So long, and thanks for all the fish-y plotlines!

 Dear WCTH writers, the first rule of writing is show, don't tell. You can tell us over and over again how "honorable" Elizabeth is, but actions speak louder than words and you aren't showing her acting very honorably.

But it seems the show is completely ignoring canon and trying to reverse the direction they chose in season 8. Congrats on jumping the shark! And Brian Bird thinks it's going to last as long as the Simpsons? 😂😂😂 I don't even watch the Simpsons and I know that's highly unlikely. Unless their goal is to emulate daytime soap operas in their entirety. Interesting choice for an allegedly "wholesome" and "Christian" show.

As an aside, I know I'm 100% in the minority here, but the hint that Abigail might return was the final nail in the coffin for me. Someone tweeted asking if people would stick with the show if she returned and I'm giving an emphatic hell no. I personally have no desire to see Lori Loughlin return to the show. For a while, I thought Minnie might be the new "matriarch" of the town, but I've read that this season her screen time was limited to a BBQ? Great choice... I wasn't sad to see Abigail go based on the way Lori behaved after the season 5 finale and due to how long it took her to acknowledge her crime. I'm not sure she learned any lesson from what she did. 

Besides, the town has moved on without her, so I don't see what good it would do to regress. Though, I suppose, that was the entire goal of season 10, wasn't it? To regress the show back to season 8 so they could revisit the triangle? There were so many creative ways they could have caused a break-up without obliterating the story they'd already told. Would fans have still been upset? Possibly, but as I said before, if they weren't straight up lying about what happened, fans might have at least respected their honesty even if they disagreed with the decision.

Anyway, I've already spent way too much time on this stupidity. So long WCTH and thanks for all the fish-y plotlines! 

Fool Me Twice...

Throughout all of season 5 of When Calls the Heart, Brian Bird continued to assure fans on social media that "Everything's Going to Be Okay" or "EGBOK" for short. And then, Jack died and we learned what we'd long suspected: that Daniel Lissing was leaving the show.

After the finale aired, confirming hearties' worst fears, I wasn't angry at Daniel Lissing for making a career decision. I wasn't even mad that they killed off Jack. Was I annoyed that it took us 5 seasons to finally see Elizabeth and Jack get married? Of course, especially since we went from a wedding to a funeral in like 5 episodes. It sucked. Nobody was happy. Hearties took to Twitter to express their anger and frustration. I remember even having a moment of schadenfreude the next season when Lori Laughlin got fired because after season 5, she called out hearties for having a "bad" reaction. She went on and on about how many people would have lost their jobs if they canceled the show after the wedding. Someone pushed back and told her to "let us grieve" and she finally shut up. But I never forgot the way she reacted to the backlash and when the story came out about the investigation into her part of the college scandal, a part of me felt vindicated because her own actions could have put the show in jeopardy. I honestly wasn't sure if the show could survive after losing two prominent characters in Jack and Abigail.

No, what angered me at the time was being lied to, for an entire season, by someone who proudly calls himself a "pot stirrer." Well, Brian, sometimes over stirring the pot causes the contents to boil over, leaving a big, burnt mess. And that's what happened after season 5. I'm not saying they should have had spoilers. I get it, the shock value of losing a major character was "good for ratings." But telling us everything was going to be okay when it clearly was not pissed me off. For someone who preaches his "Christian values", constantly on social media, I didn't expect to be so blatantly lied to.

So, it pains me to acknowledge how much my aggravation at the show is my own fault. I, once again, made the mistake to trust someone who had already lied to me once. Brian Bird not only stated the triangle was resolved, he defended the decision to go with Lucas. He didn't back down from the backlash from Team Nathan. In the face of so much vitriol for not only the characters, but the actors, the writers, the showrunner, and Brian Bird himself, he stood firm.

But now, I'm hearing interviews where the new showrunner decided to break Elizabeth and Lucas up at the end of the season and worked backwards from that action. Where the man who defended choosing Lucas as a way to tell more stories and "breathe life" into the show, is now acting like this was "always Casablanca." I'm sorry, when was Elizabeth running from Nazis? WWII hasn't even started yet in the timeline of the show and WWI is over, though you'd never know it had happened in the quiet town of Hope Valley. And if we're going with the Casablanca angle, is Daniel Lissing coming back to reprise his dead character? Because that's the only way any of these claims are plausible.

What's ironic to me is that I've seen claims from Mr. Bird that if Elizabeth and Lucas got married, they wouldn't have new stories to tell. Well, that's weird. If Jack hadn't died, would that have been the end of the story? Rosemary and Lee got married, and the story continued. Other couples have gotten married on the show and the story continued. Why is this relationship the one that would end the story?

