By now, we know Scott the vet is actually rather close with the Flemings, and that Ty likes to look out
for Amy. One character I neglected to talk about from the last two episodes is Mallory, whose family
is friends with the Flemings. She seems to visit fairly regularly, and does a good job of filling in the
role of the child who just runs her mouth. Her talkative nature allows her to make the subtleties of the
show more obvious, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. If anything, it's another reason for why
Heartland feels so real. Children in general point out the obvious, whereas adults tend to over-think
things and under-communicate.
Thanks to Amy's exceptional people skills, she manages to attract her first major client: the wealthy
Lisa. Lou invites her father to the open house she planned for boosting Heartland's reputation, and
gives him an opportunity to get to know Amy better. We still don't know what he's done, but he
isn't portrayed as a bad man, so I'm starting to think maybe he's alright.
The middle parts of this episode really feel like business as usual. Ty continues to obey and assist Jack
with physical work and Amy continues to work with horses. I'm starting to get the feeling that future problem horses will have their issues resolved the same way: by bringing back the previous owner.
It's not exactly a bad thing, especially if the acting is strong, but I can only hope it doesn't happen
frequent enough to get stale.
Towards the end is when this episode begins to annoy me. I think I expressed before that Ashley
wasn't exactly an interesting character. Well, neither is her mother Val. They were the two weakest
links in my book for being relatively one-dimensional antagonists, and here they continue to do just
that. It's a freaking open house for Heartland, and despite being invited out of courtesy (I'd assume),
they choose to use it as an opportunity to soil Amy's reputation. Just, ugh. And predictably enough,
Amy takes Val on and uses her challenge as an opportunity to make Heartland look even better. It's a
rather formulaic and cheesy scenario, and I think I'll pretend it never happened, since nothing of
importance came out of it. We already knew Amy was good with horses and jumping, after all.
Amy and Lou's father does end up coming to the open house, although he does it quietly and is
chased off by Jack before he gets the opportunity to reconcile with Amy. As for the rest of the
characters that evening, traces of romantic interest were all over the place: Amy x Ty, Lou x Scott,
and... Jack x Lisa? It looks like another character will be joining the crew at Heartland next episode.
Episode 3 continues to reinforce the chemistry between Amy and Ty, although you can already feel
that if/when they get together, you'll miss the way they are right now. Many questions still remain unanswered, like what kind of life Ty led before coming to Heartland, what Amy and Lou's father did
for Jack to despise him so much, and more minor things like who the heck Mallory's parents are and
why we haven't seen them yet. Hopefully in future episodes, Ashley and Val will be developed a bit
more, so that I can stop seeing them as generic, uninteresting characters. I suppose they'll appeal to
the younger audience, with this being a family show and all, but as an adult who hasn't even watched
that much television, this whole idea of a mean girl and her mother antagonizing for the sake of it
seems all too familiar and cliché. |
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