Appreciate 'Friday Night Lights' while you can

One of the best shows on television just finished its fifth and final season, and there's a good chance you haven't seen a single episode.

More than mere football drama, "Friday Night Lights" is a show about life in a small, sports-obsessed Texas town. It centers around Coach Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler) and his wife, high school counselor Tami (Connie Britton), and includes thoughtful storylines about students, parents and even loudmouth car salesmen.

After a ratings-deprived run on NBC, "Friday Night Lights" entered into an exclusive contract with DirecTV, which aired three additional 13-episode fall seasons. NBC airs the reruns on Friday nights in the spring.

The show concluded its DirecTV run late last year, and NBC will begin showing the final episodes beginning tonight at 8 p.m. Lucky for everyone, the entire final season is also newly available on DVD.

Last season, the series found new life when Coach moved from the well funded and respected West Dillon Panthers to coach the East Dillon Lions, a high school program with misfits and long-standing troublemakers. The show incorporated new characters, like reformed quarterback Vince (Michael B. Jordan), allowing graduating seniors like Matt Saracen (Zach Gilford) to actually leave the show in believable fashion. In short, there's no creative need for a "Friday Night Lights: The College Years."

Season five continues to showcase the rise of the perpetual underdog Lions, as well as Tami's struggle to counsel kids who have never been encouraged to be anything more than strippers and town drunks. The stories are as compelling as ever, with Vince butting heads with his newly-paroled father, and the Lions scrapping to be respected alongside its cross-town rivals.

And since it's the final season, the show finds natural ways to incorporate special appearances from former series regulars (every college kid visits home every once in a while). That includes more of standouts Saracen, Landry (Jesse Plemons) and resident bad-boy Tim Riggins (Taylor Kitsch).

The only dud story of season five involves the Taylors' daughter, Julie (a typically capable Aimee Teegarden) sleeping around with her college TA. College may be important in real life, but it almost always ruins shows about high school.

To appreciate the sharp writing and direction of "Friday Night Lights" only takes a few key moments, with each scene taking what would be typical "football-drama" fare and making it a unique viewing experience.

In the season's fifth episode "Kingdom," for example, the Lions take a road trip. On the eve of the game, a few of the players chat outside their hotel rooms, on topics ranging from football strategy to their rooms' pay-per-view entertainment. It's a nice standalone scene, but what makes it great is how we also see Coach listening and reacting to every word from his hotel balcony. It's one of the rare instances where the authoritative coach is shown reacting and relating to his players as individuals rather than students.

Chandler and Britton are treasures in "Friday Night Lights," with both earning long-overdue Emmy nominations last year. They are even better in the final season, and the show goes out on a thrilling and emotional high.

Best of all, you don't need to understand a single rule of football.