its super bizarre - i feel there has been next to no progress with this love triangle for almost three years. like we still don't know much about these men, why she should go with one or the other and they write them in a very strange fashion. but even elizabeth herself - there has been no talk between her and her friends about how she is processing her grief over her dead husband, when and if she wants to move on, there's alot of assumption and not alot of back up. weird.
I think you sent three messages but I’ll reply to each one separately because I’m lazy and it seems simpler. :P
I agree that the biggest issue with the love triangle is almost in two parts.
We don’t really feel like we know these men let alone why she would like them, but also
The writing is clumsy sometimes and it throws everything off.
Related to #1 you could also say, “Why should either of these men like Elizabeth beyond her good looks?” Like sure, her being good with kids is an admirable trait (from Nathan’s POV, anyway), but it’s not exactly romance-worthy on its own.
I wish there was a little more meaty discussion about “moving on” and the processing of grief. Here are some examples of grief that were addressed in the show:
Cat loved her husband but they’d been having a lot of troubles due to his gambling addiction, and the debt Joe left with her left Cat to care more about how her children felt about him than how she felt. I can’t help but feel that there was a little resentment there.
Florence straight up was still in love with Paul. Like he still left her love notes toward the end of his life and everything. As late as S5 she was still not ready to move past him.
Molly loved Patrick but was trying to live in the present by focusing on Rosaleen (so maybe struggled to process that loss). We never really saw her get over it.
Mary loved her husband and emotionally wasn’t ready to move on from him but felt she needed to take advantage of someone expressing an interest in her because she had a son to worry about and no way to provide for him long-term. We see her fall for Dewitt over time but it’s pretty clear to me that had she been financially sound, she would have never bothered with him from the start (because she wasn’t ready to move on).
Abigail seemed to be grieving for Peter way more than her husband Noah, so it’s possible they weren’t the uh...most in love anymore by the time he died, but they barely knew each other when they got married so there’s that. There are a few episodes that show her processing her grief, particularly for her son. She had nothing left of her family, so the difficulty for her was in leaving the house they had shared to get on with her life, and, much like Mary, not having the luxury of taking her sweet time to decide what to do.
When Dottie’s husband died and Bill expressed his condolences, she said, “Please. We both know my husband was no saint.” I never forgot that line. It’s hard to get a read on her relationship to Silas, but I got a “convenience” vibe from them. (In fact, at one point I thought she was going to hook up with Henry...lol.)
We also got a “moving on” theme with Bill and Nora for quite some time, where we saw that both characters grieved the loss of their son Martin differently (and in fact, were incompatible in this way as their methods of grieving only ended up hurting each other). Nora was very open with her grief; Bill was very closed about it. Even after a couple of years Nora couldn’t seem to finish processing her grief and felt she was alone in her hurt. I think Dottie was a catalyst for Nora being able to move on; she told her that she was not alone and many women in Hope Valley understood the hurt she was feeling very well. She then made a conscious effort to get on with her life and stop wallowing in her grief.
We also saw Clara struggle a little with the memory of Peter, but it was just a glimpse, and I think serves to show the audience that moving on doesn’t necessarily mean forgetting, and it certainly doesn’t mean the love you felt disappears.
I know they had a whole episode dedicated to people grieving Jack, but it didn’t really have the time to get into the heart of it for everyone. We saw bits and pieces of the characters dealing with it. Rosemary was close (childhood!) friends with Jack. Bill was his mentor/viewed Jack as a son and he’s already lost one son. Abigail probably also saw Jack a bit like a son/family member. They all sort of...grieved for Jack and we caught glimpses of that, but never the full resolution. Has everyone processed that grief except for Elizabeth? We have no way of knowing.
I really just want Elizabeth to have a frank discussion with some of her friends. I don’t even care which friend. She could talk to Rosemary, Lee, Bill, Clara, Florence, Molly. Heck, she could write to Abigail and let it be narrated like her journal entries. Sometimes those were a bit heavy-handed but at least we weren’t left to just Assume Everything (which is a disaster in HeartieLand).
What kind of conversation would I want? Just something open and honest. Raw. The girls had that discussion about feeling “cheated” in S5 and that was one of the best lines this show has ever seen. I want Elizabeth to have that conversation with someone. I almost don’t care who it is, but it might be nice if it was someone a bit unexpected (so...not Rosemary or Clara). My vote would be for Bill because I want to see him have a bigger role with Elizabeth and Jack, but also because Jack meant a good deal to him, too, and he might be able to offer an interesting perspective, but Lee or Florence would be incredible, too, and the conversation being so belated would feel more natural (these aren’t people she confides in about deep emotional things, but she bottled it up until it just exploded).Â
Plus I feel like those three characters wouldn’t push her the way Clara and Rosemary pushed Elizabeth in the past. Was it #badwriting? Yeah. But they were really pushy about Elizabeth needing to fall in love again/put herself out there. I think Bill, Lee, or Florence would encourage her more from the perspective she needs encouragement from, in my opinion: sometimes moving on takes a long time, sometimes a person needs to process their grief without pressure from other people.
(Plus, I’m kind of tired of seeing Rosemary just fill Abigail’s shoes as the only friend Elizabeth apparently has. I want to see other characters Elizabeth can lean on, too.)
