In my third year of veterinary school, I moved out with two other girls in my class to a little one-level house a short drive away from campus. We each had our own rooms and did our best to share the cooking and the chores during regular semesters. We dubbed our humble abode "The MooseVet House" since we were all Canadian and enjoyed the slightly lower costs of living that came with sharing utilities as well as (mostly) each other's company.

One of the first things we were excited about was the little library located close to the local mall, only about a five to ten minute drive from our house. We all got library cards, pleased at the prospect of being able to indulge in various media to help us unwind between all the studying, especially since my housemates had pretty much made it through the DVD collection I left behind during my short trip home for the holidays. While we buzzed around, the DVD box for an American TV drama caught my eye. I'd heard good things about the show, and what did I have to lose, really? If I didn't like it, we could just return it, no harm done. I showed it to one of my housemates who was willing to give it a try, and the evening's plans were set.

Honestly, I don't think either of us really expected to fall so hard for this show.
 

I walked into this pretty much only knowing that it was about football and it starred Kyle Chandler. I have never been a huge sports enthusiast to begin with, and football was one of the sports I had zero knowledge or interest in, so it was mostly Kyle Chandler's presence that pulled me in since I'd found him so charming in Early Edition when I was a kid who just wanted to see a cat deliver a newspaper. I also had very little interest in small-town American life, having grown up in a reasonably metropolitan Canadian city. I wasn't even really that interested in teen drama, which the brooding portraits of the young and good-looking cast seemed to promise. Friday Night Lights was all of that, but somehow it was also so much more.

As anyone may have easily deduced, the show revolves around a high school football team in the small town of Dillon, Texas. It's an ensemble show with the stoic yet passionate Coach Eric Taylor and his amazing, compassionate, strong-willed wife Tami Taylor at the center of it all. It's about the town they live in, the young people they help to mold and guide, the ups-and-downs of small-town life, of loving the community whose beating heart bleeds for this football team and each other, of appreciating your roots and the sacrifices of your family but still wanting to escape the smallness of it all. There are so many amazing characters who get knocked down, who make bad decisions, who are making the best of their situations, who grow beyond the stifling environment they're brought up in, or who get trapped by their circumstances. It's heartwarming, it's sometimes devastating, but it always feels like an honest portrayal of these people in this particular town. 

While the various plots revolving around the football team and the town of Dillon are often very engaging, to me the real draw are all the relationships between the various characters, as bonds are made and broken and mended the way they are in life. Things are often complicated between characters, but also sometimes they're as simple as the unquestionable fact that there is real connection and love in these families and friendships. Coach and Tami Taylor probably have one of the best portrayals of marriage in media, where they both maintain their individual motivations while always coming together as a team. Sometimes there's fighting, sometimes there's sacrifice, and sometimes there's compromise. But there is always understanding and there is always love. I could go on and on about the personalities that populate this town, and my housemate and I used to joke that if I was the Saracen then she was the Riggins, even though she drunkenly came into my room once to declare that she was also a bit of a Saracen herself (which is a real Riggins-move, but I digress!) I could go on forever about the various characters and their arcs, but it's best experienced first-hand.

The one major caveat about the show is how uneven it can be at times. While the second season was always a bit shaky due to various decisions made by the writers to probably try and help their ratings, there was one particular plot-line that my housemate and I actively hated and were only too happy when they finally just shoved it under a rug, never to be addressed again. And that is something that happened a lot in this show. New characters that seemed to hold some importance to our regular cast and their journeys would disappear between seasons, huge changes would occur with barely any exposition to explain how we got from Point A to Point B, and entire plot-lines would just drop into nothingness. Sure, some of these changes were probably for the betterment of the show, but it was rare that we would start a new season and not be absolutely flummoxed by all the new adjustments we'd have to make in the first few episodes.

Sure, the various hiccups and bumps may prevent it from being the "perfect" show, but it somehow doesn't really detract from the overall experience, especially when shared with someone. My housemate and I looked forward to our evenings where we took an hour's break from studying to indulge in an episode - sometimes with wine, sometimes not. We laughed and cried over these characters and their lives. We dreamed of growing up to be as wonderfully strong and steady as Tami Taylor. We took the same exams in different settings and would always text each other "Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can't Lose!" as encouragement.

I still don't care much for football and I still see very little charm in small-town life, but I will always absolutely love this show.

 

 

And then came Signal.