Lord have mercy ya'll. Last night I came across the saddest little show called Hart of Dixie on the CW. My expectations were not high, but with Ringer and the Secret Circle, I thought we might have a winner. Sigh....no.
Where to start on this...you see, I liked many of the pieces - Rachel Bilson (adorable), Scott Porter (Blake from the Good Wife who is nothing like his character on TGW), Vice President John Hoynes (Tim Matheson), the hot redneck neighbor, an alligator named Mr. Burt Reynolds (they share the same skin), a sleepy little Alabama town and a house that looks like its straight from the arizona sweet tea bottle. However, the writing? Awful. The 'southern' names? Atrocious. Lemon? No one names their child Lemon. And I hate the voice overs. HATE THEM. We got the story Rachel; you don’t need to talk to us like we're stupid, though it is on the CW, so maybe half your audience is.
Rachel Bilson is Zoe Hart and from the moment she was 9 she has wanted to be a cardiothoracic surgeon. She tells you this about 100 times. Here is the first problem though. Rachel Bilson probably couldn’t even spell cardiothoracic surgeon, and yet here she is, running around new york hospital, trying to be a doctor while wearing some killer stilettos and has a poor bed side manner.
When she doesn't get the internship she thought she deserved, she heads on down to Dixie where an old man who saw her speak at med school graduation begged her to come and work in his general practice. So dressed in her $6000 Chanel jacket and those damn stilettos, she hops aboard a Greyhound and treks it down to Alabama to find out old man Harley is dead and has left his portion of the practice to Zoe. The other half of the practice belongs to VP John Hoynes from TV’s West Wing who hates Zoe because she is a woman and she is from new york city.
I really, really dislike shows about the big city person who knows best but somehow ends up in the South to warm, friendly people and thinks they are backwards bum-fucks. Ok, sometimes it's true that part of the south is like the 1960, but that's not a reason to be mean to people.
So Zoe heads off the Greyhound stop (which stops randomly along a street) and starts walking the 3 miles to town in 4 inch heels, when a hot southern boy in a pickup truck stops and offers her a ride. She declines because she is a yankee and they do not accept rides from hot men strangers. They go back and forth and of course she takes the ride. She finds out that George lived in NYC too! But he loved the quiet life, sitting on the verandah, sipping some sweet tea. Zoe is marveled at this - why would anyone leave the city for this! He drops her at her new office, she meets her assistant, an under-utilized Nancy Travis, and requires a soy foam latte to keep her awake because she wants to see her patients! Right now! But there is no starbucks in this sleepy little town! Ohhh no. The horror! The closest coffee shop is 13 miles away. I can't imagine this is possibly true and should move there immediately to open a store.
A lot of stuff happened in this hour – from meeting Lemon, the cut-throat debutante whose father is John Hoynes who is engaged (yes ya’ll! Engaged to George!), to the black former football player who refers to himself in the third person, to George saving Zoe from Mr. Burt Reynolds in the middle of the night down a dark, deserted road. There was the pregnancy, the making out with hot neighbor boy, Zoe’s mother, Zoe’s father, the secret confession of Lemon loving the football player, and the sexual tension between George and Zoe. I’m exhausted just thinking/writing about it. It was a lot to take in.
I’m on the fence with this show. If the writing improves, then it could possibly be cute. But I don’t think there is any writing in the world that will make people believe that Rachel Bilson made it thru medical school and is a doctor. True story.
XOXO,
Bunny the belle
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