In “Inside the Episode,” writers and directors reflect on the making of their Emmy-winning episodes.
Clear eyes. Full hearts …
It took a lot of tears, both on- and offscreen, but “Friday Night Lights,” the drama about small-town high school football that was about way more than just small-town high school football, finally won two Primetime Emmys in its final season. At the 2011 ceremony, one award went to lead actor Kyle Chandler as the coach and (sometimes de facto) patriarch Eric Taylor. The other went to “FNL’s” behind-the-scenes father figure, showrunner Jason Katims, who wrote the drama’s series finale, “Always.”
“FNL” was beloved because it had the magical ability to be set around the lives of high schoolers and their parents — Coach Taylor was nothing without his wife, Tami (played by 2011 Emmy nominee Connie Britton) — but to not necessarily feel like a teen soap.
“It’s funny, when I first started talking to reporters and critics about it, they would ask, ‘How does this compare to other teen shows?’” said Katims, who wrote for “My So-Called Life” and created “Roswell.” “Until somebody mentioned it as a possible teen genre kind of show, I literally never even thought of it that way. … I thought of it as a story of this town, a story of these people.”
He speculates that perhaps this was because “even though those people are teens, they’re dealing with such adult things and themes.”
To wit: The series finale isn’t just about the football team making it to the state tournament, it’s about love, marriage and partnership. Just as Eric and Tami argue against their teen daughter Julie (Aimee Teegarden) getting engaged to her on-again, off-again boyfriend Matt Saracen (Zach Gilford), they have their own marital strife as they decide whether Eric should sign a new contract for a coaching job that would keep them in town or if Tami should have her moment and follow her career out of state.
Meanwhile, Tim Riggins (Taylor Kitsch) has grand plans to stay in his home of Dillon, Texas, forever while his ex-girlfriend Tyra Collette (Adrianne Palicki) explores new opportunities in college. Aspiring football coach Jess Merriweather (Jurnee Smollett) relocates to Dallas while her boyfriend, all-star player Vince Howard (Michael B. Jordan), starts his own journey. And, with his football career derailed after an injury, Luke Cafferty (Matt Lauria) joins the military. He and newly reunited girlfriend Becky Sproles (Madison Burge) share a tearful goodbye at the bus stop as he gives her his championship ring.
Over a decade later, The Times held it together long enough to speak with Katims about the events of “Always.”
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Jason Katims accepts the Emmy for writing for a drama series for “Friday Night Lights” in 2011.
(Mark J. Terrill / Associated Press)
The show aired on NBC before finishing its run on Audience Network. Given those changes and how this would affect cast availability, how far out did you start planning the series finale?
We didn’t really know in the fourth season exactly what we were going to do. We had it vaguely in our mind. But for the fifth season of the show, we really were planning it right from the beginning in the writers’ room.
Were there serious scheduling issues [with actors who’d already left the show]? I’m sure there were. But I think everybody who had been part of the show felt very committed and very, very, very much part of it and wanted to be there for the end.
There were the actors who really wanted to be part of it. Scott Porter [who played injured football star Jason Street earlier in the series’ run] showed up for the last scene, even though he wasn’t written into it. It was the scene where they were on Riggins’ land and he really wanted to be in that scene [because those characters were such good friends]. [That scene was cut from the finale.]
The show had some key phrases that you also worked into the finale. We see Coach Taylor, who relocates with his family to Philadelphia for Tami’s job, trying to teach a new group of football players the inspirational message “clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose.” And we see Tim Riggins and his brother Billy (Derek Phillips) clinking longnecks and saying, “Texas forever.” Was there a conversation about who would get to utter those phrases?
It was really clear to me that Coach was going to be in the “clear eyes” and Riggins was going to be “Texas forever.”
Those weren’t conversations that happened in the writers’ room. Those happened when you were writing the script. But the big ideas, like the ball going up in the air at state and then landing in Philadelphia was not my idea. It was an idea that came out of the writers’ room.
Whether this team does win the state tournament is kind of like not seeing a body in a horror movie. It’s never explicitly shown or said.
It’s a funny thing about that because you do know who won the game because there were so many things in that final montage that were references to [them winning]. A lot of people had rings. They take down the championship sign from the [high school]. It was clear that they had won and the reason we didn’t see the win itself was because I felt that that football game should be poetic. There weren’t any more moves to make at that point in the show, in terms of the drama of the football game. To me, it was more the emotional journey that we’d all gotten to.
I’m really happy with the way the game transitioned into the final montage of the season. The whole episode is about closure. You don’t usually write that way. Usually there’s tension and then some catharsis, and these days, then another catharsis and then a cliffhanger. But there were five seasons leading up to that episode, and it was all about resolution. There were people declaring their love and all that stuff.
The tensions running through it were the questions of what’s going to happen to Coach and Tami. That was a serious dilemma. I felt like that made for the most dramatic tension in the episode.
Obviously, there were other things as well. There’s that scene with Tyra and [her ex-boyfriend] Tim where they’re talking about the future. It feels so beautiful to me to watch these two people who were so in love and put on divergent paths.
Why did you decide to call the episode “Always”?
The show is about love. It is a love story. It was about Coach and Tami and Matt and Julie and Vince and Jess and Luke and Becky.
But it was also the permanence of that culture of high school football. And there’s something touching to me, and moving to me, in that final montage. You see all these people playing in different stadiums, but they’re still playing the same game, but it doesn’t, weirdly, matter that much.
So much of this show, and its characters’, identity is wrapped up in Southern culture and lifestyle. So I always thought it was interesting that the Taylors moved out of the South.
What we were trying to do for the whole season was make this a really difficult choice for Coach. Coach and Tami, people would talk about that as such a great marriage. We knew, at a certain point, that we were never going to tell a story about one cheating on the other or divorce. Those stories were off the table. There was something sacred about that, about them. That’s wonderful to watch. But as a writer, it’s challenging because we need conflict.
In their particular marriage, it had always been that they were going where Coach would go [for work]. To me, the key to the whole episode and the whole season was him coming to her and saying, “It’s your turn.”
It’s very feminist and progressive of Coach to think this way.
You know, Coach is a very traditional guy. You see it when Matt says [to him that] he wants to marry his daughter. You see it at the dinner scene when they’re all together [and Coach and Tami tell them they’re too young to get married]. He doesn’t address his daughter. He addresses Matt.
There’s a lot of traditional thinking around Coach Taylor, which is why that decision he makes [with Tami] is so dramatic. It shows a man really changing.
This seems like something Tyra went through a lot. That’s a character who felt like she had to get out, otherwise nothing would change for her.
For Tyra, that’s a big thing. In the last episode, when she has that scene with Tim, she’s talking about wanting her life to be big and going into politics. … She was inspired by a woman like Tami, but she could see that her future should be bigger.
One of the things that’s so powerful about the show is that Dillon, Texas, is this beautiful town and you feel all these things about community and faith and lifting each other up and love and all that. But it’s also a place where you can get stuck and feel like you have limitations on you.
It was also really touching to see that last scene with Matt and Julie [when they move to Chicago and are engaged]. My thought about that is that they’ve become Coach and Tami. She looked a little more like Tami. But she was doing it in their world. It was a different, more urban world.