Fall TV: Hart of Dixie

I'm a fan of Rachel Bilson from her days as Summer Roberts on The OC and her new show, Hart of Dixie has a nice old-school WB feel, despite it being from Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage (who kind of pioneered the move away from those shows with the aforementioned OC and Gossip Girl). I'm not sure if there's really an audience for this show anymore (similar feeling Privileged and, at least initially, Life Unexpected, didn't last very long) but I rather liked it.

Bilson plays Zoe Hart, a rising star surgeon who is rejected from her desired NYC cardiothoracic fellowship because she's supposedly too cold and impersonal with her patients. Her plans foiled, she accepts a job as a general practitioner in small town Bluebell, Alabama. When she arrives, she discovers that the man who offered her the job has passed away and left her his half of the practice. (The other half, Dr. Breeland, is not so welcoming.) After some initial mishaps, an emergency baby delivery (of course), and a revelation that ties Zoe to the town in a way she never expected, Dr. Hart is in Bluebell to stay.

Yeah, it all sounds kind of cheesy and predictable. But Bilson is charming (even though she's really stretching credibility as a cold, detached Cristina Yang type) and so is Scott Porter (Jason Street from Friday Night Lights) as a lawyer returned to his hometown to marry his childhood sweetheart, the ridiculously named Lemon Breeland (played by Jaime King, doing her usual Jamie King thing). Also in the cast is Cress Williams (also from FNL, but in a very different role) as former football player and town mayor.

I'm glad that the CW isn't just making teen shows anymore and I think this may have the potential to become a Gilmore Girls-esque quirky small town show. And hopefully Schwartz and Savage have enough clout with the network that they won't get pressured to "spice things up" aka run the show into the ground...