The Flow of Time on TV (The Supposed "Realism" of Friday Night Lights)

It is a truism that the characters we see on TV tend to be far more affluent than the overall audience--the "First World," "middle-class" viewers of the shows only able to fantasize about having such homes and clothes and disposable income as those they see on the screen.

Those characters also tend to have much more disposable time on their hands.

Of course, this can seem a narrative convenience. People who don't have so much time are less likely to be able to have a wacky adventure or piece of melodrama every week.

Still, it can get ridiculous, with one case that has always seemed to me especially glaring Friday Night Lights--what I saw of it in reruns, anyway--the more in as the "sell" here was so strongly based on its "realism," with the football players an obvious case. In real life an intelligent, energetic and dedicated high school student has their hands quite full just keeping up decent grades while meeting the demands of being on a team. But we were constantly given the impression that this "realistic" show's football players were frequently honors students and state champions, all while they put in long hours on part-time jobs, and coped with levels of family melodrama that drive adults to nervous breakdown, while having left over from this endless amounts of time for hobbies, girlfriends, and "hanging with their buds" for endless hours in a bar (guess they don't "card" in this town), all without anyone ever apparently being so much as tired out.

Some grasp of reality, that, on the part of those who called it "realistic."