Brown played without a script because, according to Berg, "you've heard fathers for 33 years, so you ought to know what to say." Kyle Chandler, as coach Taylor, was reportedly surprised by Brown's intensity. Reception Lisa de Moraes, in her "TV Column" for The Washington Post, pointed out that in spite of critical praise, the show's premiere did poorly with viewers. With 7.17 million viewers, it had "the worst ratings performance for any series premiere in the official 2006-07 TV season." On the other hand, Cynthia Fuchs of PopMatters wrote that the episode's good performance among the coveted demographic of men aged 18 to 34 could be a saving grace. The episode was nominated for an Artios Award for "Best Dramatic Pilot Casting". Casting director Linda Lowy was the nominee for the award, which was won by the series Brothers & Sisters for the episode "Patriarchy". The pilot of Friday Night Lights received good to middling reviews. Virginia Heffernan of The New York Times gave the episode a very good review, and suggested the series could be good enough to transcend the medium of television. She praised the "intelligent performances" of the actors, and though she found the "Smash" Williams character less convincing than the others, she thought it improved towards the end. She also appreciated the use of audio to tell the story: the buzz of a surgeon's saw or the sound of skin stuck to leather. Keith Phipps of The A.V. Club, wrote "I appreciate the feel for the high stakes attached to small-market school sports, the knowing take on the high-school caste system, and the details of family life." Still, he worried that America was "failing to fall in love with" the show, and expressed doubts as to whether it would be allowed to survive. Henry Goldblatt, writing for Entertainment Weekly, gave the episode a grade B. He accused the show of abandoning the "racial diversity and the gritty poverty" of the film, but still allowed that Peter Berg had "kept the thrust". The Matt Saracen character was singled out as particularly promising. While positively contrasting the show with other teen-age dramas like One Tree Hill, Goldblatt also had doubts about its staying power. Variety's Brian Lowry called the show "Earnest, beautifully shot and perhaps more organically religious than anything else in primetime". Still, he felt the show was "like one of those family programs middle America