Friday Night Lights

TV Guide's Matt Roush fielded a couple of questions and opined on the future of Friday Night Lights in his recent column. Have at it ...

Q: So explain this to me one more time: How is Friday Night Lights moving to DirecTV in Season Three (just until January or whenever) supposed to help ratings? Don't DirectTV customers already get NBC, in which case DirectTV customers have already been exposed to Friday Night Lights? And don't Nielsen ratings take satellite TV watchers into account? How much can 13 episodes really help in saving a show? And if the show was originally an NBC show, why doesn't NBC air it first and then DirectTV? I thought I understood everything that was going on with this scenario, but I guess not.

Plus, I heard Ben Silverman (the one who wasn't a fan of Friday Night Lights) is leaving or stepped down from NBC — is that just a rumor? Sorry for all the questions, but I began rewatching Season One of FNL last night and was reminded (because it's been so long since I last saw an episode) how good this show really is and how much I love it.

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Wondering what's to come in the new season of Friday Night Lights? Michael Ausiello of Entertainment Weekly offers the following tidbit ...

Q: Have you forgotten about a little show called Friday Night Lights?

A: Who do you think I am, an Emmy voter? Anyway, if I'm interpreting your passive-aggressive dig correctly, you're hungry for something on Friday Night Lights. Well, per my on-set spy, the show has recently shot several flashback sequences that will help fill in the considerable gap between Season 2 and 3. For starters, we'll see first-hand how the Panthers ended their season and what led to Smash's choice of colleges.

Life is going well for the cast in Austin as we await Season 3. E! Online's Kristin Dos Santos has the skinny from the Friday Night Lights set.

Q: I need to know what's coming up for my Friday Night Lights folks, especially Julie-Matt and Tim-Lyla!
A: As you read this, I am actually in Austin, Texas, at Casa de Taylor, stalking and interviewing cast members. I just got a two-step lesson from Adrianne Palicki (no joke, and awesome, and she even let me be the girl) and heard about her hot new cowboy boyfriend Cash (Zach Roerig, meeting him later), and even met Matt Saracen's mom!

More on this as it develops ...

Friday Night Lights' Scott Porter has been rumored for a new role on ABC's Brothers & Sisters. Since he's being phased out of Friday Night Lights, we can think of nothing better. Here are five reasons why:

1. The character of Ryan - the long-lost Walker child - is an all-American JFK Jr. type. In other words, a Scott Porter type.

2. Friday Night Lights' decision to sideline Porter after four episodes this season leaves the leading man free to tackle another role.

3. There's nothing Scott Porter can't do. Drama? Comedy? Done and done.

4. There's nothing that Porter can't do well. Brilliantly, in fact. You can almost forgive him for being so impossibly handsome. (I said almost.)

5. On top of it all, Porter's one of the good guys - not just a class act but also a bona fide sweetheart. What more can we say?

We understand that his character has to leave Friday Night Lights at some point. But for a new show, how can you not hire this man!?

Landry Clarke is about to have some new competition, according to Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello.

Friday Night Lights has tapped former As the World Turns troublemaker Zach Roerig to join the cast of the critically acclaimed show as Cash, a local rodeo star who does his best to lasso Adrianne Palicki's Tyra Collette.

As executive producer Jason Katims teased back in July, Cash will appear just as Tyra's romance with Landry is cooling off.

"Tyra in the past eight months has [realized] that, while she loves Landry, she kind of feels like he's not really The Guy," he said.

"So it becomes a story about 'Are they going to be able to be friends? And will Landry be able to accept that?'"

The newest addition to the Friday Night Lights roster, D.W. Moffett talks about his role and his few days of filming in his TVGuide blog ...

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Long time no blog but thought I'd come over here and talk to you about a little show called Friday Night Lights. Heard of it? Yeah. I thought so.

