Whenever I encourage someone to watch Friday Night Lights—which happens often, as I’m quite evangelistic about my TV shows—the response is always the same: “But that’s a football show.”
For most shows, I would leave it at that and move on. But Friday Night Lights, currently airing its fifth season on DirecTV on Wednesdays at 9/8c, with a run on NBC this spring, is not most shows. And while football is central to the residents of Dillon, Texas, anyone who has watched one episode can attest that their lives are about much more than football. At its core, this is a show about marriage and family and the everyday moments that make up a life.
The show revolves around Eric and Tami Taylor, the coach and guidance counselor at East Dillon High School in rural west Texas. In the season five premiere, the Taylors are practically the only remaining original cast members, and their marriage anchors the show. They impact the kids of East Dillon not just as coach and counselor but by example, their lives and love modeling what many of the teens don’t have at home.
Slatecalls the Taylors’ marriage “the defining achievement of FNL, quite possibly the greatest marriage in television history.” New York magazine called the Taylors “the only living grown-ups on television: complicated, emotionally alive, intimate, and totally in love.”
And I’ll just come out and say it: I want to be Tami Taylor. Not until I started watching FNL did I realize the dearth of strong female role models on television. Like many women, Taylor wears many hats: wife, coach’s wife, mother, counselor, sister, friend. But what’s striking about Tami is that she often finds herself in situations where she does not know what to do, yet forges ahead and honestly addresses the situation head-on. Sincerity is her hallmark.
For example, when Taylor finds out that her daughter Julie has started having sex with her boyfriend, she insists they have an open talk about it (something sure to make any 16-year-old squirm).
Tami: And you know, just cause you’re having sex this one time doesn’t mean that you have to all the time, and you know if it ever feels like he’s taking you for granted, or you’re not enjoying it you can stop anytime … and if you ever break up with Matt it’s not like you have sex with the next boy necessarily.”
Julie: Why are you crying?”
Tami: Because I wanted you to wait … but that’s just because I want to protect you because I love you, and I want to make sure nothing bad ever happens to you. And I always want you to be able to talk to me even if it’s about something so hard like this.
Julie: I didn’t want to disappoint you.
It’s frustrating that Taylor implicitly allows her daughter to continue having sex, and I hope it might play out differently should I ever find myself in her parenting shoes. Yet hers is the first message I would look to for guidance, because Taylor’s love for her daughter is so obvious. Any teenager watching the scene would recognize it as well.
Earlier this year, Friday Night Lights made headlines when it aired an episode that portrayed a pregnant teenager seeking out, having, and not regretting an abortion. New York magazine described the episode as the “best and most honest portrayal of the heartrending decision to end a teenage pregnancy that we’ve ever seen.” (In fact, I argued in favor of this point.)
But, as is true in life, the story could not be neatly wrapped up in one hour-long episode. The rest of the fourth season effectively addressed the fall-out of such a decision in a small west Texas town. Because the girl had sought out Taylor’s guidance, and because the father’s parents are pro-life Christians, they were horrified to find out that information Taylor provided led the girl to have the abortion. (Taylor did not recommend that the girl have an abortion, suggesting adoption first, but did agree with the girl that abortion was one option.) At the outrage of her boyfriend’s parents and the principal of a local high school, by season’s end Taylor found herself demoted as principal down to guidance counselor.
Through it all, Tami exemplified why she is the best female character on television now, and perhaps ever. She acts in the interests of her students and is willing to keep jumping hurdle after hurdle with them so she can get them as far as she believes they can go. And she is gracious, willing to admit defeat or step aside when the battle is lost. She knows what she believes is right, and stands resolute and firm to defend it.
Though the Taylors regularly go to church (as nearly every character on the show does), Tami has never verbalized much about her faith. But one thing I appreciate about Friday Night Lights‘ portrayal of faith is that the characters we know to be Christians truly live lives consistent with Christianity.
I look forward to this final season and hope Taylor continues to be a strong character of power, grace, and love.
If you watch FNL, do you think Tami Taylor is an exemplary female character? Who are other strong female characters on TV?
Nothing says wholesome, family entertainment like a group of teenage misfits doing jazz squares. But since last May’s exuberant post-Idol premiere, FOX’s freshman series Glee has some of the nearly half million who downloaded that exuberant cover of “Don’t Stop Believin’” wondering if, as a recent Time article suggests, the show is actually anti-Christian.
It shouldn’t have come as a surprise, however, that a show conceived by Ryan Murphy, the man known for pushing boundaries on Popular and the controversial Nip/Tuck, would quickly generate controversies of its own. Call it “the ick factor”: the show’s two main story arcs center around Mr. Schuester, a teacher/choir director who’s stuck in a marriage so bad you find yourself rooting for him to leave his wife for the perky guidance counselor, and Finn, a quarterback-turned-baritone who accidentally got his cheerleader girlfriend pregnant. Did I mention that she’s a committed Christian (who interrupts their make-out sessions to pray) and the president of the celibacy club? And when her very religious parents find out about her pregnancy, they kick her out of the house. Ick, indeed.
If a show portrays Christians in a negative light, is it “anti-Christian”? This is the question Nancy Gibbs asks in her Time article, “The Gospel of Glee: Is it Anti-Christian?” While acknowledging the show’s reinforcement of negative stereotypes, she ultimately argues against the thesis: “It insults kids to suggest that simply watching Characters Behaving Badly onscreen means they’ll take that as permission to do the same themselves. The fact that Glee is about a club full of misfits already makes it ripe gospel ground; Jesus was not likely to be sitting at the cool kids’ table in the cafeteria.” She’s right; what we need to worry about is kids seeing characters behaving badly without repercussions. But this is not the case in Glee; its portrayal of struggling teenage parents offers an embodied, complex exploration of the consequences of sin.
She goes on to conclude, “The point lies in the surprises that jostle us out of our smug little certainties and invite us to weigh what we value, whatever our faith tradition.” It makes me uncomfortable to find myself rooting for even a fictional married man to leave his wife, but still I find myself struggling to reconcile my own beliefs with the action unfolding on screen. Is this cause for alarm with the show, for portraying a complicated situation without an easy resolution, or is it in myself, for being exposed in my baser instincts? I’m helping the show make its point—I am the “hypocritical Christian” it critiques. We can be quick to jump on obvious red flags, but it’s often the subtleties of a well-made work that draw out the true message. They don’t make for easy sound bites, but they’re often there if we’re willing to do the work.
Glee airs its fall finale tonight at 9/8c on FOX. Are you still watching? What do you think about the idea that the show is “anti-Christian”?
