3 Day Christmas (aka 3 Day Test)

Frustrated accountant George Newborn (the groom from Father Of The Bride) feels his family is losing touch with each other, and responds by shutting off the power and heat and locking them in the house for three days. If that sounds like an odd solution, that's only because it is. Apparently he got the idea from his brother, who's some kind of survivalist psycho, yet it still seems reasonable to him. The wife and kids protest, but come around eventually and decide to take up the challenge. There's a few oddities here, the first being that Newborn has several hallucinations which doesn't seem unusual to him or the filmmakers. Second is when the survivalist psycho brother decides the challenge is not challenging enough and stages a number of home invasions, setting up the climatic sequence which plays out like a less blood splattered version of You're Next, or simply a less creative ripoff of Home Alone, however you want to see it (and You're Next itself is only slightly less violent than Home Alone 2). The always likable Megyn Price (Grounded For Life, Rules Of Engagement, which I've never met a single person who ever watched it and yet it ran for 7 seasons) is good as the wife and tv veteran Corbin Bernsen is effectively comical as an oddball cameraman. Apparently Bernsen directed and (allegedly) cowrote this, and while I'm sure it didn't send any flags up to the Emmy committee, he did a passable job. No romantic angle here, it's about a dysfunctional family, and makes decent use of the season. Nausea factor low. Christmas factor moderately high. MSG approved, but they better continue to make use of the Christmas version of the title, there's no reason to care about this January to October.