If you’ve yet to watch Tuesday’s Hart of Dixie, avert your eyes now. Everyone else, read on…
Hear that? That’s the sound of many a Hart of Dixie fan’s hearts breaking after this week’s installment of the CW charmer, which found Wade reluctantly coming clean to Zoe about his wandering eye everything and effectively ending their wonderfully short-lived love story.
“It’s sad because they’ve been building these two characters up for a season-and-a-half,” Rachel Bilson tells TVLine. “It’s like a real breakup.”
Wilson Bethel, who portrays the misguided philanderer, couldn’t agree more with his co-star — and being the man behind the wrong-doer makes the twist sting all the worse.
“I’ve developed a very strong relationship with Wade over the last year-and-a-half, and it’s like seeing a really good friend do something wrong, you know?” the actor shares, somberly. “There’s an emotional impact that it has on you. But the question is, what happens from here — and a lot of that remains to be seen. It’s a little heartbreaking.”
Bethel explains that Wade’s choice to stray from the relationship for which he fought so hard “definitely came out of the blue, but so goes it in network television… The nature of the game is that nothing can be happy and good for too long,” he says, laughing. “Six or seven episodes of [happiness] is probably all you’re going to get out of a show that’s relationship/triangle-based.”
With “Wade entering into a pretty dark zone” in the coming weeks, Bethel reveals that he too will be “entering into a pretty dark zone… But it’s good, too. From an acting perspective, it’s a new shade of the character and it gives me some new territory to explore.” That said, Bethel is going to miss the enjoyment of embodying “the playful guy that everybody likes. It’s not fun being the guy that everyone hates. But at the end of the day, we’re not doing Schindler’s List here, so there’s got to be a lot of light moments to come! Still, it’s going to be a lonely course.”
The after effects of Wade’s indiscretions will also impact other Bluebell denizens, including Cress Williams‘ beloved mayor Lavon. “He’s been Wade’s friend for years and believes he’s got so much potential,” Williams shares. “But Lavon’s also seen him undercut it time and time again. And then here’s Zoe, his best friend, and the fact that she’s hurt. It’s like part [of him] wants to shake the child [Wade] and say, ‘You can be so much better!’ but he’s also angry about him hurting his best friend.”
Not unlike Bethel, Williams recalls that “it felt so weird when we read the script [for this episode] out loud. Wilson took it really hard. There was just a hush at the table read, like ‘Oh man, that’s not good.’ (Mircea Monroe [Tansy], for her part, also took the news badly: “I was crying — we’re all really invested!”)
Putting a slightly more positive spin on the Dixie shakeup, Bilson notes: “It’s fun to do these emotional scenes because I don’t get those very much… So, I’m actually looking forward to [what's next] in a weird way.”
And what is next, you ask? For starters, some long-overdue girl time for sometime-frenemies Zoe and Tansy. “We have some moments coming up,” Monroe teases. “In the next episode, it’s Tansy who Zoe goes out with to try and get over Wade. She has extra empathy in this situation. It’s really cool twist for the character, to start to like someone that she didn’t because of shared experiences.” But don’t think Tansy will totally let her guard down when it comes to the pint-sized doc. “While we’re doing shots, Tansy even says something like, ‘You’re going to be fine. You’ll find someone like George — but not George, himself,’” the actress laughs.
As for what’s to become of the broken hearted, Bethel can only muster up a solemn “who knows” for now. “But I think Wade and Zoe made a pretty good run at it,” he adds, “and maybe this will leave room for a continued development down the line.”
