Friday Night Lights Television Program

LAST week wasn't a great one for NBC, which saw its fall lineup, including the premiere of a new spin on the old car caper "Knight Rider" and the return of the onetime hit "Heroes," stumble in the ratings. Whatever happens, though, NBC Entertainment co-Chairman Ben Silverman has already delivered on an important part of what could ultimately prove his legacy at NBC: Hurling a Hail Mary pass to save the low-rated but critically acclaimed fan favorite “Friday Night Lights.

If “Friday Night Lights” executive producer Jason Katims had his way, all of the show's fans would be just like Brian McCafferty. The Philadelphia attorney could not wait for the show to return to the NBC lineup in February. So, McCafferty, 40, ordered DirecTV for just one of his TV sets so that he can watch the third season when it premieres tonight on DirecTV's 101 Network. He also kept his cable provider for its local sports programming.

This IS how new characters make their way onto "Friday Night Lights": They creep. The producers and writers of this finely whittled show know this: There are few truly grand entrances in life. And so when a fresh face needs introduction, it's in neatly doled-out dabs -- seen from a distance, barely sniffable at first. After a little while, when that person becomes central to a plot line, it's with a heavy inevitability. They've been there all the while, it seems, waiting for a change in tide.

IT'S the storylines that tell you how good "Friday Night Lights" has become. They're rich, swirling around one another in a kind of perpetual motion. The NBC drama is ostensibly about the outsized importance of the high school football team in a small Texas town; this is the easiest entry point for anyone who hasn't yet seen the show (and there are, alas, many of you).

and there's ample evidence on the Web and on the street that many of you choose the latter -- please, please, do not call actress Minka Kelly a slut. It's not nice, especially when she's out in public with her father. "That's not how you approach someone, my God!" she says, over a breakfast of her favorite oatmeal frittata at Hugo's. "I've been with my dad and a man came up to me and said, 'You're that little slut on that show, aren't you?' And I'm like, 'My dad is standing right here!'

The little show that could is back to show you that it can. Last season "Friday Night Lights" may have had more critics raving about it than it had people watching it, but it's back to prove that you can have a show without the presence of a nerd, a superpower or a nerd with superpowers. Instead you get Texan youth, many of them football players of surprising emotional depth, and a quiet sustained drama that only lacks the presence of Robert Duvall to lift it to iconic status.

First of all, what's with the goofy, soapy midepisode recap, sponsored by JC Penney? I realize that embedded advertising is the future in a DVR world. But please, I don't need to be told what's just happened in the first half-hour of "Friday Night Lights." The show has me at "hello"! The corporate-sponsored recaps are both no big deal and a microcosm of a sophomore jinx, demeaning a quality show with faux intrigue.

"Friday Night Lights" launched its second season this month with a shocker: Smart, funny, geeky teenager Landry Clarke killed a man threatening to attack Tyra Collette, Landry's crush. Then, rather than face up to the crime, the pair dumped the body. There was just one problem. The show's relatively small, extremely intense fan base didn't buy it. "I hated, hated, hated the murder scene," wrote a poster named Tom on the website of Alan Sepinwall, the critic for the Newark (N.J.) Star-Ledger.

IN a perfect world, TV networks would broadcast the very best shows they could find and viewers, hungry for excellence, would elevate the cream of the crop to positions of popularity commensurate with their quality. If this dream were flesh, NBC's "Friday Night Lights" would not be adored by only a passionate few, and the season's bona fide hits, "Heroes," "Jericho" and "Ugly Betty," would have more company in the winner's circle.