Clear eyes, full heart, can’t lose.

Friday Night Lights was the best high school tv show of the mid-aughts, featuring Coach Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler), his wife Tami (Connie Britton), daughter Julie (Aimee Teegarden), quarterback Tim Riggins (Taylor Kitsch), Landry (Jesse Plemons), Lyla (Minka Kelly), and Tyra (Adrienne Palicki). Based on a nonfiction book of the same name about football in West Texas, the series constantly struggled in the ratings, but it eventually found a massive audience thanks to its portrayal of rural life.

The students were given dark, serious storylines that other high school tv shows of the time were just starting to address, dealing with alcoholism, absentee parents, searching for colleges, life after being a star athlete, and covering up a murder. With one exception, the stories never reached the outlandish heights of Riverdale, making Friday Night Lights a time capsule of school life before social media.