Lise Winne

This series was recommended to my husband and me, and we are pleasantly surprised ... and also riveted to the T.V. screen every night. It has a "Walton's" feeling to it, a show from the 1970s, but Heartland feels more realistic, with more modern-day concerns about balancing family with career, and is geared more towards adults than the former. There are sometimes corny plots, and the Ty character has to deal with more criminals (that are unconnected with the other criminals presented in the show) than would normally happen over his short life, and some of the scenes from Mongolia just don't ring true, but they are by far drowned out by the normal everyday life plots. The show is primarily about family, and sister Amy's happy functional marriage juxtaposed with Louise's dysfunctional marriage and relationships. The on-going theme is also about how ambitious should women (and some men) be at seeing their dreams and ambitions come true when there is a farm to take care of, children to raise, when the elder is getting too old and feels too overwhelmed to run the farm by himself, and how to take care of one another. While there are occasionally some arguments between family members, they mostly work out their differences (and it is informative to see how they do it). Each member contributes to the farm, using their own set of skills including running it as a business (where Louise comes in), horse training and horse whispering (where Amy comes in), veterinarian medicine (where Ty comes in - with Scott), taking care of other aspects of the farm and family and running a rodeo school (where head of the family Tim comes in) and over-all caretaker of the generational farm (where Grandpa Jack comes in). The family also takes in troubled kids like Mallory, Ty, and Georgie who all blossom in the lifestyle of taking care of horses, being an integral part of the family and living a life of serenity within the stunning scenery of the Rockies foothills in Alberta, Canada. One of the most extraordinary feats of the show is seeing the real actors who play Georgie, Jade and Amy do the actual horse riding tricks and stunts (with the exception of some of the falls). That's astonishing, in and of itself, since they are not just modest efforts by the actors. If you don't like plots, this is a worthy reason to see the series. The show also concentrates on the character, Jade, in later seasons, a woman of small stature, who is learning to be a rodeo bronc rider, and the show raises the question of whether women should be in the sport (it turns out that the answer is "yes", and that even a small woman can be exceptional at it). I highly recommend this series!

For all intents and purposes, this series is about a guy gaslighting his wife into trying to convince her that he's not having an affair, but then he is (but only once) until by the end she finds out he is a serial cheater. Her blood boils with anger over all of the lies, and being back-stabbed emotionally (he tells his mistress that he will leave his wife and it is caught on video - and his wife sees him saying that). People in marriages like this get to a point where they don't know if their partner is lying all of the time, some of the time, or rarely. It can make you feel like you are going crazy, and all of the betrayals add to that feeling. Also he doesn't seem committed to either woman, though he puts on an act that he wants to be a full time partner privately, with each of them. So that is another thing we don't know if he's lying about or not. He may just want both of them, but feels he needs to lie to each one to keep them (both women obviously have other plans). When his mistress dies, he seems to have no feelings for what happened to her. He's only out to save his own image and reputation. Another crazy-making situation for the wife. She vacillates wildly between wanting to stay and wanting to kill him. She is also not innocent - in the end she kills two people and her husband is in jail for both of the murders she committed. This would be a lot more of a poignant series if it showed what really happens in these situations. The problem is, like most moving pictures about abuse that are turned into thrillers, the subject matter is cheapened by the fact that it's a thriller - and that's the reason it is so disappointing: it won't ever enlighten anyone as to why cheating can be so devastating, why trying to murder the cheater is never the answer (it's better to walk away disgusted), why tit-for-tat blackmailing isn't a good idea either (it's just one more added betrayal in a marriage full of them). Even the investigators don't look like they have their head on straight. The best series that tackle this subject matter have something to teach us about the issues that are raised. This series does none of that. My full review is here: https://angry-alcoholics.blogspot.com/2023/09/series-review-wilderness-amazon-prime.html