This review contains spoilers!
Another Sunday, another Heartland episode, and this one seemed to be a bit more relaxed, while still staying true to the shows style, which I liked because not every episode needs to be as intense as the last one with Ty leaving was.
This episode we saw three main plot lines play out, each including multiple of our beloved characters. First and foremost, we saw Amy working with a client horse solo and that causing problems for her. We know that Amy is amazing with horses and that she isn’t afraid to get down and dirty, if that is what’s necessary. However, now she needs to not only think about herself and what the horse can do to her by running her over or charging at her, but also about the baby that she is carrying inside of her. And she seemed to finally realize that, after client horse named Lex charged at her and dragged her behind him for a little while. Of course the baby was fine, as was Amy, but now she really realizes just what it means to be a mother, especially to your unborn child, and I think that will also play into next couple of episodes more and more. Speaking of Amy, we also saw her and Cass having some words, since Cass was demanding Scott to fire Ty and take her on as a partner, because he is away and not fulfilling his duties at the vet clinic. I liked how Amy said that even if Cass thinks that she wanting Ty to lose his partnership isn’t personal, it actually is and that they need to figure it out. It brought back some of the tension between Amy and Cass we saw on last season, only this time Amy was quick to stand up for Ty and voice her opinion on what Cass was doing, which shows that Amy is growing up more and more and standing up for her family. By the way, it was really great seeing Kaitlyn Leeb back on Heartland, too, just as we welcomed back Nathaniel Arcand in last week’s episode.
The second story line we saw this episode was one with Jack and Lisa, in which Lisa’s aunt Evelyn came for a visit. It started out great with Lisa being excited to see her aunt and Jack being excited to meet her, but it quickly went downhill from there, because Evelyn started to doubt if Liza is happy staying at Heartland and being married to Jack. She even went as far as to say that their marriage can’t work in the long run, because Lisa is rich and Jack isn’t. That caused a lot of tension not only between Jack and Evelyn, but also between Jack and Lisa. Luckily Tim (yes, you read that right, Tim) was able to share some useful insight with Jack, about just how to deal with bad, snobby in-laws, since his ex-father-in-law aka Jack himself was difficult to please. It was funny to watch this exchange, and it also finally showed Tim in a better light and not just yelling at somebody who is doing something that he doesn’t agree with. And at the end, after Lisa told off her aunt and stood up for her marriage, aunt Evelyn realized that she was wrong to assume that Lisa is or soon will be unhappy staying in Alberta, which lead to a beautiful moment with Evelyn and Katie flying a kite and Jack and Lisa watching over them. I just live for the scenic “Heartland” scenes.
And then there was also the whole Georgie-Adam-Jade-Clay story line in which we saw them go on an orienteering trail ride and Tim forcing Jade and Clay to work together to stop their intense rivalry. Of course that whole spiel turned into Jade talking Georgie into them switching partners, which left Georgie with Clay and Adam with Jade hunting for clues giving us some good comic moments. Jade as a character in general tends to frustrate me, much like Tim’s character does, which probably is why they always go head to head with each other, and I would like for Georgie to stand up for herself against Jade just a little bit, because lately we see too many scenes with Georgie being roped into different things by Jade.
Lastly, I also wanted to praise Heartland for the way they are marketing their show. Not only they have a blog, where each week there are new posts up about the show and everything that comes with it, and they are doing production Tweets, when Heartland is being filmed, to tell the fans what is happening on set, but now they have also set up a blog for Ty, where there are video diaries posted each week, so fans can see Ty’s journey in Mongolia, too. And I just think that all this additional visual media not only adds to the show, because fans can see the behind the scenes process of Heartland, but it makes more interesting to be a fan of this TV show, because now Sundays aren’t the only days we can get our Heartland fix in anymore. We can see glimpses of Heartland every day, be it on social media, in video form or by reading a blog post.
Highlights of Heartland Season 10 Episode 5:
• Amy and Cass talking it out
• The orienteering event
• Clay freaking out about the spider
• Tim teasing Jack about being a hard-ass father-in-law
• Aunt Evelyn apologizing
Let-downs of the episode:
• Seeing Ty for only a second
• No Lou in the episode
• Jade being pushy and Georgie not saying no to her
• Aunt Evelyn thinking that just because Lisa isn’t living like her, Lisa isn’t happy
Quote of the episode:
Georgie: What was that?
Jade: Clay’s ego was burning out of control, so I put it out. With ketchup.
Adam: Do you ever think that maybe your personality isn’t suited to the service industry?
Jade: It’s not my personality that’s the problem.