Canceled 'Friday Night Lights' gets respect at Emmys Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertai
"Friday Night Lights" finally got some respect from the Emmys Sunday night, and if that sounds like too little, too late for a show that ended its run last spring, it's not.
You can ask, among others, the guy who created it, Peter Berg. He thinks "Friday Night Lights" has resonated a whole lot further than its Neilsen ratings numbers would suggest, and that it will resonate even more in 10 or 20 years.
"It's just one of those shows that captures a story in a timeless way," he said last month. "And I don't think the way its viewership has been measured has ever reflected the number of people it has really reached."
It's always been a running semi-gag among "FNL" fans that if the show had just been on cable, it would have been revered like "Mad Men" or "The Sopranos," because its core base of maybe 4-5 million fans would have made it a star.
When you're on a broadcast network, though, that number of viewers gets no one's attention.
So Sunday night's Emmy awards felt like an admission by the TV biz that for the last five seasons there's been this really good show, and we really ought to give it some kind of farewell salute.
Even then, of course, there were those who saw the show's major nominations - best drama, best actor for Kyle Chandler, best actress for Connie Britten - as mercy gestures, pats on the head.
That sense may account for the look on Chandler's face when it was announced he had won, beating the likes of Jon Hamm and Steve Buscemi from shows that did run on cable, had even smaller audiences and were almost universally revered.
If you'd told Chandler he'd just been cast in the lead role for a remake of "Gone With the Wind" and filming started in five minutes, he couldn't have looked more stunned.
Then there's also this: Chandler's win wasn't even the best Emmy news for "Friday Night Lights."
The best news was that Jason Katims won "best writing for a drama" - because as good as Chandler was, and as beautifully as Britten played his wife Tami, what set "Friday Night Lights" apart was how it painted the whole picture of life in a small Texas town.
The writing award said the TV biz noticed that.
If nothing else, "Friday Night Lights" was a study in perseverance.
It started on NBC, barely survived as a Friday night show for a second season, then was rescued by a deal where DirecTV and NBC shared production costs for three more, shorter seasons.
Through all that, it also never played like a show that felt it was on borrowed time or thin ice.
It treated its characters in more or less real time, so players graduated and were replaced with others. It found new, equally compelling stories for its second generation, integrating them with the characters who remained.
"We were incredibly lucky to have the freedom to tell the story the way we wanted to tell it," said Berg, who didn't have to add that this might have been trickier if it were a big hit.
But he also argues that it was a hit. By the time you added up the original viewers, the DirecTV viewers, the NBC viewers, the DVD viewers, the DVR viewers and the pass-along viewers, he said, "A whole lot of people watched and loved this show. People come up to me all over the world to say how much it meant to them."
So far, "Friday Night Lights" hasn't moved into a glorious afterlife. ABC Family picked up reruns last year and discontinued them.
This may be a case, then, where the Emmy recognition can really help - starting in the short term, where Berg says he'd love to do a "Friday Night Lights" movie.
He's already working on scripts.
A new movie would create an interesting symmetry, because Berg originally adapted the "Friday Night Lights" book into a theatrical film before deciding it would be even better as a TV show.
This new film would pick up from the TV show, and the stars seem enthusiastic. Both Chandler and Britten say they'd love to do it, schedules permitting.
Meanwhile, of course, the cast and crew have moved on. Britten [sic] is starring this fall in FX's "American Horror Story." Scott Porter, who played the original quarterback Jake [sic], is starring in the CW's "Hart of Dixie."
Minka Kelly, who played Jake's [sic] girlfriend, is starring in the ABC remake of "Charlie's Angels."
In fact, she was the one who handed Chandler his Emmy Sunday night.
"Friday Night Lights" fans always suspected there was an angel involved somewhere.
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