[Toast and Kent love time loop (and Christmas) stories. With this "Loopty Loo @ Xmas" series, T&K explore just what's happening in a Christmassy film or TV show loop, and maybe over time, they will deconstruct what it is that makes for a good time loop]
The Twelve Days of Christmas Eve, d. Martha Coolidge (Valley Girl, Real Genius) - Tubi
[Kent] Toasty, for this one, I was reminded that within the Fantasy/Sci-fi subgenre of time Loops, there's a further,rarer subgenre, death Loops, loops that only repeat after death. This is a death Loop, even though there's a grander hand orchestrating this, the only way the loop resets is through death...
[Toast] So, in theory, don't all loops reset with death? Or is the loop oblivious to your meat death and time continues until whatever that event that triggers the restart comes along again? We have seen a few examples where the supporting cast actually reacts to the death of the Main, implying that time continues. I suppose the TVA will eventually come along and prune whatever multitude of additional timelines are created by these loops events.
How did the Loop Begin?
[Kent] Calvin Carter (Steven Weber) is a busy CEO of a dollar store franchise. He wakes up on Christmas Eve next to his beautiful, younger, blonde girlfriend, and prepares for his busy day impressing a Brazilian contemporary who wants to bring American-style dollar stores to South America. He succeeds, but along the way he ignores his family, pisses off his girlfriend, and is kind of a dick boss to his right-hand man.
[Toast] I love the nod to Groundhog Day in that he awakes every morning to a song on the radio, his stupid sliding-out coffee table and he ... prints his news?!?! WTF is up with printing the news from a website?
[Kent] As he exits out of his corporate office, basking in the glow of what he calls "the best Christmas Eve ever", the mechanical pointing finger that rocks back and forth on the face of the building malfunctions and falls on him.
He wakes up, dazed, in a hospital bed, but with seemingly no walls surrounding him. Nurse Angie (Molly Shannon) asks him about his day and questions whether he really did have "the best Christmas Eve ever", and she puts him back to sleep.
[Toast] This whole hospital bed and slightly irritated nurse thing is ... just weird.
[Kent] When he wakes up he's back in bed, next to his girlfriend, being told it's still Christmas eve.
He repeats the day, but differently than the day before, armed with the knowledge of what happened previously. He really charms his Brazilian counterpart, and makes his son's Christmas concert, and feels like he's done things even better. He avoids the falling hand but gets hit by a snow plow. He wakes up in the hospital room again and Angie tells him he's just not getting it.
It's on the third go around where she explains he has 12 Christmas Eve's to figure out what exactly it is he's to learn, or, you know, dead dead, like forever.
What was the main character's first reaction to the Loop?
[Kent] Calvin has typical Time Loop confusion, but acting as if he has prescient powers, or a strong sense of deja vu. When he wakes up in the "hospital" with Nurse Angie, he thinks he just had a dream
The third go around, he's just out of his mind. A complete zombie, trying to figure out what the hell it is that's going on. He references Sisyphus, but asks were the gods testing him, or punishing him?
[Toast] That third round he quoted somebody or other saying he was going to "listen, observe, learn" so that quiet loop of him just staring into people's faces non-committaly, is supposed to represent him "learning" ?
[Kent] The fourth go around, now that he knows the rules (sort of), he proactively is trying to be a better guy, by taking out 1.2 million dollars (100K for each of the 12 days of Xmas) and giving it away to people. But it's just for show. Day 5, he shuts down all the dollar stores with a paid day off, which interrupts an important ritual his father does every year. Day 6 he instead tries to give his family big expensive gifts (but the day is cut short, because it wasn't going very well). Day 7, he seems to be getting what's been going wrong, seeing the moment where he could be doing more, but just not quite...still a little to selfish, still trying to figure out the answer. Day 8, he tries more, big sweeping gestures, but winds up just stepping on toes. Frustrated, Day 9, he just gets greedy and gives to himself. Day 10 he tries to propose to his girlfriend and she declines, and he's just depressed for the whole day. Day 11 he just abandons everything and works in a soup kitchen for the day, just completely unsure what to do with himself, but he gets some perspective. Day 12, he kind of realizes that it's his last day on Earth, possibly, and instead of living it greedily, he tries to tell the people he knows how he feels about them, and actually spend time with them...and it works even though he thinks he has a heart attack and wakes up in a hospital (it's just extreme heartburn from eggnog and it's a real hospital this time).
[Toast] What bugs me about the "failed" loops is that he did some pretty decent things then, even with the wrong intent in mind. Even if he didn't give all his stores the day off, he could have reduced staff to just management and allowed the part-timers a full day off with pay? Salaried staff could work and benefit on another day. Also, the soup kitchen seemed a genuine moment where he just allowed himself to be exposed to what was going on around him, without expectation or judgement.
WHY did the main character get put into the Loop? Can someone else be brought into the Loop?
[Kent] What I liked about this Loopty Loop was that it's an orchestrated Loopty Loop. There's a whole organization that puts people in time Loops at the time of their death to try to learn a lesson and become a better person. In this case Calvin needed to learn that there's no such thing as a "perfect day" and that it's not a destination but a journey, something to strive for.
