Stocking Stuffer 10.1 Holiday Mismatch

Weird. We mean best of headbands for you. No, I'm not wearing this now. Don't be so uptight. There's a new woman on the Christmas committee.

She is such a piece of work. He is so cute. I found your dream girl. Two kids, unlucky in love. This is going to be fun.

I'm two meddling mothers. This is my mother, Barbara. Lauren is your Oh no Oh. Holiday mismatch only on Hallmark Channel. Oh hello, and welcome to side Quest season ten point one of stocking Stuffers of the Feminine Critique.

I'm Emily without me today is Christine, who will be here soon. But some of you know, if you have not listened to this podcast in the past year, then perhaps you have no idea what's going on. And I am sorry. I'm sorry for so many things in this world right now, but in part one of those things I apologize for is the season of stocking Stuffers, which are a series of episodes, typically shorter than are usually episodes, where I, typically with the subsistence of a guest, tackle one of these movies. And you heard the Travelers, so you know what I mean by these movies.

We are talking Hallmark Lifetime Marvista, whatever it might be, but not the Great Family Network because fuck them. But anything else that does this thing? Where come it used to be December, but then it became November and now it's like October first, where these networks and Hallmark certainly pioneered it, many others picked up a slack just correctly. Guess that what a large chunk of the population of America. Certainly I don't know about the rest of the world, and if these are popular there, I'd love to know more.

Actually, now that I say that, but everybody likes to I guess not think during this time, which I understand. The holidays are busy, you're stress. It's the end of year. So even if you're not celebrating the traditional December holidays, you might have end of year budget things to think about. Whatever it might be.

This form of entertainment, which I call the cozy Cardigan Christmas movie, it has certain templates that it hits, certain tropes that it has to have, and at the end of the day, you know, there's a very little conflict for ninety minutes or two hours. Once you're adding commercials, often for Daisy sour cream. We will get to it, but at the end of the day, you have consumed a candy cane, nothing significant, nothing that is going to challenge your worldview but makes you feel good or distracts you, or whatever it might be. I started doing this ten years ago, which I can't believe. I am saying that I've done ten years worth of these things, and it came in part because I started kind of catching these movies somehow.

I don't exactly remember how I ever decided to sit down and watch them, and I could kind of couldn't contain how much I had to say about them because they are so empty, and yet in their emptiness, they'rein lives maybe a lot of truth. I don't know. I'm getting very deep, but it's been ten years of doing these I feel like I should have more reason other than just I don't know. I like to kind of identify the tropes and see how many public domain Christmas movie songs you can cram in eighty seven minutes of film, and the answer is usually quite a bit. But the way these episodes go is I will usually be joined by a guest and Christine will be on one, but it will also be a lot of special celebrity guest stars, just like I was doing my own Christmas special.

What a world. We will take one of these movies. You will hear the trailer for it. I will tell you where to find it. This was a Hallmark of twenty twenty four, so it's going to be findable on the Hallmark network.

A lot of these are going to Peacock, so if you have Peacock, you can probably find them too. I won't always do once from this year. I'll I like to dig around find what's you know, kind of in the bottom barrel of Hulu and so on. It's really fun if we find some from the late nineties where they hadn't quite figured out that this was the thing they could do, but you could see always see bones of things. Anyway, these are movies that are rarely good.

Sometimes they are Sometimes they they're funny, they're charming, sometimes there's chemistry or they actually do have a little bit of something to say the but that's like not really why we watch them. We watch them just to kind of I don't know, pull these things, and it's fascinating, and I'd like, I'm clearly not the only one interested in this phenomenon, because otherwise others wouldn't join me for it, and these movies wouldn't be popular. But the first movie of the year I usually like to do alone just because it kind of sets the stage. It lets me kind of orient my brain back into this world and let's talk about this world. This world.

And when I say that, I mean the Cozy Cardigan universe. There are different presentations of it. Sometimes there's fantasy elements. Sometimes it is just make it as quick as you can in eight days and try to spend as little money as possible. You will see minor celebrities.

Sometimes it is retirees who kind of come in to do a couple of scenes one day. Sometimes it's you know, fresh young faces just off the CW network or whatever network is happening. Now. I'm old, guys, I don't know what's cool anymore. These movies are not cool, but yet a lot of people watch them.

