Bigger underdogs than the Giants -- which means there's always hope
02/08/08 10:02 AM
By ED BARK
Critical acclaim remains high for NBC's Friday Night Lights, which won a prestigious Peabody Award last year.
Ratings are still a big downer, though, which puts the Austin-made series in deep limbo after its Friday, Feb. 8th episode, fittingly subtitled "May the Best Man Win." That exhausts the second-season supply of 15 episodes made before the writers' strike halted production late last year.
There's a fair chance the walkout will come to an end next week, which would give Lights a chance to gear up for a handful of new episodes before the TV season officially ends in May. But there's just as good a chance that NBC will pull the plug and punt the show into its cancellation bin.
The Peacock has given Lights a fair shot in the face of a season-long slump in the prime-time Nielsens. Last Friday's episode drew just 5.6 million viewers nationally to rank 50th among all prime-time programs. And its ratings performance generally has been even worse in football-crazy Dallas-Fort Worth.
There's always a "Hail Mary" hope, though. Lights easily is NBC's highest-quality drama series, and that's not entirely lost on the network. So we'll see if the stars somehow align. If not, it's been a pleasure to be among the relatively few who never miss an episode of Friday Night Lights and its fractious Dillon Panthers. They always came to play.