And this is a Deck the Hallmark podcast synopsis!

"Round and Round" originally aired December 10th, 2023. And it went a little something like this...

The movie starts with a flashback! It's the 80’s as Rachel tells via voiceover how her parents met on the 7th night of Hanukkah at a party. Her mom, a dj. Her dad, an economist. They spend the night in the dj booth, then go to Goldbergs and eat jelly donuts and the rest is history.

Cut to the present and the family is throwing a party for the 7th night of Hanukkah and Rachel is in charge of bringing the jelly doughnuts from Goldbergs cuz duh. 

The day starts off with bad news - her boyfriend caught an airport cold, so he isn't gonna come to the party. Then she bumps into a guy and the jelly donuts go everywhere! He's like, “I'm so sorry but i have to run.” But he left behind this little wooden box. She snags it and then goes to break the news to her family that there are no donuts and no boyfriend. 

To make matters worse, Rachel is having a hard time with the fact that this is the last Hanukkah at their childhood home - her parents are selling the house. Rachel's grandma wants to set her up with a fella named Zack. She doesn't care that Rachel has a boyfriend and invites him anyway. He comes in and it's the donut guy! 

She gives him back the box and he's like, “oh dope those are my super special Dungeons and Dragons dice.” 

They light the candle, play dreidel with a special Dreidel that grandma gives Rachel, and Rachel is crushing it until she notices that the curtains are on fire! This is bad news because it's putting the sale in jeopardy!

She goes to sleep and wakes up and she's back to the morning before. She's super confused and thinks it's just a wild deja vu. But when she gets the call from her boyfriend about the airport cold AND somehow still bumps into Zack and the donuts go flying, she realizes what's happening. It's a groundhog day sitch.

The next day, she still drops the donuts! I know I'm harping on this but I cannot say this enough - she's awful at groundhog daying.

She tells Zack that she's in groundhog day. He's a nerd, so he's kinda perfect. He says let's start with this - put your number in my phone.

The next day, she waits for Zack at the station and still manages to drop the donuts. She dives right into telling him about what's happening and naturally he believes almost immediately. He tells her to look through some boxes in her old room and see if there's anything in there. 

Then they end up going to a comic book store to get some comic books about time loops. They talk about what could've been the thing that set off the time loop. She says, “well my grandma did give me an antique dreidel, which I spun and the curtains caught on fire.” They're like, “WELL THERE YOU GO!” 

So they go to get the dreidel and comic book guy is like, “you should give this a spin again and see if that stops it.” 

Spoiler alert: It does not. 

She gets a butt dial voicemail from her boyfriend who is supposed to be home sick but he's clearly not. Zack recognizes the music and they track him down at a bar. She confronts him and is like if you didn't wanna come to my parents you should've just said so. He ends up breaking up with her and she spends the rest of the night with Zack.

The loop repeats and comic book guy tells her she needs to follow her passions, so she lets the nerds read her manuscript and they love it, so much so that Zach loves the book and passes it to Rachel’s cousin for publishing. She gets really upset with him!

But the next day she realizes that she's starting to fall for this sucker. She comes up with a possibility - it's the donuts. She has to get the donuts to the party. They come up with a plan but for some reason on this day, it takes Zack a little longer to come around...but finally he gets in the van and they go to pick up donuts!

While in line for the donuts, Zach invites a nosy lady in line to join them at the family holiday party and Rachel breaks up with her boyfriend over the phone. Zack and Rachel are very flirty, fun times in the van and end up kissing!!! That makes seeing the boyfriend at her parents house all the more shocking, especially for Zack who didn't know she had a boyfriend and obviously isn't privy to all the previous break ups. He thinks she's just using him to make the boyfriend jealous but Rachel is like, “no no.”

After seeing Rachel and Zack, grandma talks to Rachel and says, “you need to spin this dreidel. It's clear to me you've been making good use of it.” Rachel is like, “whoa wait you knew?!” And Grandma is like, “know what?”

She spins the dreidel and there's no fire! But Zack doesn't stick around cuz he's still mad about the boyfriend thing.

The next morning, she wakes up in her parents house! The time loop has come to a close! Her dad comes in and explains that everyone in the family has spun the dreidel. The dreidel brought him and her mom together, her sister and her wife together, it happened to all of them. But he explains the dreidel can only do so much. If she wants to fix things with Zack, she needs to make that happen.

Rachel goes to find Zack and she apologizes but he's like, “I like you but this is all too much. You're a lot right now. I need to protect myself.” This gives her an idea - she puts the dreidel in the D&D dice box and he suddenly remembers everything! The 80's power ballad plays plays and this kiss BIG ONESSSS!!!!

And that my friends was “Round and Round!”