Hearts Around the Table: Kiki's Fourth Ingredient (Hallmark Channel - 2025)

[00:00:01] Hi, I'm Brian and I love Hallmark Table Movies! I'm Brian and I like Hallmark Table Movies. I'm Dan and I despise Hallmark Table Movies and this is the Deck The Hallmark Podcast! Deck The Hallmark, it's this podcast. Friends host this podcast. We hope you like this jolly podcast. Oh boy, look at this. We've been teasing it. Big week. We've been teasing it for a while.

[00:00:38] We've been a little bit out there. But we finally did it. We moved to our new studio location. Brian's house. That's exactly right. Welcome. You finally got to see this mural. You've been painting. You've been working on this for a long time. You've been working real hard on it. It's crazy. A little bit of help from the fine folks at Victory Garden. Victory Garden Studios. They did a great job on this, Brian. I do think you did the bulk of it. Victory Garden did put it over the- I couldn't have taken it home. They made it a victory.

[00:01:08] They made it a victory. It's in the name. But we're very excited about space and hopefully you're watching us on Phyla. Phyla.tv slash DTH. You get to watch all of our stuff and you also get to watch most of the movies that we talk about on this year's show including Kiki's fourth ingredient. Kiki. Kiki. It's the fourth ingredient. The fourth one. That's exactly right. Which was? Love. You think it was Love? I think it was Love. Tandoori. Oh really? No, Tandoori's not an ingredient. It's an oven.

[00:01:36] Yeah, that's an oven. But you need- An oven is a kind of ingredient. It isn't. Sure. Well try and make- No, don't sure him. No, no. It's not an ingredient. If you have to cook something- In a recipe of cooking. If you have to cook something, how do you think it's going to work? You can cook it over a fire. You can cook it in a microwave. You can cook it a lot of ways. It doesn't have to be a nothing. Those are ingredients. To success. Okay, different thing. Well, but-

[00:01:57] It could have been Kiki's fourth ingredient to success. You're right. We don't know. It's a long title. Staying corrected. They shortened it. I did get the first cut. Dot, dot, dot. I got the first cut and that's how they worded it. So I can't get in trouble for this. Brian, you were telling me on the way over here that you saw something so funny and I said, hold it for the show. Wait for the pod, buddy. Hold it for the show. And so now I'm going to ask you, what was that thing that you saw that was so funny? It was- What was that thing that I saw? It was a snowman without his nose. No, Brian, you said. You were like, snake.

[00:02:27] Snake's alive. Speaking of snake's alive. And then you were going to go into it and I don't remember what it was. You said, hold on. Don't do the snowman. Don't do that. Tell us what you actually were going to say. Snake's alive. Snake eyes. Snake's alive. Snowman. And you guys, if you know what that means, then you do what you will with that. Because those who don't get it, forget about it. Those who don't get it, forget about it. That's right. That's exactly right. Shall we dive into hearts around the table? Kiki's fourth ingredient to success. To success. Sure. Absolutely. It originally premiered on the Home

[00:02:56] Mark Channel, April 12th, 2025. And it went a little something like this. Kiki is out here delivering baked goods despite the fact that she's catering her sister's wedding. On her way out of the place that she was delivering baked goods, she bumps into this random guy who ends up buying some of her baked goods. And she's impressed. Impressed with those goodies. My goodies, not my goodies. Jenna is planning her wedding and is looking for a dress.

[00:03:26] That's a thing that's going on. All of the boys are hanging out along with some random guy. Random guy shows up. Apparently he knows Andrew. He's going to be the best man. And his name is Clay. He's a chef. And he's the guy from earlier that Kiki bumped into. He does food. She does food. Man, you're made in heaven. Give me right now. There's two ingredients right there. I know. Kiki gets the oven. Kiki gets the oven. I know. And then we have the oven.

[00:03:55] We don't have... You're going to be successful. Yes. We don't have salmon, though. Kiki, we don't have salmon. How am I going to do this? There's a whole thing. Jenna gets a lot more playing this movie than I expected. So I had to mention it. Including her finding an old picture of her birth father that she didn't know about. So there's that going on. Kiki starts to feel a little overwhelmed by the catering of the wedding. Because she's also in the wedding. And she wants to be their first sister.

[00:04:24] This whole thing. So when she finds out that Clay is a chef with his own restaurant, she calls on him for help. When she ends up... Oh. What she ends up getting with his help is basically an episode of The Bear, but with no stress, no swears, no fun. Angie, foster mom, tracks down Jenna's birth father,

[00:04:48] but he says it's best if he doesn't enter her life right now. Kiki and Clay, they're hanging out more. Sparks are beginning to fly. They're both food people. What? Come on. But at the rehearsal dinner, Kiki gets mad at Clay and storms out for various reasons. Then Jenna's dad shows up and she storms out. Everyone's storming out. Storm season. Seattle storm.

