Quite uncomfortable truths
Jan. 21st, 2023 11:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallownessHart of Dixie - 2.14 Take Me Home, Country Roads
The follow-up to the previous episode included AB trying to pretend Nothing Had Happened with Lavon when it clearly had, and he was left puzzled because he thought What Had Happened had gone well. Zoe was high on being Dr Popular now, while Brick was not – serve him right for not being around (again, although I think that’s a function of Tim Matheson not being one of the five regulars) when the flu hit the town. I inferred that he’d been on a trip with Shelby, who was trying to cosy up to Lemon and Magnolia and tacitly acknowledging the age gap with Brick by trying to be the sister figure neither Breeland girl wanted.
Zoe being the doctor in demand was encroaching on Wade/Zoe time. He was getting disgruntled and although he talked a lot about sex, it was clear he wanted her company too. And although AB pretended she wanted doctoring, she really wanted female advice on her situation, complicated by the fact that, of course, she had feelings for Lavon. There were echoes of the potential for Zoe-AB friendship from s1, and, really, I’d like for Zoe to have a staunch adult female ally.
Brick guilted Lemon into not being evil (as Magnolia kinda wanted her to be to remove the potential stepmother). Jonah, who had been brash and flirty to Zoe (she has one of those in her life already and told him as much), turned out to be Brick’s nephew (which reminded me of the s1 cousin with MS we’ve never heard of since) and to be a doctor and so a solution to Zoe and Brick’s competitiveness and desire for the weekend off – Zoe having promised to spend it with Wade, and being deserving of the time off, while Brick was celebrating his birthday. Brick was swithering over those birthday celebrations, though, nixing a birthday bash because he started worrying that his much younger girlfriend would increase his new unpopularity. Meanwhile, Jonah was a bit of a horndog; having failed with Zoe, he asked Lemon to set him up with divorcee AnnaBeth.
I sympathised with George’s antipathy to Tansy’s dog, Dolly Parton.
Lavon tried to get AnnaBeth to explain why they couldn’t be together on a date (oh, put two and two together, man.)
Wade had a lot to put up with while he was being the best boyfriend under the circumstances (he had made an effort to turn the night they were meant to spend together more romantic than his words had suggested). Even though he’d got Zoe out of Bluebell, she hadn’t left it behind, and when one of her patients let slip that a lot of them were going to the surgery for non-medical reasons, she ended up going too far. Her falling into mud in search of a phone signal was schadenfreude. She and Wade started arguing about what they’d do after she got cleaned up. She’s not wrong about Wade not caring as much for bartending as she does for doctoring, but saying it out loud like that was painful.
Speaking of connecting, AB was so useless at following Zoe’s good advice and telling Lemon what had happened, because Lemon is Lemon, she ended up on a ‘date’ with Jonah. Which Lavon walked in on and saw Jonah covering AB’s hand, not AB looking at her watch or sharing memories, not sizzle with Jonah. So she had to go after Lavon and explain, and admitted she had feelings for Lavon to his face. He was now up to speed about the Lemon problem, and, at this point, at least, seemed to have moved past Lemon.
Magnolia let slip to Lemon that she’d lied to Shelby and egged her on to arrange a surprise birthday party against Brick’s wishes, showing Lemon, who was trying so hard to be Lemon 2.0 for her daddy, what kind of example she’d been setting to her little sister. Could Magnolia at least squash the whole Shelby jumps out of a cake and does a special dance for her boyfriend part of the evening?
George, having been a careless dogsitter and disappointing boyfriend, had to sing a snippet of ‘Jolene’ to Tansy’s dog to prove he loved her. Tansy, that is. This was the most lightweight plotline and part of its problem was that it didn’t connect to any of the other storylines. Zoe and Wade are in a triangle with Bluebell, Lemon is in a very dramatically fruitful triangle with Lavon and AnnaBeth, while claiming to be happy with new boyfriend Walt, and Tansy is as OTT as any Bluebell lady, but…Scott Porter is reduced to doing turns, essentially.
So, Zoe walked in on the surprise party just before Brick did, and walked out again. Shelby burst out of the cake and performed a risqué enough dance that you’d hope no one younger than Magnolia was there. (Turns out the actress playing her has a good voice. If Rachel Bilson could sing, I’d be expecting a full-on musical episode soon.) The Breeland girls were horrified, but Shelby got applauded and Brick proved he was enough of a gentleman to admit she was his (much younger) girlfriend to the town. (Deleted sentence about all the ways he isn’t a gentleman went here.)
Jonah gave Zoe some reassurance that the town has accepted her and floated the idea of moving back to Bluebell – she said no thank you, but I suspect they’ve given him a big enough build-up that he’s going to stay around a bit. At present, I remain uncharmed. AnnaBeth finally told Lemon, who was hurt and angry because the person who she’d trusted with her secret feelings had betrayed them, which I get, but have also witnessed her treating AB horribly, while saying that she’s happy to move on with Walt, so I doubt I’ll have much sympathy for her if she keeps on being in a snit with AB.
Zoe went to Wade’s to apologise again to him, he admitted that she’d been right about the job crack and said he was thinking about getting his own bar, which made her face light up. And I’m willing to accept that that’s at the idea of a Wade with purpose, pushing himself more than narrow ambition. They would have finally had sex, but a heartbroken Lavon turned up demanding choccies and sympathy, because AB had taken on Lemon’s criticism and wanted to regain her (abusive?) best friend’s trust. To me, that shows that AB is more the person Lemon was trying to be for all of five seconds, and deserves to be happy with Lavon, even if that probably isn’t endgame.
(But what will this mean for the catering company?)
