York Times? This is in regards to season two. This is a dancing around the moment that we talked about in season two that is wildly unpopular. But this is in terms of like capturing what the teen depiction on Friday Night Lights was like.

40:16If Friday Night Lights hadn't been inspired by the fascination with a Southern fascination with college football, it would be easy to imagine that it had been born somewhere on the outskirts of Marseille. So committed is it to divorcing images of adolescent sexuality from standard American anxiety narratives. The teenagers on front-end lights, as we are reminded this season, jump freely in and out of one another's bedroom windows to consort. There are no back seats or back alleys or broom closets forcing them to quarantine their erotic identities. And the show imagines that it is the denial of sexual urges, not the submission to them, that can carry dangerous consequences.

40:48So the whole thing that happens in season two kind of happens, this article argues, because Tyra does not want to have sex with a character. And I'm like, that's a stretch as far as I'm concerned. But like in terms of like bedroom window hopping, I don't I don't know that I think about Friday Night Lights that way. What's your experience with it? I think about it only in the sense that a lot of the parental figures, as we alluded to, are out of the picture for various reasons. And so it's very much like a generation of kids who are raised by their grandmother or their older brother or whoever may be around still.

41:25And so there is a freedom of movement that I think you do kind of need to explain and have baked into the show. It's also, again, like inextricably like if you are growing up in small town, probably anywhere, but especially Texas, like, yeah, there's a lot of freedom of movement. There's a lot of like gray area for you to navigate the world. I also think there's something about Adrian Pelicke's character, Tyra Collette, if you want to go to the Riverdale archetypes. I need to learn about it, apparently. You're Betty's and Veronica's, right? Is she more Betty or Veronica? She's a real Veronica, right?

41:58What does that mean? Lila Garrity is Betty, is the girl next door. Got it. And Veronica is like the sexy alternate option, right? And she is all over Smash, is all over Street, is all over Tim inside of the same episode, right? But Tyra is smart and cool and confident. And there are dimensionalities to these archetypes. All of the archetypes are here. Lila Garrity, good Christian girl cheerleader. But there's a dimension to her. Tim Riggins, bad boy, leather couch sleeper. But there's depth to them. Well, there's depth to that hair for sure. Absolutely. It's very important. It's very, very important.

42:35But I think of all the characters, Tyra as an archetype, like the sexually forward, wants attention, extremely hot blonde girl in the 2006 appropriate low rise jeans. like I've seen that character done so poorly and it has done so much better on this show in terms of what it has to say about young women and their sexuality and their power and their intelligence and what they think can get them attention and what they think can get them ahead in the world, you know? She winds up having one of the best arcs on the show and that's really saying something considering I think she's already a great character in season one.

43:16It's not like they had to rewrite or reinvent her. It's just she's on a journey like everyone else is and there's so much there to work with from the jump. Right. That they take her to some really compelling places. Something I wanted to mention, this just goes back to the parent thing. This is something I, we try not to like discuss these shows before we get on the pod, but I could not resist texting you last night. Because when, in the final moments of the episode, when they're still playing the game and we keep cutting to Minka Kelly as Lila Garrity in her like perky little cheerleader ponytail crying in the hallway of the hospital.

43:49then we come back to the game and her dad buddy garrity is there like cheering for the panthers not with his daughter at the hospital but still at the game and that is buddy garrity through and through one of my favorite tv characters of all time buddy garrity i i just think that's a perfect crystallization of what you're talking about is like buddy garrity uh you know a business leader in the community. We are interested in his car dealership inside of this episode. There are church functions. There are all these things. He and his wife have this huge house. Lila has siblings. She's a member of the Boosters, you know, et cetera.

44:28All of this. And he's just not there for his daughter at all. Remotely. You have those kinds of fully articulated characters in hand from episode one. You're already dropping iconic lines here in the first episode. And then you have a fully complete dramatic arc that leaves you in shambles by the end of it. Right. It's just hard to do TV better than that. And I think they managed to build on all of those things so well, especially in season one. But it really is like a force of nature, this episode. Did your Friday Night Lights fandom change or was it impact the way that you watch television at all?

