Sweet Magnolias Season 4 Couples: All the Details About the Future of Helen and Erik and Maddie and Cal

Glamour: The first episode has so many shockers—thanks in part to the time jump—that my jaw was on the floor. What was the reason behind that decision?

Sheryl Anderson: That reaction right there, to have people realizing, Oh, things have happened, things have changed. Wait, what? They’re still together? Wait, what? They’re not together? Because it’s season four, and we know everybody better, and we hope the audience trusts us more, we wanted to have a little fun with shaking things up.

Cal and Maddie are not only engaged, but they get married by the second episode. Were you worried that fans would be disappointed not to see a Cal and Maddie engagement?

No, because they have been so swoonily in love from the moment they met that we thought that seeing an engagement period was ultimately less enjoyable than, “Surprise, we’re getting married!”

That was definitely a surprise, and it made the Halloween episode so fun. How did you decide on that?

We wanted to do a wedding, but not a classic wedding. Dana Sue and Ronnie’s vow renewal was kind of classic, and we didn’t want to follow that with another church wedding as basically the next episode. So we were like, “How can we shake this up?” People in the writer’s room were like, “It’s a surprise.” And since I had said, “Let’s start [the season] at Halloween and end at Christmas,” and we were going to be filming at that time of year had we not had to stop because of the strikes, we were like, “Let’s take advantage of it.”

We wound up shooting out of season, because of the schedule change, but it’s also a season we haven’t seen yet. It’s not always summer in Serenity. We wanted to show a different time of year in Serenity, and the period from Halloween to Christmas is my favorite. It elevates emotions, because everybody wants everything to be special while you’re celebrating.

In between Halloween and Thanksgiving, Serenity gets hit by a massive hurricane. Given what’s happened in Los Angeles and North Carolina the last several months, I have to imagine episodes like this take on more meaning now.

Post-hurricane in Serenity, we wanted to show the people we love loving their community and being generous and compassionate. Yes, there are moments where the world seems to be falling apart, and that’s why it’s important for us as individuals, and as groups, to stand up for and help the people who need it, regardless of how well we know them, and regardless of what our relationship was with them before. The only way we can move forward, as friends, as community, as a nation, is to love and support each other.