The Christmas Calendar

After playing Santa’s daughter in the MSG Approved "Becoming Santa" and returning to the genre in the MSG Middle Finger "Season’s Greetings" (shut that one off about 20 minutes in), professional plain jane Laura Bell Bundy is back with this offering from Up TV. This is sort of a less aggressive version of the MSG Middle Finger "A Christmas Reunion," Bundy plays a big city lawyer who returns to the small town to take over the bakery she inherited from her grandmother. But this time it's someone who chose to do so, instead of having some local prick bad mouthing her life choice at every turn until she magically relents. As her nose-ringed millennial assistant points out, "She used to be a lawyer, but she's better now." I'm not sure if that's intended to be anti-capitalist or anti-lawyer, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and go with the latter. There's the impending foreclosure and the business rival who becomes the love interest, wrapped inside a plot which focuses on the anonymous titular gift, which includes a new message each day. How small is this town? Before this happens, the front page story in the local paper is a dog giving birth to 12 puppies, so once word of her mystery hits the news cycle, the whole town gets all up in her business, both personal and professional, wondering who the secret admirer is. It should be pretty easy to guess, especially since the premise was scooped by a film last year (won't say which one, not that anybody cares, but no spoilers just in case). I'll assume the script was written more than a year ago and chalk it up to parallel development. Someone might have caught it and changed the ending but then again it would kind of ruin the whole premise, and for these movies, who gives a crap about originality anyway? But the big difference is last year's film did it better. Like the unsuccessful films this could have been any other month. Plus when the hell is she baking? Not MSG approved.