Friday Night Lights

Habitual overpraiser Catherine Andrews proclaims Friday Night Lights "hands-down, the best show that's been on television in the past couple of years." Which it is, if you neglect several better shows. That said, it is the best show to have appeared on the dying medium of network television in the past couple of years. More interestingly, she points out that the entire first season is viewable online at NBC.com as the network tries valiantly to secure an audience for their excellent, but little-watched show before it enters its second season.

At any rate, these efforts will almost certainly fail and the show will almost certainly be canceled, though it'll be interested to know if the network and the creative team manage to destroy the show's quality (see, e.g., Veronica Mars) before it dies or if they let it go down nobly. For whatever reason, network television is incapable of sustaining a good show the way a subscription model or even ordinary cable (The Shield, Battlestar: Galactica) is and I think we should all just come to terms with that reality.