There used to exist, in our house, a pair of Buddy’s Bar glasses, products from the NBC show Friday Night Lights.
During the very frantic week of Tax Day, Passover and Easter, Squirt broke one.*
*(On a personal note, I think that this more than makes up for ME breaking the purple Fiestaware mug that Squirt insisted that we use to outfit our kitchen when we moved into our house. She demanded Fiestaware even though I am one of the biggest klutzes in the world and have been known to break breakable objects in record time and spectacular fashion. I broke the mug two years ago, pulling it out of the dishwasher, if you must know the whole story. She was able to get another purple Fiestaware mug BUT we cannot get another Buddy glass because NBC Universal no longer sells it. So I think that we are now even, if not me being ahead. Now back to the post.)
We loved Friday Night Lights. Squirt watched it first, in real time, on NBC and then On Demand. As usual, I was behind the curve, so I watched it much later on DVD. Squirt’s favorite complaint on the show was that it was marketed wrong. For a casual football viewer, I initially thought the show wasn't for me. I now know that that was/is wrong. The show, which is about high school football, is not about football. It IS about the life and times of the residents of Dillon, Texas and even sometimes, about the town itself.
Also we LOVED the finale of the show, which did what few shows manage to accomplish. It gave us time to say goodbye to the characters that we had gotten to know and love and care about. It wasn’t too concerned about wrapping up "the story" (which it kind of did anyway) but it really let us, the viewers, leave the town of Dillon with a smile.
But, this is not a post about Friday Night Lights. This is a post about products for fans.
These glasses were nearly perfect as fan products because…
They represent a part of the universe of the show. Not the show itself. Nowhere on the glass were the words “Friday Night Lights”. These glasses were simply Buddy’s bar glasses. Almost as though we could have traveled to Dillon Texas, perhaps on a road-trip, had lunch at Buddy’s bar and bought the glasses home as a souvenir. Almost as though, we could have lived, for a brief moment, in the world/town that we loved.
But you’d have to have watched the show to know that these were fan products. To everyone else, they were just bar glasses. Which are also useful, don’t get me wrong.
We also have shirts that tout East Dillon Lions, “Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can’t Lose” and the Dillon Panthers, which we wear probably more often that you would imagine.
We do NOT have any shirts that just say “Friday Night Lights”.
I hate fan products that are just the name of the show.
I find it lazy.
Too many fan products simply put the name of the show or the movie in an interesting font and slap it on everything, regardless of whether the item relates to the show at all. It also assumes fans want to shout their fandom to every passing stranger, instead of getting the thrill of the secret smile or the head nod when another fan recognizes the reference.
Because NBC no longer sells the Buddy’s bar glasses, we have moved our remaining glass to a more revered place (read: higher shelf).
But this glass is way more to me than a piece of fan memorabilia. To me, it is a piece of the Dillon Texas that I spent 5 seasons getting to know and love; not just a product from a show.
- Sis