And I always kind of make a statement here to say I don't It's okay if you don't want to listen to these episodes and you just want to wait for Christine to come back and us to talk about movies in a more intelligent manner. I won't be offended. Don't worry about it. But if you like this stuff, then join me, won't you for this journey down In today's case, Holiday Mismatch. So we are going to dive into this movie.

And the way I structure this is I kind of give a quick blood synopsis. I will go through the ten things that we kind of have to have in these movies and then all the little bonuses that come up along the way. So Holiday is Match twenty twenty four from Hallmark Network. This is directed by Caroline Librish Libershe. Something that is notable for a lot of these movies is that there are often women behind the camera, many many female screenwriters, female directors.

Hallmark has always been very forward about being a kind of you know, a network that has its mass appeal to women and Lifetime the same way, but also hires a lot of women. So that's nice to see. There is a scandal, and I don't know how true it is of where supposedly there's a Hallmark casting director who's like saying they need to hire younger female leads and Lasha Shaber, who is my age, is getting too old for this stuff. So we're gonna keep a watch on that. See where it goes as of now, I have a hard time believing Hallmark is ready to ditch it's, you know, the face of its Christmas movies.

But I could be wrong, and they could be yet another terrible company making terrible decisions because they hate women, which I don't know if you know this, but so it does a lot of this country. Anyway, I digress. Holiday Mismatch, let's talk about it. I should mention Caroline Lebershet Librish. I don't know, but I'm gonna say Labour Shae because it sounds funner.

Director has something that is often true of many of these movies. Is a fun game to play is how many Christmas movies today have the directors made and how many lifetime thrillers have they made? So Libershet some of her credits include Sweet as Maple Syrup, Farmers Seeking Love, and Fuck Mary Kill So right away, I do want to make a point that Holiday Mismatch is both a typical Hallmark movie, but it does, from a structural point of view, do something very different. There is a romance. It is two unlikely people who wants a control freak and one's a free spirit, and they fall in love.

However, that's not really what the movie is about. Instead, the stars of this movie are Beth Broderick and Carolyn Ray Raya. I've never been sure you know these names. You have seen these women in many a thing, including together on Sabrina the Teenage Witch. And yes, they take a while to get there.

It's I think it is like the last joke of the movie is a somewhat of a Sabrina the Teenage Witch joke. So hang in there, guys, and you will get there, So don't worry about that. But we don't usually, you know, orientate our Hallmark movies around the older leads, right, those are our supporting characters, our sage old person number nine. But in this case, our leads are two older women, and Barbara Beth Roderick is a kind of uptight accountant and she has just retired. She's married, she has an adult son, and immediately she's one of those people who when they retire they need projects because they are, you know, like to be busy and do tasks and complete things very type A.

And Kath on the other side, which is really annoying to say, so I'll probably stumble over that a lot. But Kath works for the Chamber of Commerce, and you know, does all of the events and kind of handles the committees and such. And she have a little whackado. She's Caroline ray Raya, so you kind of know, you know, she's gonna wear big earrings and you know, kind of always have like silly sweaters on. And Beth, I'm saying Beth, what I really mean is Beth Broughtreck, who's playing the character of Barbara.

Thank you. Barbara decides to volunteer for the Chamber of Commerce to kind of just keep herself busy. Immediately gets there and is like, oh, this shit is not organized. I can fix it, because Cath is kind of a basket cave. But Kath knows what she's doing.

She's just organized about it. These two women, Oil and Water don't like each other, and the one thing they have in common is that both of them have children who are single and and both of these mothers really want their child to find somebody, and they find a dating app for parents to try to find somebody for their children. I guess it's a thing. I don't know. It's probably not a thing.

Oh, it probably is a thing. I don't know. I haven't dated in a long time, and what do you know, they end up without realizing it, like setting up a date for It's Cat's daughter Lauren and twist. Even though kath is the free spirit, her daughter Lauren is the control free and Barbara's son Shane twists. Barbara's uptid and her son Shane is kind of the like actor, director, artist of the town.

