Broadcasting Christmas

Update: I had to come back and edit this post because I realized that I somehow deleted the paragraph that actually describes the insane ending of this movie prior to publishing.  Yet another hazard of blogging from my phone…please enjoy learning why the ending filled me with so much rage.

This movie boasts some serious mid 90s star power in the form of Melissa Joan Hart AND Dean Cain.  The new offerings for 2016 have been fairly disappointing thus far, but I genuinely liked most of this movie.  Unfortunately, the ending absolutely ruined everything, but we’ll get to that.

In A Nutshell

We see two different morning news reporters go through their morning routines.  Dean Cain anchors the morning news at a local station in New York City.  Melissa Joan Hart works as a human interest reporter at a small station in Stamford, Connecticut.  You know she is kooky because she arrives to work with rollers still in her hair, and you know the station is kooky because everyone acts like this is totally normal. Dean Cain has a friend named Patrice who works as a producer on the nationally syndicated show Rise and Shine.  Patrice has him come downstairs to watch a big announcement from one of the co-anchors: she is pregnant and moving to Los Angeles full time.  This means that Veronica, the remaining anchor, is going to pick a replacement.  Some Hallmark writer was watching the Kelly Ripa / Michael Strahan stuff go down this summer and furiously scribbling notes on a napkin (because the writers were at a summer pool party instead of writing scripts for the 15 movies they were going to be expected to produce during September and October).  Anyway, Patrice tells Dean Cain he is being considered for the co-anchor position.  He will fill in during the month of December, along with two other potential candidates.

Surprise twist though: it turns out Melissa Joan Hart is also friends with Patrice.  Yup, Patrice, Dean Cain, and Melissa Joan Hart used to all work together in Stamford.  Not only that, but Dean Cain and Melissa Joan Hart had both been up for the New York City anchor position. Not only THAT, but Dean Cain and Melissa Joan Hart were dating and they broke up because Melissa Joan Hart wouldn’t move to New York with Dean Cain after he took her dream job.  We have a rich backstory going here, people.  Melissa Joan Hart calls up Patrice and asks to be considered for the Rise and Shine co-anchor spot.  I would be pretty annoyed if I were Patrice, because it sounds like Melissa Joan Hart has not called her in some time and now she’s only calling because she needs something.  Patrice maybe agreed with me a little, and tells Melissa Joan Hart that the network is only considering “names” for the job.  Melissa Joan Hart then gets called in to anchor the 11pm news, and in a state of tired delirium she goes on a rant about how she would be a great co-anchor for Rise & Shine.  The face her fellow anchor makes during this rant is pretty priceless.  The rant goes viral, leading to this classic exchange:

Boss: You’re a pound sign!

Young Producer: You mean a hashtag.

Boss: Even better!

It is clear that a Young Person wrote this bit of dialogue, as well as the subsequent reference to Dean Cain tracking down Melissa Joan Hart at church with her family in Connecticut because her sister tagged Melissa Joan Hart on Instagram.  I checked to see if there was a Young Person Social Media Consultant somewhere in the credits here, but sadly such a thing does not exist.

Patrice comes to see Melissa Joan Hart in Connecticut and announces that the network executives love things that happen on The Internet, so Melissa Joan Hart will now be in the running for the co-host position.  Melissa Joan Hart and Dean Cain exchange words to show how intense their rivalry is, such as: “This is New York. Leave the rollers at home.”  You cut right to the core of her there, Dean Cain.

There are a bunch of shenanigans where all the potential co-hosts do segments for the show. It is not clear to me what time this show airs in the morning, because there are SO MANY PEOPLE milling around the lobby of the building on their first day of work.  Why are all these worker bees in an office lobby before 6am? Why is it sunny outside at this hour of the day? There are also several instances where Melissa Joan Hart is just chilling at home with her sister watching Dean Cain on TV.  Don’t you need to be at your job, Melissa Joan Hart? I want to know what kind of hours these people keep.

Dean Cain and Melissa Joan Hart steal each other’s personal anecdotes and eventually end up throwing snow at each other and holding hands at a Christmas tree lighting.  Gee, I wonder if these two are still in love?

Are There Obstacles To Their Love/Christmas Spirit??

