Christmas on the Square (GAM276)

### Starring:

Dolly Parton, Christine Baranski, Treat Williams, Jenifer Lewis, Josh Segarra, Jeanine Mason, Mary Lane Haskell

### Production Company:

Magnolia Hill Productions, Sandollar Productions, Warner Bros. Television

## Hosts

Heath Enwright

Eli Bosnick

### Special Guest

Michael Marshall

Dolly Parton's ***Christmas on the Square*** is the story of an annoying mean-spirited Scrooge-like lady begrudgingly hashing a festive change of heart. It's *A Christmas Karen*.

### **Opening Phrase**

Where each week we watch another terrible movie, so you don't have to.

### **How Bad Was It?**

Well, if you loved your highschool musical, but you wish it was the quality and sanctimony of the "Everything Must Go!" bin at Halloween Adventure, you will *love* this movie.

### **Best Worst**

* Marsh: ...town meeting. [How do we torture and kill this Scrooge lady?]
* Heath: ...best best kid getting hit in the face with a snowball. [So violent!]
* Eli: ...phenomenon to have to explain to Marsh. [Dolly Parton is like the Queen.]

### **Notes**

* Check out Marsh on Twitter, *Be Reasonable*, *Skeptics with a K*, and at The Good Thinking Society or Skeptic of the Year.
* "Musical" is not a legally protected term.
* For Marsh: "steals our homes and vittles" means "steals our homes and food." They aren't "vittling", whatever that is.

### **Jokes**

* [Eli: Okay, so now we're going to cut over to the "sassy barbershop", where the movie's two *gayest* backup dancers were told to go nuts. And you know what? They did.] [This was gross. The movie was clearly was like "What are barbershops like?" And they came up with the stereotypes of a black barbershop and the stereotypes of what a homophobic person thinks a salon would be, and they just mashed them up together into this bigot musical mashup. It's *horrible*.] [Marsh: The two dancers here, I think the way they're dancing here *technically* qualifies as a hate crime—I think technically you can report them just for this dancing.] [Heath: Absolutely correct.] [Eli: Yeah, but this is where we meet the *head* of the barbershop, Christine Baranski's only friend in world, "Margelline."] [Marsh: Margelline. Yes, throughout this film we just pretend "Margelline" is a name. And I was so frustrated by this, I paused and checked on one of those baby name sites to see how popular a certain name is, and apparently since 1980 there has been *one* person world-wide listed called Margelline, and she was in Quebec. So that is the name—apparently we're going with Margelline.] [Heath: And they've Margelline-ized a black woman, which is not great.] (16:04)
* [Eli: So yeah, Dolly sings the "I'm an Angel" song, and this is also where we get the "Parable of the Lamplighter"?] [Marsh: The *Scottish*... the Scottish parable of the lamplighter. It's one of those many Scottish parables—Scotland is really famous for its parables. It's not like a Welsh fable, it's a Scottish parable.] [Heath: What *is* it though? Cause she sings a long ass song, and as far as I know it's just "a guy lights lamps." How is that a parable?] [Eli: yes! That's the best part: Dolly Parton is so stupid that she was like "Once there was a lamp-lighter; he lit lamps. Are you with me? Are you still with me? Because this one too me like nine ones to get."] [Heath: No, I got it. Is there more song?] [Eli: That *is* pretty much the "Parable of the Lamplighter"—I had to look it up and I'll tell you what the payoff is in a second—but I walked away from this scene being like "Is the 'Parable of the Lamplighter' just 'one time a Scottish guy had a job'? Because that feels... political."] [Heath: I think it is.] [Eli: So, the kamplighter lights the lamps, and eventually you could see where he'd been because that's where the lamps were lit. I should point out, very importantly, that is where the *song* ends, okay? Where the parable ends is "There should be no better goal in life than for people to know where you've been by the light that you shone while you were there." And they did *not* include that in the song.] [Heath: But that's the opposite of how lamps work. Like, if you light a candle or a lamp, they go out eventually. That's not how that—if he's a lighter, then clearly it goes… it's his *job* to go back—they fucked up the whole metaphor.] [Marsh: So, this was a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson, I think. I looked this up, and that's the only thing I could find. That's not a parable, that's a poem. Does Dolly Parton not know the difference?] [Heath: Wait, really?] [Eli: Absolutely. As we're going to learn later on, she doesn't know the difference between the Bible and a birth certificate.] (39:55)

### **Interstitials**

* Dolly Parton Song Meeting (6:12) [Possum Cattywampus]
* Regina's Test Results (35:12)
* Michael Marshall, Angel of the Year (1:06:53)

### **Tropes**

* Looks Like…
* Magical Black Person
* Name That Movie

### **Links**

* Episode on Audioboom
* Episode on YouTube
* Film on Netflix
* IMDb

### **Ad Reads**

* Tushy: Your Country Never Ceases to Horrifify Me (1:34:13)
* Mint Mobile: Faster than Blitzen over Bagdad (1:36:00)