So they set them up without realizing who's who. These two are both like, mom, Mom, I don't want you to set me up with someone. This is weird, but fine, I'll just do this so I can get you off my back. They meet, they have a date, they like kind of both agree like, look, I hate that our mothers are doing this. Hey, I have an idea.

How about we pretend that we're dating to keep our parents off our back for the holidays and then we can go our separate ways and guys, I plot twist. I don't know if you're if you could possibly see this coming, But it turns out Shane and Lauren actually really like each other, and you know what, they kind of fall in love, which of course is annoying to the moms who are like no, no, no no. The whole point of this is that I don't want you dating somebody whose mother I just met and don't like fair enough. So it's a little you know, it's that kind of thing. So then the mothers try to break them up.

There's other minor conflicts where Lauren has a big she's an architect and partner in firm and has a big presentation. And Shane owns a theater but he's thinking of selling the theater because he's like really bad at everything other than cough cough, improv. We'll get there, but okay, no, I gotta jump ahead to this. Imagine a local like your little local theater is doing her Christmas cal Great. I love a Christmas Carol, right, it's nice.

Every couple of years you go see a stage production of Christmas Carol and everybody's happy. You get there, You sit down and the narrator like you're gonzo, but like in human form, in like knock off Jonathan grofth form, because this guy is like Jonathan Groff but not he comes out and instead of being like Marley was dead to begin with, says Okay, I need a suggestion from the audience, because it's like improv Christmas Carol. Nothing has ever been made better with improv. I'm sorry anyway, Shane's the worst. He's actually not that bad, except the fact that he does run an improv Christmas Carol him and Lauren.

Lauren of course helps him figure out what he can do with the building and how to get a chamber of commerce grant again, conflict of interest. Maybe separately, Barbara and Kath like argue, but they kind of come to respect each other. Barbara convinces Kath she should stand up to her boss, and Kath and everything's fine, and in the end everybody is happy, and surprisingly that's how these movies tend to end. But now we get to the fun part, which is going through the things that these movies all have, and this one has not surprisingly nine out of ten of the musks and then all of the bonuses pretty much. So the first thing is our female in female lead in need of a lesson, And this does do a bit of a twist obviously, because we have kind of three women, and of course they all need to learn lessons of different types.

But you know, cav needs to learn to stand up for herself, Barbara needs to learn to let go a little bit, and Lauren needs to learn to let love in. This is what happens in these movies. No Christmas themed names. We do give bonus points for that. I say that as if I keep score.

I don't actually keep score. But often we have Holly's and Noel's and that kind of thing we don't in this case. Number two is our bland love interest, which typically breaks down into poor little rich boy or widowed dad who works with his hands, maybe as a kid, has his heart broken from his wife who died. There's never talk of divorce. Every now and then there is.

We're getting a little more progressive, but you know, kind of like a man's man in this case. We have a bit of a twist on that. So Shane is again not the man. He is an actor, he is creative. We see early on that he is not handsy at our handy handsy because he's on handsy either that we saw, but we don't know what goes on behind closed doors.

But he is not the guy to fix things. Lauren kind of is, so you know, there's kind of a twist on that. And we even get a scene where when kath is trying to break them up and Barbara has kind of given her some notes on Shaine Cath figures like ooh, I can make Shane look bad by like showing like what not a man he is. So again it sounds more toxic than it is in the context of this movie. It's not.

But of course there's that other part of this of do they speak to a bigger truth and are they really forcing stereotypes? Of course they are, but this one honestly was kind of okay. So Shane, and again we've talked about how he is also doing improv when he should not be. And law I mentioned Lauren as our other you know, is she the bland love interest? Is she a lead?

She's not really the lead, but she's sort of the central person that has to fall in love. Yeah, type a just like Barbara. Oddly enough, and she does even get to say the line you know, I am a perfectionist, So just in case you don't get that, she's that type of person. Something rare in this movie because normally the romance is very chaste. Maybe we will get the start of a kiss at the very end of the movie.

And these are the kind of movies that if you've watched anything on Lifetime or network TV movies, there's no time for a coda. There's no time for like a credit sequence. So when characters like get together to kiss, it just immediately, Like the credits take up three quarters of the screen. You can actually read any of the credits. This one does a rare thing where it actually lets our characters kiss, like halfway through the film.