45:04You talk about evangelizing it, sort of trying to get people in your life to watch it, to prevent it from cancelization. Is that the first time you like, Like, I remember signing a position to keep my so-called life on air. Okay. That is something that I did. Did it change? Were you on, like, message boards? Were you reading recaps? What was your level of involvement? Definitely reading recaps. Definitely, like, I literally had, like, the Dylan Panthers P logo on the rear view window of my car. Like, I was out here, like, trying to get people to watch the show. Yeah, you were, like, clear eyes, full hearts.

45:35And I do think, to your point, you just have a very particular kind of relationship to those shows. the ones that you had to push for, that you had to fight for, that you were trying to get people to be on your side about and that had that like quality of if someone you did find someone who loved it. It's like we share a fundamental thing about our tastes in something. Right. And it's not fully defining, but it is it is, you know, an olive branch to another human being. It is like a way of reaching out in the world and seeing somebody who's a little bit like you. And I think this is one of those shows like that for me where I was online about it.

46:04But to me, it was more like trying to understand why this, why this was the kind of show you had to fight for, why this was one of those shows that was like always on the chopping block, even when it was relatively well, like received and successful. Right. What was it about something that should like football is one of the most popular things in America. Why is a football show that has these performances and this kind of production value and the explosions in the sky, part of this where it's like, You have these high soaring visual and audio references, but also this really grounded premise. And you're just in suspended animation between those things at all times.

46:40Why am I having to sell this? I had a really, watching this episode last night, I had such a visceral reaction to the explosion of this guy. That score is immediately identifiable. When you hear it and you hear imitators of it, it is distinctive. They use the same outro music for the closing credits for every episode. And as soon as it hit, it just like did something to me. And which I was not expecting. It really surprised me. I was on the message boards. I was reading recaps. And the reason I brought that up is this was like the real television without pity era. And I don't know if you were involved.

47:22Dabbled. Yeah. But the recappers, the television without pity used to call Mindy Tyra's sister, Olsys. like Ole Miss, but they called her Ole Sis. And I just think about that all the time as one of the like top tier recapper nicknames for a character of all time. Yeah. It's really an important part of the craft. If you're going to recap these shows, you have to find ways to entertain yourselves. And honestly, it's a cutesy little nickname more than anything. Did anything surprise you watching this pilot? You said you've seen it a million times. Was there anything that like leapt out to you? Like, no, I can close my eyes of an evening and just replay it on the back of my eyelids.

47:58I think it's mostly that all these years later and all these watches later, it still has that power and that pull. And the emotional heft of this episode is really breathtaking. And I mean that in kind of a literal sense too, right? It's like your course over watching it. You know all the beats, you know all the characters, you know exactly what's coming. And yet it's undeniable in the way it pulls it off. And that shouldn't feel like a surprise to me at this point, but kind of consistently does every time I turn it back on. I think one of the miracles of this episode is the way in which these families are so, you know specifically I will say uh the Taylors and the Saracen household yeah and in the way in which this these just feel like real family yes when Eric and Julie and Tammy are having a conversation all overlapping on top of each other where Julie is talking about how Moby like real New York Times writer style talking about how Moby Dick represents the town don't spend too long on the smash comparison don't worry about it yeah really don't worry about it yike um eric uh trying to watch game tape while also kind of talking to his daughter while his wife will not stop talking yeah about the new house that she wants to live in and when he says to her like relent you know or just like and and also this is this is the thing i love about watching the pilot of a show that you've watched a million times the number of images from this pilot that are in the opening credits forever yeah like him on the couch like looking over at Julie and sort of like winking at her or like Tammy coming up behind him while he's sitting at the office you know or her in the kitchen you know dancing away like his and hers closets like it's Friday Night Lights iconography and to your point we get a clear eyes full hearts can't lose in this opening which if you ask people on the street who've never seen Friday Night Lights of a certain age they can probably tell you clear eyes full hearts can't lose because we're annoying as hell about it and I'm glad that we were alright what else do you want to say about this the show.

