Friday Night Lights
Over five seasons of trying to get more people to watch this gem of a drama, we fans have told our friends, "It's not really about football." Now it can be told: We were lying! Well, not entirely. There was much, much more to this story of small-town Texas life than the high-school football team that was at its core (first, powerhouse West Dillon, then wrong-side-of-the-track underdog East Dillon). There was family, faith, love, money. But it all came down to applying to larger life a lesson we know from sports: there is no I in team. FNL was always sincerely about community, about the idea that every person, grownup or teenager, is part of a larger system of dependence: a town, a school, a family, a marriage. The final season of this drama came down, as you would expect, to a final dramatic game. But the real action was always just as much in the stands. (DirecTV/NBC)