Still, that's not even what I'm mad about. As I've said before, I was team "tell a better story" and honestly would have been just as happy if Elizabeth chose neither man at the end of season 8 and stayed single. But since we were told that she would be making a choice and ending the triangle, I was hoping for Lucas simply because I didn't want to revisit the Mountie storyline again. Even a blended family didn't feel like enough of a change to the love story we'd already seen between Elizabeth and Jack.

I'm angry because I'm being gaslit. I was married to a narcissist and I got out of that relationship because of gaslighting, among other reasons. The last thing I need is to be gaslit by a television show. WCTH is supposed to be about hope. It's supposed to be an escape. Instead, I'm feeling like I'm once again in an abusive relationship, questioning what I thought was true and watching a complete revision of history. From a television show. I suppose my one consolation is that this is a much easier "relationship" to leave, but it doesn't change the fact that the behavior is triggering.

If they wanted to kowtow to Team Nathan, then fine. It's not the direction I would have chosen, but it's not my show. They could be upfront and say they thought they made a mistake choosing Lucas and needed to course correct. I doubt I'd continue on with the show for the reasons I stated above, but I could at least respect their honesty.

But that's just it. They're not being honest. We're being told it was "always Casablanca." They're painting this revisionist history where Elizabeth never actually loved Lucas, despite all the receipts I've seen from Team Lucas demonstrating the contrary. The worst is, they literally pulled lines directly from Team Nathan in the last episode, which is making this all sound like some awful fan fiction. If I had known that WCTH was going to be a clean version of 50 Shades of Gray (which, if anyone wasn't aware, started out as fan fiction of Twilight) I would have stopped watching after season 5.

I recently saw a TL fan who is holding onto hope that this is all a ruse. Again, I haven't watched season 10, but I've read enough spoilers to have an idea of the plot/overarching storyline. This fan is hoping that Elizabeth and Lucas are playacting a break-up because of a threat to protect one or both of them. The idea is the ruse will be revealed in the finale and all will be well, but honestly, I think that's even worse. For one, jerking TN around like that is just cruel. But at this point, bringing up the triangle again at all was stupid. It's splitting the fanbase yet again and causing a lot of poor behavior on both sides. Several hearties, including ones who weren't on a team like me, are over it and walking away. Though Mr. Bird apparently says only "drips and drabs" of fans will leave the show, and for his and the actors' sake, I hope he's right.

But he also said that the teams were something the fans did, and not something WCTH cast and crew created or encouraged. That is the biggest load of horse manure I've seen from him yet. There is literally a tweet from him in the middle of season 6 on May 6th, 2019 that says "Too early for #TeamNate and #TeamLucas, #Hearties?" So, don't give me the bs that the "fans" created the teams. And let's be real, any time there is a love triangle in any form of media whether book (see Edward vs Jacob), television show (see Stefan vs Damon, Max vs Simon), or movie (see Mark Darcy vs Daniel Cleaver), there are bound to be teams rooting for each character. 

I'm not buying what he's desperately trying to sell. You can't create a monster and then, when you inevitably lose control of said monster, wave your hands and proclaim your innocence. There are literally dozens of tweets from him fanning the flames of the teams, including the one I mentioned above. I've honestly never seen a show creator be as involved in promoting the show on social media as that man, and after this experience, I can see why others stay out of it.

He's also said that fans are leaving because they didn't get their guy. That's rich since the only reason several TN fans have returned is because the script was flipped and now their guy is the choice. And while I cannot speak for the TL fans, for me, it has very little to do with not having a specific character as the love interest. Going back to the Vampire Diaries from my earlier entry, I was very much team Stefan. But I watched even when Elena started dating Damon all the way to the nonsensical ending of the series and the continuous revolving door of death (they really ruined that show). So, no, I'm not leaving because of one storyline or one character, I'm leaving because I'm not going to allow myself to be gaslit by revisionist history and the assassination of a character I've loved for 9 years.

And if I wanted to read bad fanfiction, there are plenty of places I can find that. I don't need to see it on my TV screen.

When Calls the... Shark

 If you've never heard the phrase "jumping the shark" in reference to a television show, consider yourself lucky. It started thanks to an episode of Happy Days, where the Fonz jumped a shark. It basically refers to when a show has gone completely off the rails and is no longer following a comprehensive storyline.

I will preface this by saying that I haven't watched any of Season 10 of When Calls the Heart. Initially, this was because of timing. It premiered at the end of July, which was a busy time for me and then I was on vacation for two weeks in August. But honestly, by the time I'd reached a point where I could start watching it again, the things I was seeing on social media were giving me pause. Suddenly, it was like we were back in 2021 Season 8, and the triangle had been brought back from the depths of hell.

