Day 3

I've always had a soft spot for Dolly Parton, so when I saw her new Netflix series Heartstrings come up on my feed, I was all over it! Throw Julianne Hough into the mix and I'm not going to move until I've binge watched the whole lot.

Unfortunately I only had time to watch the first episode before the boyfriend and no doubt would have told me it was soppy AF and ask why I was watching it! It's the Hallmark movie type of trash TV I live for.

Now, Jolene is a song I have adored ever since Miley Cyrus did her backyard barefoot cover a few years ago. That might be part of the reason I put so much pressure on this episode.

Don't get me wrong, it was the cheesy trash that I love, but I feel as though the story was a little rushed, and didn't really have enough detail to it.

Jolene had the beginnings of an amazing character, but she didn't have enough of an arc for me. She was sold as this strong feminist who clearly had a lot of issues going on, but the only one that was actually tackled was the fact that she slept with married men because she was scared of love and that she was too scared to go to Nashville. They touched ever so slightly that she didn't have parents but didn't go into that in any more detail, if you're not going to have enough time to sell all of someones story then don't tell it.

I'm not going to beat around the bush either, the song that she sang for the Harvest Festival was trash! It had a good point to it, and again could have been great, but it was the worst song that's been thrust upon my poor eardrums.

Now it wasn't all bad, I did actually quite enjoy it. The reality of Emily's relationship was a breath of fresh air amongst all the Hollywood bullshit fake happiness relationships that are in everything else with big fuck ups and enormously over the top gestures to fix it. It was nice to finally have a relatable relationship with real life problems and life lessons to learn from. Unless you're a complete robot, at some time or another you're going to get jealous or worry about having to compete with someone who you've got no competition with.

The heart of the story was more or less that women have to stick together instead of cutting each other apart, because when we have each other, we are much stronger people than we are when we stand alone. That despite our differences we can build bonds with anyone if we don't judge them based on appearance.

All in all I am quite looking forward to watching the rest of the series and see how Dolly has turned some of her other songs into stories.

Let me know if you watch it and what you think!