More of an obstacle to their professional ambition.  There is a nightmare woman named Kate who has a wedding reality show and is in the running to be the new co-host.  Kate lets it slip to Melissa Joan Hart that this competition is all a ratings ploy, because Kate’s agent already has the contract, and Veronica isn’t seriously considering Melissa Joan Hart OR Dean Cain.  Patrice had no idea that any of this was going on, which I am extremely skeptical about.  Sidebar: Hallmark could make these movies more interesting if they made the friends a bit more ruthless and morally ambiguous.  They were almost there in the Winnie Cooper movie, but they wussed out at the last minute.  Anyway, Patrice asks Veronica if Kate gives her”an evil creepy vibe,” to which Veronica exclaims “Of course she does!”  Everyone is frustrated, but ever the plucky pair, Melissa Joan Hart and Dean Cain decide to try to make the most of their remaining time with national exposure. Kate ultimately decides to drop out of Rise and Shine to plan a mega-celebrity’s wedding to an astronaut (are people still into astronauts?), but not before trying to negotiate an ownership stake in the morning show.  You are a Shrewd Business Lady, Kate. Well played.

Dean Cain’s dad is also an obstacle.  He is a famous newscaster who seems a little disappointed that his son is hosting morning shows.  We find out that Dean Cain’s dad made a phone call that convinced the New York executives to give Dean Cain the job over Melissa Joan Hart.  Actually, Dean Cain’s mom tells him this in the most cruel fashion possible. She and Kate should be super-villain friends who go get their nails done and destroy peoples’ lives for fun.  Now Dean Cain is having an existential crisis because he thinks he did not get anywhere on his merits. For whatever reason, Dean Cain decides he has to reveal this to Melissa Joan Hart, and she gets depressed about the fact that the system is always rigged against her and she can never win a job no matter how good she is.

But Do They Find The Meaning of Christmas???

Melissa Joan Hart does a very plucky piece about a lady who keeps a 100 year old fruitcake. The fruitcake lady was one of the MVPs of this movie, since she had one million insults to lob at Dean Cain.  She addresses him as “The Boy With The Face”, “Haircut” and “Cheekbones” in the span of five minutes.  She also says that every trouble she has ever had started with a handsome man, which is why she is not buying what Dean Cain is selling. I want to have drinks with fruitcake lady sometime.  She likes Melissa Joan Hart though, so Melissa Joan Hart gets her story on camera. Dean Cain finishes editing the story for Melissa Joan Hart after she gets insecure and quits, but he edits himself out of all of the footage because he knows it is Melissa Joan Hart’s story to tell.  Cue the awwwws.

But Do They Fall In Love At The End??? 

I watched this movie with my mother-in-law over Thanksgiving, and we both agree that Dean Cain is still pretty good looking, even if he probably has had some work done to keep him looking that way. He and Melissa Joan Hart had pretty good banter. We were both on board with this pairing.

But the ending, you guys. Oooooooh the ending. Melissa Joan Hart and Dean Cain have to host a day-long telethon on Christmas Eve. Veronica is going to make her decision about a co-host, and she somehow figures out that these two used to be in love/are still in love.  Veronica gets them to admit their love for each other while broadcasting live, and she also gets them to make out on live television.  Now, I’m not a journalist or anything, but I’m preeeeeetty sure that’s highly unprofessional.  Then Veronica comes out to announce the co-host…but instead of hearing it, we cut to New Year’s Day.  Dean Cain and Melissa Joan Hart are both sitting behind the Rise and Shine desk, because VERONICA DECIDED TO RETIRE SO THAT THESE TWO PEOPLE IN LOVE CAN HOST THIS NATIONAL MORNING SHOW TOGETHER.  This would be like Matt Lauer walking away from millions of dollars a year so that Savannah Guthrie and her husband could host the Today Show together, because true love.  I do not buy it, and it filled me with a white-hot rage even though I managed to ignore many many other logical inconsistencies in the movie up until this point.  I thought the ending was going to be that Dean Cain got the Rise and Shine gig, but Melissa Joan Hart got Dean Cain’s old job (the job she really wanted in the first place) so she could move to New York and they could be together.  Kind of a bummer for Melissa Joan Hart, I guess, but Hallmark is constantly having women throw away their careers for true love, so it would have at least been consistent.  Or Melissa Joan Hart could have gotten the job at Rise and Shine and Dean Cain would have found a way to make peace with his constant feelings of inadequacy at his old job.  Instead we got this nonsense where Veronica, who has been pretty ruthlessly self-interested this entire time, just rides off unceremoniously into the sunset. I hated it.

Is It Worth The Effort It Will Take Me To Fast Forward Through All The Consumer Cellular Commercials In Order To Watch This?

Did you ever wish you could to hear Dean Cain say “Heck yeah I’d like to meet a camel!” with more enthusiasm than any human has ever mustered before? Then this is your movie.  Are you bothered by total insane endings that defy all logic and reason? Then this is probably not your movie.