Image Credit: Bill Records/NBC

It’s been exactly four weeks since Friday Night Lights sailed beautifully through the big goalposts in the sky, so here’s another excuse to moisten those tear ducts. As it turns out, the ending of the original script for the finale included a heartfelt farewell speech by Coach Taylor (Kyle Chandler) that was to play over the moving montage that showed where our characters wound up eight months later. But when the producers reviewed that sequence during the editing process, “every one of those little moments was much more than what it felt like it was going to be in the script,” explains executive producer Jason Katims. “Because the images ran so long, it was hard for us to figure a graceful way to fit in the speech. Also, I just wanted to let the images stand for themselves…. I loved the speech and the way Kyle did it —  and it was one of the things I was really looking forward to in the finale — but after looking at it both ways, I realized that the episode was stronger without it.”

Coach’s sentimental send-off may have been benched for the finale, but it was included on the season 5 DVD as an extra. Make that a well-hidden extra. READ FULL STORY »