[00:05:18] The next day, Jenna decides that she does want to talk to her dad. So he shows up, they make up, and she asks if he will walk her down the aisle along with Angie. And he's like, I didn't see this coming, to be honest with you, and neither do we. Kiki and Clay also make up, and they're back to being a dream team, getting his food ready.

[00:05:45] Then we get a montage of the last four movies, all the couples and whatnot, so that's nice. Jenna and Andrew get married, they kiss, the crowd cheers, and the food is a big hit. And Clay tells Kiki that he loves her, and she's like, I love you too. And they kiss, and they head back in for a dance-off. And that, my friends, was hearts around the table. Kiki's fourth ingredient success. Yes. I forgot the colon. I forgot them.

[00:06:15] You were ready to go. We were distracted by a new studio. You were ready to go. Yeah. No distractions here. Let's take a break. Let's take a break. We'll come back. We'll break down hearts around the table. The final, unless we get hearts around the table moms, next year. Here on. Take the Hallmark. Riding a bike. Welcome back, everybody. Guys, will you just skip? Welcome back.

[00:06:45] Welcome back, man. I always say I need a couple days to get acclimated to a new recording area. I'll be good next week. Next week? Next week, I'll be guaranteed. You're going to give yourself a full week. Full week. Wow. All right. Full week. And then you guys can recall me. Then all bets are off. Yeah. That's right. Let's talk about hearts around the table. Kiki's fourth ingredient to success. Let's start with a hot take. It's where we share exactly how we felt about this movie. We do not hold back, and I'm going to start with you, Brian.

[00:07:14] Brian, what did you think of Kiki and her fourth ingredient? Yeah. This was my favorite of the four. I enjoyed this more than the other three. Such a hot take. Clay immediately disliked Clay, and he grew on me really fast. I went from being like, who is this guy? I can't believe we have to watch him the whole movie, to I want Clay in the kitchen all the time. Big towards Coombs guy. I guess so. I didn't know. He's Coombs head, Brian. Did you know he's a Coombs head? Well, he walks in in the morning, and he says, hand me my Coombs. Yep. That's what I do.

[00:07:43] And I didn't get the connection, but now I do. And it makes so much sense. You didn't get the connection. Yeah, I didn't get it. I don't know why I would say that. Now I get it. Kiki, she was in the weeds. She needed Clay, and Clay to the rescue, as I always say. Just a classic, according to Brian, woman needing a man scenario. Yeah. Got it. For success. Yes, of course. No, no, no, no. For success. Of course. For her to be successful, she needed a man. Clay. Clay specifically. Okay. Clay happens to be a man. She needed a man to be successful. To be better at the job she was doing in order to be successful.

[00:08:13] To be successful in the job that she signed up for. Yeah, she needed Clay in this instance to help her out. Got it. And it worked out pretty good for both of us. As long as we're on the same page. Yeah. I wanted to get in the kitchen here, and I was hoping we'd spend some time in the kitchen, and we did. So that's a check in the win column for me. Did not, by any stretch of the imagination, stick the landing with the dad situation. No. Borderline ruined the movie. I really enjoyed Clay and Kiki working together.

[00:08:41] That saved the movie, so it was good and evil battling it out for me while watching this. But that dad part, oof, woof, big swing and a miss. It was like they just were like, we could do something here. Let's not. Let's not. Let's just head home early. So that was rough. But other than that, yeah, I liked all the food stuff. It was a lot of fun for me. Shocked that they love each other, but I guess who am I to judge? So yeah, that was pretty good.

[00:09:08] You know, this is a tough one because we kind of just, like, poor Kiki doesn't really get a full movie. Not even close. Kiki gets half movie at best, and that's frustrating. If you wanted to do this whole, like, let's wrap up everybody's storyline, there should have been a fifth movie, Five Marks to Spot or something like that. Where we kind of. Hearts around the table, Five Marks to Spot. Five Marks to Spot. And we kind of. There are five valves in a heart. Do it. You won't, you cowards.

[00:09:37] We spend time with each of the couples, and we get kind of more to their story and how they wrap up. But instead, we get Kiki's story, which gets truncated, and then we get. He's very nice. Oh, my God. He wants a week. Did he say truncated? I don't need a week. I don't need a week. He wants a week. I'm weird out. Did you read a thesaurus before this episode started? Yes. But then. Oh, my God. So we get, you know, we get truncated. Kiki saw them live, by the way. Phenomenal. They're openers only. They never do a full show. They never do a full show.

