"Inevitably, there are always surprises."
Hello everyone!
Honestly, the whole premise is cute, even if slightly unbelievable, but hey, we've seen way worse on this blog site.
The latest installment in the series FINALLY seems to establish a bit more ground in the romantic department, and here's to hoping the writing follows up on what's already been TWO invitations to a date, or else we riot.
I mean, Hannah's already basically said yes twice.
So without further ado and more jabbering from me, let's get right down to the nitty-gritty, and figure out why this one didn't land as well as the others before it.
The resident baker-sleuth is back in Reality Bites!
With Hannah's mother, played by Barbara Niven, apparently somehow part of the theatre group now, Hannah needs to really fight to be seen, but she scores a bunch of brownie points when she comes to tell her mom that her bakery, The Cookie Jar, will be closed for a few days while a reality cooking show will film there.
And not just ANY show, but THE show with THE Connie Mac.
If you're like me, asking who the heck this is, I'll tell you: she's supposedly just the biggest culinary genius that's ever lived, and Hannah and her assistant Lisa are basically worshipers at that altar.
So Hannah has no problem lending her space for a few days, and is delighted to be able to help out with the process, though she does note some mistakes in the recipes and that things seem ... off, with the star of the show, like she has to be told what she needs to be doing and such.
With pie being dropped on her for good measure, Hannah finally learns the truth: her hero is a big, fat liar, and doesn't know one end of the fork from another.
That's fine, says Hannah for the most part, we'll still keep this show going because that's what you do, and too many people love it for her to just drop out now.
Which is, of course, when she finds the show producer dead as a doornail in the middle of her bakery.
This then kickstarts a convoluted quest to discover his killer which I can honestly say makes the least sense of all the Hannah Swensen mysteries, and includes but is definitely not limited to the usual snooping around, Dolores actually doing some REALLY good detective work (surprisingly, considering how ditzy she's portrayed as), and a connection to the case that Chad (Webster) is taking to court during this same time frame (it also includes some more quick footwork and reactions from our Chad, saving Hannah's life not once, but twice).
I'm still not over that they named him CHAD, of all names.
But it's kind of cute how he extends an olive branch to Hannah, inviting her to watch the proceedings and just generally hang out with him in an environment he's familiar with, especially when he's still fighting off any and all culinary delights made by her, like he has no sweet tooth at all.
That aside, Hannah wonders first whether the two cases are connected, because the victim of her bakery one happened to be reading about the upcoming trial on his laptop before he died.
I won't really go into the ups and downs of this, because really, I watched with both eyes and ears open and couldn't figure it out until they spelled it for me, that the reality star's assistant was actually the daughter of the guy going to jail for all his jewellery theft, and she brought the show to Lake Eden to nick the star's necklace, make it look like her old man did it, and thus prove someone ELSE was the thief since he clearly couldn't do it from prison, obviously.
This all seems rather convoluted because she's ALSO apparently the dead guy's lover, not something that's at all explored enough, and when he put two and two together she poisoned him with eye drops so he wouldn't spill any tea about her.
There's just not enough screen time for this plot to air because we get zero connections without the characters telling us, which is bad, IMO. The case definitely could have benefited otherwise, and while I enjoyed seeing Norman back around, that's just not enough for me I'm afraid.
Hannah and Chad continue to be delightful together, and hopefully their upcoming date WILL feature soon enough, as well as another case which will be a little less TELL and a whole lot more SHOW.
xx
*images and video not mine
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