S1E5: Best Laid Plans (2007)

  On an otherwise innocuous trip to Maggie’s Lou discovers Val has produced a promotional video to increase Briar Ridge’s reach. Almost in real-time, the end of the shot gives us viewers insight into Lou and the ingenuity that got her through a Columbia MBA, and as soon as she returns to Heartland, she attempts to convince the much older, less tech-savvy, and non-MBA-holder Jack of the merits of this new marketing strategy. After a quick elevator pitch to her grandfather, Lou drives headlong into this idea, completely oblivious to its effect on the other residents of the ranch, guided only by tunnel vision to grow the ranch’s business at any cost. Meeting later in the day with Marnie Gordon, Lou attempts to recruit Marnie’s husband Jerry to help shoot the video.

Having gone to run an errand—or more likely to escape from Lou’s Type A mania—at Briar Ridge, Jack comes face-to-face with Ty for the first time since he left, and Jack must broach an uncomfortable subject: Ty’s probation and his sponsorship agreement.

In a continuation of a plotline from a previous episode, Lou tries to clean out the barn office, just as she and Amy had done in the hose. A number of mementos—even some from the previous century—still remain in the office. Resistant to any change, even the most minor, and trying to preserve physical links to their mother’s memory, Amy objects to the removal of a rotary phone, an old calendar, and several other mementos from the office. After a number of phone calls with a prospective director indicating to Lou that that director won’t help with the shoot, she once again turns to Marnie and Jerry. Jerry, whose specialty is wedding videography, has never shot a commercial of the sort Lou wants to be filmed, in the same style as the Briar Ridge video. Jack, who has never been involved in TV productions, struggles to cut out filler words from his lines as he tries to not seem tense, remember his lines, and safely drive the truck he is in while his segment is being shot.

After it becomes clear that Amy’s progress with the new arrival is long and slow, Jack, noticing the lingering tension between Amy and Ty, orchestrates a plan to reunite them by bringing Amy along on a trip to Briar Ridge, for which the larger goal is to officialize the transfer of Ty’s sponsorship in the rehabilitation program from Jack’s name to Val’s. Ty and Ashley’s mutual dishonesty regarding the arrangement is revealed at this moment under the worst circumstances for Val, who is in the middle of an interview with a top-shelf magazine. Ty is promptly fired, and the friendship between Val and Jack temporarily soured. Scott and Jack suffer from horrible camera fright, and Jerry requires multiple takes from each to get their segments to be up to Lou’s highest of standards. Lou’s controlling nature poses a safety risk to Amy and to the new horse, and Lou, rather than the horse, is chased around several laps in the round pen before finally escaping.

Ashley hosts a party to which Ty had previously been invited before he had been fired from Briar Ridge, but romantic tension between him and Ashley and between him and Amy keeps him there at the party. At the same time, Lou is on a date with Scott, rekindling their pre-series romance, when it is revealed that Jerry had finalized and sent the promotional video to CJOT, the local TV station, without seeking approval from the Type-A-business-minded Lou. While Jack, Amy, and Scott all believe the video turned out well and will be successful in boosting Heartland’s reputation, Lou, who was not able to exercise nearly as much creative control as she would’ve wanted, defaults to seeing the project as a humiliating failure. However, it is later proven that Amy’s perception of the video’s success is in fact the one that lines up with reality, as over the next few days, several clients call to book spaces at Heartland as a direct result of the video’s outreach.

The end of the episode is an incredibly important development in Amy and Ty’s relationship, already strong enough and tense enough to be labeled a budding romance, though neither character is fully aware of this quite yet. Perhaps paranoid from Val’s accusations that he might try to commit horse theft by suitcase upon his firing from Briar Ridge, Ty panics when he comes face-to-face holding a hat which had been a gift from Mallory. Alone together in the barn, Ty is faced with a choice of whether to stay at Heartland or to leave, but Amy convinces him to stay.

Having reversed the backpedaling caused by the chaos of the commercial shot which interrupted the sacking-out (a real method for desensitization of horses to potential stressors) of the new arrival which until now has had no name, citing the horse’s stubbornness and “almost zero people skills,” in full view of her sister, grandfather, and her sister’s romantic interest, Amy reveals the name she has chosen for the horse: Lou.