Friday Night Lights

I don't know how many of you watch the show Friday Night Lights on, yes, Friday night. The show doesn't get good ratings. That may be because the premise is high school football in Texas, but the show features much more than football and delves into the lives of the characters and is one of the more thought provoking shows on network TV.

On last Friday's show, it featured a hot button topic that is often too controvesial for network TV, but one that women can relate to. You can probably find the show online if you wish. Anyway, this high school sophomore got pregnant doing it the first time with a boy she barely knows. She's the mother of a single bartender who had her when she was a teen-ager.

The show then examines whether or not she should get an abortion. I don't want to get into a debate on that subject, but the show points out how difficult this situation is for a teen with no money and not much of a support group. The abortion debate gets so heated that it is sometimes easy to forget how much anguish is involved for a teen facing this crisis.

The same show deals with a football player who needs $4000 to get his crackhead mother into rehab and resorts to the gang he was trying to get away from for the money and gets sucked back in.

Real life sometimes isn't easy and the show points that out while dealing with sensitive issues. Yet it get clobbered in the ratings by shows like American Idol. Go figure.

FD