It's Christmastown

MAURA QUINT & CHARLES STAR get trapped going ROUND AND ROUND (2023) with us, but...

Shut up, kids, it's the second episode of Hanukkah!

THEME: "Fuck You If You Don't Like Christmas," from Crudbump, by Drew Fairweather

PART ONE

Chag Sameach ... We regret the errors ... It's good! ... Jew Belong meets war ... Good movie crammed into Hallmark, better than Christmas fare ... Crying at The Rock, Actually ... Jade

PART TWO

Cast Rundown ... The Expositional Challenge ... Plot Mop-Up: Maura's Monologue; dreidel-dependent f*ckups; dating-help time loop ... Nerd cred ... Your boyfriend/son will explain the nerd thing ... Fake Londoner, Comic Guy ... Double the characters, all matter ... Ashkenazi word load ... Format tweaking, references on the meta knife edge ... Which twist? Who knew? ... Can't hang (with) the DJ ... Jobbed mom ... Welcome back to Bar Mitzvah Chat

PART THREE

Spot the Angel: Grandma/Busker/Santa? ... Spot the Bard ... Eat Your Heart Out: Food-lite; plot/reality-proportional; "Hanukkah on Rye" callback; Jews as human ... Sufganiyot (reprise): Childhood, Israel, politics, inaccuracy ... Signifying body blows ... People, 2030 ... Blue Christmas ... Candles ... Latke assembly ... No superlatives ... Wine complaint ... Secular Jews, pls

PART FOUR

Hallmark Expanded Universe: Hanukkah on Rye ... Overdetermined: London-Nerd hookup vs. Time-loop revelations vs. Rachel's nerd cred/purpose/attitude ... Self-uncanny valleying ... Tropes as prison, not skeleton ... Curving tropes in on themselves ... Uncanny to movies, not humanity ... Crossover: Too real; a $10m budget and 30 days; Hellraiser; Granddad Groundhog Day; all Groundhog Days

PART FIVE

The Hallmark Voight-Kampff Test: Grandpa; the most Methodist mom ... Rating: 5 ... The Leftovers: Jammed-in Santa ... Coda ... Almost famous ... Inclusive casting ... Bryan Greenberg, Rick Hoffman, and Vic Michaelis Appreciation Station ... Feelings at movie scale ... Real pillow-face ... Bears tight end ... Stay off the tollways ... Minion gifs ... Subway signage ... Two-hour novel revision ... Mixtapes ... 7 days ... IMDB Dive: Tamar Laddy ... Merry Christmas!

All other music by Chris Collingwood of Look Park and Fountains of Wayne, except: "Orchestral Sports Theme" by Chris Collingwood and Rick Murnane, "Schlep the Halls with Loaves of Challah," by The Three Weissmen and "[I'm Spending] Hanukkah in Santa Monica," by Tom Lehrer.

We sail away from SAILING INTO LOVE (2019) and: "I think it's great" ... THEME ... Seattle Pilots ... Dickie Thon (redux) ... Dave Lopes, Grant Balfour ... Swaddled in torpor ... Four Weddings and a Funeral, on paper ... Plot with no wake ... Instant bread podcast ... The Expositional Challenge ... I got nothin' ... Plot mop-up and island love ... Boy falls in water ... Welcome back to Costner Chat ... BREAK ... Still so featureless ... Spot the Angel: Nobody ... Like a table read ... Fiona Vroom: The Dean Acheson of the Hallmark family of brands ... Eat Your Heart Out: Minimalist dining; Kate-upsetting chowder; Hallmark in Maine; suspiciously beige; penne and Aussie wine; Last Ship nostalgia; family-annihilating unkillable Master Chief ... BREAK ... The Hallmark Expanded Universe: Gus Van Houten's Resort Paradise vs. Lucky In Love and Northern Lights of Christmas ... Overdetermined: Nothing, but also Tom quitting over a street conversation ... Crossover: Into the Blue, Striking Distance and Grey's Anatomy ... Only the driest and most odorless sex ... BREAK ... Letters to Santa: Transcontinental best-friendship ... The Build-a-Buré Workshop: Christmas in July, zero research on Australia, Bryan Brown, Midnight Oil, Luke Prokopec, Natalia Imbruglia and AC/DC ... BREAK ... The Hallmark Bechdel Test: No ... Partner Chat: Appropriately medicating ... Rating: 1 (soporifically) ... Leah Renee, underserved ... Leah Renee's earlier music career ... Busytown Mysteries ... Dave's Willow Bay nostalgia ... Garry Garneau, Aaron Rodgers, Colin Jost and Peyton Manning ... What about my snacks??? ... Merry Christmas ... • MUSIC: "Fuck You If You Don't Like Christmas," from Crudbump, by Drew Fairweather • "Insanity," by Leah Renee • "iBF (Imaginary Boyfriend)," by Leah Renee • "Break the Ice," by John Farnham • "Orinoco Flow," by Enya • "Orchestral Sports Theme" by Chris Collingwood of Look Park and Fountains of Wayne, with Rick Murnane

