Vintage: Hallmark 2020
Summary: Aunt Dee splits her candy shop between her niece, Maggie, and maple farmer, Dex. Following letters Dee left, the two uncover the reason for her decision, during the Sweet Autumn festival.
Cast Member Prestige: Nikki DeLoach has an IMDB page a mile long, but the only entry on it that matters is her 1993 stint on the Disney Channel’s New Mickey Mouse Club. Andrew Walker is a Hallmark Guy.
Action:
We open, as all the best Hallmark films do, with a memory. Picture it: Brattleboro, Vermont, circa 1990. Our heroine Maggie is but a wee child, frolicking outside with her sister Jodi. The girls’ caretaker, Aunt Dee, is doing some kind of “trial run” of selling her homemade candy right there on the lawn. Maggie and Jodi toodle meaningfully with a wooden music box of some kind. We’re meant to intuit that the box is somehow special, although we don’t yet understand how or why. (Spoiler: we will never understand how or why.)
Flash to the present: Adult Maggie dines outdoors at a Minneapolis bistro, accompanied by a besuited man, Jonathan. Maggie and Jonathan are, as it turns out, investment brokers, and they are waiting on a lunch meeting with “Ella” of the extremely creatively named “Ella’s Pumpkin Patch.” When Ella arrives, Maggie immediately goes hard, cooing about the infinite possibilities of “expanding Ella’s Pumpkin Patch to the world.” Ella looks dubious, probably because she realizes that her business is [checks notes] a PATCH OF PUMPKINS.
We cut to a handsome man on a motorcycle, riding along a path that appears to be made entirely of autumn leaves. This is Dex, our hero. Dex pulls his motorcycle up to a business called Aunt Dee’s Candy Shoppe, goes inside, and banters with the Hallmark Token POC staffing the counter, Zack. As it turns out, the annual Sweet Autumn Festival is coming up, and the guys are excited. You know how guys are in the fall.
Now we cut back to Maggie’s lunch meeting, where Maggie is sharing her expansion ideas for Ella’s Pumpkin Patch: pumpkin coffee, pumpkin candles, etc. “You’ve really thought of everything,” says Ella, (has she?) “BUT” Sounds like Ella has decided she wants to keep the business small, family owned and operated. She backs out of the deal. Afterwards, Jonathan is angry but Maggie is calm. She’s going home to Vermont for the Sweet Autumn Festival and for the reading of her late Aunt Dee’s will, she tells him, and she will figure everything out as soon as she gets back. “Have a maple bite,” she says, and hands him a small wrapped candy.
I want a maple bite.
Maggie arrives in Vermont, where she finds that her sister Jodi has taken over the reigns of the Sweet Autumn Festival from the late Aunt Dee, who passed away 6 months ago. Jodi’s sharing the responsibility with Aunt Dee’s neighbor Dex – does Maggie remember him? Maggie does not. Hey, but guess what? Later on that day, when Maggie is walking around town and trying to take a phone call, she is distracted by the loud sounds of some hot asshole trying to get his motorcycle to start up. What an inconsiderate stranger, amIright? Oh well, not relevant, have another maple bite, time to go see about Aunt Dee’s will…
… which is a VIDEO narrated from the grave by Aunt Dee herself. Is this an actual thing that people do? Jodi presses play for the assembled crowd and dead Aunt Dee appears on screen, looking healthy and lovely, immediately chastising the living for crying. “A smile is a curve that can set things straight,” she live/laugh/loves. Maggie turns her head at the sound of a latecomer entering the back of the room and YOU GUYS it’s the hot motorcycle asshole! Maggie leans over to Jodi, all “who’s that?” and Jodi tells her “that’s Dex!” Aunt Dee leaves her motorcycles (ok Aunt Dee!) to Dex’s dad, her home to Maggie and Jodi, and her candy shop to Maggie and… Dex. Everyone, Dex included, is like WUH?
After the will reading, Maggie and Jodi chat. Jodi says that Dex and his dad moved onto the nearby maple farm a few years ago and became like family to Aunt Dee. Maggie is like what am I supposed to do with half a business? Jodi says “Aunt Dee doesn’t do anything by accident.”