49:57Well, do you want to get into, I mean, the incredible at the high end cast and what they went on to do and maybe some of the disappointments therein on some of our favorites as well? Right. So the clear breakout, early breakout of the show was Taylor Kitsch as Tim Riggins. Right. And everyone's like, oh, my God, who is this Texan? Heathcliff, blah, blah, blah. So broody, the long hair, the shirtlessness, the warrior poetess to tease Rob Mahoneyism. And then Hollywood really tried to make Fetch happen with Taylor Kitsch. What's your favorite version? I mean, make Kitsch happen was right there. Sorry.

50:30You're the best. Sorry. I'm sorry to line edit you, but you know, it's a collaborative medium. You're always punching up my work and that's fine. What in his early filmography would you like to shout out here? I mean, it's not good. It just never happened. It never happened in a way that I'm still trying to figure out a little bit. I do think there is something so magical about Tim Riggins as a character that is hard to escape. I also think to a certain degree, and I think about this a lot when I think about Zach Guilford, is like a lot of these characters were modeled to just the kind of the person.

51:04I'm not saying that like Taylor Kitsch is Tim Riggins, but there are ways in which his natural state is Riggins-y. Right. And certainly Zach Guilford. Yes. The aw shucksiness a little bit. Yeah, does not have a ton of range that I've seen except for Midnight Mass, which you will watch eventually. like outside. I was really hoping that Zach Gilford would like really go some places and it has not yet really, really happened for him. But for Taylor Kitsch, Gambit in X-Men Origins Wolverine, really tough. Gambit, my number one guy and they cast him Riggins and it was an absolute shitshow nightmare.

51:39It's really good headshot casting. It's like, yeah, that guy looks like Gambit. Kind of. I mean, I could see it. Maybe not your Gambit. No, hashtag not my Gambit. I know you have a very specific association to animated Gambit. Hashtag not my Gambit, all right? Battleship, which I watched for the first time during COVID and is one of the funniest experiences of my entire life. It's quite something. Rihanna, who knew? It's a lot. And then, of course, John Cotta. I mean, in 2012, he does Battleship, John Carter, and Savages. And it's just sort of like a, this isn't happening. And it was supposed to be.

52:07I would say especially John Carter, right? That's the big vehicle. That's the big gamble. Yeah. I think you're right that responding to the magnetism of Tim Riggins, you feel like maybe something should happen for him. But I also really don't know that he does a lot beyond it. And I think maybe the best role I've seen him in, I've heard good things actually about his performance in Waco, where I think he's drafting off a similar charisma. Sure. As like a dirty cop in 21 Bridges. I think he's pretty good, but it's a very small part. Okay. That's about the best I can do. And you have not seen True Detective season two.

52:38I genuinely tried. It's tough. Yeah. It's not for me. I couldn't even see it through, to be honest with you. So then the real, like, honest-to-goodness, slow-burn breakouts of this are Jesse Plemons, who goes from this to do Breaking Bad and then goes from Breaking Bad to becoming one of our great movie actors. Yes. Full stop. One of my favorite people to ever watch on screen. Not a single argument from me. And it's, like, as good showing up and carrying half of Begonia as he is, like, for one scene in Civil War. Yeah. And he can just do anything. That Civil War scene. and then the Oscar winner I'm so delighted to announce is Michael B.

