Christmas Is Canceled

This year a Christmas movie came out that kicked father/daughter suggestiveness to a whole new level. If you’ve seen it, or even seen the trailer, then you already know what movie I am talking about: Christmas Is Canceled, a last minute holiday incest-shipping gem (available on Amazon, I believe).

The premise is this: Emma has a nasty surprise when she learns that her father Jack’s (played by Dermot Mulroney) new girlfriend will be intruding on one of their traditional family Christmases, and even worse: his new girlfriend, Brandy, is her old enemy from high school. So we have a movie about an adult daughter, very close to her father, who is determined to sabotage his new relationship. The fics practically write themselves!

What makes this rare, beyond the favorable premise, is that both Emma and David are very attractive, and Jack/Dermot Mulroney, while being old enough to be her father, is not old. It’s convincing that Brandy would want to be with him, would be attracted to him, and by extension, it’s convincing that Emma could feel that way too.

I’m going to talk through the plot and spoil as I go, not that there’s much to surprise anyone. Overall, it’s a fun watch for fans of father/daughter but I wouldn’t call his a can’t-miss recommendation.

Emma’s mother has passed away two years ago and Emma seems to have slipped right into the wifely role despite having aged out of the house: in the first scene Emma has just returned from a research trip that lasted a couple of months. Jack comes home and Emma tells him that she picked up his dry cleaning and folded his laundry and she’s about to make dinner. Emma does live on her own but clearly is used to coming and going from her father’s house whenever she wants to. They also work together at the same corporate-type company.

Brandy, this enemy from high school, grew up across the street and has moved back into her parents’ empty house. She and Emma haven’t seen each other in 10 years, so Emma is most likely about 28 years old. (Jack is 54.) Brandy comes over to say hello and it’s clear that she and Jack are already together but they pretend they’re not because Jack hasn’t told Emma yet. Brandy offers some kind words about Emma’s mom and brings up a time when she took the girls to the mall and bought them both bras with pineapples on them. The story being about bras, possibly one of the girls’ first bras ever, is weird and wonderful on so many levels, and Emma actually brings it up later after she finds out that Jack and Brandy are dating.

We cut to two weeks later and Emma’s friend Charlyne is trying to invite Emma out to do stuff, but Emma has traditions with her dad that she would rather do. Charlyne wants Emma to be a “normal twenty-something” and when Emma tries to defend herself, Charlyne points out that she cooks pot roast for her dad and that her clothes are probably from Talbots (which, if you’re not aware, is typically known for having clothes for older women).

Emma says she’s doing it for her dad, but Charlyne asks her if she’s doing it for him or for herself, and if maybe she’s the one who’s really lonely, not him. In an ideal shipping situation, it would be both, of course. But the implication that Emma isn’t just doing him a favor, but actually wants all that, is good.

Emma brings her dad some breakfast at work, which seems to be something that happens all the time. He apologizes and says he forgot to tell her that he had a breakfast meeting. This breakfast “meeting” is with Brandy, who comes strolling in, dressed inappropriately for the office. The two had planned to meet at a restaurant but Brandy had left a message with Jack’s secretary, Bea, to meet at the office instead, which may or may not have had an ulterior motive. Bea, the secretary, appears not to have told Jack on purpose and clearly disapproves of Brandy. I think we can all guess what direction this movie will go but wouldn’t it have been great if Brandy was just awful for Jack and everyone thought so, not just Emma.

It has been two weeks since Emma came back from her trip and Jack still hasn’t told her. He’s had plenty of opportunities – not just that first night when they had dinner together at home, but presumably every day at work as well. That’s pretty significant, I think. Naturally he doesn’t want to tell her, it’s an awkward conversation to have and he can be certain she’ll disapprove because she wastes no opportunity to insult Brandy, but at this point it’s ridiculous. And in fact Jack doesn’t tell her, Emma picks on the implication from talking with Bea.

Letterkenny

 

Letterkenny is a Canadian comedy series about the rural small-town problems and dealings of Wayne, a farmer, his younger sister, Katy, and his friends Daryl and Dan. (And various other town folk.) It premiered on the Canadian premium cable channel Crave in 2016 after starting out on YouTube as Letterkenny Problems. It is an ongoing series and there have been eight seasons so far with a total of 54 episodes.

Wayne and Katy have a wonderfully shippy (but non-canon) relationship – it’s sweet in a very understated way. They live together on the farm and Katy is very much a part of the gang of the four of them. They have all the same sayings and codes and habits. They just…fit. Katy and Wayne have a very positive, friendly dynamic – they’re extremely supportive of each other. They’re more likely to get along, to agree and show respect to each other, than to banter, though of course they banter a little. And Wayne hates all of Katy’s boyfriends.

They still live together at the end of the fifth season, and love interests come and go. It’s just…very easy to imagine them together.

