Having an anxiety disorder means that you spend too much time catastrophizing everyday situations such as dinner with friends or a case of common cold (WebMD is not my friend), but even my fear-focused mind could not conjure up a situation like that of the coronavirus pandemic. To say it has been hard to turn off my brain, or just keep the constant hum of panic in a low frequency, it would be an understatement. But there is one thing that helped calm my anxiety soul: the Hallmark of the series When Calls the Heart.
I began to look at When Calls the Heart, a series about a school teacher named Elizabeth Thatcher (Erin Krakow) who moves to the remote town of Hope Valley in the early 1900’s, a couple of months before the start of the pandemic. As a child, I grew up on a steady diet of Anne of Green Gables, Little House on the Prairieand Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. I love healthy stories about women who are much stronger than society expects them to be who also happen to be set in picture-perfect small towns. When Calls the Heart it is without doubt a modern descendant of those shows. When Elizabeth first moved to Hope Valley (originally known as Coal Valley), she feels completely out of place. Almost all the women in the city has lost a husband or child to a devastating data mining of incidents, leaving them as the mainstay of their families. On the contrary, the naive Elizabeth, who has lived a life of privilege and wealth, manages to burn your new home within a few hours of arriving to the city. That is the level of relatability that I look for in a character.
As you might have gathered, Elizabeth is not suited to the Canadian border in the style of life, but she commits herself to the city of the children and found a strong network of support from their mothers, led by the burning of the widow Abigail Stanton (played by Lori Loughlin before their role in the 2019 college admissions scandal led to the abrupt exit from the show). Over time, Elizabeth learns to cook for herself, ride a horse, and to pursue their own dreams of being a writer. Along the way, she falls in love and becomes one of the most important members of a community full of love and support from the neighbors.
There is a development of the story which some modern viewers may find unpleasant. This is a show that is entirely sincere in its insistence that people are good and good at heart, no matter what they have done in their past. It is not daring, subversive, or self-conscious. It is a hallmark card come to life, and that is exactly what you need to get through the last few months.
When stay-at-home orders began in March, seeing my partner (also known as my mom) and I began transmission of multiple episodes a week. We sailed through the stations at an unprecedented pace for two people not known for their binge-watching skill (don’t ask me how long we have been seeing The Crown). In June, we had finished the season seven-and joined the ranks of the Comrades (When Calls the Heart super-fans) eagerly waiting for the season to eight. Along the way, I had become a Heartie, too.
The strength of Elizabeth, Abigail, and my personal favorite character, the always sunny and theatrical Rosemary LeVeaux (Pascale Hutton), gave me a sense of comfort while trying not to be able to see my real life friends. View Elizabeth love affair with the dashing Mountie Jack Thornton (Daniel Lissing) facilitated my mind in the evenings when the anxiety dreams that startled me awake, and speculate on what might happen next brought me even closer to my essence-worker of the mother as I felt helpless watching her go to work each day. In fact, I’ve committed to take my mom to the Canadian city of Langley, where the show is filmed, when the world finally rights itself. It will be a kind of pilgrimage to the two new Comrades that I want to say thank you to the fictional small town that allowed us to visit a community full of warmth, love, simple, and goodness, when we need it most.
For now, let’s wait for the season of eight to arrive, and the peace of mind of knowing that in the days in which the real world is too dark, When Calls the Heart is the wait on Netflix to welcome us back home with the Hope Valley.
