podcast (spoilers included)
One more warning, there are lots of spoilers included so if you haven't watched the whole series DO NOT READ.
So, someone posted a podcast with 2 women interviewing Leila Gerstein (HOD creator and executive producer) and she said some interesting things:
They asked where the idea came from and she said she was working on Gossip Girl which was sort of dark and she had a baby at home and felt like she wanted something happier. It was after the BP oil spill and they kept showing these small towns along the Gulf where neighbors were helping neighbors and she liked the idea of that. That's how she came up with BlueBell, some place that is kind of the opposite of NY in so many ways. It's a utopia. She said because it's a utopia she purposely didn't touch on any "issues" that exist in Alabama and other areas of the deep south. For example, Race is never an issue in Bluebell, everyone always has enough money, etc.
They asked her straight out if she knew when she started who the end game couples would be and she said she did not. Then she contradicted herself by saying the original idea was that Zoe would end up with George and that Wade would just be an obstacle to them getting together.
She said she always knew that season 1 would end with George leaving Lemon at the alter to be with Zoe, just as Zoe had finally given in to Wade.
The original intent was to have Zoe and Wade together for just the first few episodes of season 2 and then Zoe and George would work their way to each other. This changed when the writes discovered how cute Zoe and Wade were together and how much they liked the chemistry with Rachel and Wilson together.
By the time they were filming 2x10 (Blue Christmas) the writers were working on the script for the episode with the play (this part was a little confusing because she said they were working on the play episode where Zoe and George kiss which is 2x19 but she called it 2x17 which is the episode after they break up so I'm not sure which it was exactly). She said while working on that script was the point when she and the rest of the writes decided Zoe and George shouldn't/wouldn't be together. She said Zoe's sort of conflicted feelings about George, does she really like him or is it just that he's there and they have a connection through NY and she's upset about what happened with Wade?, was how they felt as the writers about Zoe with regards to George. They didn't really think she felt that way about him anymore, if she ever really had. She also said that the audience was so invested in Wade/Zoe that she was afraid if she put Zoe and George together even for a short time, that the audience would turn on George.
She said that she knew pretty much every coupling pissed off about half of the audience but admitted she didn't expect the audience to like Lavon and AB together as much as they did. (I had suspected this. She was such a Lavon/Lemon fan from the very beginning I don't think she really put a lot of thought into the possibility that Lavon and AB together might work and couldn't imagine the fans would like them).
She joked about all the Joel hate from fans in season 3. She said for the most part she tried to stay off social media but she couldn't believe all the fan hate directed at Joel. She laughed about wanting to shout at people "He's just an obstacle, Zoe isn't going to marry Joel". Again she said she didn't expect it because she loves Josh Cooke and Rachel loves Josh Cooke. She said he was the kind of guy she imagined Zoe would have been with if she had never left NY. On one level I do agree with her on this. I was surprised by all the hate too and wanted to ask people if this was the first tv show or rom-com they had ever seen? It was so obvious Zoe wasn't going to end up with Joel. At the same time, I do think Leila kept him around longer than she needed to to serve her purpose. There were some more rational fans whose issue was not so much Joel being there as the fact that too many episodes had him as a main story line at the expense of some of the other main cast members which I think was true. She said the scene in the zip-line episode when Wade says to Zoe "I don't know what everyone is making such a big deal about, we all know you're still in love with me" was her way of saying to the audience, Joel is just an obstacle.
She talked about some of the story lines that she would have liked to seen flushed out if they had more time and that included the Cricket/Jaysen love story. Part of the reason they couldn't do more with that was one of those actress's was pregnant as well. She said they couldn't have filmed any more than they did because Rachel had her baby literally a week after they filmed the finale.
She knew the AB/George thing kind of came out of nowhere and was rushed but she wanted all of her characters to end up in a happy place if this was the last season and she felt their characters had sort of gone through some of the same things as the series had gone on. They both started out being bullied and pushed around by Lemon, have been unlucky in love, etc. She also said she always knew someone was going to have to leave BlueBell because it's so small and that it obviously couldn't be Zoe and it wouldn't be Lavon because he's the mayor, so that sort of left George.
She talked about the curling iron speech and how long she and the writers worked on that and how much she liked it. She had been critical in the past of shows that write in unplanned pregnancies and then have them "taken care of" with a miscarriage because she thinks it's taking an easy way out. Obviously this wasn't a consideration with Zoe since the whole reason the pregnancy was written in was because Rachel was pregnant.The hosts asked her if she ever thought about tackling that subject on HOD and she said no because she didn't think BlueBell was the right place for that and HOD wasn't the right kind of show for that. She did say that Zoe's comment about believing in a woman's right to return a curling iron she hadn't ordered was her way of squeezing that in a little though.
The last thing they asked her about was the name for TBD. She said the baby was never given a name and that her intent was to have that be revealed in episode 5x01 which we all know never happened. It was meant to be the cliff hanger. I had suspected that this might have been part of the reason we didn't get a name although I still think she could have handled the situation better. She knew from the very beginning of the season that there was a chance they wouldn't get renewed for another season. She made comments in interviews during the last season that she thought "76 episodes might be enough for these loves stories". She could have planned for that eventuality of being canceled. It's not uncommon for shows to shoot 2 endings, especially when there is the possibility of cancellation. I didn't watch Castle but they knew they might be canceled and filmed 2 final scenes. One was to be shown if they got renewed, that would lead people into next season, the other one, the one they aired, wrapped everything up. I realize that the final announcement on the show being cancelled didn't come until after the finale aired but they knew it was probably coming. The CW had renewed every other show in their lineup except for HOD and a show that hadn't even aired yet (The Messengers?), a couple months prior, the ratings were low, and HOD didn't fit in with the genre programming the "new" CW head wanted (superheros, sci-fi). They knew they were more likely to get cancelled than renewed. She should have filmed a scene where they mention the babies name and aired that when it became clear they were not going to get renewed even if the CW didn't give them the courtesy of announcing it until right before up-fronts.
I think I got it all or at least the stuff I thought was interesting. She confirmed some things I had suspected and cleared up a few other things. I do still wish she'd given us the babies name though, LOL.