Instead of watching my beloved show burn in real time, I watched the smoldering each week on social media. "Team Lucas" fans were very unhappy. That is likely an understatement. But I expressed to my husband my feeling that the show was going in a direction I wouldn't enjoy, and that I wanted to wait until the end of the season to see if it was even worth watching.

Based on fan reaction to tonight's episode, I'm going to say I made the right decision and that at this point, I have no intention to watch season 10. To go from giving fans an engagement to a break-up defnitely feels like the show has jumped the shark. Honestly what I think happened is that enough Team Nathan fans followed through on their promise to boycott that the show decided to backpedal to try to win them back. And in the process, they fucked everything up.

Back in 2021, I posted about the ongoing fan drama. Honestly, part of the reason I've steered clear from this season was the fan base. There's passionate, and then there's obsession, and the return of the obsession put a sour taste in my mouth. At the end of season 8, I pointed out that I wasn't ever Team Lucas in the traditional sense. I was "team tell a better story." And based on several interviews I read around that time, I thought the show runners were on the same page. Elizabeth had been with a mountie already. We'd had that epic love story, though it was cut short. I was excited to see the new direction they were going.

Now, I'm going to deviate from Team Lucas fans by saying that Season 9 wasn't really all that interesting to me, but it had nothing to do with Elizabeth's choice. Instead, it had everything to do with the rehashing of the mine disaster. The mine disaster happened before season 1. And we spent significant time on it, so when it came up again, I was more than a little over it. 

But then, there are a few things that have left me scratching my head over the years. For instance, Henry's redemption arc. I understand when Abigail left, it made it more difficult for the writers to help him find forgiveness. But when they started trying to make Henry look like the unsung hero of the mine disaster with the out-of-nowhere discovery of the mine company's response to his concerns for unsafe conditions, it felt like it was cheapening his arc. The Henry who burned evidence, harassed witnesses, threatened a good man's name, and attempted to bribe a judge is not a Henry who would have warned the mine company of unsafe conditions. I'm sorry, I just can't buy it. And I honestly preferred the idea of him finding redemption through becoming a better man, not pretending he always was a good one.

I think sometimes WCTH's tear jerker storylines help to muddle the questionable directions the show has taken. But when I've watched it from the beginning, things like Henry's storyline or Lee's sudden concern for finding a "calling" just don't add up. And now, we have another thing that doesn't add up: Lucas and Elizabeth breaking up.

Look, if the writers wanted to cotow to Team Nathan fans, they could have gotten there through more honest means. People do break up, even fan favorites in TV shows. Instead of pretending season 8 and 9 never happened, the writers could have focused on Elizabeth and Lucas growing apart. They could have written it in a way where Elizabeth's heart wasn't in it anymore not that her heart was never his. I think they could have avoided blowing up the fan base drama again.

That said, as I noted in my posts back in 2021, everything is for ratings, and I can see how blowing up the fan base again would be great for ratings, at least short term. They've certainly caught Team Nathan fans up in the frenzy, but I've seen people who weren't team anyone express how sick of the triangle they are. So, they may have done more damage than if they had just chosen Nathan in the first place.

The writers ignored their own cannon at their peril. To pretend that Elizabeth never loved Lucas is to ignore the very real feelings portrayed in season 8 and 9. Not to mention, what kind of a single mom would allow someone to get that close to their child if they didn't truly love them? It perpetuates the negative stereotypes around single mothers that exist even in our modern world. Like I said before, I understand that things sometimes don't work out, that relationships don't always last forever. But from what I've seen, that's not how this was handled, and that is why I think the show jumped the shark.

One thing that I've been feeling even before this season was that the show needed to find a natural conclusion. And I was heartened to see that a few hearties felt the same. Nothing lasts forever, and I have found that I prefer when shows end before they start to ruin things. For instance, I was a big Vampire Diaries fan up until Elena turned into a vampire, which is when the show jumped the shark in my opinion. Had the show ended before that, I might enjoy re-watching it. But I can't because, unlike WCTH, I witnessed the degradation of the quality in those last few seasons. What would have been nice is if WCTH had ended this season with a wedding and a promise of a HEA. Instead, I'll borrow a stance my husband holds about the Star Wars movies and just pretend season 10 doesn't exist.

I'd love to say that if they kept Elizabeth single instead of running into Nathan's arms, I might be willing to stick with the show. But honestly, the way this was handled has just overshadowed the good parts, and it's just not worth my time.