"Don't whisper-yell at me," Coach Eric Taylor retorted during a recent episode of "Friday Night Lights," after his wife, Tami, proved once again during a quiet, intense fight that she's the wiser half.
It was a funny line in its delivery, but it also highlighted a relationship that works for better and for worse, and has been heralded by critics and fans as the best portrayal of a marriage on television.
As brought to life by Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton, Eric and Tami Taylor are not your typical TV spouses. They argue without bickering. They support without resenting. And they are loyal and interested instead of dishonest and indifferent. No other married couple on TV -- except perhaps for Allison (Patricia Arquette) and Joe Dubois (Jake Weber) on NBC's "Medium" -- makes domesticity seem both ordinary and blissful.
Chandler, 42, who is married and has two daughters, says the secret to the success of the Taylor marriage has little to do with the romantic part of the couple's relationship.
"A marriage is a bond between two people, and a friendship," Chandler said. "The way we do it, I think, is that the marriage part is secondary to the friendship between the two characters."
The couple's steady give-and-take is one of the cornerstones of a series built around the life of a town in which high school football means everything. "Friday Night Lights," which was created by Peter Berg, has a loyal audience of 6.2 million but still hasn't popped as a hit. The series has improved its ratings since NBC moved it to Fridays, ranking second in its 9 p.m. time slot among 18- to 49-year-olds and picking up 38% more of those viewers from DVR playbacks. Though its season was shortened by the strike, "Friday Night Lights" managed to complete 15 episodes -- there are three more in its run.
In person, the actors who portray the Taylors can seem as if they're stuck in an episode of "Everybody Loves Raymond." During an interview over breakfast at Victor's Square Deli in Hollywood last month, they teased and squabbled about who smells worse, who talks more and how they each landed their roles.
Britton: Pete had been talking to me about it, and I had been a little foot-draggy, and then I found out it was you and I was really foot-draggy.
Chandler: I was foot-draggy too. And if I had known it was you, I wouldn't have been foot-draggy. I would have been the hell out of there.
Britton: Exactly. I thought, who is this scumbag that I've never heard of?
