Image via Complex Original
Space opera Battlestar Galactica and family football melodramaFriday Night Lights are two of the most beloved cult hits of the last decade. You can spot a TV nerd from a mile away with his "Texas Forever" T-shirt and his "So say we all" tattoo. Look beyond the radically different landscapes of the two shows, the rusty trucks and endless fields of Texas and the hi-tech decks of the Galactica, and you'll see that they have more in common than meets the eye. In fact, they're the same show.
If one show's antagonists are robots and the other's are overbearing football dads, how can these shows be one in the same? Put on your helmet of choice, whether it's the headgear of a Panther or a Viper Pilot, and let us show you the 15 Ways Battlestar Galactica and Friday Night Lights Are the Same Show.
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Written by Brenden Gallagher (@muddycreekU)
A wise middle-aged couple...
There aren't many characters on television like the couples on Battlestar and Friday Night Lights. From the Westeros of Game of Thrones to the Brooklyn of Girls, older folks on TV are usually subjugated to the background so we can focus on the problems of hot young things.
But, you're probably thinking, what about about the suits and ties of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, or everyone's favorite lawman, Raylan Givens. Middle-aged leading men and women on TV, from Hank Moody to Nancy Botwin, are often just as childish as their young counterparts. They're trapped in a delayed adolescence, too obsessed with their careers or themselves to have a meaningful relationship. The boozing and one-night stands that these characters depend on feel far more like the typical behavior of a twentysomething than a mature adult. Rarely on prestige TV are loving, stable adult relationships the primary focus.
The relationship between Tami (Connie Britton) and Coach (Kyle Chandler) on Friday Night Lights, and the one between Admiral Adama (Edward James Olmos) and Laura Roslin (Mary McDonnell) on Battlestar Galactica offer the kind of love and commitment that only the healthiest of relationships can hope for. Rather than dwelling on failed romantic endeavors and broken couplings, we watch two people who are in love and working to keep it that way.
Unlike the typical TV anti-heroes, these characters aren't forever looking inward to fix themselves, these are individuals acting together to impact the world around them. It's refreshing. Try it on.
...leads a band of warriors...
In the pilot of Friday Night Lights, there's a scene where Coach talks to a scout who's come back from taking notes on that week's opponent. As they wrap up their conversation, and the aging scout sees the pressure building on the shoulders of the newly anointed coach, they go back and forth reminding each other that "it's just football." And then they start to laugh, because they're lying. It isn't "just football." To the people of Dillon, Texas, this is war.
Just as elaborate ceremonies are held for old soldiers on a Battlestar when they leave the service, celebrations are held at Garrity Motors, where aging ex-players proudly display their championship rings. For the Dillon Panthers, the State Championship isn't literally a matter of life and death, as it is for the Viper pilots, but it might as well be. All the old Panthers players have to look forward to is a life spent working a menial job in Dillon, hoping the next batch of warriors will bring home the prize and provide something to inspire feeling. That's not much of a life at all.
...including a brooding hot guy with cool hair...
Maybe there isn't much of a similarity between Gaius Baltar (James Callis) and Tim Riggins (Taylor Kitsch) at first glance. One is a tough football player on his way to a life as a drunken layabout. The other is a fast-talking genius who attains extreme political power and fanatical religious devotion. But these characters serve a very similar function in terms of the storytelling on their respective shows. They aren't exactly the antagonists, but they serve to cast doubt on the high-minded ideals of our hero and his mission.
Some Dillon Panthers will go on to play college football or harness the discipline they learned from Coach Taylor to find successful careers as agents or army men, but Riggins will have no such luck. Baltar remains skeptical of Adama and Roslin's strategy and governance throughout the show.
Throughout their arcs, both characters exist to ask an important question: Are our heroes doing more harm than good? Would Tim Riggins have been better off if he had never been a high school hero, with all the booze, women, and excuses he wanted? Would the Galactica crew have been better off without the mystical journey that Roslin and Adama persistently champion? The ends of each series provide us with a clear answer, but these characters act as vital antagonistic voices along the way.
...and a nerd who dates out of his league and gets punished for it...
In these alpha male dominated worlds of interstellar warfare and inter-Texas football, there isn't a lot of room for nerds. Both Billy (Paul Campbell) and Landry (Jesse Plemons) get punished when they think they can act like their muscle-bound shirtless castmates and date beautiful women. In the grand scheme of things, Landry turns out better than Billy. He commits murder trying to save the woman he loves and narrowly avoids a prison sentence, while Billy bites the bullet literally for his love interest. Brains are only valuable in these worlds if they're accompanied by a little brawn, or at least a strong backbone.
