‘Hart of Dixie’ takes girl away from it all

Although a brilliant cardiothoracic candidate for the top residency program in New York, she’s passed over because she lacks compassion. Which is also why she manages to get dumped by her boyfriend.

In the CW’s series premiere of “Hart of Dixie,” she faced the question: How can she learn to be a better person and a better doctor?

Well, an older country doctor, Harley Wilkes, came to Zoe’s graduation and when he spoke with her afterward, said he was so impressed with her valedictory speech he invited her to join his practice in Bluebell, Ala.

She was not impressed with this offer. She was going to be the next brilliant young heart surgeon like Christina Yang of “Grey’s Anatomy.” But Wilkes sent her daily updates about the patients in his practice, which he shared with Tim Matheson as Dr. Brick Breeland. So when Zoe relents and determines it’s as good a place to continue her training, she arrives with a good sense of patient history.

Not good enough, as it turns out. Her first case is a request to approve a sight test for a driver’s license to a blind man, based on an eye chart reading that he’d memorized. This in turn resulted in the hit-and-run accident with the only person she’d met in Bluebell who’d been nice to her – Scott Porter as George Tucker, the lawyer fiance of the town’s queen bee, Jaime King as Lemon Breeland, Wilkes’ partner’s daughter.

See, that’s not the only surprise waiting for her. Wilkes is actually dead. Yup, four months before Zoe arrived. His receptionist had continued to send her the patient updates by postcard – which I can’t imagine is remotely ethical – but more to the point, he’s willed his half of the practice to her, which no one can believe and in fact, no one told her about, which makes me wonder about the lawyers down there.

Well, there’s several points of confusion. Lemon seems to have some intrigue with the town’s mayor, Lavon Hayes, played by Cress Williams. Doc Breeland has been the only doctor in town for months, now, but still vanishes all day to go gator hunting or something. But since his receptionist is so conversant in patient histories maybe she sees a few for him as well. Also, Doc Breeland is enraged he has to share his practice with a young woman doctor and makes certain she feels exactly that welcome.

Colorful characters

What the show runners did for “Hart of Dixie” was to establish a small town environment filled with colorful if somewhat two-dimensional characters. Part of Zoe’s reaction to the stress of the new job is to get very drunk and sleep with her neighbor, Wade, played by Wilson Bethel. And when she’s repairing George’s dislocated shoulder after that hit-and-run, he screams at her about her lack of bedside manner.

“Why is everyone so focused on that?” she asks.

“Because it’s NICE!” he retorts.

And one of her first cases is a young mother who doesn’t know she’s pregnant – her mom just thinks she’s getting fat – and the young mother-to-be, Mabel, insists that Zoe help her deliver her child, rather than Doc Breeland, which sends him into a howling rage.

Zoe manages the delivery, and Mabel confronts her own mother about how she’d always been so mean to her and she’ll never be that mean to her baby.

And then Zoe learns something even more interesting – that Doc Wilkes is, in fact, her biological father. This explains why her own father has always been so distant ever since he found out some 10 years ago, and her mother’s irritation that she even go down there in the first place.

Yes, the show just keeps getting more and more interesting. It’s a little soapy and the characters could use some depth but it’s early days and I’d say it’s interesting enough to give it a shot.

“Hart of Dixie” airs at 9/8c Mondays on The CW.