The word that comes to mind, over and over, when watching Christmas at Sea (2025) over on the Hallmark Channel is "awkward".
The concept of a cruise where people get on a boat to share oxygen with working actors while also desperately celebrating secular adult Christmas a month early with hundreds of tipsy strangers is just kinda... awkward.
The folks who they recruit for the show? We'll get into that.
Trying to make something of a 3-day cruise? And try to film it and make it look natural when it so clearly is all staged and stage-managed? Awkward.
I've long withstood the slings and arrows of others' discomfort by throwing on Hallmark movies at Christmas - which led to me spending the first half of 2025 watching 70-odd Lacey Chabert movies. But for a few years I've been aware that the Hallmark company now has basically Christmas Cons in Kansas City each December over two separate weekends, and now there's a Christmas Cruise, where one can set sail with Hallmark devotees and a handful of stars from Hallmark movies.
During the holiday season, I kinda sorta throw the movies on in the background, and am used to enjoying seeing, say, Teri Hatcher go through the motions of a TV Christmas movie. But in the past several years, Hallmark jettisoned the former-star-getting-a-paycheck, and now basically has a home-grown stable of actors that are not famous-famous, but they are Hallmark famous. Some are folks you may remember from things several years ago, but others are just, like, Canadians.
I am not making fun of the Hallmark talent - these are people who work hard and are carving a career out in a particular world I don't understand. And to agree to give up your time to smile like all of this is a good idea? I assume it's lucrative and will help keep them in the good graces of the network while also boosting their profile.
Anyway, I don't know if the 2024 Hallmark Christmas Cruise was the inaugural Hallmark Christmas Cruise, but it was the one they used to make a 4-episode reality show, Christmas at Sea.
I'm a bit jealous. For years I've said I thought that one could make a fascinating documentary about the attendees at a Hallmark Experience or whatever they're calling it. But I also realize that Hallmark is a media company, and you'd get kicked out after 4 hours of trying to make your doc if you didn't have their blessing. And so this is the final product - and rather than documentary, it's "reality TV".
I don't actually watch much reality TV as... it's not my thing. But I know a few things: (1) it is not reality when there are cameras and mics in your face, and (2) everything is worked out in advance. Thus, we gin up narratives and watch them play out.
In this case, we found a few groups of people and made them spend their cruise going through their little personality arcs, and had them helped along by Hallmark stars.
And this is where I found out how selective my Hallmark viewing really is. Chabert was not on the cruise, so I had no idea who most of the women Hallmark stars were, with the exception of Kimberley Sustad (she's the star of the cat-themed Christmas movies and many others). But because the movies mix-and-match male and female stars, I had seen most of the men rotate through these movies - especially last year when Jamie and I went all-in on Hallmark movies for the holidays.
Like anything with a fanbase that is catered to at the level of Hallmark, the fanbase is a little culty, but maybe in a harmless way. But if you had a rough idea of who makes up the Hallmark fanbase, this show sits you down, holds your hand, and says "you have never been so correct in your life".
We have:
1) The middle-aged couple from New York. Maybe Long Island? I don't do accents. But holy smokes, do these two sound like they came out of central casting. They've been together 9 years, but aren't married for reasons that were utterly unclear. They share a house and their commitment to the bit is so great, they have a tree in their house covered in ornaments with the faces of the Hallmark actors.
Malady: Despite looking robust, apparently the lady has an issue with pressure on her brain and had brain surgery the prior year.
2) This one hit home as a lifelong Austinite - the Californians who moved to Austin.* There's a lot to unpack here as the trio is mom, her adult daughter, and her daughter-in-law who the mom seems to prefer (awkward). And we will only ponder what it means that the daughter-in-law really does look like mom... Like, off-screen-son seems like he may need to work some things out.
Malady: Mom had pre-emptive double mastectomies as there's cancer in the family. Blonde daughter is sick of Georgetown, the community outside Austin where the family resides.
3) The Best Friends. Two women who went to high school together, remained best friends, and are celebrating their 60th birthdays together on the ship.
Malady: One of them is "afraid of doing things"
4) The Sisters. A would-be Hallmark movie writer (awkward) and her sister who works in theatre and seems like she has her act together on a very different level.
Malady: None. But this is what happens when you major in creative arts but reality sets in and having three kids means you don't get to spend your time writing or whatever.
5) The Grandson and his two Grandmothers. Oooof. This one is so rough that they only show this kid for two of the four episodes, and it's pretty clear they knew this was bad television and setting someone up for wedgies forever.
On paper it sounds kind of dorky but loveable as a grandson hits the high seas with his two grandmas, who he says are his best friends. But it's very clear the grandmas want no part of this and are aware of who their grandson is.