It's wild, guys. I don't know. I think times are changing. We'll see I mean, none of the country. But you know.

Number three is our setting, which I always list here because it breaks down into one of three things. Is it a big bad city. Is it a magical winter wonderland. Those are rare, they're more expensive to make, but they're my favorite, but we don't get them often. Or is it a charming small town ding ding Ding, charming small town, cheapest of film.

And and this town is called Brooklane. And it's very annoying because of course you're trying to figure out did they just not want to say Brooklyn? No, Brooklane? And it's hard to say anyway, Cass, why is this movie challenging me so much? Is the first one of the season.

It's supposed to be a warm up anyway. Number four dead parents or dead wife usually dead parents. It's like a given that we get dead parents. Guys. I don't know if I am cursing myself for this season, but how did I pick a premier movie that did not have dead parents?

Everybody's alive, even you wonder, Okay, Well Barbara's husband shows up, you know here and there. Well Kat's husband doesn't. Did he die? No, he left what he left the family, And it's part of the story because it's like when Lauren became a perfectionist. And I don't know what to do with this.

It's a little unsettling because I would rather have dead parents than a movie than a dead be dad. It's weird. Will continue, just keep that note. I don't know. We're going to see if this tracks or not.

Number five is our sasy sidekick, often a best friend, assistant, coworker, sometimes a sister character. Some things we always look for is that usually the sassy sidekick, especially if the movie is like from a focusing on a woman. If it's a female sassy sidekick, she can never be as attractive as a lead. She will never dress as well as the lead. She will often wear like gigantic dangling earrings in part to maybe like underplay her own good looks, because again, we need a very clear trajectory to know who we need to pay attention to falling in love, so it can confuse things if our sassy sidekick is too attractive.

In the case of Halidy mismatch, it's kind of it's tough to say, well, who's the sidekick, because both Barbara and Cath are sort of like normally they would be kind of that, especially Kath who wears gigantic earrings, who wears like the ugliest sweaters and not even just Christmas sweaters, like she's wearing like a lot of pink, and it's very strange. But I guess we can't. They're the leads. I can't. I can't call them.

So instead we have a couple of others. We've got the two kind of other men on the community of Chamber of Commerce, and they're both kind of like, I don't know, they have their moments, they're just getting to be goofy. One of them ends up being Santa Claus and has like an existential crisis about it. So I guess that's kind of sassy and not sassy but kind of nice to have. And certainly the sidekick role is be Beth.

I keep saying that Barbara as Beth Broderick has two sons, so Shane, who we obviously were focusing on, and then she has another son who shows up a few times, and that son is gay, and the movie makes mention of his husband, and never a thing. It's just treated the way it would be if oh, this is my other son and his wife and it's like Hollmark. Obviously it's amazing. How I don't want to say how quick, because in many ways this is not quick at all, Like it's I don't want to give credit to a network for coming around to a gay relationship in twenty twenty four, especially when they did some pretty shitty things over the last couple of years. But it is nice, refreshing to see it's just there.

He is, if anything, not sassy. He is kind of the more like straight man in this scenario. But hey, it's something and I will take it. So number six is there evil woman character. Sometimes the you know, it's the villain role.

Sometimes it's a bad businessman, but often it's an evil woman. And again, this is something where we have seen a shift. These movies used to almost always have either like The Big Bad Boss Lady or The Love If It was a poor little rich boy, like his girlfriend fiance was like a mean rich girl and she had to kind of get taken down a few pegs. They've moved away from that, which I appreciate even though like I like a dumb, villainous woman, but also like it's unhealthy to have that in these movies, so in this case we don't. We have a little bit of tension with Kat's boss, Yolanda, who Kath is like terrified of, and Yolanda seems to like make a lot of mistakes and Kath will never correct her, and you kind of find out there's a reason because Yolanda gave her a job when she really needed one, so she feels like she owes it.

But then like you know, at some point, Kath says to Yolanda, like I'm gonna stand up for myself, and Yolanda's like, all right, cool, and that's that. So as much conflict as we get in these movies, people don't expect, I don't know, like a Serbian film here number seven montage my favorite thing. I love a montage. It's the laziest way to tell a story. And I appreciate the way to save energy.

