Today [Thursday, October 26, 2017] is the 70th birthday of the 2016 Democratic nominee for president of the United States Hillary Clinton.
I acknowledge that.
And now I will move on to a subject which is worthy.
Tomorrow [Friday, October 27, 2017] is the first day of the 2017 Hallmark Channel “Countdown to Christmas.”
This is a two-month marathon, usually beginning with the last Friday of October or the first Friday of November, and running through Christmas. “Countdown to Christmas” typically concludes in the late hours on January 1 or 2 of the next year.
Hallmark Channel suspends much of its programming—most notably reruns of the Emmy winning, 1985–92 comedy series The Golden Girls—for this very special time of the year. Every year.
I love “Countdown to Christmas”!
I love this theme of Hallmark Channel original movies because I can avoid looking to real classic Christmas-themed movies like It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) and Scrooge because Hallmark originals tell stories that borrow from those titles and more.
In 2012, NPR’s Linda Holmes, in a piece titled “Does Hallmark Have Basic Cable’s Most Efficiently Defined Brand?” wrote the following: “Hallmark manufactures [its original movies] like McDonald’s stamps out McNuggets: they’re decent, they’re satisfying in a superficial way, they’re bad for you in excess, and they’re reliably the same every single time.”
Thank God for that!
Now, it should be noted that, during November, there is usually one or two Thanksgiving-related original movies from Hallmark. So, even though big retail corporations are making their employees work Thanksgiving Day (you can never get an early start on Christmas!), Hallmark still acknowledges Thanksgiving.
In past years, quality Hallmark originals included Love at the Thanksgiving Day Parade, a 2012 screwball romantic comedy of an initial love-hate relationship whose leads (played by Autumn Reeser and Antonio Cupo) battle over how to budget Chicago’s annual parade of excesses; The Most Wonderful Time of the Year, a light 2008 comedy complete with the track of Andy Williams crooning, in which a visiting uncle and retired cop (Henry Winkler) matches his career-driven and single-mother niece (Brooke Burns) with a neer-do-well but aspiring chef (Warren Christie); and, for simpler tastes, The Christmas Card, a lovely 2006 film about an on-leave military man (John Newton) who is fated to meet the woman (Alice Evans) who writes letters to military servicemen—and she wrote one to him. Her father (an Emmy nominated Edward Asner), despite urging by his wife (Lois Nettleton) to not interfere, plays matchmaker. (The Christmas Card is the most in musts. Even Netflix added it to its catalog in 2015.)
Those flashes of quality are merely distractions.
Onto the usual substance.
What I look forward to the most is the reliability of frequent leading lady Lacey Chabert. She totally lives up to what Linda Holmes wrote. The former cast member of Fox’s 1994–2000 drama series Party of Five, and a co-star in the 2004 big-screen comedy Mean Girls, is the go-to romantic leading lady so sugary sweet in likewise reliable Hallmark Channel original movies. (Check her out in A Christmas Melody, from 2015, in which Chabert and Mariah Carey, who directed, are reunited ex-high-school classmates who renew their rivalry. Never mind that there is a 12-year age difference between the two actresses. And check her out in her next Hallmark original movie, The Sweetest Christmas, on Saturday, November 11, 2017 at 08:00 p.m. ET.) Lacey Chabert can never star in enough of these original Hallmarks.
May God bless Lacey Chabert!
May God bless Hallmark!
This is a network which does not serve the Democratic Party Establishment’s recent identity politics phenom. For example: The only blacks I have seen have played supporting roles—like second bananas—to white lead actors. (For example: Vivica A. Fox has been in at least two in which she plays—get this!—a sassy sidekick.) And there are no gay men or women—safe zone!—and certainly not in lead roles. (Blasphemy!)
Hallmark is a very Republican Party-friendly basic-cable network. So typically are its productions in Canada—for the taxes and overall budget costs—that a part of the fun with viewing and researching an original Hallmark movie is to find out which of the two leads was born in the United States. Why? That is because there must be some agreement with Canada that says one of its natural born actors and citizens, who U.S. audiences may or may not recognize, plays one of the two lead roles. (Patriotism!)
I am counting on the 2017 “Countdown to Christmas” to—once again—live up to the reputation one expects from Hallmark. While many of its stores have closed, partly due to undercutting store owners for Hallmark cards being sold in big retail stores like Kohl’s and Walmart—these original movies rage on.
