IF YOU WATCH:What: ‘Friday Night Lights’Where: NBCWhen: Season Two premiere airs Oct. 5 at 9 p.m.

‘Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose.’

This is not only the motto of the Dillon High School football team, but the mantra that runs through the veins of the city of Dillon, Texas.

While football is what NBC’s quietly triumphant drama, ‘Friday Night Lights,’ is based on, it is not necessarily the focus of the show.

Adapted from the 2004 hit movie of the same name, ‘Friday Night Lights’ tells the story of Coach Taylor (Kyle Chandler) who is in his first year coaching for the championship Dillon Panthers.

The first season aired last year to great critical praise but low ratings, as is the case with so many great shows that were canceled before they could flourish.

While the first season followed the Panthers’ journey to the state playoffs, it was the sub-plots that made the show so engaging and relatable.

In the pilot episode (ironically, the weakest episode of the season), it’s Coach Taylor’s Friday night debut. The first half of the game is dominated by the Panthers and star quarterback Jason Street (Scott Porter).

But as always, Dillon can’t just win and celebrate. Street has to make a game-saving tackle, and during the hit, he ends up breaking his back and becoming paralyzed.

And that incident is the trigger point of all that happens later in the season.

We watch Street’s girlfriend Lyla’s (Minka Kelly) fall from grace as popular head cheerleader as she struggles with her boyfriend’s injury and ends up in the arms of Street’s best friend, Tim Riggins (Taylor Kitsch).

Riggins is the bad boy running back of the team – he’s very nearly an alcoholic, he has cheerleaders do his homework for him and he dates the bad girl of Dillon, Tyra (Adrianne Palicki).

But as the season goes on, the writers add nuance to Riggins’ character, showing that he has a vulnerable side. He earns back his friendship with Street, quits drinking (for a while) and befriends a neighborhood boy who is being bullied.

Perhaps one of the best things to come out of Street’s accident is that backup quarterback Matt Saracen (Zach Gilford) must step up for the team. Saracen is shy and awkward: the antithesis of a high school football player. While his dad is away in Iraq, he must care for his Alzheimer’s-suffering grandmother, work a burger joint job and lead the Panthers to state.

His growth as a team leader under Coach Taylor’s direction is subtle. You find yourself cheering for Saracen as he makes a great pass and a shaky camera witnesses a first kiss between Saracen and Julie, Coach Taylor’s daughter.

Amid all of the troubled high school relationships, there is relationship drama between Coach and Mrs. Coach (as Saracen calls her), perhaps one of the most realistic marriages on television. They fight, they struggle to raise their daughter, the town is constantly on their backs about the team, but always at the end of the day, they love each other and they love the team.

‘Friday Night Lights’ plays off a lot of high school stereotypes, such as the quarterback dating the head cheerleader, the bad boy with a tragic background and racial tensions between team members.

The only difference is that the show doesn’t play into the stereotypes. It deals with them realistically. Riggins is stuck in the rut of his broken past, and when Saracen’s dad comes back from Iraq, the result is more heartbreaking than heartwarming.

The heart of ‘Friday Night Lights’ is more off the field than on. The relationships between teenagers and adults are what make the show engaging.

And it sometimes feels like the real motto of the team might be one shared between Jason Street and Tim Riggins.

‘Here’s to God, to football and to good friends living large in Texas.’

Published on September 30, 2007 at 12:00 pm