My weakness

We don't keep secrets, do we? I've always admitted my many shortcomings (impatience), faults (I'm quite the philistine, turning my nose up at ballet, Albee plays, and modern art), and unwillingness to try new things (no pineapple pizza, and I mean it!)

So please don't be shocked when I mention my addiction. Everyone has one, and if there's a twelve-step program for getting over being hooked on "Chesapeake Shores" on the Hallmark Channel, I haven't heard about it.

It's one of those shows that comes on for about ten episodes a year. It's one of those shows that's about a family and the people they love and don't love anymore, and maybe marry, maybe not.

There was no reason ever to start watching the show when it premiered on the Hallmark Channel back on August 14, 2016, opening a horn of plenty that brought Jesse Metcalfe, Meghan Ory, Barbara Niven, Laci J. Mailey, Emilie Ullerup, Brendan Penny, Andrew Francis, Diane Ladd and Treat Williams into our home. But we watched it, and it's like trying to eat one corn nut. You can say what you will about these actors, but you cannot deny that each and every one of them is a prime example of what it looks like when you're a good-looking person. 

I mean, really.

Besides how unlikely it is that everyone in a family looks like TV stars, the show is supposed to be about the goings-on of a family on Maryland's Shore - on the banks of the Chesapeake Bay. And they throw in Baltimore references, and talk about the Orioles, and someone's office being "up in Baltimore." But no one has even a trace of a local accent, they never mention National Beer, Berger's Cookies, or crabs (they go to a lobster feast!) and they wear sweaters to sit around outside in July when we're panting like dogs in tank tops.

I mean, we're sweating like humans in tank tops. You can't get a dog to put on a tank top around here in July.

A few years ago, another network put on a show about Point Pleasant, New Jersey. But they filmed it on the west coast, and we were sitting here back east, wondering how they got the sun to set over the ocean in New Jersey. These little things should matter, but the show was filmed on Qualicum Beach in Vancouver, Canada, and the neighboring town of Parksville, British Columbia.

Anomalies abound. This show revolves around the O'Brien family. One of the O'Brien sons comes home from the Army and becomes a firefighter in Chesapeake Shores. He falls for a local woman who is also hired as a firefighter but soon decamps for the Philadelphia Fire Dept. She says she "transferred to Philadelphia." One might be transferred to another fire station, but never to another city's fire department. But she came back and they got married.

One of the daughters is a lawyer, one runs an inn with her husband, one writes books. The lawyer daughter had a thing going with a local boy who had become a big country singer but chose his music over his woman. The innkeeper's father-in-law is in trouble, running from American authorities over his embezzlement of millions of dollars, so he is now seen wearing a pith helmet in a phone booth in what must be a tropical location because there are giant plants and a ceiling fan. The son who isn't a firefighter is a lawyer but he had a heart attack from getting himself all worked up over his cases and now he is about to marry the paralegal who came to work with him and just passed the bar exam. The daughter who writes books was just offered a deal to turn her book into a movie and the family was nattering on about who would play whom in the film, since the book was a thinly-veiled look at a real American family...theirs!

The parents are divorced but it looks like they'll be getting back together, although the mom just went to Los Angeles to work for the Getty Art Museum. The father is a builder and entrepreneur who flew his own plane until he crashed it and now, after a short period of physical therapy, he is a pill freak, strung out on painkillers and reluctantly attending NA meetings.

The grandmother is nowhere to be seen this season, but when she was around, she would break into an Irish accent for no reason at all and spout bromides about life that only occur to people who have lived 70+ years.

And yet, every Sunday, I'm ready for another new episode and I will be sorry to see "Chesapeake Shores" end after this season. I gave up on "The Young And The Restless" in 1993. Maybe I can go back and pick up the story line and have a new addiction.

Are Victor and Nikki married again?