Where the Hart Is

I am acutely susceptible to a certain brand of wacky sentimentality.  That's why I loved Gilmore Girls and Everwood, and why the funny episodes of Felicity are my favorites.  If you can make me laugh and cry at the same time, if the best way to describe your show is with the words "cute" or "charming," and if you've stacked the deck with silly tertiary characters, quaint events or pets with adorable names, I will almost certainly love it.  That's why Hart of Dixie seems tailor maid for me. 

Zoe Hart (Rachel Bilson) is a driven, emotionally stunted woman who has big plans to follow in the footsteps of her father and become a cardio thoracic surgeon working at a top New York hospital.  But her dad is cold and distant, her mom is bossy, withholding and controlling, and she has no bedside manner at all.  Bye bye New York CT fellowship. 

Fortunately, there's this old guy from Bluebell, Alabama who's taken an interest in her career and who's been courting her via post card to come work in his practice for 4 years.  With no other options left (or, at least with no easy ones that just pop up in front of her and wave their arms around in her face) she relocates to Bluebell to learn how to treat people as a general practitioner. 

The cranky town doctor (Tim Matheson), a bossy assistants (Nancy Travis), a former football hero for a mayor (Cress Williams), George, the dashing attorney (Scott Porter) and his snotty belle fiance named Lemon (Jamie King), a host of other small-town, southern characters and a pet alligator named Burt Reynolds.  Zoe likes George and George likes Zoe but he's engaged to Lemon who has a secret past with the mayor that might not be as over as she hopes.  The mayor's groundskeeper likes Zoe but she appears to be indifferent. Lemon's dad, Zoe's partner in the practice, is anxious to be the only doctor in town. 

It doesn't really matter what transpires to keep her in Bluebell (it jerked the tears out of me) or why the doc left her his practice when he didn't even know her (sniff!).  It just matters that these are actors I adore playing characters I like, in a town I find enchanting and I am completely won over by the show.