FirstCuts: Season 3 Friday Night Lights News

The Television Critics Association press tour rolls on and the train made one of my favorite stops this weekend with the wonderful people at NBC who make a little program called

.↵↵What we already knew: The show makes its debut this fall on DirecTV with a short run – just 13 episodes – and will make a second appearance with those same Season Three episodes on NBC at a later date.↵

↵↵Now onto the new information, as once again I have to live my TV critic life vicariously through Star-Ledger TV guru Alan Sepinwall. He relays this answer in response from FNL executive producer Jason Katims on whether he expects fans without DirecTV to download the show rather than waiting to watch it on NBC. ↵

↵↵⇥“I would like to think that I would be patient and wait and watch the real version when it was available to you,” Katims told (Dan Fienberg).↵↵↵Really? In this age of the Internet, with show secrets out all over the place, you expect a diehard fan base not to watch this thing ASAP by any means necessary? And here is where I think this whole DirecTV plan is flawed. The NBC ratings are going to be an utter disaster between people who already watched the show on DirecTV and the segment of the fans who will download the show from wherever they can find it. (But really, Nielsen families, look at Minka Kelly and view with your hearts.)↵

↵↵Follow the jump for a few notes that are a bit spoiler-y for Season Three, courtesey of Sepinwall’s blog.
↵
↵

↵

↵↵Lightning round spoilers from Katims! (And granted, these don’t sound like giving away the arcs of Season Three, but rather where we’ll pick things up, sort of in the same way the audience picked things up at the side of the pool in Season Two’s debut.) ↵

↵↵⇥Tami Taylor is going to become principal of the school.
↵⇥[...]
↵⇥Tim and Lyla are in a serious relationship.
↵⇥[...]
↵⇥There also won’t be any murders.
↵⇥[...]
↵⇥We’re going to try to do those stories we do best, those intimate stories about adolescence, relationships, marriage, parenthood. I really think we’re going to hit our stride this year. I’m very excited about these stories.
↵⇥[...]
↵⇥We’re introducing a new character named JD McCoy, who’s a freshman quarterback, and is a phenomenal quarterback. ↵↵↵I don’t want to give away all of the news, and Sepinwall has a more detailed look at everything. A positive note vibe I got was that Katims really sees the flaws from Season Two – the murders and some of the ridiculous tossed-in characters that created fragmented storylines. The problem is that he might have realized it too late. I’m not sure 13 episodes is enough time to clean up that mess.↵

↵↵↵