PEL Presents PMP#212: Holiday Romance Films
The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast
Mark Linsenmayer
4.6 • 2.3K Ratings
🗓️ 24 December 2025
⏱️ 58 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Hallmark Channel became famous for producing low-budget, formulaic Christmas films, and this has spread to other outlets, sometimes with higher budgets and ambitions. Mark, Lawrence, Sarahlyn, and Al each watched a smattering of these and share their reflections on the genre and their specific experiences.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, it's your pretty much pop 2025 Christmas episode, this time focusing on Christmas |
| 0:15.7 | romance films. |
| 0:18.1 | You know, you probably know the hallmark, the lifetime formula, but it has become a wider |
| 0:23.2 | thing. Netflix has done a ton of them. You're on other channels as well. This is Mark Linsonmeyer. |
| 0:28.8 | I'm just stopping in town for a couple days. I can't stay for Christmas. This is Al Baker, |
| 0:33.5 | everybody's Christmas prints. I'm Sarah Lynn Bruck and I enjoy twinkly lights decorating a Christmas tree, snowball fights, and a hunky guy wearing a flannel shirt as much as the next person. This is Lawrence Ware, and I cannot wait to go back to my big city job. Oh, wait a minute, they let me go. I now have to move to the small town. I'm not going to fall in love to this person. I can't fall in love this person. |
| 0:54.7 | But you know what? |
| 0:55.3 | I cannot resist falling in love and kissing on Christmas Eve as snow gently falls down to the ground. |
| 1:02.0 | I mean, I guess sometimes there is a husband, you know, a boyfriend in the big city that the woman is leaving. |
| 1:07.6 | But never like a whole, like you learn like, oh, this is a mother of four, |
| 1:12.0 | but she has decided that she's in love with a small town life. It's always the guy who has a |
| 1:19.3 | kid or two, but not her. That's true. It's never the woman. That is a very good point. And I didn't |
| 1:25.5 | know that that many dads were like single dads out there in these streets. |
| 1:28.7 | It's kind of strange. |
| 1:29.9 | Often they're widows. |
| 1:30.9 | That's right. |
| 1:31.4 | They are widowed all the time. That's true because they've never done anything wrong in their life. And the plot you were describing to me, honestly, I don't know if it's based on a real movie. But it seems fairly high stakes. I don't remember many things as upsetting as somebody getting fired. |
| 1:44.9 | No, many people have gotten fired, and that is literally Like, I don't remember many things as upsetting as somebody getting fired. |
| 1:44.9 | No, many people have gotten fired. |
| 1:47.5 | And that is literally the plot of 85% of these movies. |
| 1:51.2 | And trust me, you know, spoiler alert to the people listening, I freaking love these movies. |
| 1:55.8 | Like, I love all of them. |
... |
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