Malady: home schooling
One big takeaway from the show is that the Hallmark audience is *thirsty*. The fake-Texans spend much of their screentime talking about their "Hall(mark) Passes", which takes the TV crushes from cute to something else. You realize they're mostly there to ogle guys who all seem like the second-best-looking-dad standing on the sideline at your kids' soccer game.
I don't shame anyone for this - you go girls. But it did raise the question of what life is like for "Hallmark Hunks". Especially trapped shipboard with a thousand randy, drunk women.
This randiness materializes in particular with one of the fake-Texans handing a Hallmark Hunk a bracelet in which she's included her phone number in beads? Shoot your shot, I guess, but that this was shown on the Hallmark show as a good idea...? I mean, I guess it's the equivalent of women throwing room keys at Tom Jones in Vegas back in the day.
But, (a) oh, the scandal had he taken her up on it... Part of me really wishes this had ended with her in tears eating Fruity Pebbles and wondering why he didn't call her back. (b) The reverse version of this would be considered harassment, I'm fairly sure.
The middle-aged couple decides to get married, and wouldn't you know it - though this was supposed to be a surprise, etc... - the bride has a gown she clearly had ready to go that is absolutely not off-the-rack. The wedding gets subtly demoted to a "commitment ceremony", the couples' kids don't attend, and the whole thing is officiated by a Hallmark guy, with Hallmark stars standing for them. And everyone in the audience is in pajamas, I believe. And, yet, the guy seems to believe this is all a complete surprise. Maybe it was for him?
I do believe the one timid friend was kind of nervous about trying new things, but she also agreed to be on a reality TV show, on a cruise, so its obviously not exactly pathological.
The sisters... I dunno. The running gag in movies about showbiz are the Hollywood hopefuls inappropriately shoving screenplays in the face of a passing celebrity or a person with a hint of power. It's a trope that I can see having a basis in reality. But... the show has one sister bring her spec Hallmark screenplay on board and... wouldn't you know it? Hallmark stars take an interest.
It is handy to know that some Hallmark stars have rightfully determined that the real money in this is owning the whole production, and have started writing their own movies and are getting into directing, producing, etc... So, it's not wacky to have them look at the script from a real "does this work?" perspective, because they know the formula better than anyone.
Reading between the lines - the script was, in fact, kind of bad. My guess is that the producers of this show hoped that they could take the script and have a movie spin out of the show and market it that way. But when Paul Campbell is telling someone "as a performer, I need to be able to say these lines", it doesn't seem like we have the next Great American Movie here.
In the end, they get Hallmark stars to kind of do a private read-thru, which can be read a lot of ways. Like - maybe for copyright reasons they didn't want to do in on ship, or show it to people, but... maybe, also...
Kimberley Sustad, who co-writes with Campbell, was clearly on deck to join Campbell for the conversation about the script, which I'm not sure she had read at all. But I am sure she had either brought some gummies or had finished a bottle of wine to brace herself for this conversation.
All in all, I don't think Christmas at Sea worked. Even as an ironic watch.
They don't really just show the cruise, which would have maybe been interesting - or more interesting than what we get. Because it's these little arcs, we don't see how the cruise works, what events happen, how someone who isn't partaking in a reality show actually does things on the boat. Or what people are really like... the reality of partaking in the cruise.
Reality TV relies on tension, manufactured drama and big personalities, but this was like watching your most basic co-workers geek out a bit and meet quasi-famous people. It's super boring to watch people pretend to go on a little adventure that is mostly them doing staged re-enactments of "what if you casually met Tyler Hines?" or whatever. Because that's what it feels like. And it feels like a bad advertisement for the cruise when you realize the stars are busy working on this show and will speak with just a few pre-selected people.
Hallmark relies on low-stakes drama and people being generally nice to each other. So moments are built up and built up as being of great import as a life-decision is made - but then, like - they just say "I'm moving to California" and the other person says "sounds like a plan" or "will you marry me?" and "yes". Nothing bad can happen.
And maybe that's what happened with the kid who disappears? After all, it's clear his grandmas are trying to ditch him and have a good time on Day 1.
The stars are fine. They know their job is to make people comfortable and happy to be there, and they seem engaged (minus, maybe, Sustad). But I also felt bad for them having to do so much emotional labor.
It's weird. And... awkward.
*the influx of people moving to formerly inexpensive Austin starting 15 years ago has driven up the cost of living in Texas, especially Central Texas, while also putting real burdens on the infrastructure and resources, displacing whole neighborhoods through gentrification, and generally making things less the town it was. California has been particularly villainized as Californians basically pushed up the cost of homes by factors of 2-3x coming in with the cash from selling home in Southern California and then competing with each other (and California-based venture companies). Plus, being kind of rude to locals while simultaneously telling us how much they love it here/ how much they hate it here when we did not ask
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