Happily NEVER After

Hey, hey… episode 15 is live! We kicked The Sweetest Heart to the curb for the #Markleseason celebration that is the movie Royal Matchmaker. (Bethany) Joy Lenz – seems she’s also kicked her first name to the curb – is celebrity matchmaker Kate Gleason who has been sought out by the kingdom of…wait for it… Valdavia, because it seems that you can just make these Eastern Euro names up. Kate’s challenge will be to successfully match Prince Sebastian with his future queen, as daddy king is tired of these royal responsibilities and is ready to finally fast track his aged son of 30 to the throne. But not without a bride. With her trusty work sidekick Brittney in tow, Kate is determined to find a wife – and some damn good advertising for her start up business - for this thorny prince who doesn’t believe in love. It’s a rocky start, but in the end witty insults, dilapidated community centers, gladiator-style war rooms and misdirected feelings give way to a matchmaker and a prince who are a perfect match, 98.5% in fact, for each other.

Like we said, people, it’s #Markleseason so we’re letting it rip with When Sparks Fly, starring the soon-to-be-duchess herself as Chicago newspaper writer Amy Peterson. It’s pretty shocking to find out that after seven years of being away from your hometown, your BFF is marrying your old super serious flame with whom you might still be in love but don’t realize it yet. When we head back to Lakeside, WA, we not only learn that Amy’s best friend Sammy is 4th of July obsessed, but that she’s also a pathological liar...or at best, a chronic omitter of life-altering truths. In a series of awkward instances of finding out information that would have been useful to know before she got back home, Markle...err, Amy, is taken on a hometown trip of discoveries that eventually lead her to rip off the band-aid that is her best friend’s engagement and reclaim her old flame. Throw in Amy’s parents’ failing pyrotechnic business and this one really explodes!

We’re baaaaaack!!! After what feels like AGES, we are psyched to bring you episode 13 of Happily NEVER After! As promised, our latest recap is the North Carolina Hallmark fave, Love On Ice. Why a state that barely sees snow has hitched its wagon to a movie about figure skating in sub zero Michigan is beyond us. But here we go. Emily James is a former championship figure skater played by General Hospital alum Julie Berman (remember Luke and Laura’s daughter Lulu?) and Andrew Walker, aka Mr. @oneanddoneregan, plays figure skating coach Spencer Patterson. After a happenstance meeting in the local café, Spencer’s obsession with Emily – and his quest to find out her reasons for hanging up her skates eight years ago - really takes off. Together they overcome an aggressive skating mom, a salty ex-coach and the ghost of parent past to a Midwest Regional figure skating comeback that finishes up a bit more “symbol” than we imagined it would. Overall message: a bit of low-key stalking absolutely can turn into a consensual courtship on the ice.

Are you a mid-30s professional with a fine AF best friend that you are secretly in love with and who is also secretly in love with you? Do you enjoy masquerade balls, but only if you have three months notice to attend? Have you donated money to your local botanical gardens lately?? Do you even like flowers??? If you can answer yes to any or all of these questions, then Very, Very Valentine starring Danica McKellar (not Patrick), AKA Winnie Cooper, is your sure-fire road map to everlasting love. Helen (McKellar) and the delightful Cameron Mathison, Henry, are college friends who have reconnected in NYC some years back. A masquerade ball, masked hottie and grip of Cerino de Bergerac meets Cinderella type shenanigans makes these two besties finally realize that the true love they’ve been scouring the city for has been right under their nose all along…along with all of them damn flowers. Gesundheit. Listen and enjoy!

Come along on a journey with us to a vineyard in the Oregon countryside where Chloe, neglectful daughter to a loving, but oddly dismissive, father and an overly confident country boy, turned New York city boy, turned back to country boy named Seth fall in love – but not into a marriage, thank goodness – in about four days…TOPS. An eraserless chalkboard ensconced in Chloe's late mother’s cabin plays a critical role in “Handyman” and “In Need of Repairs” – yeah, ew, gross – getting to know each other better. Lacey Chabert of Party of Five fame plays Chloe Grange of Grange Family Wines while Andrew Walker, just mostly Hallmark movies, is Seth Anderson, her knight in corporate-family winery-takeovers. The big question becomes… Will he convince dear daddy to sell the family winery making him the VP of party wines or will he risk it all for the chance to be Chloe’s “handyman” for life? As if we didn’t know…

For our landmark 10th episode we're taking a break from recapping and having a detailed, and fiercely opinionated, chat about what we call The Hallmark Formula. With the help of a couple of fun articles and videos we found on the interwebs, we discuss the key elements of these movies that have made them and the Hallmark Channel so "successful" and what also make them maddeningly frustrating to the reasonable viewer. Because yes... If you think falling in love in three days is normal, I'm calling you unreasonable. Join us for this one!

