Friday Night Deja Vu

So I caught the encore presentation of the new FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS show last night. Gotta say, I am just not that impressed with this show. Don't get me wrong - I love a sports movie / TV show as much as the next guy. I loved INVINCIBLE, I always get caught up when REMEMBER THE TITANS comes on TV, and I can recite the scripts for MAJOR LEAGUE and SLAP SHOT almost verbatim.

So what's so terrible about FNL?

Well, nothing really. It's a fairly well written show about high school football. Pretty good cast. Decent football scenes. So what's my beef? Well, to be honest, I liked this a lot better the first time when it was a movie called FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS. Oh, and I liked that better the first time when it was a book called FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS.

Seriously, how much juice can they squeeze out of this thing?

Granted, the new TV show, unlike the book/movie, takes place during present day. And they managed to score a few young hotties to play the players' girlfriends. And extra kudos to the casting director for casting my main man Jesse Plemons (last seen thwarting Crispin Glover's evil plans in LIKE MIKE). But is that enough to warrant a show based on a movie based on a book?

As far as the content, the pilot episode was pretty boring. For 45 minutes, we get the following message stamped into our brain over and over: Texas loves high school football. The new coach is under a lot of pressure. The backup quarterback sucks. So you can imagine my lack of surprise when they play the big game and sure enough, down goes the starting quarterback. So then the lovable but not-so-talented backup goes in and . . . wait for it . . . WINS THE BIG GAME!

Hooray, make merry, and all that shit.

Ok, maybe I'm being a little picky here, but I feel like TV execs aren't earning their paycheck these days. If you're going to tell this story for the third time, can we at least introduce some cool new elements? Vampires? A male-prostitute ring? A wacky transsexual mix up? Throw me a bone you derivative bastards.