[00:10:05] They got a solid 2025, and then that's it. But then we also get basically only Jenna. Just more Jenna. Yeah. And we don't get any of the other two whose names we all know and we love. Absolutely, yeah. And we'll put them in post. Yeah. Terragon. Gone? Terragon? Yes. Terragon, yeah. Absolutely. So this is a tough movie because. Someone has been hitting the thesaurus. It's a tough movie because we have basically two movies in one.

[00:10:36] And I don't know. I kind of just wanted a standalone Kiki, you know, as a Coombshead myself as well. Sure, absolutely. Yeah. I kind of want to just Kiki Clay for one movie, and then we get that fifth Hearts of Fire. Fire, yeah. And we can kind of spend time with each of them. I don't know why they didn't do that. If you wanted to tell more of Jenna's story, you then also, you got to tell me more about the other people because now I'm just left wondering. So this was a tough one.

[00:11:04] But as far as the Kiki and Clay of it all, I thought that was fine. And I just do a full movie. Just do a full movie. That's all I'm asking. Dan? Yeah, this is tough because Kiki's fourth ingredient is not her movie. It is 100% Ashley Newbro and Steve Lund getting married. She's possibly four on the call sheet in her own movie. Not great. Not what we're looking for there.

[00:11:32] And that also leads us to a wedding planning part of this movie that doesn't really include anyone that should be the lead in it. It includes a very tough, as Brian alluded to, a very tough biological father situation that is just terrible. And then what's left over is like 25 or 30 minutes of a pretty standard, you know, Hallmark chef movie, which you've seen a thousand times. So not really great on any account.

[00:12:01] It's definitely not my favorite of these. The biological dad part of it alone ruined that. But then also you guys have already said it, but everybody else got their own movie. Everybody else got their own movie. The others are supporting this. Ashley Newbro and Steve Lund get a lot of time in this movie. And I'm never mad to see those two, but it's not your movie. It's Kiki's movie. She didn't get a movie. Yeah. Maybe not as bad. I don't know. I've kind of forgotten the other ones. Definitely not my favorite though. Definitely not my favorite.

[00:12:32] Stop for the feels where we're talking about what this movie gives feels Brian. Yeah. That tandoori chicken pizza. Yes, please. Vodka sauce. Maybe some crispy onions. Maybe some blue cheese. Yeah. Holy cow. I've never had that. I really like that idea. You could even do, this would be weird. You know, people dip their pizza in ranch, which I would never do. I don't. Yeah, I don't. But that cucumber sauce and Indian restaurants that you dip tandoori chicken in. Find a way to drizzle that on. Yes. Oh boy. It's a drizzle. Sometimes you need a drizzle.

[00:13:02] Yeah. You got to drizzle stuff. Yeah. So that distracted me, that thought. The chocolate zucchini muffins that she brought in early. Stop it. I knew you were going to bring up the dumb zucchini. For the record, zucchini bread far greater than banana bread. You guys have lost your mind. I'm on the record for this. I'll never pick banana bread over zucchini bread ever in my life. Did you bring any in? Of course not, Brent. That would be crazy. I mean, I didn't know we could bring food into the new studio. Old Brian's so much better than that. Yeah. There is a kitchen downstairs, isn't there? There's a kitchen downstairs in the studio. Put that to use. But my real feels was Kiki over.

[00:13:32] It's weird. Not every office in this office park has kitchens. Kitchen downstairs. This one does. We were lucky to get that. We were lucky to get that unit. Special requests. They said, oh, you're a podcast studio? Surely you need a kitchen. Yeah. My real was Kiki making a bunch of sauces just to try just in case, which is my move all day, every day. It's like, I have a recipe. It's good. What if I made five other sauces that could maybe work or not work? Did you kind of identify when she talked about how her sauce was really good, but then she wasn't sure if she was going to use it? Yeah.

[00:14:02] And he's just like, hey, just trust your instinct. Your sauce is good enough. Did that? Yeah. I feel like Torrance was talking right to your soul there. It did feel. That's the coombs head in me there. Just falling for that. Yeah. And he was right. Do you have an instance in your head you can remember where you'd made five extra sauces with your default, I know this is good, and one of them was better? No. Yeah. There it is. That's all I needed. I knew the answer was no before I started the question. I would probably try to talk myself into thinking maybe this one's better.

[00:14:32] No. No. I mean, come on. Coombs is right. Coombs is right. Coombs is right on this one. Listen, this scene was so good they put it in the movie twice. Uh, when they, when they are having their heart to heart and a little, little hand touch. I, I, you guys know me well enough by now to know that that was going to be my feels great moment. And the fact that we got to see it both in real time and then later in black and white, I believe, uh, was a really, it was really good for brand. Dan, uh, my feels is going to be, I think some people's weight.

