Mean Girls

Man, are all women in Kentucky this mean, or just the rich ones? Yikes. If I were from Kentucky, I might be a little offended.

Stella is from St. Petersburg Florida and has moved to Lexington Kentucky to be a milliner. She was inspired by a photo of a woman at “The Derby” wearing a hat she really liked. She sneaks one of her hat designs into a society maven/ horse farm owner’s hotel room, and wins her favor because her designs are something different from her usual milliner. It is decided that Stella will work from the usual milliner’s, Odette’s, studio and, under her guidance, produce the hats for all of the outfits that the wealthy society and horse lady, Rosalind, will wear to all of the Derby events, of which there are many. Odette is a real witch and a hard taskmaster. To add to Stella’s troubles, of which there are many, Rosalind’s PA is also put in the studio and tries to sabotage Stella at every turn. We don’t know why she hates Stella so much. I guess she’s jealous? Why? Meanwhile Stella meets Rosalind’s son, Christian, who is also the horse trainer for the stable and that’s the romance part.

There were some good things in this one, but in the final analysis, there were just too many things that just didn’t track with me.

•  It was not a good look for the professional horse trainer that his mother’s hat maker knew more about horses and even specifically the horse he has raised from a foal, than he did.
• Now Central Florida, even though it is geographically more southern than Kentucky, isn’t really “The South” as far as attitude and culture. (For that matter, is Kentucky?) But it’s not New York or Alaska. Surely Stella should know that “Bless Your Heart!” is not a compliment. It’s so famously an insult, that even Southern Women can not say it to your face anymore. 
• The Hats. They were not good. Or, let’s just say they were not to my taste. It was like the costumers knew they didn’t have the skills to make really pretty hats, so they decided to make them as ugly as possible, so viewers would think it a case of “It must be me-no one would really go out in public with that on their head.” Kind of like “A good offense is the best defense”. Some were OK, to be fair.
• Christian, the love interest, behaved very problematically at several key points. He was really rude to his friend Davidson who came to stable his horse as previously agreed 8 months ago. He yelled at him and almost kicked him off his property with no explanation other than his horse Toreador has been on a winning streak. I thought it would turn out that the guy was a real scoundrel but no, he was super nice. Since we were not given an explanation, it made Christian look like a brat.  Also, even though Christian knew that Hannah the PA had it in for Stella, he believed all her lies and put her in social jeopardy more than once. I know there always has to be a big misunderstanding near the end, but this one just made Christian look even more stupid and childish. 

Ah, me. There was some other stuff too. I won’t compare and contrast The Kentucky Derby versus The Lexington Derby. Nor will I address Amusement Parks or disastrously placed cups of coffee. The horseracing setting was something different and it was good. I liked  Ginna Claire Mason’s portrayal of Stella, and Holly Robinson Peete’s portrayal of Rosalind, a woman struggling to break out of her comfort zone and take some risks in chapeaux as well as horse racing. A little secondary romance there would not have come amiss. But it was not to be.