Maggie finds a packet of brown paper envelopes left for her from Aunt Dee: one marked “Read me first,” followed by a series labeled Day 1, Day 2, and so on. The note in the first envelope instructs Maggie to open one envelope each day on the corresponding day of the Sweet Autumn Festival. “It’s not too late,” Aunt Dee writes, “for us to spend the festival together.”
The festival kicks off with predictable angst, Dex and Maggie haggling over the future of the candy shop at the opening ceremony. “You don’t know the business like I do,” Dex pouts. “Well I think Aunt Dee would want to take her business nationwide, which is MY expertise,” Maggie business-ladies. They are interrupted by Jodi at a podium, welcoming everyone to the festival. Maggie stomps away and calls Jonathan, telling him about being left half the business. Jonathan is intrigued – could this be an investment opportunity? “I will bring you a deal, one way or another,” Maggie promises. They hang up, then Maggie opens her Day 1 envelope from Aunt Dee. It reads: “Slow down like molasses, or in this case like maple syrup. Rediscover the art of maple sugaring.” I don’t get it.
But Maggie gets it! She sees on the festival schedule that Dex is hosting a maple syrup tapping demo on his farm and she makes a beeline. Dex asks her: “So city girl, you ever tap a tree?” Maggie is all, um, I don’t know, you clearly drove holes into the wrong side of these trees and now you won’t get maximum sap flowage but whatever, please share your wisdom. Dex is sputtery, all “it’s just a demo! For the kids!” Maggie smiles, asks him if they can talk. “I think we got off on the wrong foot. Clearly you meant a lot to my Aunt Dee” She proposes they spend some time getting to know each other. He agrees. They shake on it.
Later that evening, Dex discovers his own set of Aunt Dee envelopes! Dead Aunt Dee is crafty! Dex opens the first one and reads: “Keep this close to your heart as a symbol of what we’ve started together. It’s up to you to unlock the future.” In the envelope with the letter is a key.
The next morning, Maggie opens her Day 2 envelope. “Working in the shop with you brought me such joy. Relive those days with me and don’t forget to be a team player.” Maggie, following orders, shows up at the candy shop. “Good morning partner,” she chirps, announcing to Dex that she thinks Aunt Dee would want her to work in the shop this week. “You seem pretty confident about what Aunt Dee would’ve wanted,” snarls Dex. They argue (again) over whether or not Aunt Dee would have wanted to expand her business or stay small. “I’m gonna be here all week - why don’t we just try and embrace this and work together?”
Later, after a day presumably spent candy-ing, Dex is in his dark and lonely house and opens one of his Dead Aunt Dee envelopes. It reads: “Frustration comes with every worthy endeavor. Keep pushing through and when you need inspiration you know where to go.” Across town, Maggie opens one of her own: “Inspiration can only find you when you’re out looking, because inspiration is looking too.” That’s just word salad, Dead Aunt Dee.
But not to Maggie and Dex! They both head out immediately to grab a bite at the Inspiration Cafe – thanks, Dead Aunt Dee – where they are seated together, order drinks, and both re-emphasize their respective stances on the future of Aunt Dee’s business. Dex tells Maggie all about how Aunt Dee championed his maple farming, and Maggie describes her business in return. “You and I both know how great those candies are,” Maggie stresses. “Why not share them with as many people as possible. What do you say?”
Dex gazes at her across the table, then says: “Do you fish?” Dex! So random!
Cut to the most autumnal fishing scene ever. Maggie and Dex cast lines into some kind of creek that is literally surrounded by red and orange trees. They wax nostalgic about Dead Aunt Dee. You’ll never guess, but Dead Aunt Dee always disapproved of both Maggie’s and Dex’s previous partners! Then they both catch a fish at the exact same moment, like, that’s not how fishing works, but ok.
Back in town, Maggie runs into Dex’s dad, who tells her that it’s Dex’s birthday. So….naturally, that evening Dex comes home to find Maggie in his kitchen, serving up some kind of maple cake with his dad. Dad spills that Dex has a Big Top-Secret Dream, and Maggie begs to know what it is, and Dex demures and protests, and finally Dad spills it: Dex… wants to bottle and sell his maple syrup.
