Review of Friday Night Lights: The Son

With fortuitous timing, this week's episode of Friday Night Lights happened to air only a day after President Obama's nationally televised speech in which he outlined his plan to send more troops to Afghanistan. The episode, entitled The Son, dealt head on with the pain and loss that family members of soldiers killed in the Iraq/Afghanistan campaigns must endure.

Inspired by the 2004 theatrical movie of the same name, which itself was an interpretation of the book: Friday Night Lights: A Town a Team and a Dream by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, H.G. Bissinger, the current series airs Wednesdays on DirecTV's channel 101. Following the pattern established last season, episodes will repeat on NBC in the spring.

In the episode, Matt Saracen (Zach Gilford) not only has to come to grips with losing his father, but he must also manage the simultaneously mundane and overwhelming decisions that go along with ensuring a proper burial.

Among these burning questions are what kind of wood to use for the coffin, whether he should rent cars from the funeral home for the family and whether or not to schedule viewing time. Of course, the fact that his father died as the result of stepping on an IED (improvised explosive device) pretty much guarantees that there will be no viewing. In fact, even though Matt asks to see his father, the funeral director does his best to dissuade him.

And here's where this particular episode strays into the territory of brilliance. Regardless of how or where his father died, the simple truth is, a young man has lost a parent. He's old enough to be responsible for the hard decisions which must be made, but young enough to assume they would not invade his life for years to come. In playing these scenes, Zach Gilford displays a depth of range any young actor would be proud to possess.

He faces a steady stream of well-wishers who come bearing their sympathies and that ubiquitous question, "How are you doing?" But all he really wants is to be left alone. To grieve privately and search the recesses of his own memory for something that tells him who his dad was. He watches old video, he listens to the empty speeches of others who declare how brave and noble his father was for serving his country and he endures the commentary of an Army Representative sent to console Matt; a man who had never even met his father.

But what Matt slowly comes to realize is that all of these people knew different parts of his father. Parts that maybe Matt didn't get to see on a daily basis. And in a heartbreaking scene where Matt insists upon seeing his father's remains, the camera lingers, not on the body in the casket, but on Matt as his body stiffens and folds into itself. As his eyes pool with tear and his face tightens in a mask of horrific understanding and regret, before giving the slightest nod to indicate he's seen enough. It's surely one of the simplest and most beautifully painful scenes likely to air on television this year.

It's only after witnessing the mangled and broken remains of his father, that Matt can allow himself to fully break down and them reassemble the man in his memories. All the different pieces that other people have talked about now coalesce as the whole person who Matt knew.

This newfound understanding allows him to deliver a moving eulogy, where for the first time in his life, rather than begrudge his father for choosing a military career over his family, he can accept that his career was for his family.

It doesn't matter if you believe in or support why or where our Military is sent to work, at the end of the day, what's really important is that it is comprised of individuals. Men and women who have families who miss them. But each of these individuals does a job, which enables our country to exist. To move from one day to the next. And some times, these individuals don't come home and new burdens fall upon their children.

These themes of service to country and family, and the tragedy of loss that sometimes results were dealt with in personal and meaningful ways, without straying into the territories of politics or rhetoric.

It's a shame a show with a creative team so talented has not been able to garner a wider audience, but Friday Night Lights truly is one of the best shows on TV right now.