Overall, this was a very well-constructed ep. [Edited for tupos 25/05/05.]
The follow-up to the previous episode included AB trying to pretend Nothing Had Happened with Lavon when it clearly had, and he was left puzzled because he thought What Had Happened had gone well. Zoe was high on being Dr Popular now, while Brick was not – serve him right for not being around (again, although I think that’s a function of Tim Matheson not being one of the five regulars) when the flu hit the town. I inferred that he’d been on a trip with Shelby, who was trying to cosy up to Lemon and Magnolia and tacitly acknowledging the age gap with Brick by trying to be the sister figure neither Breeland girl wanted.
Zoe being the doctor in demand was encroaching on Wade/Zoe time. He was getting disgruntled and although he talked a lot about sex, it was clear he wanted her company too. And although AB pretended she wanted doctoring, she really wanted female advice on her situation, complicated by the fact that, of course, she had feelings for Lavon. There were echoes of the potential for Zoe-AB friendship from s1, and, really, I’d like for Zoe to have a staunch adult female ally.
Brick guilted Lemon into not being evil (as Magnolia kinda wanted her to be to remove the potential stepmother). Jonah, who had been brash and flirty to Zoe (she has one of those in her life already and told him as much), turned out to be Brick’s nephew (which reminded me of the s1 cousin with MS we’ve never heard of since) and to be a doctor and so a solution to Zoe and Brick’s competitiveness and desire for the weekend off – Zoe having promised to spend it with Wade, and being deserving of the time off, while Brick was celebrating his birthday. Brick was swithering over those birthday celebrations, though, nixing a birthday bash because he started worrying that his much younger girlfriend would increase his new unpopularity. Meanwhile, Jonah was a bit of a horndog; having failed with Zoe, he asked Lemon to set him up with divorcee AnnaBeth.
I sympathised with George’s antipathy to Tansy’s dog, Dolly Parton.
Lavon tried to get AnnaBeth to explain why they couldn’t be together on a date (oh, put two and two together, man.)
Wade had a lot to put up with while he was being the best boyfriend under the circumstances (he had made an effort to turn the night they were meant to spend together more romantic than his words had suggested). Even though he’d got Zoe out of Bluebell, she hadn’t left it behind, and when one of her patients let slip that a lot of them were going to the surgery for non-medical reasons, she ended up going too far. Her falling into mud in search of a phone signal was schadenfreude. She and Wade started arguing about what they’d do after she got cleaned up. She’s not wrong about Wade not caring as much for bartending as she does for doctoring, but saying it out loud like that was painful.
Speaking of connecting, AB was so useless at following Zoe’s good advice and telling Lemon what had happened, because Lemon is Lemon, she ended up on a ‘date’ with Jonah. Which Lavon walked in on and saw Jonah covering AB’s hand, not AB looking at her watch or sharing memories, not sizzle with Jonah. So she had to go after Lavon and explain, and admitted she had feelings for Lavon to his face. He was now up to speed about the Lemon problem, and, at this point, at least, seemed to have moved past Lemon.
Magnolia let slip to Lemon that she’d lied to Shelby and egged her on to arrange a surprise birthday party against Brick’s wishes, showing Lemon, who was trying so hard to be Lemon 2.0 for her daddy, what kind of example she’d been setting to her little sister. Could Magnolia at least squash the whole Shelby jumps out of a cake and does a special dance for her boyfriend part of the evening?
George, having been a careless dogsitter and disappointing boyfriend, had to sing a snippet of ‘Jolene’ to Tansy’s dog to prove he loved her. Tansy, that is. This was the most lightweight plotline and part of its problem was that it didn’t connect to any of the other storylines. Zoe and Wade are in a triangle with Bluebell, Lemon is in a very dramatically fruitful triangle with Lavon and AnnaBeth, while claiming to be happy with new boyfriend Walt, and Tansy is as OTT as any Bluebell lady, but…Scott Porter is reduced to doing turns, essentially.
So, Zoe walked in on the surprise party just before Brick did, and walked out again. Shelby burst out of the cake and performed a risqué enough dance that you’d hope no one younger than Magnolia was there. (Turns out the actress playing her has a good voice. If Rachel Bilson could sing, I’d be expecting a full-on musical episode soon.) The Breeland girls were horrified, but Shelby got applauded and Brick proved he was enough of a gentleman to admit she was his (much younger) girlfriend to the town. (Deleted sentence about all the ways he isn’t a gentleman went here.)
Jonah gave Zoe some reassurance that the town has accepted her and floated the idea of moving back to Bluebell – she said no thank you, but I suspect they’ve given him a big enough build-up that he’s going to stay around a bit. At present, I remain uncharmed. AnnaBeth finally told Lemon, who was hurt and angry because the person who she’d trusted with her secret feelings had betrayed them, which I get, but have also witnessed her treating AB horribly, while saying that she’s happy to move on with Walt, so I doubt I’ll have much sympathy for her if she keeps on being in a snit with AB.
Zoe went to Wade’s to apologise again to him, he admitted that she’d been right about the job crack and said he was thinking about getting his own bar, which made her face light up. And I’m willing to accept that that’s at the idea of a Wade with purpose, pushing himself more than narrow ambition. They would have finally had sex, but a heartbroken Lavon turned up demanding choccies and sympathy, because AB had taken on Lemon’s criticism and wanted to regain her (abusive?) best friend’s trust. To me, that shows that AB is more the person Lemon was trying to be for all of five seconds, and deserves to be happy with Lavon, even if that probably isn’t endgame.
(But what will this mean for the catering company?)
Overall, this was a very well-constructed ep. [Edited for tupos 25/05/05.]
