Now, I know you all think of me as an urban sophisticate with high brow taste, but I have a confession to make. Sometimes, I enjoy watching something silly and comforting on TV.
Something where you don't have to think too much or keep track of too many characters or have complex feelings or ask a lot of questions about if plot points are "realistic".
In a recent quest to expand our silly and comforting TV repertoire, Katr and I tried to relive our childhood by watching Little House on the Prairie.
It turns out that in the '70s, it was customary to stretch about 20 minutes worth of story into an hour of TV, so for every actual "thing that happens", there is an endless series of shots of Pa walking or riding horses, shirtless in high-waisted pants, the wind rippling through his washed-once-a-week hair, like he's in a prairie music video, trying to flush out sexy prairie dogs. We gave up after about a season. We want a show to be silly and comforting, not BORING WE HAVE STANDARDS.
After giving up on Little House, we were still primed for sweet ass prairie goodness, but with better outfits and that's when we started watching When Calls the Heart on Netflix.
When Calls the Heart is a Hallmark Channel show. Lori Loughlin is in it, so that's probably all you need to know.
When Calls the Heart is set in a mining town where there has been a mining accident recently and most of the men in the town were killed in the mine. If this set-up sounds familiar, it's also the premise of another Western-themed show on Netflix called Godless.
In the previews, I feel they sold Godless as an "all the dudes in this town were killed in a mining accident and now women run the town wocka wocka" kind of romp with a little Three Amigos-style peril at the end. But IN REALITY, it was mainly about a violent conflict between two dudes and there was a lot of sexual violence and it was really fucking disturbing in several parts. Only my love of Merritt Weaver and my faith in screenwriter Scott Frank kept me watching until the very satisfying conclusion. It was neither silly nor comforting.
Anyway, back to When Calls the Heart. In When Calls the Heart, big city rich girl Elizabeth Thatcher travels to the frontier to teach school to winsome ragamuffins in the tiny town of Coal Valley. Pampered Elizabeth knows a lot of book learnin' but doesn't know how to light a stove or cook, so she burns a lot of things, including the house she's supposed to live in, so she has to move in with Lori Loughlin.
There's a super hot Mountie in town - Jack - and in the first episode, he discovers that he's been assigned to this boring backwater instead of exciting Cape Fullerton because Elizabeth's rich dad wanted a Mountie in town to protect his little girl. Jack is SUPER PISSED about this and blames Elizabeth. Naturally, they fall in lurve.
You can see why Hallmark Channel enthusiasts love this show. The "issues" they tackle on When Calls the Heart are generally things like "wacky misunderstandings between will-they-or-won't-they couples", "education is important - even for GIRLS!", startling revelations like "You're MARRIED?" or "You were in PRISON?" and the occasional gang of outlaws passing through town who somehow manage to worm their way into the hearts of characters of the fairer sex and then get caught in dramatic fashion by Mountie Jack and one-time-Mountie-and-now-who-knows-what-the-hell-he's-up-to Bill, seen here drinking milk with Lori Loughlin.
It's ridiculous and we can't stop watching it. And I'll admit, the show has one other claim on my affections.
There's a character on When Calls the Heart named Rosemary LeVeaux. She's a very dramatic actress who vastly overestimates her own talents and is blissfully unaware of how annoying she is but in the end, she also has a heart of gold. Because it's a Hallmark show and you either have a heart of gold or a heart of coal and get caught doing crime and then Mountie Jack takes you to the pokey, where you get stared at by his basset hound Rip.
As I mentioned in one of my posts last year, my name is not nearly as unique as I'd like it to be. Actually meeting another Rosemary in person is a rare thing; seeing a character named Rosemary on a TV show is even more rare.
In fact, I don't think it's ever happened to me before, except for sort of in the Pound Puppy animated series, where there was a character named Nosemarie, and she was a dog and the one summer of my life that I had to deal with mean boys, the mean boys called me Nosemarie, so that wasn't great.
It was annoying when Rosemary showed up on When Calls the Heart, because her character was just there to throw a wrench into the burgeoning romance of Mountie Jack Thornton and big city rich girl turned small town frontier schoolteacher Elizabeth Thatcher. Spoiler alert: her plans to lure Jack away from Elizabeth fail but she sticks around to pester the town at large instead of just its Mountie. Gradually - very gradually - she becomes SLIGHTLY more endearing and as she stays on in the town, all the characters go from calling her Miss LeVeaux to calling her Rosemary. And I can't. Get. Enough.
Every time someone says "Rosemary" on the show, it's like my ears perk up. Like I'm a dog and I know my name. And my name is Rosemary.
A few episodes ago, every time someone said "Rosemary", I started whispering "Rosemary" to myself. And I have kept doing it. Kind of delightedly. Every time.
When Calls the Heart is definitely a problematic fave, you guys, I get it. Until the Season 4 Christmas special, everyone is SUPER white and we certainly never discuss whose land we're all mining and sawmilling and Mountie-ing on. Obviously, everyone is a proud heterosexual. There are some nice girl power moments that do not in any way threaten the patriarchy. And, for my history buffs, the fact that GROWN WOMEN WEAR THEIR HAIR DOWN IN 1910 is a constant source of fury. Jesus Christ, Lori Loughlin, you are RUNNING a CAFE. Keep your hair out of my shepherd's pie, FFS!
But still.
Rosemary.
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