Tell me, do you remember what you did with your Friday nights last fall? Go on some hot dates? Meet friends at a bar?

I bet I know what you WEREN'T do1ing: watching "Friday Night Lights," NBC's critically acclaimed — but ratings-starved — football drama.

Since its premiere in 2006, the threat of cancellation has hung over the series, which follows high school football coach Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler), his young players and their families in a small Texas town. The drama, inspired by the 2004 film of the same name (which in turn was based on a nonfiction book), earned a small but loyal audience with its fully realized characters, sensational cast and emotional story lines.

The series won a last-minute renewal last year and ended its second season ranking 138th in prime-time shows to date, according to Nielsen ratings. Until recently, a third run was very much up in the air.

The network reached a deal earlier this month to air new episodes of "Friday Night Lights" on DirecTV starting in October; NBC will rebroadcast the same episodes early next year.

That means you have plenty of time to catch up. The second season has just hit the DVD shelves (Universal Studios Home Entertainment); the first season came out last summer. And really, you should catch up.

Filmed on location in Austin, "Friday Night Lights" uses hand-held cameras to achieve its intimate documentary-like feel. Watching the show's mix of drama, humor and, of course, football, you can't help getting sucked into the action: You cheer when Coach Taylor's Dillon Panthers score a touchdown and cry when the coach's wife, Tami (the fantastic Connie Britton), breaks down in postpartum tears.

But sometimes TV shows hit a sophomore slump, especially if they had a stellar first season. That's the case with this show. Its second season got off to a rocky start, largely due to an unbelievable plot line so seemingly out of tone with the show that it put off some viewers. And just when the show found its footing again, the season was cut short by the writers' strike; its 15-episode run ended with a finale that leaves many stories unresolved.

To tide you over until the third season, the set features deleted scenes on all four discs as well as three commentary tracks and an interview with the cast and producers. It's an improvement over the first-season DVDs, which included deleted scenes and a behind-the-scenes featurette. On the commentary of the second-season premiere, executive producers Jason Katims and Jeffrey Reiner discuss the finer points of how the show is edited and filmed. Hand-held cameras capture unusual and sometimes compelling shots, they say, helping the characters become even more finely etched.

The two other commentaries don't add much insight, but they're fun. Britton and Aimee Teegarden, who plays Coach Taylor's teen daughter, Julie, use the words "great" and "amazing" so often I wanted to go back and count (I didn't — I don't have that kind of time).

On another commentary, actors Jesse Plemons and Adrianne Palicki, who play nerdy Landry and tough girl Tyra, often lapse into silence as they get caught up in the show. But it's clear from the four actors' banter that the cast is tight-knit. "We've got a great family," Chandler says in the nearly 40-minute interview.