After being unable to make it through more than a few minutes of any of previous episodes of the critically acclaimed Friday Nights Light's hour drama on NBC - I sat through the three back to back episodes last night while working at my desk. And... possibly... there were... maybe... 10 minutes out of the combined three hours that managed to in any way capture my interest.
Which left me puzzled. It has gotten excellent reviews from many critics and the backdrop of a small Western town - and I spent much of my time for 10 years in such towns and have been around them my entire life - so why do I find this series so totally and completely... unwatchable?
Looking back at the three hours last night - I don't think I can recall a single moment where anything - on any level - other than the scenes of the elders in the black church scenes, which felt dead-on - felt real for me.
There was zero feeling of any sense of place of any kind to me and none of the younger characters felt like any real people I have ever known - much less like kids from a small Western town. And when I tried to recollect who they did remind me of - to my surprise - it was the characters of Seinfeld - but without the humor!
All the joy of life has been sucked out of them and all they ever do is sit around and bitch and complain and talk and talk about life as if they were bunch old timers hanging out, waiting for death at Zabar's on the Upper West Side of New York.
So here's my suggestion - take the exact same characters, very slightly rewrite the dialogue, change the sport to basketball, add a laugh track and move them to Manhattan.
It'll be a guaranteed hit!
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