This Girl Is A Whore.

Not in real life, I'm sure, but totally a TV whore.

Each week I'm going to try and come up with someone or some thing in the realm of football and/or the rest of the world that absolutely, positively must be axed. Whether it's a flagging QB, a particularly poreous defense or a footaballcentric episode of Smallville, I will be calling for it's return to the wild where it will never assault the senses again. And now for the easiest part of any coach's job...the cuts.

Kicking off The Cuts will be the small screen serialization of the big screen Billy Bob Thornton vehicle Friday Night Lights. All the flashy editing and blue screen shucking and jiving in the world can't save this garbage. I've given it three weeks now, and I have yet to find any real redeeming qualities. Ridiculous football, stock characters and some pretty poor dialogue abound.

The original movie claimed to be based on a true story, and if that is the case, you can bet the series is too. Mostly because every character, scene and pithy quote from the film is repeated somewhere in the first three episodes. Football ending injury to a star player? Check. Back-up player makes good in subbing for said injured player? Check. Quarterback stopped at the one to lose the game? You bet your ass! Crazy ass Texans threatening to run the coach out of town if the team doesn't win? You see where I'm going with this. I really hope Texas High School Football towns are really like this, cause you can never have enough reasons to laugh at Texas.

I don't make the big money being a network programmer, but if I did I might start by acquiring shows with at least one likeable character. I mean sure, you can't really get down on the paralyzed quarterback or his goofy, unsure back-up, but they're hardly register a blip anyway. Instead we're given the completely devoid of a personality coach, the overbearing parents, the loudmouth running back, slut #1 and secret slut #2. Who is secret slut #2? The paralyzed quarterback's girlfriend who stands by his side right up until the point where she screws around with his best friend. What the hell am I watching again? This has to be the WB. The best friend is the real joke here, though. He's a surly alcoholic who feels so bad about his buddy getting hurt that he can't even bring himself to visit him in the hospital, but not bad enough to avoid screwing said buddy's girlfriend. I'm confused. He shoots things from the back of a moving pick-up and wails endless empty beer cans into the ravine. This best friend character is the brooding tortured, Ethan Hawke in Reality Bites type that makes you realize that Friday Night Lights has a very specific demographic, and your average male viewer is not invited. It's all just standard. You get the feeling that if this thing makes it to a second season, pretty much everyone will have hooked up with everyone else a la Melrose Place.

This show might redeem itself if the football were good. Too bad it's not. So far, both games they've featured ended on a last second play. That makes for a pretty long season right there. You've got the formulaic bullshit of the coach taking his team out to doing sprints across a muddy river at midnight as a big motivator. As my buddy said, "I would tell my coach to lick my nuts." I'm going to tell this show to lick my nuts. By all means, though, check it out if your vagina seems so inclined.