JULIE TAYLOR: AIMEE TEEGARDEN 🏈🏈🏈🏈🏈🏈
Julie and Matt are slow dancing to a radio playing Patti Page at a Holiday Inn and she’s being all awkward and saying it’s dumb and he’s like “It’s romantic, we’re slow dancing in a hotel in Austin” and she just says “It’s the capital.” Classic Julie: totally useless.
You’re not as interesting as they imply you’ll be and you’ve never been funny even though you’ve tried valiantly but your hair is so straight it looks sharp, so you do have that. How are Tami and Coach your parents and you come out so meh? (And poor baby Gracie Belle, bald as my grandpa). They tried a bit with Julie - the occasional but always obtuse literary references (The Moby Dick one in the pilot still haunts me)- and she did have that reverse Lolita thing with her English teacher. If I was the queen of Friday Night Lights, Julie would have brazenly disregarded her Mom’s wishes and taken off with the English teacher a la Cash and Tyra, who themselves get married too young but have a much classier wedding than Billy Riggins and Mindy and a lot of beautiful blonde babies and stay together forever AND Tyra becomes Lady President while Julie lives out the rest of her life as a well-read but overall maladjusted dental hygienist.
MATT SARACEN: ZACH GILFORD 🏈🏈🏈🏈🏈
He’s the middle of the middle of the road - and taking care of Grandma Lorraine alone while his absentee Dad toils in Iraq merely adds up to just enough to cancel out the whole slurry wet noodle thing he has going on. +3 footballs anytime him and Riggins hang out, because Riggins is the kind of guy who brings up everyone’s footballs. You get high just from being around him (I estimate). I mean sweet baby QB Matty gets dragged into the shower by his coach, drunk as all hell cold water streaming on his face and he’s crying, screaming “everyone leaves me” and I’m just thinking- Matt, you’re boring. So colour me surprised when he gets into the Chicago Art Institute- remarking to Julie about the culture in Chicago “A lot more than here.” This coming from the guy who is overwhelmed by the Alamo Freeze! It doesn’t add up, What does Julie see in him? You know what I bet? What I really think? Big dick. Think about it.
TAMI TAYLOR: CONNIE BRITTON 🏈🏈🏈🏈🏈🏈🏈🏈
Tami’s a very empathetic mom who gets to be sexy and flawed (like her taste in footwear and a certain kind of boxy, square necked silk blouses with really floppy cap sleeves). A woman with a career and children who is responsible but passionate and is usually drinking a tall glass of wine after a long day (still probably only half of what Kirsten Cohen would’ve had). Watching her gives me the same feeling I get when watching Orange is the New Black- profoundly dumfounded to see a woman written and played like a human. It’s not perfect, but so refreshing. We are always asked to empathize with the Landry Clarks and the Matt Saracens of the TV world- we’ve seen them 1000 times before. With Tami, I feel like I am building neural pathways on how to have empathy for female characters.
As for her other characteristics - the high strung super intimate umbilical cord mom vibe - I’ve got too many Mom issues for that.