It’s a very funny show with a lot of original humor so I definitely recommend it, not just for Wayne and Katy’s relationship. Wayne and Katy do interact in every episode (except one!) but not every episode has something significant for their relationship. However, overall screen time is very high.

The first episode (1.01 Ain’t No Reason To Get Excited) opens right up with Wayne hating Katy’s beaux.

Reilly and Jonesy

As the series begins, Katy is dating both Reilly and Jonesy, who Wayne scathingly refers to as “hockey players”. Reilly and Jonesy are best friends but they’re basically like the same person. (They even compete in the spelling bee as one person.)

Wayne and his friend Daryl are at the produce stand, which is next to the driveway at Wayne and Katy’s house, and Reilly and Jonesy pull up in Reilly’s convertible jeep and drop Katy off while Wayne watches on with dislike.

Even Stevens, Part II/II

(Part I is here.)

SEASON THREE

3.01 The Kiss

You know, after the way it went in season 2, with Ren and Louis hardly interacting, they should have changed the intro, but they didn’t.

I don’t think I’m going to like this episode, based on the title. I have a hunch it’s not going to be Ren and Louis who are kissing.

Go Brother!

I just saw a movie of such ridiculous shippiness than I can hardly believe it was real.

I often read through the descriptions of movies that are being released to digital and check them out if they seem promising from an incest-shipping perspective – either canon or non-canon. I’ve become a lot more discriminating recently – both because my time is more limited and because there have been a lot of disappointments. And I have to be that way even more so toward foreign-language films because it’s a lot more difficult to check them out in a casual way. But after reading this description:

Shi Miao hates her brother Shi Fen. She cannot enjoy the snacks because Shi Fen eats them all; she is always late in the morning because Shi Fen turns off her alarm; her pocket money is gone because Shi Fen steals it for gaming. Shi Miao makes a birthday wish: She wants her brother gone. However, Shi Miao didn’t expect the wish to come true.

I decided to take a chance on the Chinese movie Go Brother! from 2018, and it really paid off. It sounded shippy for obvious reasons: inevitably she will miss him and will get him back and there will be FEELINGS. But it was a million times better and more amazing than that.

It turns out that the movie is connected to a series – Take My Brother Away! – that had been recommended to me already, but I didn’t realize that until I was already doing this write-up. I’m not totally clear on whether the series is adapted from the movie (it has the same characters), or is a sequel to the movie. (And I just read that it’s adapted from a manga.) In any case, the movie is a complete story, and it’s always nice to know that there is an option for more. I haven’t seen the series yet, but the recommendation comment for it is here.

Beginning the movie I thought Shi Miao and Shi Fen were supposed be in the middle school. I mean, the actors looked a lot older than that, but just from the way they were behaving I thought they were supposed to be 13-15. But then it’s Shi Miao’s 17^th birthday, and Shi Fen is at least a year older than her (based on how they seemed in flashbacks to childhood). But they go to the same school. So I don’t have the exact numbers for you but that’s a general sense of where they are age-wise. (The recommendation for the series tells us that Shi Fen is one year older.)

The description really tells you all you need to know about the set-up for the story. Shi Fen is a downright terror as a brother but in the most harmless way possible – mostly just a lot of pranks and taking her food from her, going back on deals, teasing her, things like that. Their mother is always busy with work and their father has a very serious drinking problem, so Shi Miao can’t get any help or even much attention from her parents. This all comes to a head on Shi Miao’s birthday. It seems like her parents might be considering divorce, no one has remembered her birthday, Shi Fen pranked her and made her think her crush wanted to get ice cream with her, and then she sees Shi Fen having dinner with their mom and another man. Shi Miao’s best friend, Miao Miao, seems to have the perfect life and is an only child, so Shi Miao decides to wish for her brother to be gone.

Veep

There was an exciting development in the most recent/final season of Veep. I was waiting for the season finale (episode 7.07) to air before I wrote anything and I’m glad I did because the canon brother/sister incest relationship I am going to talk about seems very much to be happily ever after, for once.

As many of you probably know, Veep is a (hilarious) HBO comedy series starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Selina Meyer, who is, when the series begins, the Vice President of the United States. One of the main characters, Jonah Ryan, was initially her liaison with the office of the President. Then he became a congressman, and in the final season he is running against Selina in the primaries to be the presidential nominee for their party.

Like almost all the characters on this show, Jonah is a terrible person. He’s not particularly smart, and a lot of his success is by accident or with the help of his powerful uncle. He’s also frequently the butt of the joke and his colleagues and uncle insult him mercilessly.

Sometime between the 6^th and 7^th season, Jonah got married to Beth. I’m a little fuzzy on exactly what happened with Jonah in season 6 – I remember at one point he was trying to make a marriage that would have been advantageous to him politically and it fell through – but the actress who plays Beth was only in the 7^th season, so their courtship and marriage all happened offscreen.