This one surprisingly doesn't have many We open with a lot of Christmas decoration and it feels like, Okay, I know what I'm getting. I'm gonna get a lot more scenes like this down the line, and we really don't. There's a moment that feels like it should have been a montage where Beth Barbara god darn it goes to like help. One of the volunteer activities is they have to make like turkey sandwiches for the I guess I want to say homeless shelter, but I don't know if they actually say that, And it's like they're gonna have a race and they have everything ready to as symbol, and you think you know what you're getting and you just don't like it just instead is like a scene. And then suddenly you turn around and Beth Barbara, I'm just gonna call our Beth from now on.

Beth has made like fifty sandwiches and cath Is eaten once much and that's that. And you're like, that could have been done as a montage. You could have saved some dialogue. But I don't know. I don't make these movies.

Number eight Slapstick, So we have quite a few moments of this in this movie. Really on Barb and Cath fight over salt and they make they spill salt, which I guess is bad lucks. So maybe that's the thing. There is a kind of kind of funny I'm gonna say, like a little bit like I didn't laugh, but I chuckled, maybe I smiled, maybe I cracked a little little grin when the scene I mentioned where when Kath is trying to like emasculate Shane in front of Lauren. They go to get a Christmas tree and Kath is like, all right, Hane, wrap it up for us, and Shane has clearly never done this before, so it's him like lassowing the tree with twine and honestly got kind of cute.

Then he has to catch a rat, which again is you know, this isn't like Buster Keaton antics here, folks, but you know it's fine. And this is where I wrote in my notes this actor I did not get his name. He has he is the asylum version of Jonathan Groff, but not in a bad way, and I stand by that. Later, at one point we get Barbon Cath trying to break into when the other committee member who is playing Santa is like locked himself in Santa's workshop because he can't go face kids. Barbon Cath are trying to break in, and Barb does this like very impressive stunt where she sort of like jumps through the window and it cuts to a stunt woman rolling over again.

I looked at that and like, huh okay, there's like a little bit of comic sensibility here, which I appreciate. Number nine, sage older person. Boy, is that confusing, because what do we do here? What do we do Our old people in this movie are kind of not sage because they're making the mistakes. Dad right, or Barb's husband does seem to occasionally have good things to say, So I guess we'll get it there.

And then Santa Claus. Number ten. Sometimes our sage older person is Santa Claus. That is the best case scenario when it's an old man who gives advice and then he like winks at the camera and he realized, oh my god, it's Santa. Not the case here, we do have a Santa Claus again, afore mentioned existential crisis of Santa Claus.

And then we along with that we get a round of everybody talking about like when they ask Santa for a gift and didn't get it for Christmas, and yes, that will come back. Now. The bonus rounds all the little things that come up. The first thing, of course, is the absurdly unlimited use of public domain holiday songs. It is amazing how many versions of these songs you can get in a movie.

We get the ones to look out for, typically are deck the Halls, jingle Bells, Silent Night, Good King, Wenchelas Noel like all the ones that are you know, not all I want for Christmas is you those kind of songs. In this case, we open with the very upbeat jingle bells. We get some karaoke of Christmas carols, which is fine except it's it's really weird to have a karaoke machine that is reading the lyrics to jingle bells. It just that just seems like something you don't have to do, but who am I to judge. The other thing, we get some nutcracker music, of course, and karaoke up on a house top.

Carolers are singing jolly old, said Nicholas Oh. At one point, the town has an event where it's the Christmas Carol trolley, which is I don't know if this is like a real Sophie's choice here. If you dropped me in this little town of Brooklyn and said, hey, Emily, we're gonna do some activities tonight, and I'm like, okay, great. Does that mean they say, well, you have a choice of two. You could go ride to the Christmas Carol trolley and seeing Christmas Carols with a bunch of strangers, or option B, you could go to the local theater production of a Christmas Carol.

Okay, I'll take that one, and then you find out it's improv and then you just you understand why people leave small towns now. Also, I will give credit because when you have like a Christmas Carol also public domain, so it's kind of like, oh, crossing a different kind of line there. So I appreciate that A number two food, all right, food, Typically these movies breaks down into a secret family recipe and or a needlessly complicated holiday cocktail. This case, right off the bat, Barb's husband makes her a jolly jewel. I don't know what it is, but it's garnished with a candy cane.

