This blog post is going to come across as rambling, and that’s fine. That IS part of the name of the blog, of course.
While watching Doctor Who today (brilliant show; I plan on writing a blog post about it soon; how soon, I haven’t decided yet. It WILL happen, though), I started thinking about Friday Night Lights. I know that’s a bit confusing, but stick with me…this is going somewhere.
I watched the Series Five episode entitled “Vincent and the Doctor,” and it was about the Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith) and his companion Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) traveling to meet Vincent Van Gogh (Tony Curran).
The story of the episode is immaterial, but I mention it to mention a Facebook conversation I had with my friend Nina Perez (brilliant author; both The Twin Prophecies and Blog it Out, Bitch! are available at Amazon). She asked where I was in Doctor Who, and I told her I had planned to watch three episodes, the latter of which was Vincent and the Doctor. She mentioned that she cried at that episode, and that got my curiosity piqued. I went to watch it, and whereas I didn’t cry, it made me think about the last time a form of entertainment made me cry.
That was an episode of Friday Night Lights.
It was the episode where Matt Saracen’s dad died, and he had to speak at his funeral. The episode was gutwrenching to watch, and I couldn’t help but to cry at the end. It was rough to see Saracen go through all of the stages of grief in such a compressed amount of time. That, and the ending scene got me, too. But, even still…this isn’t about that episode. It’s honestly not about any episode in particular. It’s more about the series as a whole.
But, in order to explain it properly, I have to explain “Always,” the series finale. At the end of the episode, the East Dillon Lions are in the Texas State Championship Game, and they have one more drive left to finish it off. Led by versatile quarterback Vincent Howard (Michael B. Jordan), the Lions make one last grasp for the end zone. Howard drops back to pass, throws a bomb downfield, and…the scene goes black Now, at this point, most fans are wondering what happened? Did the Lions win? Did they lose? What? Well, the answer is mentioned (they did win), but it’s done in such a subtle way that you’ll miss it if you blink.
This ending originally confused me, but after a while, I began to get it. The beauty of Friday Night Lights was never the football. Sure, it was a part of the series, but it never was the series itself. It was always the people. At its core, Friday Night Lights was about life, and how it goes on, no matter what. If you watch it, you see that they revisit characters from the very first episode on to the last, and everyone gets some form of closure. Well…not quite everyone, but that’s neither here nor there. What you see is, no matter what happens in one facet of the universe, life goes on. That was a brilliant way to make the show more organic, and that was a brilliant way to wrap up five seasons of great television.
So, I wrap up this post by saying this: no matter what happens in one facet of your life, don’t give up hope. Life does go on.
Clear Eyes. Full Hearts. Can’t Lose.