Welcome to our Hallmark movie podcast where a friend and I watch one of these ridiculous movies, get together and proceed to dismantle them trope by trope and stereotype upon stereotype...until there is nothing left. Oh, while we drink. This time, we bring you Frozen in Love to close out our Hallmark Winterfest recaps. Rachel Leigh Cook – remember She’s All That? Heck yeah you do! – is the owner of a failing bookstore who’s oddly attached to the classics and has never left her parents’ dinner table. Niall Matter is Adam Claiborne, a pro hockey player who can’t control his well-intended temper tantrums on the ice. Thanks to old college connections, a smokin’ hot, but she’s ethnic so we ignore it, PR lady comes up with a genius idea to pair these two up in an effort to rehab professional images and save bookstores. Brace yourself for the gratuitous Tom and Huck references and sled along with us to the politics and murder-free sleepy town of DENVER, COLORADO where these antics apparently qualify as front page news. Although Mary and Adam’s first encounter starts off pretty rocky (shocker), they grow and mature just enough to set aside their differences about whether bookstores really are just coffee shops with books and what hockey actually is. And by the end of roughly four weeks, Anna and Kristoff…err, Mary and Adam, fall Frozen in Love.

Welcome to our Hallmark movie podcast where a friend and I watch one of these ridiculous movies, get together and proceed to dismantle them trope by trope and stereotype upon stereotype...until there is nothing left. Oh, while we drink. We are coming in hot with our first Hallmark Winterfest movie, Love on the Slopes. Frightened of all things life Alex Burns (Katrina Bowden) is a copy editor on a stalking…err… work trip, while Cole Taylor (Thomas Beaudoin) is a self-proclaimed-expert-at-everything, famous photographer and extreme sports coach. These two not only have oddly similar last names in real life, but they meet semi-accidentally at a snowy mountain resort and kind of decide they like each other enough to kiss just in time for the end of this movie. She’s trying to win a super dope work promotion and he’s trying to live as a recluse in the town where everybody knows his name. Proof positive that when excessive mansplaining mixes with sheltered, low self-confidence, it’s a recipe for love.

Welcome to our Hallmark Holiday podcast where a friend and I watch one of these ridiculous movies, get together and proceed to dismantle them trope by trope and stereotype upon stereotype...until there is nothing left. Oh, while we drink.If you haven’t heard of A Christmas Prince on Netflix, exactly what extremely heavy rock have you been living under??? Rose McIver (familiar-ish?) and Ben Lamb (nope) meet at his soon-to-be kingdom in fictional Aldovia, fall in love and into a snowy proposal in about a week’s time. Sure, Amber/Martha’s a copy editor for a gossip rag and Richard is a prince fast-tracked for coronation, but when a girl is sent to get a juicy story, she’s gets her damn story...and much more. Nothing will keep these two apart - not spoiled little sisters, gold digging exes, power hungry blood cousins, paternity secrets or even the common type of round-the-clock security that any decent castle should have. Break out your good champagne and your Chucks and hitch a ride with us to breathtaking Aldovia (still not a real place) to take in this love story heard ‘round the world!

Welcome to our Hallmark Holiday podcast where a friend and I watch one of these ridiculous movies, get together and proceed to dismantle them trope by trope and stereotype upon stereotype...until there is nothing left. Oh, while we drink. Christmas Belle stars Haylie Duff and Nicholas Gonzalez. Haylie’s character, Belle Everheart, a realtor whose job is made to seem far more involved by having her additionally moonlight as a rare book dealing estate cataloguist. In a poor attempt at a modern, live-action Beauty & the Beast, she is sent away to a large estate to meet Hunter Lowell, a grouchy commodities broker, who mentally abuses Belle and his entire mansion staff as a result of his death-riddled past. Circumstances cause a sudden 180 and Hunter magically (not to us) realizes that Belle is all he could ever need in a lifelong partner, asking her to marry him after a rocky three-day courtship. The two overcome several obstacles including a jealous non-boyfriend, lazy business owning father and supervising mansion Christmas décor which culminates in a Christmas dance and everlasting love.