We are going to start with When Calls the Heart because it was basically our gateway drug into this world of gentle watches.
We were drawn to it initially because:
1. Period piece
2. Plucky heroine
3. Hot Mountie - featured prominently in the Netflix promo screen
4. Low-stakes conflict that will be solved by the end of the hour
5. Easy to watch while also having a full conversation
A quick overview of the premise: Elizabeth Thatcher is a young socialite who leaves the big city to teach in the tiny frontier town of Coal Valley. Roughly six months before Elizabeth arrives, there was a terrible accident at the mine and 46 men from the town died, including Lori Loughlin's husband and son. It is a pretty dark beginning, and season one does deal (albeit superficially) with grief and PTSD and how a community moves forward after a tragedy. But as the show goes on, this disaster seems to be basically forgotten and everything is much more cheerful. Mostly, it's a romantic story about finding yourself, learning heartfelt lessons and falling in love with ruggedly handsome men (Mounties, pastors, logging company owners, to name just a few).
Also inherent to the enjoyability of a gentle watch is how ridiculous or implausible some aspect of the story is. Fortunately ridiculousness abounds.
1. In season one, each episode focused on a different child going through the grief of losing their father in the mining accident. After that child was fixed, and learned to move on or love their mother or laugh again, we literally never see that child again.
2. In season one the town was drab, people wore brown, and miners actually came home with faces full of soot. By season two, the town is repainted in Disneyland colors, everyone suddenly has crisp new clothing, and looks clean and well rested. Nobody looks like they work in a mine anymore.
3. As part of the season two refresh, the costumes become atrociously hilarious. Check out Clara's old blog post about it here: http://thingsivacuumed.blogspot.com/2015/08/costume-meltdown.html
4. After some initial struggles, Elizabeth wins the children over with cheer and sincerity. After that they all sit quietly and hang on her every word. Take it from a teacher, that's literally never happened in a classroom in the history of the world.
5. Elizabeth is also basically teaching a freeform montessori education program. This is a frontier town when most kids would only be getting the "reading, writing, arithmetic" basics, yet Elizabeth is assigning environmental biology, essays about feelings, and endless art projects. All of the boys in this class would be going to work at the mine by the time they're 14, their parents would see learning the life cycle of a beetle to be a complete waste of time (which, let's be honest, that still sounds like a waste of time).
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| More spelling, less vision board making |
6. Jack and Elizabeth have been "courting" for more than three seasons - she would be straight-up considered a witch and a whore for the amount of time they spend alone together. In season four, it seems that Jack has dinner at Elizabeth's house every night, just the two of them. While obviously, in our modern times, this is fine and let's not slut-shame anyone here, but in 1910? It would be SO scandalous that the local school teacher and the town Mountie were basically living together unmarried.
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| INAPPROPRIATE PUBLIC BEHAVIOR!!! |
But enough about all that. Let's get to the good stuff. What is our rating and how hot are the men?
The Cheese Rating: It is definitely five out of five wedges of cheese.
[A real conversation that happened]
Olivia: This is so stupid.
Clara: ...are you...crying?
Olivia: ...no... *sniffs*
The Wine Rating: After much debate, When Calls the Heart get four out of five wine glasses. Despite our protestations, and the above list of ridiculousness, we're actually pretty emotionally invested in this show. We ship Elizabeth and Jack pretty hard and we have have very strong opinions about which of Lori Loughlin's many love interests is best for her .
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