The third season of the teen drama My Life With The Walter Boys picks up where Season two left off, with family patriarch George Walter suffering a stroke. Also, Jackie Howard finds out that more than one Walter boy is in love with her. How will these changes affect the previously very together Walter family?

Opening Shot: George Walter (Marc Blucas) is being wheeled into an emergency room after having a stroke; his son Alex (Ashby Gentry) found him unconscious.

The Gist:  George’s stroke happened soon after Alex overheard his then-girlfriend, Jackie Howard (Nikki Rodriguez) and his brother Cole (Noah LaLonde) tell each other how they feel. Of course, Jackie has lived with the Walter family since her entire family died in an accident a few years prior, and the Alex-Jackie-Cole triangle has been simmering for quite awhile.

As George recovers, Katherine Walter (Sarah Rafferty) has struggled to manage the household, which consists of six of her seven sons, lone daughter Parker (Alix West Lefler), and Jackie. Jackie sees the Walters fracturing a bit, all of them going their separate ways instead of having the family meals and other moments of togetherness they used to have. And because hospitals bring up bad memories for her, she tries to help wherever she can in lieu of visiting George. She also tells Cole that it’s “not a good time” to explore their feelings for each other, given everything that’s going on.

Alex is dedicating himself to his rodeo career in the wake of what happened with Jackie, almost to the point where his safety might be compromised. He’s also under the false illusion that everything is going to be back to normal when his dad comes home from the hospital, despite the fact that George is paralyzed on one side. Cole, on the other hand, is being entrusted to fix the hot rod of a well-known drag racer.

Meanwhile, Alex’s bestie Kiley (Mya Lowe) feels conspicuous now that she’s dating Dylan (Kolton Stewart). Oldest Walter son Will (Johnny Link) proceeds with the ranch resort project. Danny (Connor Stanhope) and Erin (Alisha Newton) get more serious, while Nathan (Corey Fogelmanis) is asked by Skylar (Jaylan Evans) to write a school paper column about indie music.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Like we said for the show’s second season, My Life With The Walter Boys, created by Melanie Halsall and based on the novel by Ali Novak, is Virgin River meets Dawson’s Creek meets 7th Heaven.

Our Take: It feels like that Season 3 of My Life With The Walter Boys brings the Alex-Jackie-Cole triangle to a somewhat anticlimactic settling point. While Alex still loves Jackie — and apparently, Jackie does love him too, but in a “different” way than she loves Cole — “I don’t want to be with someone who wants to be with someone else,” he tells Cole. And, after Alex and Jackie have their heart-to-heart, it feels like all is well between the brothers as well as Jackie. And by the end of the episode, Jackie is ready to go all in with Cole.

We’re not sure we’re OK with that. The triangle has been the driving force of this show since the beginning, despite all of the other stories going on among the Walter boys and Walter-adjacent characters like Kiley. Watching Jackie and Cole give it a go might not be quite as dramatic as seeing Jackie fall for both brothers and not know which one is the right choice for her. Then again, that kind of waffling only goes so far before it gets infuriating, and perhaps Halsall and her writers are content with letting Jackie’s love life go on cruise control for awhile while they explore other stories.

Aside from the Walter family trying to come back together and manage the ranch while George tries to get back to a semblance of his pre-stroke self, the rest of the stories are pleasant enough, but they feel pretty generic.

Kiley feeling too “seen” with Nathan is an example. Even though Kiley tells Nathan that she’s always been fine flying under the radar, the story is more about how Kiley sees herself than anything else. She’s not a cheerleader, but she’s not exactly a dork, either; in other words, she’s not outkicking her coverage by being with Nathan. Riley seems to be too confident a person in every other aspect of her life to need to be propped up by Nathan like she seems to be in this episode. It’s a story we’ve seen so many times it’s silly, and these two characters, who have demonstrated good chemistry, deserve better.

What we hope is that, as Jackie and Cole begin whatever they’re beginning, there will be tension with Alex and his rodeo career, a chance for Cole to start drag racing, and other stories that can bring some conflict into the mix.

Performance Worth Watching: Nikki Rodriguez’s performance as Jackie continues to be mature beyond the character’s years (but perhaps not Rodriguez’s years, if online speculation is to be believed), and we continue to be on board for it.

Sex And Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Jackie and Cole finally kiss at the site where Cole brought her when she first moved to Silver Falls.

Sleeper Star: Here’s a good place to give it up for the two youngest Walter boys, who seem to get very little in the way of story: Dean Petriw as Jordan Walter and Lennix James as Parker Walter.

Most Pilot-y Line: We appreciate that George Walter doesn’t come back from the hospital as if nothing happened; he really can’t use his left arm and hobbles with a cane. But nothing happened with his face or his ability to speak or any of his cognitive abilities?

Our Call: STREAM IT. My Life With The Walter Boys continues to be a pleasant show to watch, even if its main love triangle is going to hiatus, at least for most of the third season.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.