MinkaKelly.com

THIS IS how new characters make their way onto " Friday Night Lights": They creep. The producers and writers of this finely whittled show know this: There are few truly grand entrances in life. And so when a fresh face needs introduction, it's in neatly doled-out dabs -- seen from a distance, barely sniffable at first. After a little while, when that person becomes central to a plot line, it's with a heavy inevitability. They've been there all the while, it seems, waiting for a change in tide.

In last week's third-season premiere, you first glimpse Joe McCoy (D.W. Moffett) in the empty bleachers, talking with Dillon Panthers booster Buddy Garrity (Brad Leland) while getting the once-over from Coach Eric Taylor ( Kyle Chandler). No one crosses his arms quite like Coach Taylor: right palm tucked into left pit, left arm on top of right, hand wrapped around the right bicep. They never intertwine. From the outside, it appears hard and impenetrable. But try it: It's like hugging yourself.

Coach Taylor's body never betrays him. His quiet certainty is the center of "Friday Night Lights," the perennially underwatched show about football and its fallout in the small town of Dillon, Texas. Easily among the most nuanced, felt and emotionally incisive shows on television, it still felt distant on NBC, an apparition that was more talked about than seen. Now on DirecTV (9 p.m. Wednesday), it will likely feel even more so. (NBC will air this season beginning in February.)