Before you head out to a game or to dinner or where ever your Friday night plans may take you, be sure and set the TiVo or VCR for Channel 11 at 9 p.m. for the season premiere of Friday Night Lights this evening.

The television show, which follows a fictional Texas high school football team and chronicles the goings-on in the town they live in, was last year's best new drama, Emmy voters notwithstanding. Few shows have ever gotten teenage life as right as Friday Night Lights does, and yet, because people have come to think of the show, which is loosely based on Buzz Bissinger's splendid book, as a football show.

And NBC, which is too busy pumping shows about time travel and bionic women, didn't help matters by jerking the show around to different time slots last season and by giving it very little promotional love this year. In addition, the executive who championed FNL got fired, and the show was plopped into a horrible time slot on Friday nights, the evening with the second lowest viewership of the week and the evening when most of the people who should be watching it are out living their lives.

The November sweeps begin on Nov. 1, and networks waste no time yanking shows that underperform in the ratings during sweeps months, meaning Friday Night Lights essentially has four weeks to pull its ratings up to stay on the air.
Do yourself a favor and tune in or record it to watch later, and if you can't, click here to watch it online.