Only three times in my life have I torn the medial gastrocnemius muscle on my right leg. It hurts. The first two times occurred while I was playing college basketball.  The third time—well, all I will say is that gardening is not an injury-free activity. My doctor told me to remain sedentary, alternately heating it and icing it for at least six weeks. So, heating pad and ice packs in hand, I settled into my basement man cave and watched television every day for several hours.

To be honest, I was looking forward to following the doctor’s prescription. This was the season of Canadian uber-Christmas films on the Hallmark Channels. I enjoy these films because the plots are simple and predictable.  Couple meets and doesn’t like each other, or dogs like each other, but owners don’t. However, by thirty minutes into the show, a romance starts to blossom (at least between the dogs). An hour into the show, the human romance is heating up, and just when they’re about to kiss for the first time, some kid or adult or dog or sprinkler system or meteor strike or whatever interrupts them before their lips can lock. The romance continues to blossom often leading to a scene when the following question is asked

“Do you want to dance?”

 “I really don’t know how to dance,” is usually the answer.  It is the most honest line in the film.

Let’s face it. Canadian actors don’t know how to dance. It’s wired into their DNA. They are congenitally unable to keep a beat.  It would be nice if the dancers could pick one beat, any beat, and stick to it.  One would think that with all their experience playing hockey, they might be able to coordinate their movements.  Instead, watching them try to dance in a Hallmark movie is akin to watching a peewee soccer game where all the kids bunch-run to the ball.  All coming from different directions at different speeds and different beats. All looking very confused and anxious Just sayin’.

Around ninety minutes into the show, a serious conflict occurs threatening not only their relationship but the rest of their lives.  Quite often, a previously commitment-phobic boyfriend (aka Loser) puts down his business cellphone long enough to show up out of nowhere (usually New York) professing an undying wish to marry the ingénue. Or, at the very least, he wants to create a partnership in some five-year program that will eventually lead to marriage, or at least to moving in together.  Standing in the background, her new love-interest (aka Winner) watches as Loser gets down on one knee and offers the girl (aka Confused) a ring (or some gum wrap he found in his pocket and shaped into a spontaneous engagement ring.

“Uh, oh,” I always say aloud, smiling. “I have a bad feeling about this.  I need another ginger cookie”

Mistaking the scene as the end of his relationship with Confused, Winner flies/drives/walks away in a sorta-spurned huff. By doing this, Winner does not witness Confused respond with a gentle “No.” Fortunately, in contrast to Romeo and Juliet, nobody has to die.  Within fifteen minutes or so, the Winner and Confused meet again (on a set I swear I’ve seen in five other Hallmark films). No-Longer-Confused clears up the misunderstanding, the couple reconciles, and about three minutes before the end of the film, they finally get to kiss.

Well, some people might call it a kiss, but I suspect they are wearing invisible scotch tape over their lips to keep their mouths closed and prevent anything un-Hallmarkian from happening.

Having watched a plethora of plots like this, I am able to overlook the predictability of the Hallmark plots.  I can also overlook problems in continuity, like when the heroine flies across the country, departing NONSTOP on a two-engine Boeing 737 but landing in a four-engine 747! I can even ignore when the hero drives up in his Toyota pickup, only later to be shown arriving at a house in his double-axle Chevrolet pickup…just as an unidentified neighbor drives away in a Toyota pickup the same color, size, model, and mileage (well, maybe not that). I can overlook those moments when the Canadian actors try to dance (the secret is to get up and get some milk and cookies until they are finished).

HOWEVER!

In the interest of full disclosure, I am a musician, composer, and university music professor. I have composed using a variety of electronic equipment and software.  So, I know the sound of real vs. synthesized musical instruments—well, most of the time. Because in the past fifteen years, music instrument software has become so sophisticated that even a trained musical ear can be fooled.

This is not the case for Hallmark movies. Instead of acoustic music, one is more likely to hear the pathetic sound of a cheap electronic keyboard, perhaps from the last century, probably using a patch labeled “string quartet.” The difference in sound is like the difference in taste between a real apple and a wax one.

For example, recently I watched a new Hallmark Mystery Movie. Near the end, a married couple is having a lovely anniversary dinner at a fancy restaurant. The husband has arranged for a string quartet to play for them.  Hubby (lead out from Hallmark’s stable of actors) gives the quartet the signal, and they began to play. Their bows held correctly (almost), their fingers wiggling their vibratos to beat the band, and their faces showing just the correct amount of emotional ecstasy.  However, when the sound reached my ears, I literally started laughing aloud. It was the cheesy sound of a keyboard synthesizer. It was like being promised expensive dark chocolate chips only to discover they were really carob chips. Even the thought of it now makes me want to reach for a glass of water and a tongue scraper.

Worse, the music (carob chips) made absolutely no sense musically.  It sounded more like drunken noodling at a piano. However, the noodling inspires the husband to ask his wife to dance. Bad choice. See above for my comments on dancing.