A look kind of disgusting they drink eggnog. Later, there's talk of a turkey sepper sandwich, which Barb is like, that sounds like it's like somebody like picked up a snail from the ground and shoved it in her mouth. Who doesn't like a turkey like super sandwich. I don't know, Barb. Apparently Number three, small business in Danger Chain's theater, seems to be on the verge of closing because he's a very bad businessman.

Also maybe because he's doing improv in a small town when you don't need to do improv. I did not catch any product placement. Number five is the Cloying Child, which we did not have. I don't think there was anybody under eighteen in this movie, and I am happy for that. Number six finding the Perfect Tree, we do get that, well, I mean it's not like the whole like, no, it's not Christmas until we find the tree.

We just get a scene of them chopping for the tree. Empty coffee cup acting okay, this is as we know. My favorite thing about these movies is how none of these actors have ever held an empty cup of coffee in front of the mirror to simulate, like how to show that it has weight. When it does not have weight and it's clearly empty. There are some like egregious cases of this.

This movie does something pretty smart, which is it has Lauren and Chane are like walking around with coffee cups, but it's like the line is did this hit your hot cocoa fix? Like are you satisfied with your drink? As if to say, we have already drank what was in here. So that's a good way to get around it, like oh, we're just still looking for a garbage can to throw our cups in, so it you know, it's not quite as obvious. And then at one point we do when the eggnog scene, like Dad definitely was drinking that eggnog although now and then the other part of this is actors trying really hard not to eat on camera, because again in these movies, you have a lot of food.

You have a lot of uh scenes of baking and hilarity, and there is a Christmas cookie thing running through it. And at one point Chaine brings Lauren some Christmas cookies and like they both go to eat them, and I swear this had to be some kind of like you know, the way we know that like a lot of directors like to like really fuck with their cast and like make them do things on camera that they don't want to do. This scene feels like that director is standing behind the camera holding a flamethrower and threatening and saying, you will take a bite of that fucking cookie or I will burn you both because they both like Cary to like make a little like grimace before they bite into the cookie. And they do bite in the cookie.

We do have eating in this movie, but you can tell they hated it, and I don't know why. It makes me really happy because I don't know I have problems. Number nine canadianisms or obvious tells that the movie was not filmed on location. All I can say is the actress playing Lauren, who is very charming I thought to define job is also definitely from our neighbor up north. Just definitely strong Canadian accent, So there is that.

I think Shane had one too, but hers I could catch a little more. Number ten our warm weather watch. Do we have proof that this was not filmed during the during winter? We just I mean to have again a lot of sometimes they have gloves on and sometimes they don't, and they all seem to have unbuttoned coats. Sure, that's fine, But I think the main way you can tell this was not filmed in winter is like how pretty the snow looks, because there is a scene where you have trees and you have like the house is covered snow, and there is no way if that is real in any any manner of speaking.

Number eleven, which has become one that like the last two years, i'd say really picked up was old people aggressively matchmaking our leads, sometimes to the point where like it felt a little uncomfortable. This entire movie premise is built on two older people doing everything they can to get their kids to fuck and then realizing, oh no, but I don't want to share a grand kid with you, So now I don't want that to happen. But again it happens. It's fine, and then we close with kind of our fashion watch. These movies are made cheaply, but they have learned the formula for costume design, and again I have not.

I would love to find some interviews with the costume designers on these movies, because there is clearly with limited means. None of these movies are made with a lot of time or money. But yet there must be a big bank of pea coats and a very clear color that somebody is standing there and saying, Okay, if she's in red, he's got to be in green. And if she's in blue, then we have to put some white in and you will notice it. And I think on this movie it was actually funny, is how it seems to deliberately take the character of Calf and not put her in Christmas colors.

Here and there Carolyn Ray is wearing like a you know, a Santa sweater, but for the most part, even then, she'll have like a pink scarf, or she has like a big crocheted white outfit with big blue flower rosettes on there. And it just seems very deliberate, and I'm curious about that choice. Is it just kind of, oh, Carolin Ray is kind of like that fun person, so we want to tap into that, or was there like something else going on there. In terms of some of my favorite costumes in this I would say Lauren has a very nice white pea coat with like very like classic like gold kind of military buttons. The only problem is when I see characters in like white outerwear, I just think they're dirty.