We wrote the producers of Battlestar to ask if Billy was also in a Christian speedmetal band, but, as of press time, we haven't heard back.
...and a token minority...
Tokenism is prevalent in all over TV, particularly on those shows with a cast of young hotties. The tokenism in these shows is a even more ridiculous than normal, because both shows engineer pretty implausible solutions to solve their white-washing problem.
On Battlestar, it turns out that Sharon Valeri, aka Sharon Agathon, aka Boomer, aka Number 8 (Grace Park) is one of an infinite number of exact copies of herself. This doesn't help more minority actors get work, but hey, it sort of counts, right?
In an equally strange development at the end of the third season of Friday Night Lights, we learn that Dillon, which seemed to be a pretty small, almost entirely white town actually has an urban, predominately black side of town that went conveniently unmentioned at the beginning of the series.
Here's to Smash (Gaius Charles) and Boomer for blazing the trail for the minority characters who would be implausibly added to these series at the 11th hour.
...and an attractive blonde who challenges the status quo...
Women have a far easier time of things in the space than they do in West Texas. Tyra (Adrienne Palicki) challenges the generally accepted course of life in Dillon simply by being an attractive young woman who chooses to not be a cheerleader.
Starbuck (Katee Sackoff) has to go a bit further to rock the boat in a society where men and women are equals. By constantly ignoring orders, punching a superior officer, and going off to hunt relics and lost planets whenever she feels like it, she blazes her own path.
...into a seemingly impossible battle.
Talking about who's worse off at the end of each series pilot, the edge has to go to the intrepid crew of the Galactica. Sure, the Panthers lost their star quarterback, but Adama and company have lost their entire civilization.
Now, if you want us to handicap who has better odds of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, we're going to have to call it a toss-up. While the Galactica is an antiquated Battlestar that was recently turned into a museum, Matt Saracen (Zach Gilford) hasn't thrown a meaningful pass outside of his backyard tire swing prior to replacing the paralyzed Jason Street (Scott Porter) as Dillon's QB1.
At the end of their respective pilots, victory is a long shot for both heroes, though we have a sense that the Coach and the Admiral have more than a fighting chance of defying the odds.
The aging hero uses motivational speeches...
Even when things look incredibly bleak, we know that Adama and Taylor have one thing in their back pocket: one helluva motivational speech. Whether you're asked by Coach if he can "talk to you for a second," or the Admiral asks to "see you in his quarters," you can guarantee that you're going to come away from the motivational spiel a new person, ready to take on the world.
Choosing between the inspirational monologuing of Edward James Olmos and Kyle Chandler would be like choosing between our children, but here's a Coach Taylor Supercut and the speech Adama gives before the Galactica's final mission in case you want to try to judge for yourself.
...and an awesome, inspiring catchphrase...
Every greatest speeches needs to be capped off by a catchphrase—even Shakespeare knew that. "So say we all" and "Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose" definitely belong in the pantheon of TV catchphrases and have to be high in the running for most affecting catchphrases of all time.
But don't take our word for it. If you want proof of the resonance of those lines, note that both have received political play in the last year or so. Mitt Romney stole "Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose" before FNL creator Peter Berg and Connie Britton called him out for it.
"So say we all" was the preferred slogan for sci-fi nerds for marriage equality back in late March, when everyone's Facebook profile pics went red in support of gay marriage.
...and the advice of his smart, loving, supportive partner...
The similarities between Laura Roslin and Tami Taylor might be even more striking than those between their respective hubbies. Both Taylor and Roslin are former teachers who get promoted. As President of the 12 Colonies, we assume Roslin got a more substantial raise than Taylor did when she became Principle of Dillon High. Both women meet criticism for their job performance and are forced out of their positions, only to later rise to greater heights than before.
Both women also stand by their husbands and try to make their relationship work despite some substantial difficulties. For Tami, this means trying to make her husband understand that he needs to consider her career needs as well as his own; for Roslin, this means encouraging her man to never again declare martial law and imprison her.
Hey, every relationship goes through its ups and downs.
(while simultaneously ignoring a doddering fool)
Saul Tigh (Michael Hogan) and Buddy Garrity (Brad Leland) exist to make their respective heroes look good by comparison. Even after they finally figure out how to do the right thing, they let old demons get the best of them.
