Here’s a comment from the thread below on my post on the last FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS. It’s somewhat pro-Porcher and supported by evidence.
Additions and revisions are mostly parenthetical at this point, but inin a most postodern way I hope the revision process will be continuous.
Not sure I agree with #s 5-7. While I agree that they very much put family over place, I don’t think they entirely neglect the latter. I surely do not think the Riggins narrative ends with the kind of hopelessness you suggest. It’s true that “getting out” after high school seems like the definition of success, but there’s a large sense of the value of coming back too. I thought they dealt with the displacement of a modern society very well, and in a way that, if not entirely sympathetic to the Porchers, doesn’t seem antithetical either.
Consider the following, lifted from Grantland’s “oral history” of the show:
Hudgins: The show was about Dillon, about the people. And we knew we wanted to end it somehow honoring the idea of Texas Forever.
Katims: When I talked to Taylor about that final image of him on the land building the house, he said, “I want to be with Billy.” We end up with Tim, the guy in the pilot who said “Texas forever,” and he’s living his dream of building on land in Dillon, Texas. That’s the beauty of what the show is about.
Aubrey: We pull out there, and it is a beautiful location with rolling green hills, and the sky is that only-in-Texas pink sky as the sun is starting to set.
Here’s my counter-evidence.
Consider the various Riggins facts:
1. There really is nothing worthy of those two MEN to do in Dillon except coach.
2. Tim and Billy run an illegal chop shop together–that’s how Billy takes care of his family and Tim gets the money to buy his land. It’s hard to get all porchy about land acquired that way, if you really think about it.
3. After that, Billy gets by as an assistant coach, thanks to COACH, who hires him despite his lack of obvious qualifications for the job.
4. He also gets by because his wife (obviously also a person with a huge heart) works as a stripper. She, of course, doesn’t like it, although the other strippers bond with her baby boy and Becky (her semi-adopted sister). Becky–who is, despite it all (including her abortion out of lonely desperation—which she deeply regrets), pure of heart–also works in the strip club for money she really needs.
5. Tim gets paroled because of the testimony of coach and Buddy Garrity (ostracized from the power elite of Dillon, of course). The rest of the town viewed his incarceration etc. with remarkable indifference, considering what he, as a player etc., had done for Dillon.
6. The only job Tim can get with his record is working for Buddy in his bar, which he, of course, hates.
7. With COACH going to Philly, it’s clear the coaching opportunities for Tim and Billy are gone, probably for good. (I missed what Nick revealed below, that Billy is shown to be a coach on the Superteam in the concluding montage. This shows some respect for his real abilities that I describe below and a possible future. But his coaching excellence will only be recognized in Dillon, I would guess. He’s an asst with a limited role to play and no college education.)
8. So they have the pretty piece of land and are building a house together, but their prospects remain bleak. And we can hardly say that Dillon, the place, has done much of anything for them. We want to say Dillon isn’t worthy of them, but perhaps they will make a go of it as a family there anyway. Each man does have the love of a woman who is even better than he is—again no thanks to Dillon.
9. Tim drags himself out of his deep depression by bonding with his nephew and the girl (Tara) who has always loved him, and by accepting his brother for who he is, with all his limitations. That’s not exactly choosing Dillon over Alaska. It’s acknowledging that his family (given the limitations of its members) can only be a family in Dillon. That’s not hopelessness, of course. But it’s not clear that Dillon really has a place worthy of men and women such as these. (The important fact I missed about Billy continuing with the Superteam—which actually makes some sense—suggests that maybe their economic future is a little less precarious. The only job that suits a MAN like Billy in Dillon is asst coach, and maybe the Superteam has the bucks to pay him better. It better, given that his pregnant with twins wife is going have to give up her career, probably for good. This does mean, I admit, that Dillon—through the redemptive work of COACH—might have a marginal place for Riggins nobility.)
Another addendum: This contribution to FNL Studies has been very Riggins-centric. Everyone should read Paul’s contribution to below on how effortlessly the natural aristocrats the Taylors adapt to their new urban and sophisticated home. It blows the Porch right off their metaphorical house. (Their Dillon house was all about air conditioning and modern conveniences!)
