There are no miracles in Dillon, Texas. A star quarterback gets paralyzed, he stays in the wheelchair (but he does eventually find a way out of town). The star coach gets dethroned by deep-pocketed opponents, he doesn’t find an easy landing across town. That’s the way of the world, and why Friday Night Lights is so special. You want reality TV? This show delivers the dramatic goods with painstaking authenticity each week, and even when it isn’t trying to make you cry, you can’t help but get emotionally involved in the lives of these instantly recognizable and compelling characters.

The real miracle about Friday Night Lights is that I’m still writing about it as it enters its fourth season. Consider it a gift from the satellite-TV gods as DirecTV continues its support of a show that NBC would have jettisoned after its second year because of poor ratings, worse scheduling and a lamentable apathy among the viewing public for TV that doesn’t conform to traditional high-concept formula. Even better, we don’t have to fret all season long about the show’s fate, because DirecTV has committed to a fifth season of 13 episodes. (This season’s episodes will air later on NBC, though maybe not until next summer. NBC’s prime-time real estate being so valuable these days, don’t you know.)

This season of transition gets off to a powerful start as all of Dillon is rocked by a redistricting plan that will find some of the former Panthers joining Coach Taylor, against their will, in the relatively shabby “hellhole” of East Dillon High, home of the forlorn and ragtag Lions. A town meeting overseen by the coach’s wife Tami, Dillon High’s beleaguered principal, is about as civil as your average health-care-reform town hall.

Tempers are raw everywhere, in town and on the practice field, and short fuses detonate frequently in this brawling season opener as we rejoin the lives of (among others) recent graduates Matt Saracen and Tim Riggins, who are coping with life outside the high-school spotlight about as well as you’d imagine. Especially when a rich-kid punk like J.D. McCoy (Saracen’s QB replacement, who still hasn't gotten over Coach Taylor taking him out of a pivotal game) starts crowing, “This is my Dillon now.”

There’s conflict aplenty this season, but the heart and soul of Friday Night Lights, as always, can be found in the struggles of the Taylors: Coach Eric (Kyle Chandler, commanding and careworn), wife/principal Tami (Connie Britton, always a breath of fresh attitude) and even their daughter Julie (Aimee Teegarden), torn between two schools and clashing loyalties.

As Eric labors to build a team, which means instilling discipline and self-esteem that is in dreadfully short supply, there’s none of that fake, forced uplift you find in clichéd sports movies. When he lays down the law to his unruly new players, not everyone wants to hear it. The locker-room pep talk before the first game is as stirring as you’d hope, all about the glories of Texas football, “the pride that it gives us and the respect that it demands,” but that doesn’t make it any easier to take the field when the odds are so stacked against you.

There are no miracles in Dillon, Texas, except for the one that allows us to keep watching this profoundly moving series about a small town that feels so real you can almost smell the chili. As the first episode ends, on a brutally uncompromising note, hearts are heavy with burden but also full with promise.

I can’t say how the Lions will ultimately fare, but I predict another championship-quality season for Friday Night Lights.

(Friday Night Lights airs Wednesdays at 9/8c on DirecTV’s The 101 Network.)