I've gotten though the first half of season 3 so far, and I've enjoyed much of it. It's a good escape. But two things annoy me.
First, the entire series seems to be built on the efforts or apparently good-willed people making stupid moves. There's lying, concealing, manipulation and general lack of consideration that normal people wouldn't do. The whole town is like this. Many times the decisions or actions are based on some sort of strange sense of Southern cultural mores, but more often it's based on less complex motives, like simply being selfish or greedy. This is a good formula for making comedy work, but it gets old for me as a regular strategy for getting laughs...unless you have a single character, like Lucille Ball's, who is the fly in the ointment of everyday life and the rest of the cast plays "straight".
In almost every episode, some character, usually Zoe, ends up apologizing--over and over and over. It's tedious. And it's hard to believe that a person sharp enough to be a cardiac surgeon would be lacking so many simple adult skills. (Although, I must admit that, having grown up in a household of medical people, surgeons are often the most egotistical and self-involved type of medical professionals.)
My second problem is what I consider the "elephant in the room" problem. This is a small Southern town in Alabama, and yet every single character in the town seems to be completely unaware that Alabama culture has been associated with some of the most horrific practices of slavery, Jim Crow laws and other forms of institutionalized racism. It's one thing to portray a town such as this as having gotten over it and found reconciliation; it's another to have the entire town seem to have amnesia that it ever existed. Even the Founder's Day episodes don't address the issue. For instance, when European- American and African-American characters begin to become romantically involved, the problem with their relationship is not their ethnic background. Come ON! What used to be color barriers are crossed constantly in every episode: good. Pretending the barriers never existed a century ago: bad. At least SOMEbody's parochial grandma had to have a problem with this relationship or other aspects of Bluebell's change in racial attitudes over the last 50 years. Willful suspension of disbelief in fiction can only go so far, then it gets awkward.
This willful omission I blame on the creator and writers. It could have been a much better series by occasionally tackling the issue head on, addressing the realities of healing and change and then blending it in with some of the other positive aspects of Southern life that the writing does showcase so well.
First, the entire series seems to be built on the efforts or apparently good-willed people making stupid moves. There's lying, concealing, manipulation and general lack of consideration that normal people wouldn't do. The whole town is like this. Many times the decisions or actions are based on some sort of strange sense of Southern cultural mores, but more often it's based on less complex motives, like simply being selfish or greedy. This is a good formula for making comedy work, but it gets old for me as a regular strategy for getting laughs...unless you have a single character, like Lucille Ball's, who is the fly in the ointment of everyday life and the rest of the cast plays "straight".
In almost every episode, some character, usually Zoe, ends up apologizing--over and over and over. It's tedious. And it's hard to believe that a person sharp enough to be a cardiac surgeon would be lacking so many simple adult skills. (Although, I must admit that, having grown up in a household of medical people, surgeons are often the most egotistical and self-involved type of medical professionals.)
My second problem is what I consider the "elephant in the room" problem. This is a small Southern town in Alabama, and yet every single character in the town seems to be completely unaware that Alabama culture has been associated with some of the most horrific practices of slavery, Jim Crow laws and other forms of institutionalized racism. It's one thing to portray a town such as this as having gotten over it and found reconciliation; it's another to have the entire town seem to have amnesia that it ever existed. Even the Founder's Day episodes don't address the issue. For instance, when European- American and African-American characters begin to become romantically involved, the problem with their relationship is not their ethnic background. Come ON! What used to be color barriers are crossed constantly in every episode: good. Pretending the barriers never existed a century ago: bad. At least SOMEbody's parochial grandma had to have a problem with this relationship or other aspects of Bluebell's change in racial attitudes over the last 50 years. Willful suspension of disbelief in fiction can only go so far, then it gets awkward.
This willful omission I blame on the creator and writers. It could have been a much better series by occasionally tackling the issue head on, addressing the realities of healing and change and then blending it in with some of the other positive aspects of Southern life that the writing does showcase so well.