[00:15:00] What's I'm not trying to steal it, but I am trying to tell you that this doesn't belong in the way what, because it is infuriating. Um, it is, those are the fields. Angie, who is the matriarch of all of these wonderful kids, the whole movie where they eat around the table on Sundays. It's so great. Turns out she's the villain of the hearts around the table series, because not only does she go and find this biological father of Ashley new bro without telling her, then the guy's

[00:15:29] like, she don't want to see me. And Angie's basically like, yes, she does. And then that guy shows up unannounced all on the night before her wedding. And Angie's like, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't know he was going to do this without a heads up. I didn't know he was going to do this. That's my, you might not have known he was going to show up, show up, but did you happen to mention to Ashley? I found him, I went and talked to him and I told him to come see you now because you're

[00:15:59] the Joker in the dark night. Like you are like playing chess with the Ray playing evil chess with the record. The rest of us are trying to play good guy checkers. Like you are really, this is a mean means. And then to have him walk her down the aisle after having known her for under 24 hours is just, what is the, what was the impetus behind? Not only do we need to make a movie about foster kids, we need to make one where everyone can

[00:16:28] feel good about themselves going to bed at night. I think that was the thing is like, if you're watching this movie, we want you to know that everything like this ends this quickly, this happily, not sloppy, not messy at all. It's just, it's just a matter of finding your biological parents and then you'll be best friends with them. I couldn't believe what I was watching. It was terrible. Angie tells her, tells Jenna, sorry that I overstepped.

[00:16:52] Listen, overstepping is like, you know, when, you know, I don't know, like I have to return something to Dan's backyard because I got thrown over my fence. And so I just let myself in and I go, Hey, I brought it back. Sorry if I overstepped. Sorry if I went to your backyard. You went and got my leaf blower. I was out of town. Yeah. Sorry. Sorry if I overstepped. This isn't overstepping. This is like a, like personal malpractice is you just, it's vindictive. I don't know why, but it is mean spirited. Yeah. Sorry if I overstepped.

[00:17:20] Sorry if I, I stumbled my way into it. It got away from me. Let's take a quick break. We'll come back. We'll get to more weight. What's? Cause that wasn't one, right? No, it wasn't. That was me feeling angry. You're on. Tech Hallmark. Hi everybody. Welcome back. We're talking about hearts around the table. Kiki's fourth ingredient of love to success.

[00:17:51] Let's. Of love you threw in there. Fourth ingredient of love to success. IMDB's been updated. Every time we add it more and more. They keep updating it. There's nothing we can do. It's time for the way. What is where we're talking about? What in the swing? We just go away. What? And I'll start with you, Brian. Brian, what you waiting on? What you want? We weren't, we weren't there for pre-production. No, no, we were not. We tried. We tried. We tried to get in on this ground floor. Yeah. But I imagine part of it went something like this. Oh, look, I found a church. Oh, high location, Scout.

[00:18:20] Would you like to check out my church for your movie? Yes, please. This looks great. Can you move that rock out of the way of the aisle? Absolutely not. You can use our church in one condition, one condition only. The rock stays in the middle of the aisle. We'll block everybody's path. We'll block the bride. It's not moving. No conversation. The thing we know about weddings in churches is the center aisle is not important. No. It's not a big deal. Who cares if there's something in the middle of it? Yeah. A giant pedestal.

[00:18:49] Could we have moved it five feet back so it would have been in the foyer? No. Yeah. Yeah. We could have. Well, I have to imagine that those are movable because I think that's a thing for the holy water. Yeah. They built the church around it, I believe, is the problem. It's definitely movable. There's many, many churches that have those and I have to imagine also have weddings that just utilize the center. You just move it. Is that where they filmed this? Was that not movable? It looks like it was not movable.

[00:19:19] Death Valley rub the rock before you run down the hill. Well, and here's the thing. Everybody hands in. It wouldn't have been as big of a deal. Holy union three. It wouldn't have been as big of a deal if it was just Jen and Angie walking down the aisle. They can split that. Yeah. Now we got three. Now we got three. Three people walking down the aisle. She's in the middle. I don't know how they handled it because they cut away. Yes. They cut away. So I don't even know how they handled it. I don't know how she got down there. For all I know, the rest of her life, she's standing there like, I don't know how to get around this. And that's like her whole life and she never gets married. It was very funny.

[00:19:49] It was distracting. It was a real choice. To just be like, nah, don't worry about it. Does Jenna know what happy looks like? Because when she was looking at that photo of her mom and dad, as they were young, she's like, they look so happy. And I looked at it and thought, is her mom going to a costume party dressed as a dead bride? Because she looked dead. She did not look happy. And Jenna just kept repeating. She said it at least twice. They look so happy. I don't think she knows what happy looks like.

