Sweet Magnolias Might Be the Cheesiest Show We Can't Stop Watching
Let's discuss season 3 of Sweet Magnolias. Isn't it a bit too much?
Who could have predicted when Sweet Magnolias debuted on Netflix in 2020 that it would be viewed for millions of hours?
It's probably today's perpetual global crises that make us want to escape into the cosy little world of the South Carolina town of Serenity, where nothing bad ever happens.
It's only natural for people to sometimes yearn for a sticky-sweet story where the characters are always good, the atmosphere is heartwarming, the conflict is well-balanced, and all the endings are happy. However, Season 3 of Sweet Magnolias, which arrived on Netflix on 20 July 2023, has really gone too far with cheesiness, even by the show's own standards.
Season 3 carries on with the story of the three friends, Maddie, Dana Sue and Helen, their children, families, friends and rivals, all living in Serenity. However, over on Reddit, fans have noted that under all the layers of cheese, this season is drowning in, the plot is really hard to follow.
'I still have two episodes to go, and I am no closer to figuring out which story they want to tell,' a confused fan wrote on Reddit.
Everything from the writing to the acting seems over the top. There's hardly a scene without some life lesson or inflated praise for a character. The season is filled with one cliché after another.
The dialogue is so contrived it is hard to watch. Who talks like that? The show is obviously trying to capture the Southern charm, but it layers it on so thick it comes across as totally fake. People don't talk like that, even in the South.
'I live in South Carolina, and sometimes the dialogue in this show makes me cringe. It's like a cartoonish version of how southerners speak,' a viewer wrote.
The unnatural dialogues add to one of the biggest fan complaints: the acting. All the performances in Season 3 are so over the top the series feels like a Broadway musical rather than a streaming show.
'The scene where Helen and Ryan break up for the umpteenth time… I was crawling out of my skin because her acting was way over the top,' a fan noted, with scores of others agreeing in the thread.
All in all, most fans agree that Season 3 of Sweet Magnolias may be the cheesiest story ever told on screen. But will that stop us from watching it? Probably not. For all its flaws, the series still gives us an escape from today's harsh realities of never-ending calamities.