But it’s much worse when the actors are shown “playing” a violin or some other instrument at a café, barn dance, roller skate arena, wedding, private home, polar ice plunge, Christmas barbeque, whatever.  The actors are doing it so poorly that I often yell at the screen things like

“Hey, dude, the high notes on the piano are to the right and the low notes are to the left.”  Or.

“Cameron, if you’re pretending to play a cool jazz saxophone solo, you really ought to

move your fingers.” 

Or “Helen! Playing the oboe requires back pressure so that your checks look puffy and weird; not like you had the entire back row of your teeth removed so you have that lean and hungry catwalk model look.”

Or (just last week)

“Hey, Bozo Director! If the actor lifts his hands from the piano keyboard with a big flourish and virtuosic smile, but the music is still playing, it kind of negates your dramatic intent! Try to remember that when music and actor stop at the same time!”

During my recent gastrocnemii confinement, I tried to escape from Hallmark and watch one of my favorite shows, Madame Secretary, I was subjected to what I call “look at the pretty neck syndrome.”  In one episode, Madame Secretary and the Vice President are visiting in Russia. When they enter the big reception at some magnificent hall there is fabulous piano music in the background.

Now, Russia has been producing some of the finest, world-class international pianists for over a century. On lists of the best ten pianists ever, four or five of them are Russians. Many of them regularly perform at Russian functions because, well, they are “told” to.

“Comrade. Today, you play piano or pack for extended tour of Siberia.”

But instead of one of a thousand local pianists they could hire for three thousand rubles (about fifty bucks), the director chose a pretty girl with a long neck and a rather confused look on her face. She held her fingers more vertically than horizontally, as if she trying to pick out one individual caviar egg to eat. She looked like she was dipping her fingernails into some solution designed to prepare them for a manicure. I cannot with confidence say that her fingers actually touched the keys. Oh well.  I must admit she did have a lovely neck.

Unable to finish that episode of Madame Secretary, I increased the temperature on my heating pad and turned back to watching Hallmark films. Immediately, I was greeted with the worst case of musical malpractice I’d ever seen on the screen, small or big.  Christmas Next Door involved a young woman played by American actress Fiona Victoria Gubelmann who taught violin but avoided an up-coming audition because it made her nervous and confused. 

It took a lot of convincing by her sister to finally reach for her dream by auditioning for a violin position with the local orchestra.  As she practiced in her apartment, I found myself yelling at the television again.

“April, your left hand needs to do more than move spasmodically! You are gripping the bow like it’s a sword or a toothbrush.  When you start to play, it looks like you’re trying to play violin and brush your teeth at the same time.”

Or.

“What’s with that piece you’re practicing?  It sounds like the theme song from Barney and Friends!”

Trapped as I was on the couch, I switched to icing my right medial gastrocnemius muscle, and I changed channels again. I came into the middle of another film where Woody Harrelson is playing solo piano on a raised stage. I knew that Harrelson could, kinda sorta, play piano. I’d once watched him accompany himself on the piano in the Cheers episode when he played and sang his hilarious love song “Kelly, Kelly, Kelly, Kelly, Kelly, Kelly, Kelly, Kelly,” dedicated to his love, Kelly.

I read that Woody had studied hard for the film scene, and I don’t doubt he did.  Of course, I began to wonder much attention post-production sound editing was paying, when one scene shows his right hand moving down the keyboard while the music goes up. But Hallmark seems to think that post-production editing will solve the problem when a bluegrass band looks more like they belong in the Hallmark film where a group of men are pruning grape vines or tending pear tree orchards. 

It’s not like Hallmark doesn’t have competent musicians in its stable of actors. There’s Jewel.  In addition, Alicia Witt appears in Hallmark films frequently. She is a composer, pianist, and singer. I remember one movie for which she wrote and performed the soundtrack. I would love to see her in a film role that demonstrated her many talents. My only problem is that I sometimes get Alicia Witt and Lindy Booth confused. They look so much alike.  They both have red hair and stuff like that. They both play the same kind of heroine.  I know that one of them is Canadian and the other isn’t. Maybe one of them could only do Christmas Movies while the other does Hallmark Mystery Channel?

Christmas is over, but soon Hallmark will be showing Valentines films. My injury is almost healed, and I am easing my way out of my man cave before the Hallmark Easter Films show up. As for gardening, I plan to watch the landscape folks work as I sip ice tea from my deck, while also watching replays of the University of Connecticut Women’s Basketball team winning the NCAA championship four years in a row.  A couple of the players, like Kia Nurse, are Canadian. Go Kia!.

Michael Coolen is a pianist, composer, actor, performance artist, storyteller, and writer living in Oregon. His writing has been published widely. He has also published music for various ensembles, plays, and documentaries, including the soundtrack for the award winning documentary, Freedom on the Fences, about Polish poster art after WW II. His compositions have been performed around the world, including at Carnegie Hall, MoMA, and the Christie Gallery in New York.