[00:20:16] I don't know how this works, but I just, I feel like somebody messed up in, the adoption and fostering process where like, okay, her mom died. So somebody, somebody try to find her dad. So they don't worry about it. They would probably, unless the dad never had custody, they would at least reach out and they would have to terminate those rights. So, so he either had to know that she died and was lying or his rights were, he terminated

[00:20:44] his rights, like, which would be an absolute villain move to just preemptively terminate your rights. Like, you know, you, you, you know, this woman's having a kid and you're just like, I don't want any part of this. And so instead of just saying you get full custody, I'm now going to terminate my rights to parenthood, which is insane. Yeah. That's an insane thing to do. You would imagine they had to reach out and find it. You would think so. That was my, like, there's no way that he didn't know that she died.

[00:21:11] It was really distracting to me because I'm like, there was not even any conversation about what may or may not have happened or not even Andrew being like, I don't know the story, but what I assume happened, like they didn't provide anything. Nothing. There. And then when she walked in on him in the garage, I'm thinking, all right, we're going to get a little bit of a messy situation and that's going to be good because we're going to work through some of this. We're going to find out. And nope, just going to, we're just going to gloss over all that. We're not going to talk about it. We're not going to bring it up. Everybody's moving forward.

[00:21:39] And so just a little bit of backstory or info. There would have been nice. This is the worst version of people that watch Hallmark want and have to have a happy yes. They can have a little bit of a tough conversation or just have him show up and sit in the back row of the wedding and be like, Hey, I'm sorry. I missed your whole life so far. I'd love to try to build a relationship with you. Would you be open to that? Great. Awesome. Sounds good. Hey, Hey dad, you want to walk me down the aisle? I've known you 16 hours.

[00:22:06] That makes the love declaration look downright timely in this movie. It's crazy for him. It's something I'm working on. I'm watching the studio. Your goat laugh is really coming along. You want to give it one more? That's really good. That's good stuff. And listen, when you watch the studio or you just listen to like Seth Rigg and laugh a lot, like it just kind of rubs off on you. Yeah. All right. Anything else? The last one I had was Clay said, no one remembers an appetizer.

[00:22:36] And he's talking about cooking for the wedding. Wait a minute. Excuse me. Are you kidding me right now? There are a dozen appetizers that I remember that I love and I would go to a place for. How about the bread at the steakhouse in Philadelphia? That was one of the places I thought of. I mean like. Are you kidding me? We literally ate the bread and we looked around and went, is this? Are we good? This could be the best restaurant of all time. Let me ask you this. Is complimentary bread considered an appetizer? Ooh. That's a good question. Because of course everyone's going to bring up. I mean it's a meal before the meal.

[00:23:05] I mean it's by the definition. Sure. I would count it. It's an appetizer. Complimentary. Anything that's before the main course, it's not a salad, I would consider an appetizer. I would too. I just. Someone has to ask. Sure. Thank you for asking. Bread girl, you got something? Bread girl. As the resident studio bread girl, you don't have to pay for an appetizer for it to be an appetizer. Like when you're at a wedding and they're passing around apps during the cocktail hour, like you're not handing that waitress money for your like fried cheese. So it's really a dumb question.

[00:23:36] What is it? Is that good? I can't believe I unmuted Erin for that. Oh man. For her to just ridicule me. I love it. Wow. Freedom rocket. No. Anything else? That's it for me. Okay. So all she's waiting for. Yeah. So her. What do you got going on? So her dad, she's it's her wedding day. It is. And she decides I do want to see my dad go and find him. It's for the bride.

[00:24:06] For reasons I don't know. No one tells Andrew about this. Andrew is sitting up there waiting for, you know, his bride to come down the aisle. Talk to Sherlock. Fuck. We are. We are now late and no one has told him, hey, she is meeting her dad. We're waiting on her dad to show up so she can have a conversation because they literally

[00:24:34] cut to him and he's like, maybe she's getting cold feet. No one told him. Nobody said anything. What important. Crazy. Can you imagine getting that information on your. Dude, I would just be like, what? Like thinking that the person you're married to is getting cold feet. It just turns out that she's out there actually just making up with their long lost father that they didn't know was still around. So that's a lot. Yeah. And someone just could have given them the heads up. And then he's not having to stand up there. Awkward. You know what I mean?

[00:25:02] So when the dad shows up to to to make up with with Jenna, he says this line. You need to know I didn't have a choice. This is like he's this. Now he starts out making this right. He says you need to know I didn't have a choice. So if you pause right there, I'm thinking, OK, you know, mom took her or something before. Or yeah, whatever. Because you all you have rights as a parent. Yeah.

[00:25:31] He then says my job kept me away for months at a time. That's called just a bad marriage. It's like it's one of these. It's like you need to know I didn't have a choice. You did like it's people need jobs, obviously. But the like the conversation should be, hey, I realize now looking back early on, I prioritized my job over you. There it is. He didn't say that.

[00:25:59] He said, I didn't have a choice in the matter. They were holding me against my will at my nine to five multiple months out of the year being somewhere else. Narrator, he did have a choice. Here's like here's the thing. This is like this is a real life thing. People do take jobs and it does take them away from their families. And those are things that you have to grapple with. Is it worth it? Is it not? That's for everybody to figure out. But at the end of the day, you do have a choice. Yes.

[00:26:25] And it's a tough one, obviously, especially if you don't have anything else lined up or whatever it is. But to say you don't have a choice and follow it up by saying my job. It's really my job's fault. It kind of undercuts the whole thing that we're doing here. But she didn't seem to mind it at all, which blew me away. And so it was a very it was so clunky that they brought him in. And then the apology was clunky. It was all and then her saying, will you walk me down the aisle? Clunky. That whole thing.

[00:26:54] Just give Kiki her movie. No kidding. Justice for Kiki. That's right. Justice for Kiki. Dan? Would love justice for Kiki, but also maybe Kiki shouldn't be catering this wedding. She's never done it before. That's one. Number two, apparently her foster sister, Ashley Newbro, has given her the instruction of you just pick whatever you'd like to serve. So that sounds like a lot of free reign. But for someone that's never catered an event before, that's a prison.

[00:27:23] Like you, you know, it's not like she's a seasoned veteran of the catering world and she's got five or six standbys. She runs a pizza food truck. Like she's lucky that that she came up with what she came up with. But basically, Ashley Newbro was like, I want you to cater my wedding. Oh, by the way, I also want you to be in my wedding. So this is a woman who's never catered a wedding, doesn't know what to make and needs to be in the church during the ceremony.

[00:27:53] Not ideal conditions to cater a wedding. The whole premise of Kiki's 40% of the movie that she gets is really bad. It's a really bad idea for a premise. That's why I'm happy that you got some cooking moments. Thank you. It doesn't hold up. None of it holds up at all. So that's really bad. Let's cut to Jake Epstein really being angry. He doesn't get to see a peek at Ashley Newbro's wedding dress.

[00:28:21] In one of the weirdest scenes in Hallmark history, this guy is so mad that they're not showing him Ashley Newbro in the wedding dress. Let me see. Why? Let me get a little peek. Just give me something. A little something, something. What are you doing, dude? You're not marrying her. You're not there. Claire, you grew up in the same foster home as she did. Why?

[00:28:50] How is this this big of a deal? He's like, girl, they just show me the GD wedding dress. Guy loves looking at wedding dresses. He loves wedding dresses. He does. I just, I couldn't, I couldn't get over it. I'm like, this, there's, I can't think of a single person that's like, that's a, like Jake Epstein character that would give two thoughts to me and like, I can't believe I'm not there for dress fitting. Was I invited? No, but I can't believe I'm not there.

[00:29:20] That's the thing. I wasn't invited. That's, that's. That's what it is. I just want to get invited. That's right. So my thing is, is that he's not mad he wasn't invited. Yeah. He says before then, I've been asked my opinion on things my whole life and I never wanted to give it. He's happy he wasn't invited. He's mad. They won't sneak him a quick pic of new bro in a dress. It's weird. You want a little peakster. It's just a little peakster. This is crazy. Um, the actress that plays Kiki, I think she does have a bright future. She is clearly, and I've not looked it up, but I'd be willing to bet dollars and donuts on this.

[00:29:50] She's clearly British or Australian. Clearly. Wow. You're right on that. Yes. Oh, I am. I think it is. Yeah. And it's so obvious because her accent goes in and out. And I just, I kind of felt bad for her because I, I felt like they could have done a lot to make that easier on her and they just didn't do it. Um, that was unfortunate. Uh, when she and Terrence Coombs go out, Torrance Coombs, excuse me, heaven forbid, Torrance Coombs go out to eat. Sorry, Torrance.

[00:30:18] They talk about how good the course is right before the camera gets there. Right? So like we get there and they're like, man, that first course was amazing. They talk, talk, talk. And then they bring out a giant plate of pasta for each of them. I mean, it is a good helping of pasta. Palate cleanser. Yeah. They set it down and there's this terrible ADR as they go to commercial break. You need to go back and listen to this. We got a surround sound system now. That's probably why I heard it.

[00:30:44] This terrible ADR of Torrance Coombs going, we've got seven courses left or seven more courses left. Just like that was no inflection. We've got seven more courses left. So number one, why did you put that in there? Number two, is this an eight course dinner, which I've never heard of. I've heard of nine and seven. That's fine if it is. But if it is, are you trying to kill people? Because at an eight course dinner with that much pasta, nobody's going to be left standing.

[00:31:12] I mean, when you do eight or nine courses, the plates are tiny. That's the point. It's a tasting menu that's supposed to bring you to your desk. It's like a man versus food, eight course. The more courses you make, the more of a human you are. Supposed to knock you down. That's right. So that was kind of crazy. She keeps talking about doing a tandoori test. A tandoori is a clay oven from South Asian cuisine.

[00:31:37] You might be trying to replicate tandoori chicken, but to keep going, I'm going to do the tandoori again. You have no such oven. It wasn't in your kitchen. It was nowhere. You don't have that oven. You can't possibly be doing the thing you say you're doing. You can't be. You're not. Is it similar to a pizza oven? It was interesting when they brought that pizza oven thing out. It's not. It's literally made out of clay. But it is. That would be a closer.

[00:32:07] You could find a brick, a clay brick oven. Well, clay was there. So I think that covers the clay part. So you bring out a brick oven and then you call it what it is. You call it what it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure. It's a clay brick oven. That's all. It's a clay brick oven. And then I have to say it because we're still decked the hallmark. He loves her. They met under a week ago. No. No, no, no, no, no, no. That's all I got, Brian. It's time for the hallmark. It's where you wonder what could have been. Maybe get some clarity questions we still have. What are we still wondering about? That's what this segment's for.

[00:32:36] And I'll start with you, Brian. After four hearts on the table movies, what are you still wondering about? Just keeping you up at night. Well, I'm going to stick to this movie, the last one we watched here, because it was a big one. It was what did Jenna's dad think happened to her her whole life and the rest of his life? Did he think of her at all? We could have spent the entire 40 minutes talking about the father character. Legitimately. One, how did he not know that the mom died? That's impossible. Huge. It's impossible.

[00:33:06] Two, the choice of it all is just not accurate. It isn't real. And then three, the dude never bothered to even check. Never just was like, I wonder how my daughter, like even from afar, you know what I mean? Like even this thing was like, I'm not good. I made a mistake. I'm not good enough to be in my kid's life anymore, but I still want to know that they're doing okay. Not even that. And then he just shows up just full silver fox. Just like full centrum silver. Got his sports car. Looks great. He looks like he didn't have to raise kids his whole life. That's exactly right.

[00:33:35] Yeah. Yeah. That whole situation's a mess. I mean, listen, we know the ending of one couple here, but we don't know the ending of the other three couples. We're just kind of left wondering. It was real nice of them. You know, show us that Jenna and Andrew got married. As if we don't, as if we're not invested in the other stories of the names that we know. There's. Yeah. Sherry. Sherry and Tarragon. Tarragon.

[00:34:05] It's a big one. We know them. We love them. We've spent four weeks with them. Give us fifth. Give us a five star. Hearts. Leave your reviews. It's a five star heart. Yeah. Absolutely. And so like, let's give us that. Give us that last movie. And then let's wrap everybody's storyline up. Cause as is now, I don't know. I don't know what they could have done a holidays thing and actually made a Kiki movie, which is this, this transitions nicely to mine, but made a key. All right. All right.

[00:34:35] Made a key. Now we're getting somewhere. Made a key key movie. And then had the fifth movie where all of the endings happen. But they clearly decided somewhere along the way that ending the first three storylines was more important than giving Kiki a movie. They had to painful. So I don't really know. I would love to have seen the, the map of what it looked like to actually give Kiki a full movie. What if we didn't do it the way we did it? Uh, that's do it.

[00:35:05] The way we did. Basically, that's about what the homework is. What if they didn't do it the way they did it? Which should really, for most of these, that works, I think. For most of the movies we cover, that works. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, well, we did it, everybody. Congratulations to us. Four heart movies down. Uh, next week, uh, The Return of Aaron Cahill. Uh, Journey to Something, I think is the name of the movie. Great. Journey to Love. To Teradon. Journey to Somewhere. Um, have you guys taken a quick peek at, uh, next, next month? Have not. No.

[00:35:34] We have like nothing going on. I think there's two new movies and then, um, Hallmark Plus premieres. Oh. They did this in, oh, so like Chicken Sisters and stuff? Yeah, but different, like some of the stuff, I don't remember what it is. What is it? Hi, Aaron. I think the Danube movies are on the Linear channel. So, I mean, if you guys want to review those again. We may put our old reviews up. You don't do that.

[00:36:03] But we'll figure something out. Anyway, it's time for our Double Decker of the Week. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. That is where we dive deep into the life of a double decker who has signed up for Brinkler Gym Plus dot com to get all sorts of fun little goodies and to help support the podcast, but also so that Brian will, uh, track you. And after your armpit farting one, I don't feel like it can be, I mean, I feel like this is going to be his best one. But Brian, walk me through your process because you get, you get the name obviously ahead of time. Yep. Yeah. Days, months even sometimes.

