Review: Bless the Harts “Tying the Not”

OVERVIEW (Spoilers Below)

After their lint trap catches fire, the Harts stay at Wayne’s place, spurring talk of him and Jenny finally getting hitched. Only this gives Jenny hives because of how pressured she felt to get married to Violet’s dad once she got pregnant, so she has a lot of hang-ups about taking the big plunge, which mostly come through in her deliberately doing annoying things at Wayne’s place in order to keep him from getting comfortable. This is not helped by finding a wedding ring in a cupboard and taking it to mean that he plans to propose. When she confronts him on this, he explains that it’s his grandmothers that he has for safekeeping, but the pressure gets to both of them and they decide to get engaged, if only to get the other one to call it off first. Violet sees this and decides to write up vows that help them to see the beauty in their relationship how it is, so they call it off.

Also, Betty finds out Crystalynn faked surviving a murder attempt on an old show she likes and confronts her, eventually getting a confession and taking a coat from the show as payment for not spreading it around.

OUR TAKE

After two very long pauses, Bless the Harts returns…for the end of its first season. Luckily, it’s a pretty solid episode to go out on, as it makes surprisingly good use of its characters, particularly Jenny and Wayne’s complicated relationship. Jenny has always prided herself as being an independent, self-sustaining woman who don’t need no man, which Wayne respects. But we’ve also learned bits and pieces about her previous engagement to Violet’s father, which are more visualized here (while not showing Reynolds, her previous partner’s face in a rather interesting move). Suddenly, this seemingly mundane situation of crashing at Wayne’s begins rekindling all of this commotion, which she can only respond to by wanting to push Wayne away through making him force calling it off. Thankfully, Violet (in her only major involvement in the episode, sadly) helps pull it all together by reminding them both of why their bond is special. Perhaps in a later season down the line, this engagement will be revisited, but for now, it shows a surprisingly unique take on this sort of plot line that only Bless the Harts could truly tell.

I should also point out that Betty’s b-plot, which could have ended up being very out of place, ended up being a rather sharply funny plot, which is fitting for a season finale. In particular, I’d probably point out the constant one-upmanship between her and Crystalynn trying to mysteriously sneak into the other’s house to get the last word would be the highlight of that side of that story. But otherwise, I think this finale was a great cap off to a season that has had plenty of rocky moments. It actually makes me look forward to exploring the further potential of this series in its upcoming second season, rather than dreading it like I was before this episode. My only real complaint, if you could call it that, is that Violet ends up kind of in the background until certain moments come up when I would have liked her to get a stronger presence. But aside from that and the rest of the show’s clear growing pains, this might be the best we’ve gotten so far, along with a clear sign that Bless the Harts can only go up from here. Fox finally has a new animated series that has survived its first season, which is also hopefully a sign of better things to come for their animated line up.