Sweet Magnolias, season 2, is exactly what you expect from this series if you watched the first season. It’s a little like a Hallmark series, except all grown up with plenty of sex mixed in with the Christian underpinnings. It’s on Netflix.
Sweet Magnolias sometimes felt like getting a sermon or Christian counseling with its many speeches about forgiveness, patience, honesty, and love shared between various characters. There was relationship drama and and old-fashioned sense of love underpinning all the goings on in the little town of Serenity.
The lifelong friends Maddie (JoAnna Garcia Swisher), Dana Sue (Brooke Elliott), and Helen (Heather Headley) were the central characters with an ensemble of children, lovers, exes, business associates, and friends surrounding them. The friendship between the three women is the key to this story; all the parents, children, lovers, and events around them are just the decoration on their three layer cake.
Maddie grew more involved with the baseball coach Cal (Justin Bruening). Her son Ty (Carson Rowland), the baseball star, was benched with a broken arm. Her son Kyle (Logan Allen) had a broken leg and other injuries from the car wreck we saw at the very end of season 1.
Helen very slowly recovered from losing her former beau (the one who didn’t want kids) as she built a relationship with Erik (Dion Johnstone), the baker in Dana Sue’s cafe.
Dana Sue was struggling with her on-again, off-again feelings for her husband Ronnie (Brandon Quinn).
The almost grown children of the main characters had story arcs and romances as well. Some very Romeo and Juliette stories developed with the teens.
In the age of COVID when two characters reach the moment when they should kiss, but they don’t, this series has all the kissing.
Other important storylines went to Isaac (Chris Medlin) who worked for Dana Sue and came to Serenity looking for his birth parents. He found them both in season 2. That created a lot of drama.
Noreen (Jamie Lynn Spears), the nurse who had broken up Maddie’s marriage to her doctor husband (Chris Klein), showed up and had her baby. That led to a subplot about Maddie’s three kids having a new half sister.
Mixed in with all these relationship stories was a plotline about the Serenity citizens mounting a recall election against the mayor who was bilking residents out of property and parking spaces for their businesses.
A few surprise twists made the latter part of the season pop, but it ended on a cliffhanger once again. That may mean season 3 is in the cards.
Earlier I compared the series to a Hallmark series. It certainly wouldn’t fit there, but it has that core sense of hope and love and goodness. It also has adults having sex, and teens falling in love. It has a gay couple who want to adopt a baby. It has drinking (but no smoking). It has infidelity and people who make huge mistakes. In the age of COVID when two characters reach the moment when they should kiss, but they don’t, this series has all the kissing.
What’s your opinion of this series?
I liked it. But the women are so controlling The chef is beautiful but her fat tummy is a disgrace. I am surprised she had lots of me. After her. It believable still she is beautiful but that fat stomach is repulsive. She can do bariatrics consultations
You can do sensitivity training.