
There's so much great TV on tonight (including the premieres of
Pushing Daisies and
Private Practice), and yet the one show I'm really pining for is the one that will be hardest to watch.
Friday Night Lights returns tonight for its third season — if, that is, you have DirecTV.
I'm trying not to be too bitter; after all, DirecTV is basically the reason we're getting a third season at all.

One of the biggest
Emmy snubs — now two years running! — is the exclusion of Connie Britton for her pitch-perfect performance as Tami Taylor in
Friday Night Lights. For two years, she's played Tami's highs (helping troubled Tyra get her act together) and lows (slapping daughter Julie outside after a particularly troublesome act of teen rebellion) with just the right balance of drama and humor — and, when season three begins, she'll find Tami in a
demanding new job.

Score! The
Friday Night Lights crew stopped by the
TCA press tour on Sunday to chat about their new deal with DirecTV and what's in store for the upcoming season three.
The show will begin shooting again in Austin in August, executive producer Jason Katims said, and it will premiere Oct.

Two longtime Dillon Panthers players won't be on screen quite so much when
Friday Night Lights returns for its third season. Entertainment Weekly is reporting that the two players, who have been series regulars, will now
just be recurring characters in the upcoming season. The info could be a little spoilery, so I'll put it behind the jump — but, for the record, I don't think it's necessarily bad news.

NBC started off this year's
Upfronts more than a month early this afternoon, kicking off the frenzy of Fall TV announcements with its no-frills presentation (which took the form of either a PowerPoint presentation or a
conference call, depending on where you were). While the format of the announcements wasn't thrilling, the content will give us much to speculate about over the next few months. Here are some of my initial thoughts: