After the last episode’s cliffhanger, the new episode of Heartland brought us a much-needed conclusion to some storylines. While also opened up new plot points to explore as the season moves along.
Did they finally catch the thieves that were robbing houses in the Hudson area and burglarized Heartland as well? What about Logan’s dad getting out of jail or Cooper’s center’s financial troubles?
Find out what happened on this episode in this recap of Heartland season 15 episode 4!
As per usual, a spoiler warning is in effect, because there will be many of those in this article!
The break-in
The last episode ended on a sort of a cliffhanger – the Bartlett-Fleming clan arrived home from Cooper’s Gala to find the front door window broken and the house trashed. The Heartland ranch had clearly been a target of the thieves that had been terrorizing the area for weeks now.
So, this episode started with a police officer assessing the scene. And we found out that the robbers had not only trashed the place, they also took things like the TV, the stereo, Lisa’s laptop along with some more priceless items like Tim’s All-Around rodeo trophy and Jack’s dad’s old watch.
The whole family was shaken. And since Lyndy and Katie refused to sleep alone that night, Amy decided to do a sleepover in the living room.
Jack made a fire in the fireplace, and that’s when the first memory came.
Jack’s past
Jack blamed himself for turning off the alarm system, therefore, letting the break-in happen and making his wife, granddaughters, and great-granddaughters feel unsafe. So, all throughout the episode, we saw Jack remembering the past. Especially the turbulent relationship he had with his father and how that made him feel unsafe in his home.
From shots of his father letting little Jack try on the old, engraved watch that was stolen. To clips of a younger Jack (played beautifully by Shaun Johnston’s real-life son Shea Johnston again) after his sister’s funeral and the years that followed as Jack’s father drank himself into oblivion while Jack had to let go of his rodeo dreams and care for the ranch. We saw Jack and his father’s relationship deteriorate. And Jack’s sense of safety fall apart along with it.
And Jack, of course, wasn’t dealing with it in the best way, at one point even bolting the back door that was in Lyndy’s room shut with wooden planks.
That’s when Lisa decided to step in and confront Jack about how he was acting and what he was feeling. And that conversation not only shed some light on the pain Jack was living with, but also helped set Jack straight.
Lisa: “Which ones?”
Jack: “The kind I’d rather forget. From after my sister’s death. When it was just me and my there here and I was working my tail off to keep this place afloat while he was drowning himself in grief and alcohol.”
Lisa: “Why wouldn’t you just tell me why you were upset, Honey?”
Jack: “I’m not upset! I’m not upset about the watch, or the break-in. What I am, is angry. I’m angry at what it all conjured up, you know, that feeling that you can’t even be safe in your own home. I haven’t felt that way since June died, and Dad, he took that one out on me.”
Lisa: “What your dad did is heartbreaking, but you can’t be angry at yourself.”
Jack: “Why not? I didn’t make you feel safe, I made you feel the way he made me feel and I promised I would never do that to anyone.”
Lisa: “No! You always make me feel safe, okay? You’re not your father. You need to pull yourself out of the past and focus on the present. And take your great-granddaughter fishing. Appreciate all that you have. Because you made this! You pulled yourself out of a very dark place and you created this beautiful, perfect, safe home for us.”
Lisa assured Jack that he did not make them feel unsafe. Quite the opposite, actually, that Jack is the one who built Heartland as a safe harbor for anyone who needed it.
So, Jack finally realized that although there are so many painful memories of his father and all the bad things that he did after June passed, there are also good ones. Like the time when Jack was little and his father taught him how to fish. And that there also were things Jack was grateful for to his father.
It really felt like this episode, much like the episodes in season 13 (episode 3 and episode 4) when we found out about June, brought Jack a sense of closure and helped ease some of the pain he was carrying around for decades.
And hopefully, it will also help Jack move on from the guilt of making his girls not feel safe in their home. Because it was heartwrenching to see Jack struggle so much, and I’m ready to see a bit more light-hearted Jack in the coming episodes.
Lost and found
While Jack was dealing with his guilt over the break-in and painful memories, Tim teamed up with Parker to try to recover the stolen heirlooms.
When Parker arrived at the ranch the morning after the break-in, we saw her question Lisa and Jack as to what was stolen. And, when she heard about Jack’s missing watch and saw how upset Jack was about it, she decided to take matters into her own hands.
Being the resourceful girl that she is, Parker decided to scour the internet for Jack’s watch, hoping that the thief was dumb enough to sell it through local classified listings.
Tim, getting wind of this, jumped on the chance to ask Parker to look for his trophy, too. Better yet, he offered to be Parker’s “boots on the ground” aka the one who would answer any promising listings Parker found.
And he also accidentally challenged Parker to prove that Logan and the other kids from the group home weren’t responsible for the robberies.
Earlier in the episode, we saw Parker meet Logan when she rode Mickey to where Amy and Logan were working with the wild horse since Parker wanted to ask Amy about Jack’s stolen watch. And it looked like Parker quickly developed a crush on the older boy. Therefore, when Tim suggested that Logan and his friends might be responsible for the break-ins, Parker was motivated to prove Tim wrong.
And she did!
While searching for Jack’s watch online, Parker was getting nowhere. So, she decided to dig deeper and that’s when she connected the dots.
Parker figured out that each report of a robbery coincided with the fair moving through the area. The timeline was too perfect for it to just be a coincidence. And when Parker and Tim went to a pawn show that was under a mile away from where the fair had set up in Hudson and found both Tim’s trophy and Jack’s watch there, it was confirmed.
So, the duo not only recovered the missing heirlooms but also reported their findings to the police who finally caught the thief. Which, of course also cleared Logan and the rest of the kids of any wrongdoing.
Taming the wildly
Speaking of Logan, on Heartland season 15 episode 4 we saw Amy continuing to work with the wildly that she promised to gentle for Jessica. And she took Logan along for the ride.
At the beginning of the episode, we saw Amy pick up Logan at Cooper’s and they went to work with the wild horse where Logan told Amy how excited he is for his dad to get out of jail.
However, the next day, right before their session with the wild horse, Clint arrived at Cooper’s with some bad news.
Logan’s dad didn’t make parole which means that everything Logan was looking forward to just crumbled down in front of his eyes.
Logan, of course, ran off. And when he turned up at Heartland, it was to say goodbye. Apparently, he had decided to leave Hudson anyway, saying that he needs that blank slate that he was talking about when he told Amy about moving away with his dad. And even when Amy tried to encourage Logan to stay, he didn’t listen.
So, understandably, Amy was pretty upset. Especially since she felt like she failed Logan with not getting him interested enough in horses to stay.
Luckily, Jack was there for Amy. He listened to Amy’s concerns and had some wise words to help Amy though.
And when Amy rode to the pen to work with the wildy, Logan was there. He decided to stay after all because when he got on the road, he didn’t want to be there, he wanted to be at Heartland working with horses with Amy.
The two of them made some good progress with Jessica’s wildy and Logan even joined the family for dinner where Jack extended a standing invite to family dinners to Logan. And before Amy brought Logan back to the center, Jack also had some advice for him.
The episode ended with Logan telling Amy that their work with the horse, family dinner and everything actually made him feel like he belonged somewhere. A feeling he hadn’t felt in a long time. Which means that Amy did make Logan want to stay.
And hopefully, we will see much more of the two of them, maybe working with client horses and Logan really learning the ropes of horse training.
The center is in jeopardy
While Logan and the rest of the kids and therefore the name of Cooper’s center were cleared at the end of the episode when Parker discovered that someone from the traveling fair was responsible for the break-ins in the area, Cooper’s center still faced a bleak future.
In the last episode, we found out that the center was in financial trouble and Cooper was hoping that the donations at the Gala would help save it. But after Paula Westfield’s little speech and the fight between Logan and Mac, most of the wealthy donors walked out, and even the existing ones were threatening to pull the funding. So, the Higher Ground Equestrian Therapy Center was in real trouble.
When Amy visited the center at the start of this episode, Cooper seemed optimistic that things might still work out. Yet, as the episode went on, that optimism slowly started to fade. We even heard Cooper and Clint argue about the center.
And at the end of this episode, when Amy went to bring Logan back to the center, she met Clint there who informed her that Cooper had taken off. And, while Clint was stepping in to run the center for now, it wasn’t a long-term solution.
This means that the future of the center is in some serious trouble. And it’s not even just the financial aspect of it anymore. Because with Cooper gone, there is no one to run it permanently.
So, will Amy be the one to step in and run the center? Or will Cooper come back?
It’s hard to tell which route the show will take. I just hope that the center will be okay and we will see some resolution to this storyline soon!
The missing laptop
Finally, Lou was dealing with a crisis of her own in this episode.
As I mentioned earlier, during the break-in the thieves stole a lot of the big-ticket items like the TV, stereo as well as Lisa’s laptop. So, when Lou couldn’t find hers anywhere, she feared the worst.
You see, Lou is the Mayor of Hudson, so her work laptop, or rather the information that was on it, is very valuable. From tons of confidential documents and emails to the recent budget cuts that weren’t public yet, it was all on that laptop. And if it fell into wrong hands, it could do a lot of damage.
On top of that, Lou admitted to Rick that the official documents weren’t the only things that made it so crucial to find the laptop. There were also some photos on it that would be inappropriate for Lou’s daughters to see. So, you know, both Lou and Rick were in panic mode.
Lou: “Okay, now is probably a good time to mention that there was something else on there, too. Something a little bit more personal. It also had some photos on there that were sort of inappropriate for my children to see.”
Rick: “Whew, and there they are. The chest pains.”
Luckily, Rick was able to contact their tech guys, who had the ability to wipe Lou’s laptop remotely. And, since the laptop still hadn’t turned up anywhere, Lou gave the go-ahead for them to do so. Crisis averted, right?
Well, sort of… In the end, it turned out that it hadn’t been necessary to wipe the laptop after all.
Literally, seconds after the tech guys wiped the computer, a custodian walked into Lou’s office with Lou’s laptop in hand.
He had picked it up and locked it into a supply closet after finding it one night just sitting on Lou’s desk.
The custodian thought that with all the robberies in town, it wasn’t safe to leave such a precious item just out there for everyone to see, so he took the laptop and left Lou a note as to where it is.
However, given the state of chaos that Lou’s office is in, Lou didn’t see the note, and the whole missing laptop debacle began.
I loved this storyline because it not only gave some much-needed levity to the episode. But it also seemed to bring Lou and Rick closer.
And since Rick is one of my favorite new characters that we’ve had during the last few seasons, I wouldn’t mind seeing more of him outside the office, too. Maybe coming to a family differ or just interacting with some of the other family members. That would be really fun!
Last thoughts on Heartland season 15 episode 4
It was so cool to get another glimpse at Jack’s past and see what made Jack the way he is.
Season 13 already did this with some cool flashbacks. And I’m glad they continued it in season 15 because it’s a clever way to show us the past and help us understand what makes Jack tick without taking us out of the story being told in the episode.
READ NEXT: Heartland Season 15 Episode 5 Review
The other great thing about this episode was how much I actually enjoyed the Tim and Parker team-up.
In the past, Parker was usually paired with Jack, Amy, or even Lou and Katie. So, this episode brought us a fresh pairing that was unexpected, yet worked really well for the story.
Promo for Heartland season 15 episode 5
And here is the promo for the next episode of Heartland:
Heartland episode 1505 will be titled “Blood and Water” and will see the Bartlett-Fleming clan doing their annual cattle drive which will put Amy and Shadow in a dangerous situation involving a bear. There will also be a discussion of the succession plan for Heartland Beef which won’t be to Lou’s liking. Meanwhile, Katie and Parker will take on babysitting duties and things will not go according to plan.
My daughter saw “Tim” break his valuable trophy in the pawn shop when he hit it on the cupboard – would like to see the blooper that happened with the actors and crew. PS my daughter saw that and we had to find the on-line episode to confirm – yup he broke it!!!!