Jason Street

Jason Street is Dillon, Texas's golden boy: the Panthers' star quarterback, headed for a big-time scholarship, dating the pretty and devoted Lyla Garrity, and treated like royalty by a town that lives and dies with Friday night football. He's confident, gracious, a natural leader—the kind of kid who makes success look easy and inevitable.

Scott Porter plays that easy charisma so warmly and un-ironically that you believe every hope the town has pinned on him, which is exactly what the writing needs before it tests him. The performance never winks at the audience; Jason believes his own good fortune completely, and that sincerity is what makes him worth watching.