Sweeten that studio magic, it's 2018's IT'S CHRISTMAS, EVE, featuring LeAnn Rimes and: One-year-anniversary gift of the magi ... Malaise forever! ... Scouting Report: Young Werther ... Casey Kasem ... Premature rating ... THEME ... Always Christmas/always New Year's Eve ... Pastiche of pastiches ... LeAnn Rimes: Dead-weight energy and stone face ... Junket/glad-handing impatient demeanor ... Thoroughly even keeled ... LeAnn doing original songs is originality enough ... BREAK ... The Expositional Challenge ... Proactive dad with a website ... Original music ... Belted-out studio vocal track ... 100 percent *valid* Christmas tree lot ... Bantering dialogue like a table read ... Uneven emotional engagement ... Undermining degrees of Chandler-from-Friends spin ... BREAK ... Spot the Angel: Abby or, everyone but Eve ... Checking in with Hallmark sponsor Country Living Magazine: Maple Ridge or Chilliwack? ... Roving superintendent of schools ... Just try raising taxes, buttheads ... Just ADMIT that life has value outside of cash and quantification ... Jeremy Bentham and Karl Marx ... Eat Your Heart Out: Popcorn vat at A Christmas Carol vs. overdoing the hot chocolate ... Foreign currency jokes ... BREAK ... Hallmark Expanded Universe: Every town vs. Larry Walker's hometown ... Overdetermined: Abandoning music since dad died vs. "small towns come together" ... An "Up in the Air" agent of austerity and unintentional villainy ... Crossover: Dangerous Minds vs. Up in the Air ... Hallmark Bechdel Test: Ughhhhhhh, screw it, you tell us ... Partner Chat: "If you watch that, you'll get sick" vs. Matthew Perry vibe and Celebs With No Eyebrows dot Com ... LeAnn Rimes eyebrow chat ... Don't pee ... BREAK ... The Leftovers: Letterman chat ... Love Actually, again ... "Idiot Control Now" ... "We're a Panabaker household" ... Bingo Jones ... Latin Anniversary ... Wyatt and Tate ... Jeb worked at a Hallmark store ... And Duck Head ... Homes SMOTHERED in merchandising ... Hitting the Snodgrass ... Laremy Tunsil shout-out ... Emoting your way to guitar godhood ... That ain't how pageloads work ... Spot the Charlie's Angel hairstyle ... RATING: 2.5 ... Dusty Baker, Panabaker ... Merry Christmas! ... • MUSIC: "Fuck You If You Don't Like Christmas," from Crudbump, by Drew Fairweather • "If U Want It," from Cyber-Vision, by Drew Fairweather • "The Stars and Stripes Forever," by John Philip Sousa • "You and Me and Christmas" by LeAnn Rimes • All other music by Chris Collingwood of Look Park and Fountains of Wayne, except: "Orchestral Sports Theme" by Chris Collingwood and Rick Murnane

It's time to FLIP THAT ROMANCE (2019) and reveal : This movie was bad ... Whose fault is it? ... Like a fountain-drink suicide of Hallmark going wrong ... Expanding the Hallmark topic zone ... Jeb, pain management and HGTV ... Tyler James Tyler LOVED the flips in this movie ... Welcome to Casa Leone ... Apartment dwellers and home builders agree: This is a valueless story conceit ... Heroically making human needs more expensive ... A house flipper vs. the concept of house flipping ... "Little Boxes" flipping renovation ... My Bad Flip: leaching all humanity from this concept ... BREAK ... The Expositional Challenge: Nice ... The one (and one and one) weird thing about this movie ... Costco Depot ... A whole town of bad romance and renovation stans ... Favor? This is your JOB ... Rich people jonesing for this next score to get well ... Chandler, Ross, Indy ... Leni Riefenstahl's Christmas Village ... Charlie Sheen smug vibe ... Thawed-out romance, with trolling ... Everything that flatlines might converge ... BREAK ... Substack Blog Plug ... Beaten by alumni ... Spot the Angel: A whole town! ... Drag This House: Home design center "class" options; contractor spec house picks; the Katherine Heigl kitchen; House Beautiful; debased design language; more humid than humid; conceptually beige and easy to sell; wet-paint color decisions ... BREAK ... The Hallmark Expanded Universe: In the Heart of Hearts of Spring ... Eat Your Heart Out: The Hallmark debut of rosé; buttchugging; this is how old you are now; excruciating lasagna scene; shut up and eat; just so rude ... Overdetermined: Flower arrangement ... Rating: 1 ... Mateen Cleaves Appreciation Station ... BREAK ... The Leftovers: "Epic fail" and "hangry," welcome to the canon ... First-opportunity kiss ... Positive gaysian character ... Character actor with a good IMDB page ... "Have a healthy breakfast" music ... Overbidding by $18,000 like a moron ... Time-bending countertops ... "There are opportunities here" ... Inspirational five-foot rose mural ... I thought we were going to hit it out of the park with this flip ... Merry Christmas ... • MUSIC: "Fuck You If You Don't Like Christmas," from Crudbump, by Drew Fairweather • "If U Want It," from Cyber-Vision, by Drew Fairweather • "Cantaloop" by US3 • "More Human Than Human," by White Zombie • All other music by Chris Collingwood of Look Park and Fountains of Wayne, except: "Orchestral Sports Theme" by Chris Collingwood and Rick Murnane

