Hart of Dixie 2.10 “Blue Christmas” Recap

On the winter finale of Hart of Dixie, Zoe’s mom Candace is visiting for the holidays and you know what that means? That’s right, Dr. Hart is freaking out. Her mother is extra judgmental already and Zoe’s worried that her time in Alabama will be nothing but her tearing down her daughter’s life choices, so she’s planning on the two not being alone the entire visit. One of the ideas is to keep her busy judging all of the 22 contests around town, which Lavon had been contracted to do and wished to get out of in order to spend time with Ruby. However, Candace wants to spend time with Zoe and rejects the idea, much to Zoe’s chagrin.

She may have made a couple of comments about Zoe’s appearance, but for the most part, Candace is very pleasant, both with other people around and not. For her part, Dr. Hart keeps trying to brush her off when she’s not convincing her that she’s happy, though the latter is built on lie after lie. There is no “Mo from Mobile” who spends time on the Mars Rover; there’s no southern town where “Tansy” is short for Lemon; there’s not two Lemons in BlueBell or, well, anywhere. Although she might be a good doctor, taking six hours with two patients was more about keeping herself away from her mother than doing any type of healing.

One of her patients, though, leads to her next crisis. Hal, an elderly gentleman, comes in for a bunion removal and tells Dr. Hart that he wants to visit his grandkids out-of-town, as he’s always busy working on Christmas Eve. She writes him an excuse to miss work for the first time in decades, but it turns out that he’s the town Santa and without him, there’ll be no tree lighting ceremony. And he took the last Santa suit for miles, not even her well-connected mother able to rustle one up that would be able to arrive by that night.

Zoe turns to Earl, the last BlueBell Santa, for help. In order to get the suit, she has to guarantee him the gig as Santa, even though he’s very, very drunk when she picks him up. While trying to sober him up with coffee, Wade walks in and is livid about Dr. Hart going to Earl without his permission, that he’s in no condition to be around children and the last time he was Santa turned out awfully. While all this is going on, Candace stands up to Zoe regarding her lies and that she hasn’t judged her on anything important since she’s been there, a conversation that gives an increasingly nervous Earl the chance to disappear.

Wade finds Earl at the church and they talk about the last time that Earl put on the suit, the year that his wife (and Wade’s mother) died of cancer. He took the job this year in order to make up the awful Christmas he gave BlueBell more than two decades ago and Wade eventually talks him up enough to where he feels ready for the role, which he excels at. Zoe reveals to her mother that the judgment was more internal and that it was mostly about her love life; earlier in the episode, Candace found out that Wade and her daughter had been seeing on another and now, Zoe filled her in on the trouble they had been having. She got scared and pushed him away and she misses him but doesn’t know how to get him back. Candace tells her not to let her irrational fears get in the way of her happiness, something that Zoe apparently needed to hear.

Later that night, she goes over to Wade’s and apologizes for the picnic, acknowledging the fact that even with their differences, they could be happy. As she asks him to reconsider being her boyfriend, he stands up, kisses her, and carries her inside.

Long Distance
On her first Christmas season without George, Lemon teams with AnnaBeth to participate in the annual Christmas cookie contest, which they win and are then able to rub Ruby’s face in. Ruby then begins asking Lavon how he could be friends with Lemon, commenting that one of the biggest things she’s looking forward to about being in Dallas is not running into her high school rival. Lavon is attempting to spend the week of Christmas highlighting everything good about BlueBell in order to win Ruby over and get her to move back after their one-year trial period of being in a long distance relationship ends; thus, he reaches out to Lemon to smooth things over with Ruby and make her feel at home for the week. Although Ruby’s been nothing but horrible to her, Lemon decides to do this favor for Lavon and invites Ruby to a gift wrapping event that afternoon.

There, Ruby brags about how great her relationship with Lavon is and how he hadn’t loved anyone since the two broke up as kids, causing Lemon to abandon any pretense of palling around with her high school bully. She might not have directly told Ruby that she and Lavon were together once and had been in love, but her reaction (snorting and laughing when Ruby mentions that he hadn’t been in a significant relationship since her, lashing out about the idea of Lavon not having loved anyone, running away when pressed for the identity of the woman Lavon once loved) told the entire story.

That night at the tree lighting, Lavon had been planning on proposing to Ruby as a way to keep her in BlueBell; that goes sideways once she confronts him about never telling her of his time with Lemon and how the two loved one another. Later, Lavon stops by her home and while the two seem to patch things up, Ruby believes that their relationship has been fundamentally dishonest for a while – namely regarding their long distance plans, as she knows that Lavon has no plans to leave BlueBell and she feels the same about the town as he does big cities. She breaks up with him and Lavon takes it out on Lemon, who he feels had no place talking about their past to Ruby. Although Lemon tries to atone, Lavon tells her that he’ll never forgive her and storms off.

The Perfect Gift
George and Tansy have been dating a month and while they’ve been getting closer the more time they spend together, they’re not quite ready to make a move toward becoming more serious. Or are they?

After Tansy picks George up from the live nativity scene he was participating in in the middle of town, he passes his Joseph costume to Brick, who finds an engagement ring in the pocket. Naturally, any gossip can’t stay under wraps in BlueBell and Wanda runs into Tansy at the Rammer Jammer, having a giggle fit in the process and obliquely telling her that she might need to get a manicure for George’s gift. Tansy panics and attempts to make a break from George two days before Christmas, although he doesn’t know why she thinks they’re moving too fast. It all becomes clear once Brick warns him not to propose to his girlfriend on the first Christmas Lemon’s spending single; Brick shows him the ring, but it’s not George’s.

It’s Lavon’s.

Once they get the ring back to Mayor Hayes, George and Tansy have a laugh about the thought of getting engaged only a month after dating and he chimes in that he hadn’t bought her a Christmas gift yet, hoping to be spontaneous with a last-minute selection. Tansy’s upset, having already gotten him a present, but luckily, Shelby was listening in and offers her help to her former flame in picking out the perfect gift. The two end up with a necklace with Tansy’s dog’s name on it and the idea of having a picnic in the Santa home in the middle of town, the latter of which George deems to be a bit too elaborate.

The night of Christmas Eve, the two end up on George’s boat to exchange gifts. Tansy made George a pear cozy so he could have his favorite fruit at work without it getting bruised, which makes George reconsider the Santa idea. However, once they get there and George opens the door, he finds Shelby in bed with Brick. He and Tansy then hurry back to the boat to continue their holiday.

Additional thoughts and observations:
-The “two proposals in one night” line from Wanda and the subsequent hug with Tom means they’re engaged, no?
-All I have to say about Lavon and Ruby is that if any of my significant others was as nasty (for no reason!) to any of my friends as Ruby is to Lemon, they wouldn’t be my significant other for very long. Mayor Lavon Hayes needs a backbone.
-Although, my heart did grow three sizes when Zoe called him the best friend she’s ever had.
-I liked that nativity heckling is an annual tradition for Tansy.
-George’s blue sweater was heavenly.
-Brick/Shelby: yea or nay?