[00:36:31] Uh, and then you just kind of, uh, do the deep dive. I log in. I can't tell you the password. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, there we go. You gotta go through that. Log in. I just search around. Yeah. Type in the name. Yep. I go, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, depending on what's going on there. Yeah. And you know, you just see what's interesting and what's, uh, popping up on them. And what they're up to, uh, who do we have today, Dan? We have Brenda Blau. Brenda Blau. Yeah. Brenda. Brenda, a super empathetic person. Yep.

[00:37:01] And like Brenda, she knows. And we know, uh, men have been taking it on the chin far too long. Oh boy. And Brenda's. Oh boy. Brenda's had enough. Uh, you know, they get like one time they'll wink weird and it lives forever on the internet or personally. Oh my gosh. Or they'll take off their shirt and it's always, you know, out there for. Of course he brings that up. Or they. Never a day goes by. Right. They hit their head on a microphone standing up and it's just, so there's just these things.

[00:37:29] Like how do you clean this, this stuff up when guys goof? Yeah. Embarrassing Dan's done. Uh, that's. Good luck out there. That is. Um. I stay embarrassed. I'm like the Hulk of embarrassment. Yeah. It's a standard state. Uh, so yeah, it's just, so Brenda's just been working on this product from what I can see. It looks sort of like an app or like a, a plugin, a browser extension. It's for the internet to kind of clean up reputational stuff. I've heard like getting stuff scraped off the internet is actually really hard. This is a big business. Yeah. It is big business.

[00:37:59] What's it called, Brian? It's, uh, her version, anti-histamine. I'm going to have to think about it a bit. So, and so, and correct me if I'm wrong. Yeah, please. This only works if you are a male. Yeah. Yeah. Trying to get something. Off of a meme in the history. Is it specific to memes and gifs? It's like, you, it's sort of, you don't want it to get to the point of a meme. And so it's sort of cutting it off before it gets there. So anti-histamine to meme, you don't want it to turn into it. Yeah. His to meme. Yeah.

[00:38:29] You don't want it to get to the meme state. And so. Yeah. The meme state's where it gets tough out there. So, so would you say like stuff that's happened to me in the past? You mentioned a couple of them. Yeah. Just a couple. Is it too late for me? Well, that's what Brenda's trying to figure out. I don't know. I don't think you've come to me in state. It sounds like based upon everything you said, it is too late for us, Brian. Well, for, for, I think for the head of the microphone, it's too late for that one. The shirt. Yeah. So, Brian, I guess it's too late for you. Unfortunately. Brenda, I don't know.

[00:38:55] Maybe she's got some technology that she's working on that could do something, but for you, you would kind of be excluded from this. Antihistamine. Yeah. So a little asterisk says, Brian, you don't get to apply. Very, very interesting. Yeah. How does it work? Well, it just, it does scrape the internet for things and then it just, you know, just pop, pop, pop, disappears it. It disappears it. Yeah. This is all premium stuff. I'm going to need you to maybe next week bring a little bit more info.

[00:39:24] Cause I, I don't like that. You're not supposed to understand. I think is the key from what I saw from what Brenda has been doing. I don't think you're supposed to get it. So is it, is it like a, uh, uh, what is it? A DM, uh, in a, whatever takedown notice, whatever the, you know what I'm talking about. No, I have no idea. DMARC. Yeah. Oh, right. Sometimes when people try to get things away. Is that really the letters? It's a yellow thing on a door. DMACI?

[00:39:53] What's it when, uh, DMARC is just a different guy. Do takedown notice letter D and then it'll, it'll fill it out all out. Uh, what'd you find out? Indicating that a DMARC record exists for the domain associated with email. Domain based message authentication reporting conformance. So this is different. She doesn't have anything to do with that. It's not a DMARC. If it's in an email, forget it. It's out of her hands. Fair enough. Um, all right, well, we did it everybody. Congratulations to us.

[00:40:22] We'll be back tomorrow with another episode. So hopefully you come on back and join us until then. Maybe the first to wish you a Merry Christmas. Deck the Hallmark is a Bramble Jam podcast is produced by Aaron Shea. What? For more information on Deck the Hallmark, you can go to deckthehallmark.com. For more information on the Deck the Hallmark family, you can go to bramblejamplus.com. Deck the Hallmark is presented by Philo TV. For a free trial of Philo, go to philo.tv slash DTH.

[00:40:52] You're about to hear some ads that help keep the lights on here in the old studio. Thanks for listening or don't listen. It's really up to you at this point. It's at the end of the show. I mean, you're listening to me. Hi. But here they come. I promise they're coming. Yep. Here they are. Happy day.