It's three yards and a cloud of pixie dust with LOVE ON THE SIDELINES (2016) and: Dr. Moreau wasn't wrong about the climate ... THEME ... The lines are open ... Hunter St. James ... Football or graftass ... One of the good ones! ... Joe Theismann picks interesting Hallmark movies ... Snowcoming nostalgia ... The Cremation of the Care ... Any Given Regretful Sunday ... Al Pacino reverie ... Hallmark Sports Channel ... JD and the Straight Shot ... The Expositional Challenge ... Plot cleanup: Ava and the backup; poor and hungry; incompetent Mustang owner; scant Theismann ... BREAK ... Spot the Angel: Patty, Supernatural Roommate ... The manifesto that proves the rule ... On to Cleveland ... Jeb's 19th century lawncare machines ... Eat Your Heart Out: Totino's Pizza Rolls promo; into you, Moby; Emily Kinney, spritely and elfin; a B-Dubs STACK of bread; Krishna dinner; 5 slices, 4 sliders and piles of Fritos; ecstasy of starch; clearly BBQ wings; We. Stan. Buffalo; the wattle must grow; scything a Showtime guy; pot of homemade chili; elegy for the Lost Kangaroo; bar hot dogs for dinner; "that's all casing"; the NFL diet of guacamole and cookies ... BREAK ... The Hallmark Expanded Universe: Crossover sports universe of the San Francisco Miners and Bookstore Boss Goes Bonkers; San Francisco, less beautiful than St. Petersburg; Full House; Kelly Rutherford and McKenzie Vega stuck in traffic returning to McBanjo; Kezar Stadium ... Overdetermined: The Danny/Ron/Ava Dumb Misunderstanding vs. Football-Metaphor Roasts and Joe Theismann's Eponymous Line ... Jared Lorenzen shout-out ... BREAK ... Crossover: A celebration of Any Given Sunday; Pacino in the Hallmark universe; The staggering aftermath of Last Boy Scouting it ... Billy Blanks, thanks for joining the Patreon; get my ass swole ... The Hallmark Bechdel Test: No, ass-backwards gender politics, but it still works? ... Jeb's Mom, Oakland Raiders season ticket holder ... An infinite number of peaceably coexisting dirtbag communities: The America we want to live in ... Partner Chat: Danny is a pud; otherwise enjoyable; Conviction-era Emily Kinney fan ... Rating: 3.5; perfect execution of Hallmark middle-tier ... BREAK ... The Leftovers: Danny Holland career comps: better than Tom Brady's first 7 seasons ... Arena-league player scale ... You named your dog after Newt Gingrich ... Fantastic Dane ... Theismann's method approach to lower-body injury ... Theismann to DeLuise: Touchdown! ... "Hey, you DO know something about football" ... Background football 24/7 ... (Brief) Hayley Sales Appreciation Station ... 16 episodes of Crown Bench ... Kevin Tighe Emergency! ... Ron Silver tendrils ... Idiot Elliot's patriarchal privilege ... Ocean's 12 with a 30lb. bag of dog food ... Terry Ingram and Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle ... Mike Kafka Appreciation Station ... Losing a roommate, gaining dental care ... MVP: Emily Kinney ... Dave's lustrous coat ... Merry Christmas ... • MUSIC: "Fuck You If You Don't Like Christmas," from Crudbump, by Drew Fairweather • "Not As Much As Football," by Mojo Nixon • "All Kinds of Time," by Fountains of Wayne • "Thé à la Menthe (Instrumental)," by La Caution • All other music by Chris Collingwood of Look Park and Fountains of Wayne, except: "Orchestral Sports Theme" by Chris Collingwood and Rick Murnane and "Orchestral Sports Theme (Lighter)," by Chris Collingwood and Rick Murnane