I've been cast for a multi-episode story arc in Season 3 of this show and I'm really excited about it. Couldn't be happier. The show has a lot going for it. Critics love it. Fans are nearly as awesome as the best fans in the world (Go Bears!) and the storylines are off the charts. Really well done.

So yes. I'm here in Austin, Texas, and I'm filming the opening episodes and it's been great. You can't always say that when you walk onto a film or television set you know, but here it's true. Everyone on the cast is really nice and welcoming and I've had a lot of fun already.

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There's something Friday Night Lights' Matt Saracen wants. Bad. To get it, he'll have to go through the woman who brought him into the world.

And playing the long-estranged mom of Matt (Zach Gilford) will be Kim Dickens, a.k.a. Deadwood's Joanie Stubbs, TV Guide reveals.

To date, not much has been revealed about Matt's never-seen mom.

He's led folks to believe she was far removed from his world, the truth is that she's been much closer — geographically — than thought.

That alone speaks volumes about the tension between the two when Matt Saracen finally comes knocking on her door - with a purpose.

Dickens — who will also be familiar to Lost fans from her role as Sawyer's "long con," Cassidy Phillips — first appears as Shelby Saracen in episode two of Season 3, which kicks off October 1 on DirecTV.

Friday Night Lights will feature a pair of new faces when it returns in the fall: Janine Turner (Northern Exposure) and D.W. Moffett (Life Is Wild, Hidden Palms) have been cast in recurring roles of Katie and Joe McCoy.

The affluent McCoys move to Dillon from Dallas, with their (as-yet-uncast) teen son in tow. The kid is a high school freshman with major football skills who will be fancied by many as the new Jason Street.

That, as you can imagine, will put even more pressure on Dillon's current QB-1 Matt Saracen. Poor Matt Saracen. His life is never far from mucho drama, be it with the ladies, his family, or football.

Katie and Joe will be introduced in the first two episodes of the third season, which premieres October 1 on DirecTV. NBC then unspools new Friday Night Lights episodes starting in early 2009.

Kyle Chandler was once the star of Early Edition.

For those who don't recall, it was about a guy who, for reasons completely unknown, gets tomorrow's newspaper on his doorstep today. So he's got 24 hours to try and prevent whatever disaster he reads about.

When the L.A. Daily News spoke with Chandler - now the star of Friday Night Lights - the subject of Early Edition came up as well.

"That was a fun show," he said. "I've been very fortunate, no doubt about that. I went four years on that."

Kyle Chandler is hopeful that the critically acclaimed but low-rated Friday Night Lights runs at least that long.

As Eric Taylor, coach of the high school football team in fictional Dillon, Texas, he heads a show that's about a lot more than football and uses its small-town backdrop to dramatize issues facing Middle America.

It was in danger of being axed after each of its two seasons but managed to weather so-so ratings and a writers strike to return in the fall - first on DirectTV, then rebroadcast on NBC in early 2009.

"To have this opportunity with the third season, I'm very excited for it," Chandler said. "I think the show will be as strong as ever. I think it's a new opportunity. As long as they keep it on the air."Continue Reading...

What's coming up in Friday Night Lights' Season Three? We've already discussed this in great detail - but more spoilers are emerging.

Michael Ausiello of Entertainment Weekly has some some interesting, new pieces of information on the Friday Night Lights spoiler front ...

Q: Is Lyla's father still a part of Friday Night Lights?

A: Yep, Buddy's back, and, as you might expect, he's none too pleased that Lyla and Tim are officially boyfriend and girlfriend.

Q: I heard we're going to meet Matt's mother on Friday Night Lights. Do you know anything else about that?

A: She's a lot closer to Matt Saracen than we were led to believe, at least geographically. She works as a hairdresser in a nearby town!

Q: Is Friday Night Lights really splitting Tyra and Landry up?

A: If it's any comfort, Jesse Plemons said at a recent press event that he doesn't think the breakup will hold:

"If I know the writers, they'll end up together at some point... I think they're just adding some drama. This is Friday Night Lights."

The man makes a point.