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Call it desperation, or maybe an affliction. But last night I watched excerpts from last season of "Friday Night Lights" on hulu.com.

I think I've seen the three-minute scene where Coach Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler) makes his case to keep his job to the Dillon school board a dozen times.

There's a cure for my ailment, but it's not free. "Friday Night Lights" aired on DirecTV last fall. I could have subscribed, thought about it doing it, but then decided against it because I really don't watch that much TV.

(The other show I watch is "Lost" and, trust me my fanatical island wanderers, we'll get to that in a couple more columns.)

So, I'll wait for FNL to air on NBC later this year, in late spring. It seems a long way away, though. The writers set the stage well at the end of season 3.

Taylor loses his job at the end of the season coaching the Dillon Panthers, a downfall engineered by the star quarterback's father, a powerful booster named Joe McCoy. Never mind Taylor's record or his passion. McCoy's got the pull, the money and is father to the star quarterback, a freshman phenom named J.D.

Taylor's wife, Tami (Connie Britton), is forced to watch his public ousting. She's the principal of Dillon High and proponent of the redistricting that brings about a second high school, East Dillon.

Taylor won't be unemployed, though. The board offers him the job coaching football at East Dillon, a shell of a school that the district renovates to accommodate the town's growth. The coach faces an incredible task going into his new job: building a program with a lot less money, talent and support than his previous job. The politics of redistricting promise to keep his roster depleted for several seasons.

And the tension of work will follow him home at night where, sometimes, he'll wind up at odds with his wife.

I try to limit the number of TV series I follow, so FNL didn't make it into my slim rotation until my fabulous wife got it through Netflix last year.

I resisted out of skepticism. Hollywood, I thought, would do bad things to Buzz Bissinger's book, a riveting piece of nonfiction about a West Texas high school football team, the Permian High Panthers.

Producer and director Peter Berg didn't attempt to recreate Bissinger's book of the same title, but Berg did manage to find its spirit in fictional Dillon. The Friday night football game is central to the drama, but it's not a series about football, really. It's about the town, the dramas that unfold as the game approaches, and the man who seems at the crest of the wave, Coach Taylor.

My wife says I have a "man crush" on Kyle Chandler. I'm probably not alone. Chandler's turn as the coach seems like a role made for him, the role of a lifetime. It helps that he's got a real Southern accent, not something manufactured in a New York acting workshop, and effortless charm. And Coach T. is the show's hero. Sure, he's got his flaws, but he's honest, true to his wife, enjoys his work, and exudes toughness and compassion for the kids who play for him and look up to him.

Sure, he might have gotten canned recently and sent to the dingy side of Dillon to resurrect football. But, who doesn't want to grow up to be an Eric Taylor?

Darren Dunlap is a freelance writer and Weekend columnist for The Daily Times. Contact him at countybeat@yahoo.com.