Tyra Collette

Tyra is the girl Dillon, Texas has already written off—tough, sharp-tongued, and dating the star fullback mostly because he's easy company, not because she believes in the town's football gospel. She works, she gets by, and she's smarter than the low expectations everyone, including herself, has settled on.

The show could have left her as the pretty girl on the arm of a jock, but it keeps giving her ambition nobody asked to see, and Palicki plays the gap between Tyra's mouth and her hope without ever softening the mouth. Her defensiveness reads as armor, not attitude, which is why it lands.