But I like this idea of an "organization" that helps people through their "death Loop" journeys. I could see this as a pilot to a 90's style episodic television where there are the "nurses" who help people through their "death Loops" trying to coax them towards their goal.
[Toast] If it was a series, then they would definitely have an episode where he bumps into people who are also in loops. In fact, there was a comment about other beds with other "patients" who had figured it out before he did. That implies there are other people who could be figuring their own shit out while he is doing his. Does it mean they get their own independent loops, or is everyone just in their own loop?
How long is this time Loop? What resets it? Can you force the reset?
[Kent] The loop occurs from the time Calvin wakes up until he dies. But the deaths seem orchestrated by the organization the "nurses" work for. The furthest Calvin can make it is 11:59 before something happens to him, but usually he doesn't make it that far. There is one exception, though, at one point he's ready to commit suicide, and he gets pulled out of the Loop before he can. I don't know if he still died somehow, like falling ice or something else unseen, but clearly he did not get to go through with it, and suicide in a loop is a really bad thing (Angie broke the rules, whatever those are, by pulling him out of it). So the loop ends by 11:59. Death resets it, but you can't kill yourself to force a reset.
[Toast] Her methods of death are pretty goofy. That garbage can that slowly chased him along the icy street only to bounce and crunch his head like a day old Xmas tree ornament?
How long does the main character stay in the Loop? Does it have any affect on them, their personality, their outlook?
[Kent] The Loop, as detailed, is 12 days, and the whole point of the loop is to have an effect on their personality and outlook.
Angie tells him "God is in the details" and that he needs to pay more
attention to the people around him. It's pretty simple. It's not that
Calvin was a bad guy, but he was just getting his priorities wrong.
[Toast] It might be the capitalist in me, but I found it weird that part of his "enlightenment" involved pushing off his Xmas Eve business meeting, rebooking her flight and just sending her back to her family. He didn't really care if he made the deal anymore, which is kind of weird. It was a big deal and probably would have benefited his company and family, if it worked out. Still, it did magically work out.
What about the other people in the Loop? Are they aware? Can they become aware? Does anything happen if they become aware?
[Kent] It's actually interesting for the Loopty Loo genre, because here Calvin actually has someone he can talk to about the Loop who knows all about the Loop and why he's in it. As such, he's given insight that I don't think any other Loopty Loo we've seen so far has about their Loop. He has a guide, so to speak, and therefore he doesn't need to bring anyone else into it in the story. None of the other people in his Earthen life are aware that he's looping, and he doesn't even try to explain it to them.
[Toast] Yeah, it was a unique aspect to these movies, almost making me think they were adding in some It's a Wonderful Life and she was his Xmas Angel that had to save one more person to get her out of the comfortable nurse's shoes and into some even more comfortable wings.
What does the main character think about the other people in the Loop? Are they real? Do they matter?
[Kent] I think the point of the loop is that, at the start, the other people in the Loop don't matter enough to Calvin. He doesn't treat them with enough respect, and that's some of what he has to learn.
[Toast] Given the short time of the total loop period, he doesn't get enough of them to be come (even more) oblivious to the lives of other humans. I suppose if they had given him the hundreds of loops we have seen in other examples, he might have gone the other direction and began thinking that nobody matters, at all, ever.
Most memorable event in a Loop? Most surprising event during a Loop?
[Kent] The deaths were fun, but I think the skydiving, with it's cheesy green screen aesthetic (looks like classic James Bond lol) is hilarious. That first death, though, with the big, moving hand coming unmoored, was perfect, as I was just thinking how unsafe that thing seemed.
[Toast] Did I ever tell you about the friend of mine whose parachute failed? He survived and is fine now, but that scene where he goes splat/bounce made me visibly recoil.
[Kent] Egads! No. That's bo-katan krayze!
How does this stack up in the subgenre?
[Kent] This is a middle of the road movie all the way. It's made for TV with some really terrible editing (which I mistook for bad direction, initially), and it is just baffling in how poorly it uses the Loopty Loo language. It doesn't set up its scenes that will be repeated very well at all, and it doesn't use them very effectively. But, as I said before, I love the conceit of an organization that puts people, at the time of their deaths, into time loops, to give them another chance and be better people or correct mistakes or whatever the reason. This is a series I would love to see.
Molly Shannon is perfect in the role as Angie, being kind of aloof, but funny and compassionate, while also tough and intimidating, she effectively conveys that she knows so much more than she will ever let on. Weber plays the smarmy dick well, but does it while also conveying there's more under the surface, and he peels back the layers quite well. It almost feels like this needed another half dozen Loops though to effectively get him from where he was at Loop 11 to where he ultimately is at Loop 12, but I understand from his performance that his fatalistic outlook does influence his behavior dramatically.
Ultimately, this was messy, but still a fun as both a Loopty Loo and Christmas viewing.
[Toast] I was surprisingly engaged, even more than I was with many of our Hallmarkies this year. Recognizing a few Canadian actor standards also made me feel like this was sliding in next to the Advent Calendar run rather well.
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