53:19Jordan who shows up later in the series on the East Dillon team post the wire we should know yeah this isn't the full breakout and like identifiable moment where's the boy where's Wallace like exactly he's on Friday Night Live this is an elevation into a different kind of teen stardom he was on soap operas also before this as was a lot of the cast of Friday Night Live we don't cover that on this show but yeah he was on the wire uh incredible briefly incredibly memorably on the wire and then in a more adult like he's a kid on the wire and he's like you know a young adult here yeah on front of lights has some great tragic dad daddy issue stuff eric taylor stepping in incredible stuff a great love triangle uh with jess and landry and um it's just it's great stuff and then like jason kidoms likes him so much he puts him on parenthood he's great on parenthood so good and that theater system is quite strong in terms of random friday night lights people who show up on parenthood and rightly so that's that's the point you know if you're going to run your own mini hollywood empire it's true what are you doing it for us we love it but then like you know michael b jordan he does fruitvale station he does creed he does black panther but they're really like there really was a sense for a little a minute where it's just sort of like he's not echeloning up to the exact level that we really feel like Michael B.

54:40Jordan should be. Is he falling too much into like Tom Clancy action fringed him as opposed to superstardom? It's a great question. And then comes sinners. And it's just like questions answered. We're on a different level altogether and we're enjoying ourselves so much. Just as importantly for freaks like us, seeing him and Jesse Plemons point to each other at the Oscars. Very important. It means something to us. It really does. I told you the story about how I was at this FX Emmy party the year that they that Jesse Plemons was on Fargo and Connie Britton was on American Crime Story and like like a real crew.

55:13And I never do this at like a work function. I took a blurry, very distant photo of Connie Britton talking to Jesse Plemons because it was very important to me to see it. It was like. Well, as we discussed on the Skins pod, some people are taking blurry camera phone images of like random high school girls and gawking on them at them on a train. Here you are not the same. Friday Night Lights reunion. Friday Night Lights reunion across the room. It's very important to me. If John Travolta was there, who cares? But if you zoom in just enough, you can see that this looks like Connie Britton's hair.

55:42Two gingers are talking to each other. It's very important. A momentous of it. Anything else you want to talk about? Anyone else in the cast that you really expected to sort of like go somewhere and didn't? Yeah, I think if you told me to pick off of season five, like who are the people really going to pop? Michael B would have been a great and obvious answer, I think. Taylor Kitsch, clearly a lot of people, even at that point, were still kind of banking on and thinking, okay, he could be something. I think Adrienne Palicki, I really thought was going to have a career and she has of a kind I mean doing stuff like the Orville I think she's actually quite good in John Wick in the first John Wick like that's what I wanted her to do was she is if she had an even bigger role in that John Wick but she's like one of my favorite parts of her in John Wick and like she deserved her own action franchise yes she also showed up on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

56:28like you know they kept trying to make that happen Jomie's not here we don't have to pretend that Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. I did watch it. I also watched it. Okay. It was not good. Okay. But you know, this is also the power of a show like this is again, someone is advocating for Friday night lights. I was trying to follow the cast into these other projects and believe wholeheartedly that she could be good on agents of shield that know that you could watch. Like I'm trying to think of even what the best, best compass otherwise, because it really is like you follow Taylor kitchen to one movie and you're like, Oh no, this is not going the way that I hoped it would.

56:59But Adrian Plicky's really got something as Tyra. And I don't think it's something she's ever fully recaptured in her career. And it's hard not to think that the real moment that felt like something and then died on the vine is that like dead on arrival Wonder Woman pilot that she shot. Where she's, again, black hair, Adrian Palicki. I don't like we're kind of missing something fundamental there. But she's a brunette sometimes on Friday Night Lights. It's true. But I don't know. Something about that Diana Shade just like did not quite work for her. speaking of dc uh comics we should on the eve of lanterns talk briefly about kyle chandler right it's not the same in terms of like young talent blah blah but um he's had an interesting friday at light like post friday at light's career in the same way that like sort of brian cranston uh has and stuff like that john ham has like really kind of struggled in a way to break out of eric taylor because like i would say specifically cranston and and chandler there was a real effort to sort of put them in a lot of like movies for adults and kyle chandler for a while was showing up as like guy who sits behind a desk in a show about like if there's an agent in your story he has played it yeah exactly so like he's he's the boss of the agents right and he's going to be real fussed and his hair is going to show all the full range of his emotions you and i both have talked about early edition and i really am still like mystified the fact that you ever watched early edition because you were way too young well like it's an adult show But Kyle Chandler was on Early Edition for several seasons.

