Hallmark Movies

I am working on something but have a Hallmark movie on. I used to say that these Lifetime and Hallmark movies have five plots that are just recycled. I am beginning to think there are fewer. These are the normal elements.

1. Woman as main character. She is thin and beautiful.
2. She is successful but unhappy. She is either a journalist or a lawyer or high power businesswoman
3. She is usually engaged or involved with an obnoxious, much older, controlling, and/or distant man who either has a lot of money or whom she works with.
4. For some reason she has to go to a small town and stay in a bed and breakfast or with a kind family.
5. She meets a hunky guy, who is of course available, very quickly upon coming to the town, but she usually is way uptight and does everything she can to run him off, but he is too good a guy to conclude she's the witch she is.
6. She keeps running into the hunky guy in her adventures in said small town, and he ends up being a lawyer who does lots of pro bono, a widower with a cute kid, an undiscovered artist/writer/doctor who would win a Nobel prize if the world knew about him, but he's not motivated by money, or a combination of these.
7. She of course falls in love with hunky guy, but it takes a while and there are of course obstacles, such as a. jerky fiance or b. her own personality and desire to get back to her life in the big city or c. some plot circumstance such as a toxic landfill or a big company trying to take over the town, etc.
8. she has an assistant back in the big city who is either gay (quite obviously, no doubt about it) or a friend who is an unattractive but sassy female; or she has both.
9. The town is full of eccentrics.
10. The eccentrics are played by old TV and movie stars, such as Ernest Borgnine or Rita Moreno (sort of like Touched by An Angel) and old fogies like me say, "I thought he/she was dead."
11. Often there is a type of deus ex machina that comes early; what I mean is there is a time travel, or reality switch, or magic, or wishes, or some gimmick that puts her in a position to find out how she has missed the life she should live.
12. There is tragedy somewhere in the two hour, but the witch becomes plucky.
13. All the houses are beautiful, like a catalog.
13. Everything ends happy, and the protagonist stays in the small town, saying goodbye to sassy friends and gay assistant and jerky fiance and successful job to live with hunky guy.

Comments

Anonymous said…
That was fun to read... I like to describe Lifetime Movies as Hallmark Movies without the morality.

- Cleve
drgregb said…
I laughed out loud at your Hallmark movie comments.
Thanks, guys. I had fun with it.

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