In this episode, that role is filled by Skinner of all people, who butts heads with Mary instantly, as her filming is standing to interfere with Springfield’s annual Lettuce and Tomato festival. Mary is written like the one of two basic types of protagonist in Hallmark movies: the working woman from the big city who needs to learn to slow down and appreciate the simple things, preferably from a small town she’s stuck in and with a handsome country boy who can bring her down to Earth.

She’s dreading this, having a clear aversion to Christmas movies, something that predictably will be revealed as to why later in the episode.

Big city, no-nonsense film producer Mary Tannenbaum (get it?) (played by Ellie Kemper) is our focal character for most of the running time to secure her promotion to head of the network, she must supervise the shoot of a new Christmas movie in Springfield. But despite that, this episode is basically trying to be one big Hallmark movie parody, but it basically ends up becoming just another Hallmark movie story, albeit with a meta twist. I don’t know if there’s a way you could parody them, they are so vacuous and paint-by-numbers, they’re basically already parodies of themselves. One might think that doing a parody of a Hallmark movie is way too easy a target, but in all honesty, having seen them, it’s an impossible task.

As such, I have seen a lot of Hallmark movies, including their never-ending supply of Christmas movies. The reaction: So, I have to watch a lot of different shows and movies for my job, and one of our recurring clients is Hallmark. The premise: A “Heartmark” film producer is called to Springfield to assist in the filming of their new Christmas movie, where she instantly clashes with their small town ways, particularly with Skinner, but the two slowly start to fall for each other.

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