Pumpkin Pie Wars

Vintage: Hallmark, 2016

Hallmark-approved summary: Ten years ago, Faye and Lydia each opened their own bakeries in Emeryville, Ohio, after a personal and professional fall-out during a local Pumpkin Pie contest. Now their children, and co-workers, Casey and Sam, are set to carry on the rivalry as they go head-to-head in the same contest. There's only one problem for these two people who are supposed to hate each other: they start to fall in love.

Actual summary: OMG This one is so boring.

Cast member prestige: Female lead Julie Gonzalo has actually been in a lot of stuff (Veronica Mars, the Dallas reboot, Supergirl), which is… weird? Because she’s fully terrible in this? Male lead Rico Aragon -- credited here as Eric Aragon, say it out loud and you’ll see why he changed it -- is, according to IMDB, known for something called “I Live With Models.” So.

Hallmark Man Has Hallmark Job: Sam Harper is a London-trained “professional chef” who for some reason works in his mom’s bakery.

The action:

You guys, this one is bad.

We open on the finals at Emeryville, Ohio’s annual Pumpkin Pie Contest. Former best friends Faye McCarthy and Lydia Harper are furiously stirring batter in front of a crowd, bickering out loud the whole time. The two had been planning to open a bakery together -- Faye had even taken out a loan to get things started -- but Lydia bailed and now Faye feels betrayed. They fight; the audience clucks disapprovingly. Women, am I right?

Fast forward 10 years later. Faye owns a bakery called the Sweet Shop, and her grown daughter Casey works in the back, “doing the books.” Business is slow; they used to be flooded with customers, back when Faye was the perpetual winner of the Pumpkin Pie contest, but now she’s lost three years in a row. Nobody wants to eat Loser Pie. Faye is working on perfecting her recipe and tells Casey she “has to win this time, especially to beat that traitor Lydia Harper.”

Then Faye goes and falls over a broken step and is doctor-ordered to stay off her feet. This means -- because apparently there are no other actual baking staff at this [checks notes] BAKERY -- the only choice is to have Faye’s daughter Casey, who handles bills and social media, both take over the day to day operations of the Sweet Shop and enter the Pumpkin Pie Contest on her mother’s behalf.

Across town, Faye’s arch-rival Lydia also owns a bakery. Her grown son Sam works there as a baker, but is perpetually nagging his mom to expand the business into a full service restaurant. Lydia says they can’t afford to expand. “I didn’t spend two years at the Cordon Bleu in London to make banana muffins and lemon bars for the rest of my life,” sasses Sam to his employer/mommy.

Lydia hears about Faye’s injury and is stoked, which is definitely an appropriate emotion for an adult woman to have about another adult woman’s misfortune. When she learns that Casey will be entering the bake-off in Faye’s place, Lydia announces to Sam that she wants him to do the same. “It’s your birthright,” she drama-queens. “The feud moves to the next generation.” Sam says he’ll do it only if Lydia agrees to consider his business plan for expanding the bakery. She agrees.

There is a registration meeting for the pumpkin pie contest, which our bakers attend. With their moms. At this meeting we learn that this pumpkin pie contest features two rounds of competition, the first of which entails baking pumpkin bread. I don’t even know. Casey and Sam run into each other after the meeting and trash talk each other.

Our next scene is a montage of failure in which we learn that despite having literally grown up in a bakery, Casey doesn’t know the difference between a mixer and a spoon, how to work a mixer, how to operate an oven, or how to tell between a carving pumpkin and a baking pumpkin. We also learn that Casey has a business degree from Wharton (haaaaaaaaaaaaa) and was offered a job at “that big company in New York” after graduation but turned it down to work for her mom. When Casey sets off the bakery’s smoke alarms trying to roast a pumpkin, Sam sees the smoke and comes to help. They chat; they start to bond. They agree to help each other out, in secret so that they don’t upset their mothers: Casey will help Sam write his business plan if Sam will teach Casey to bake.

What follows is about thirty endless minutes’ worth of filler featuring Casey and Sam alternately cooking, typing, and eventually making out together in dark rooms. All you really need to know is that at one point Sam actually puts his hand over Casey’s to show her how to USE A WHISK like he’s Patrick Swayzee in Ghost, and, like, how is a verbal instruction to “move it in a circle” too complex for a Wharton grad.

Fast forward to the first round of the pumpkin pie contest. In which, again, I remind you that contestants are asked to make bread. Casey and Sam fake fight on the way in to “give the people what they want,” since their moms are in the front row of the packed crowd. They bake, other people bake, and finally three finalists are announced: Sam, Casey, and a woman named Betty, who is a mutual friend of Faye and Lydia.

Turns out Betty is an important character, as she is the one who later comes upon Sam and Casey secretly kissing at the harvest festival and immediately outs them to their mommies. Both Faye and Lydia freak out, but it’s Lydia who takes the drama a step further by asking Sam if perhaps he is only smooching Casey as a strategic move. You know, doing it for the pie. Casey overhears the accusation and is worried, but Sam assures her that this is not the case. As they fret and discuss, local news coverage of the pumpkin pie contest airs on a television screen above their heads. An anchor is interviewing Betty about the pie she’s planning for the final round, and guess what? Betty stole Sam’s recipe AND Casey’s recipe AND she combined them into one unspeakable monstrosity. On camera, Betty flashes a grin that says “I wasn’t even in this movie until 5 minutes ago and suddenly I am the villain, huzzah.”

Sam and Casey go tell their moms about Betty’s evil scheming and detail the revenge plan they’ve devised in response: Sam and Casey will compete in the final round as a duo, and all four of them will team up to come up with an idea for a pumpkin pie to put all other pumpkin pies to shame. Lydia and Faye have a tender bury-the-hatchet moment, and then they all spend the whole night baking.

Gentle readers, I remind you that the entire plot of this 75-year-long movie hinges on the debilitating and pie-contest-disqualifying foot injury of one Faye McCarthy. Who is now… standing on said foot for literal hours. Making pies.

Finally, it’s competition day. Sam and Casey show up as a team and Betty’s pissed about it, but the host assures her it’s all completely above board. They start baking, and Casey notices that Betty’s working from an actual photo of Casey’s handwritten recipe she took on her phone. Gotcha! When Betty presents her final product, Casey calls her on her recipe theft and shows the audience her original recipe AND the photo Betty took of it. Betty denies everything. The host, on stage in front of an actual live audience, asks Betty to give a handwriting sample (!) and Betty recoils, slithering “I just wanted to win.” Betty is disqualified and Sam/Casey are declared the winners. They make out on stage and everyone cheers.

There are probably ten subplots I didn’t even begin to go into. I’m waving at you from the window of the assisted living facility that I had to check myself into after spending several decades writing this recap.

Rating: 1 of 10 pumpkins, for...the presence of cheesecake. Warning for everything else.