For this week’s blog assignment we were asked to watch a television show we had never seen without sound and try and determine relationships by the nonverbal communication we saw. After doing so we were to watch it again with sound and see how our assumptions matched up. The show I chose to watch is Heart of Dixie. In the opening scene as the main character makes a graduation commencement speech we see her finishing and talking to a man in a suit who approached her. I understood this man to be a Professor in the college. The man seems to be proud of the graduate. After speaking with him she was approached by an older woman who seemed proud and hugged her. I assumed that this was her mother. After the ceremony the main character leaves with a man who has his arm around her, I guessed that this was her boyfriend. As she begins her career in medicine we see her again in conversation with a man weaning scrubs, I took this to be a coworker of hers. The older gentleman Doctor in the next scene I assume is her boss. In this conversation she seems to be very angry at the man or frustrated. I imagine her voice is raised and she has taken offense to something he has said. Later we see the woman leaving the city and taking a bus into the country. She appears to be very bored on this voyage. She also appears to be disgusted by the man sitting next to her on the bus. As she gets off the bus and begins walking to town we see a man, I assume a stranger in a pick-up truck who offers her a ride. This man seems to pleasantly surprise her while the other people she will meet in the country don’t seem to accept her. Once in town she is watched by a group of women in southern belle costumes and a group of older ladies who seem to be disdainful or gossipy about her arrival. It is apparent the character is out of place and she seems to be sad and tired. She enters a practice and is met by a receptionist.

                When watched again with sound I found that a lot of my assumptions were not far off the mark. The man I thought was the Professor however was a Dr., who had a practice in a small town and was offering the main character a job. Her mother was the woman who hugged her after the speech but was not as proud as she was interested in seeing who else was there she could talk to. She actually brushed her daughter off fairly quickly. The man she left the ceremony with was her boyfriend but so was the younger man I took to be her coworker. In this instance it was actually her boyfriend breaking up was with her. The gentleman who picked her up was not only a nice stranger but an attorney who had worked in New York, a point I would not have guessed with the sound off. The main character was in fact disgusted by the man on the bus next to her stating he “smells like stinky cheese” She was in fact angry at her boss as he passed her over for a fellowship because she was giving or caring enough to her patients. As she moved to the country to accept the only job offer she had she was feeling lost and out of place.

                This was an interesting activity, I was surprised at how much of the story line I could glean without words. Had this been a show I am familiar with I would have already known the relationships and would likely have had an even better understanding of the plot.