Friday Night Lights, the series so good it wouldn’t die, is back on television for its fourth season. If you don’t already know, it’s about a small city in Texas where football rules. If this seems like a strange proposition, you don’t know Texas, which is the most football-mad place on earth. Luckily, the series really isn’t about Texas or football, as much as it is an examination of the myths that cause Americans to think and act the way we do. For example, most of us have a deep-seated sense of justice (despite the craziness of American politics), a belief in raising oneself by one’s bootstraps, a respect for religion, and a belief that love and brotherhood are more important than money. I know this doesn’t always jive with the way we act, especially internationally, but we really do believe these things. Thus, Dillon, Texas is a microcosm of America and, as such, a reflection of who we are—hardworking, ambitious, often poor, racially mixed, living alone or with broken relationships, but, nevertheless, idealistic, often principled, and with good hearts.

Having played high school football myself, I can relate to the love, loyalty, and special feelings engendered by playing on Friday nights under the lights in a small city stadium where everybody knows you. If you make a tackle, you get mentioned by name on the radio, and if you have a particularly good game, you may find a small blurb about yourself in the Saturday paper. There is nothing better than beating your hated rival, and nothing worse than losing to them.

Of course, most of this is gone from American life. Dillon, Texas is a place that no longer exists except in memory. Urbanization and the mass media have removed almost all traces of what made small town life so vital in America. Now, too often, religious bigotry and social conservatism are the defacto standard for everyone. But it was not always so. Friday Night Lights is a reminder that we really cared about one another once and that our hometowns were complete worlds, sufficient unto themselves.

I love the television series Friday Night Lights. I’ve seen every episode. My wife says it’s because I still think I’m in high school. She may be right. In any case, I like how it captures the pure emotions of youth, which in adulthood become tainted, mingled with disappointment and guilt, confused, and sometimes ugly. My appreciation is not total, however. Like most television series, it’s very episodic. That is, each program is cut into small, discrete scenes that are overripe with emotion, and the idea is to move you from one emotional high to the next. It’s like a long series of tequila shots. They’re great at first, until you’ve had one too many. I suppose this sounds like a contradiction. How can I value the emotion the program captures when I dislike the way it’s structured and get sick of it at the end? I don’t know. But I’m not going to worry about it. If I’ve learned one thing in life, it’s that one can have several contradictory feelings about the same thing at the same time. Look around you. Women do it all the time.