Brad, Barb, Rory, the Awesome Rachael, and I are going to see Eric Clapton in San Antonio this evening. So you lucky bastards are getting a short post by Yours Truly.

One of the first columns I wrote for EOB was Why Aren’t You Watching More Television? It’s now well-established that The Dude and I are hardcore TV junkies. The new HDTV and surround sound system that we installed last week shows just how dedicated we are. Yes, I will reiterate that we are in a Golden Age of Television far surpassing the early years of TV that have often carried that moniker.

I bring this up because The Dude and I watched this week’s episode of “Friday Night Lights” last night. (Thank you DVR!) It astonishes me that this show is struggling to find an audience. Yes, it’s about a high school football team in a small Texas town. And that’s like saying “Moby Dick” is about a big fish.

FNL is hunting far bigger game than the premise of the show would have you believe. And the amazing thing is that it doesn’t resort to preachiness to get its point across. There are no sacred cows in FNL. The writing is fearless.

How many shows would have crippled one of its main characters in the first episode and not have him be the object of pity or of misty-eyed nobility? Perhaps the greatest feat of this show is that there are no villains or heroes. Just people.

The characters in FNL are profoundly human. And even more amazing, profoundly decent for the most part. Most of the characters try to do the right thing. And they often fail because their method of achieving that goal is wrong-headed.

Case in point, Smash, one of the star players on the Dillon Panthers team, performs poorly when college recruiters attend a pivotal game. Desperate to ensure he gets drafted by a top-rated college, he turns to steroid use to give himself the edge he thinks he needs to compete. Smash feels his family’s future rests on his ability to get drafted by a good college so that he can eventually go pro and support them. So Smash’s actions, while wrong, are understandable. He does what he does for a noble reason, but that doesn’t exempt him from the consequences of a bad decision. In short, he’s a teenager.

What I’ve enjoyed watching is the unfolding of the larger themes in the show. The most interesting one to me is the nature of class in American society. Few other shows have really tackled this as well. Because the nexus is the high school football team, you really get a cross-section of the town’s different classes interacting with one another. One of the great American myths is that we are a class-free society. As anyone who has attended a public high school can attest, that’s a lie.

And lest you think the show is merely a glorified teen-soaper, the main characters on the show are Coach Eric Taylor (played by ever-wonderful Kyle Chandler) and his wife, Tami, the school guidance counselor (played brilliantly by Connie Britton). The chemistry between these actors is really wonderful, and their on-screen relationship has the kind of give-and-take that real marriages have. (Okay, maybe with a less-high hotness factor.)

If you haven’t been watching, NBC has the entire season available online. You can watch it here. Do yourself a favor. Follow the link. Take a chance.