Saul has his moment as a freedom fighter, but once he's back on Galactica he becomes the same drunken curmudgeon we know and love.
Garrity's life unravels as a result of his adulterous affairs, and even as he's brought lower and lower and gains a measure of humility, he's still often snake-bitten by what's left of his arrogant swagger right up until the series comes to a close.
As is often the case with arrogant blowhards, alcohol is an important coping mechanism for both characters: Tigh struggles with alcoholism throughout the series, while Garrity opens a bar in an attempt to raise his life from the ashes.
...to guide his crew through two distinct plot arcs, over the course of 76 episodes...
That's right, both series were practically the same length, though Battlestar lasted four seasons while Friday Night Lights lasted for five. Technically, Battlestar was 75 episodes, but bearing in mind the first two episodes were 90-minute long pieces of a two-part mini-series, we'll call it even.
And it isn't just the length of these series that's almost identical. The arcs of both also have distinct similarities.
Both stories begin with a plot arc that builds toward one goal: for Taylor it's a successful coaching record with the Dillon Panthers, and for Adama it's surviving the Cylon apocalypse.
Then here's a crucial turning point. For Battlestar it's the Cylon occupation, and for Taylor it's when he's ousted as the coach of the Dillon Panthers at the end of the third season.
From this point forward, our heroes must wrestle with their identity. Taylor finds himself a winning football coach who now hasn't a ghost of a chance, and Adama finds himself a soldier with no clear battle to fight.
At these (approximate) midpoints in the series, the scope broadens. No longer are there the same concrete goals for the protagonists to chase. Larger questions about the purpose of their endeavor and what success means for them become prominent, and are worked through in the remainder of the series.
...and find peace in a way that is totally unexpected, yet totally fulfilling.
When Admiral Adama promises that he will find Earth at the end of Battlestar Galactica's pilot, even he doesn't believe it. He promises Earth to his crew because he feels that there's no other way to give them any hope. When the crew of the Galactia does finally find Earth, it feels like more of an exhausted afterthought than a triumph. After following artifacts and prophecies that lead them nowhere, the intrepid crew finally finds their new home after the prodigal Starbuck comes through. What they thought would be a civilization something like their own turns out to be prehistoric, and the march of technology that destroyed them has walked back to nothingness.
In Friday Night Lights, the hero finds something that's been right in front of him all along as well. At first, we think that this is a television show about a football team. But it's not. It's the story of a couple dealing with a community. It's so fitting, so lovely, when we see Coach Taylor realize that he needs to sacrifice a piece of his ambitions for the dreams of his wife. For all of the teaching and mentoring Taylor offers throughout the series, we end the series watching him learn a significant lesson of his own.
Then, the show ends with someone building a house...
It's telling that the second to last scenes of both series involve characters building houses. After the tumultuous journey of the Panthers and the Galactica crew, there is finally a moment of rest. The wars (well, at least these wars) have come to an end. The journey is over. The Riggins Brothers and Admiral Adama symbolize this moment of triumphant stillness as both build homes overlooking vast, serene fields.
For the Riggins boys, it's "Texas forever." For Adama, we must draw on an older, less explicit phrase: He's trading in his swords for ploughshares. There's no more fitting end to these classical masculine odysseys than for the protagonists to settle down, build their little country homes, and put their weapons above the mantle, be they footballs or laser guns.
...and two main characters moving to the Northeast.
Though the northeastern U.S. is an alien world in both series (literally in Battlestar and figuratively in Friday Night Lights), this is where both series find an end. Battlestar jumps thousands of years into the future to a modern New York that looks pretty similar to the Caprica of the series pilot. Friday Night Lights moves only a few months into the future, to a Philadelphia school district where the football stadium is not the center of the universe and the players don't even know his catchphrase (you have to love the "Clear eyes, full hearts...we'll deal with that later" moment). We leave our characters as they begin a new journey in an alien environment.
In some ways, things feel the same: Coach Taylor is still on the football field while Gaius and Six muse about how the march of technology looks dreadfully similar to what was left on their old, destroyed planet.There is a note of hope in these familiar circumstances, though. We, the viewers, are left believing that the lessons and sacrifices of the previous episodes have not been in vein. Though the world may feel the same, history is not doomed to repeat itself because the characters have changed immeasurably.