Tomorrow you buy it in the morning. By the time you walk out the store, you have brushed yourself on a tree on a subway TiAl, and now you have a disgusting mark on your beautiful white coat. So it just seems very impractical. And then I will make a comment for the we have a jingle ball in this movie, Always Happy when we have a ball, And there's just like a nice little formal party at the Chamber of Commerce. And in this case, Barbara shows up looking fucking fabulous.

Beth Roderick is a very attractive woman. She has like a very specific elegance about her, and you know, she has perfectly white hair, and she's you know, very kind of almost like model dimensions where she's very tall and slim. But she has this like beautiful, sort of not quite forest green satin dress with a black velvet shrug and this gold kind of like big but not tacky petal necklace. And it is absolutely stunned. And if I could only dream of looking like Beth Broderick in thirty years, then I would be happy to wear such a thing.

So that was Halliday mismatch. Do I recommend Halliday mismatch? This is always a very weird answer to provide for a for any of these movies, because there's different categories of recommending. Every now and then we will get a movie that's like this was great, this was actually a movie, This was delightful, and I will try to remember a few of them along the way. Last year we had a Mystic Christmas and three Wise Men and a baby We're both like really cute and lovely and fun and this.

Then there's the other case of like, well for a Hallmark movie, for a cozy Cardigan Christmas movie, it's fine. I think you're you know if you watch these movies or not. And I find it funny that there are people who listen thank you who don't actually watch the movies, which is just a just warms my heart. I guess you like hearing me. But there's the whole like, Okay, if I went to my in laws for the holidays and we needed something in the background, like could I put this on?

Will it make me mad? Will it charm everybody? Is it really coying? Like? What is it?

And that's usually where I kind of frame my review of the movie is will you rarely will I ever say yeah, sit down and record this and watch it. It's more, Hey, if you want to watch some of these or if you want somebod these on in the background, is this one good enough for that? And I think this one is. You have very good comedic talent in Beth Broderick and Carolyn Ray. They've worked together a long time.

They know what they're doing. This movie feels very like sometimes these again, you can really see the speed of filming on them, and this one doesn't. Like everybody's chemistry works. Lauren and Shane click there. It's a lot.

I feel like this kind of movie would have been the case where you cut to the young people and you're like, oh god, we're back to these people. And these two actors are great. I won't be surprised to see them show up more. I think they have a lot of charm. This is it's pretty, it's harmless.

There's you know you have again, this like just pleasant acceptance of yeah, we have a gay character in this movie and that's great. So it's it's a nice start to the season. I think I say that in a pit of despair. I don't know yet when I will drop the episode because it's the weird year of timing and such, but it's you know, it's been a rough month as many of you, hopefully hopefully. If not, then we'll probably agree with.

And these are movies that I think, at their core are designed to just make you a little bit relaxed, a little bit pleased, to put you in a good mood, to make you walk away saying, well that was nice. Oh cute people they fell in love. Oh that looked pretty. I like that pea coat. And on that front, I think this one succeeds.

So that's Holiday Mismatch. I will be back again with a guest star. Uh many guest stars, I hope, although this season is going to be tough because it's very busy, but we will see. So with that, pour yourself a jolly jewel, mix it up with that candy cane, and then don't take a sip of it on camera. So my friend Matthew Broderick joins me to sing a fud for Turkies.

The bird right here and if the time of year this res up, he has made it clear. Deep fry, deep fry. The book says I should deep fry. If it says I should deep fry, deep fried, deep FRYE it's sublime. It is that your deep Rye.

I stand by the plant. Game ride Backwood when ryany Rost and I stand back the Bryant's the rack with twine. You know I told your Stampatty your mind all least twenty feet stamback. Stampay right way, Sambord. You gotta do it right because it could at night.

But if it all goes well. It's died my deep by every time. Then I try deep. It'slime, so I'll give it a try. Deep Ry, I stand by the plant.

Sam Brody, who