58:28Please just Google the premise of that show. I think you need to explain it on this podcast. Okay, listen. If you're not familiar, you got to get familiar. Here's the deal of Early Edition. This is pre-Front Night Lights. What if you got the newspaper, remember newspapers? What if you got the newspaper delivered to your door with a mystical cat one day early? Yeah, tomorrow's news today. And you and your pal Fisher Stevens could prevent terrible things from happening. you have one day to fix whatever truck is going to crash or et cetera, et cetera, that you read about in the one day early newspaper.

59:01And that's the premise of four seasons of a CBS show called Early Edition. And it rips. It really rules. It's really good. What's the equivalent? Like your Instagram feed in 2026 is a day ahead? Oh, tough. I don't know what that gets you. Well, we don't like your Apple curated news feed, I guess. I guess. I don't know how people read news anymore. They don't. That's the spoiler alert. Guess what? I got to find out that like the latest talks with Iran failed again a day in advance. I'm really benefiting from that information. Did the Supreme Court disappoint me again? Wow. What a surprise. What are we going to do with it?

59:31But we've been waiting for Kyle Chandler to have like a real thing since Friday Night Lights, his four episode arc on Grey's Anatomy aside. And I would say Lanterns is our great hope. We're really excited for it. Well, he is in multiple Godzillas. So I don't want you to just like poo-poo that. You can't keep bringing up Godzilla movies. Then these actors need to stop being in Godzilla movies. like that's not my fault I do think he's like he's awesome in Wolf of Wall Street that is a that is a great smaller dose deployment you know what he's awesome in? what's that? Game Night a perfect movie everyone is awesome in Game Night with Jesse Plemons there are look for for the Friday Night Lights heads out there a lot of random reunions happening among this cast in a way that I'm not so naive to think it's like one actor vouching for another but it's a bit of serendipity I can appreciate yeah if you could recommend people who like Friday Night Lights watch one thing.

1:00:24That one of these people has been in? Good Lord. I mean, here's the thing. Some of them are obvious, right? Like you don't need me to recommend White Lotus to you. What you do need me to recommend to you is Speed Racer. And Scott Porter pops up in Speed Racer. Your Speed Racer agenda. It's really tough for me to handle. It's very strong. It's very important. Speed Racer, a movie so dazzling visually that it was demanded to be re-released in 4K in theaters. And guess what? The gods listened. Racer X listened himself and put it back in theaters for us. I'll say for good time, try Manchester by the sea.

1:01:00Just kidding. I would say Midnight Mass is what I would recommend or Game Night if you haven't seen it. Those are two of my all-time faves. I also don't want to gloss over Minka Kelly popping up in Euphoria specifically. Because... Kind of barely. Kind of barely, but quite memorably and quite well. Lila never my favorite character on Friday Night Lights Minka Kelly is just kind of like trying to find her place into this story for a lot of these seasons gets lost in the shuffle is tasked with some very annoying storylines and like I don't know Christian boyfriends there's a lot happening but then she shows up on Euphoria and I'm like this is like has real juice there's some like real sizzle here in terms of yes granted she is parachuting into scenes with Alexa Demi so it's like this works on a level that's gonna work for me Rob Katnipp yeah but I do think she was very good in it and very good in a way that I never would have expected for her so I would love to see more of that version of Minka Kelly if that's something she can dabble in alright well that has been us barely touching honestly on the depths of our Friday Night Lights fandom well we touched God this time though we sure did thanks to Devin Aldo thanks to Jacob Cornette thank you to everyone here at Sycamore Studios thank you to Kai Grady if you did anything on this show I don't know probably always I hope so another Texas boy.

1:02:16Thanks for having a honey. Thank you, Joe. Texas forever. Texas forever. Hook them, et cetera, et cetera. Bye.

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