The "Hart of Dixie" Effect

Hart of Dixie is a CW show in it's third season. It's about Zoe Hart, a New Yorker, a surgeon, a lover of designer fashion, who somehow lands in backwater Alabama working as a small-town doctor. It's a classic fish out of water story. Rachel Bilson plays Zoe Hart, and while I am truly in awe of her low BMI, she can't act her way out of a paper bag.

The show has a very Hollywood-esque portrayal of the South:

 

Everyone is gorgeous, thin and well dressed. It's a post-racial society where everyone eats fatty, greasy foods and still has washboard abs. Jamie King's Southern accent is atrocious. The writing is sub-par...
But good Lord I will watch that show anytime there is a new episode on Hulu. Just stream it, let it be white noise, let my brain unfurl and devolve as I listen to the show's mindless patter. There's some good sexual tension between Zoe and Wade (far left) but the show has very little going for it. But I've watched THREE SEASONS!

And this is because of what I'm going to term "the Hart of Dixie Effect." That is, when given the choice of watching something critically acclaimed or something mindless and entertaining on Netflix/Hulu/bit torrent I will always choose the latter. Like, if you said I had the choice of watching "Ten Things I Hate About You" or "Casablanca" on my laptop, I would pick Julia Stiles in a second. But if I were presented with those two options at a movie theater, I would pick some artsy fartsy movie and rant about the under-representation of female directors in Hollywood.

But when I am at home, when my laptop screen glows bright, when I am in my elastic stretchy pants...my brain SHUTS off and there is nothing I can do to resist the spell of Rachel Bilson. I think it's because once I've decided to stream something on Netflix I've already given up a little bit on life. I am not leaving this couch. I am not going to comb my hair and I am not going to change out of this shirt that I've been wearing all weekend. Then I take it one step further and give myself permission to allow my mind to atrophy, as well.

Oh Zoe...

The other day I was hunting for something to watch on Netflix or Hulu but I couldn't find anything appropriate so I just started watching movie trailers. And I realized that I was FAST FORWARDING through the trailers. Like, I am incapable of even focusing on the most condensed/exciting version of a movie. Forget long form writing, or the great American novel, I can't even watch trailers all the way through. This is what the internet has done to my brain.

I guess the moral of the story is, Hart of Dixie is not a bad show.