Like… he’s a maple farmer? Isn’t that kind of the whole point?
Maggie is like “wow, that’s so great!” but Dex is all “it’s just a little dream, it will never happen.” Maggie and Dex decide they should enter the Sweet Autumn Festival candy competition together, teaming up to create a brand new candy flavor. Maggie leaves, then takes out her cell phone and calls Zack, mysteriously: “Sorry to call so late, but I need a favor…”
What’s the favor, you ask? When Dex comes in to the candy shop the next morning, Maggie and Zack are there to greet him with, surprise, a website offering pre-orders of his bottled maple syrup! Dex makes curmudgeon face. “It’s all happening too fast,” he ungratefully whines, and then he bolts, saying he has to help his father with the taffy demo on the farm.
Maggie won’t take no for an answer. She follows him to the taffy demo, thrusting her phone into Dex’s face to show him all the interest already generated by the new website, specifically five pre-orders and an “inquiry from Middlebury” to supply syrup for their farmer’s market.
Dex is all “wait, there are orders already?” and HARD AGREE, DEX. Vermont farmers’ markets are notoriously hard up for maple-themed products and would definitely be on the lookout for unestablished home-bottled syrup peddlers with prepubescent websites, this all makes complete and total sense.
Anyway, it doesn’t matter because the next thing Dex does is pour hot syrup over a trough of ice like Ma in Little House in the Big Woods and then guides Maggie’s hand as she twirls said syrup into taffy and I have forgiven all previous plot contrivances. Afterwards, they get on Dexs motorcycle and ride off through trees so autumnal they are basically fluorescent, arriving at some kind of clearing filled with wooden furniture where apparently Dead Aunt Dee used to take Maggie when she was a kid. Coincidence: Dead Aunt Dee *also* used to take Dex here for great conversations. Dex and Maggie sit and gaze at each other.
Maggie’s phone buzzes and it’s a text from her investment broker partner Jonathan: “Time’s almost up. How goes with the maple guy?” Dex hears the buzz and asks what’s up, but Maggie replies that it’s “just a project I might have to give up on.” It just doesn’t feel right anymore, she says. Dead Aunt Dee always encouraged her to go out and achieve her dreams, but lately Maggie feels like she’s just not fulfilled. “When you work so much, it’s hard to see it,” she Hallmarks. Dex is moved; they kiss.
The next morning at the candy shop, Maggie opens another Aunt Dee note. It reads: “When someone you love becomes a memory, the memory becomes a treasure. Share your treasures with those you love.” Wut. Dex walks in. They pointedly avoid discussing yesterday’s kiss, opting instead to focus on coming up with their entry for the festival candy contest. Candy montage!! There’s a bunch of flirty stirring and flirty measuring, all set to music, and at the end of it our candy connoisseurs have created a “maple chocolate with just a hint of pumpkin spice.” I mean, no. But also yes.
Dex goes to clean up. Jodi walks in and says “Looks like you two are getting along.” Maggie starts sputtering nonsense and Jodi is all YOU KISSED HIM. Maggie protests at first and then admits it.
Then they all leave the candy shop and go on a daytime hayride that’s filled with adults, which is something I feel confident does not exist. Am I wrong? Has anyone experienced a hayride in the daylight where sober grownups just, like, go for a ride?
Anyway. We’re back at the candy shop and Dex and Maggie are making eyes at each other over cups of coffee. “About the kiss,” Dex starts, and then he and Maggie talk over each other, doing a lot of “You go” – “No, you go” – and then a third voice interrupts out of nowhere and says “OK I’LL GO” and oh look, it’s investment broker Jonathan! “I’ve been thinking about your co-owner problem and I have ideas,” Jonathan announces. Dex looks shocked and hurt.
Jonathan starts spouting off about his plan for expanding Aunt Dee’s candy empire. “Do you have any idea how big the international market is for Vermont maple syrup? Aunt Dee’s face will be everywhere! She’ll be everyone’s Aunt Dee!” Dex is all accusatory, asking Maggie: “Did you have anything to do with this?” Jonathan is all of course she did! Dex storms out, saying he needs some air.
Maggie is mad. “You put this together behind my back?” she shouts. Jonathan is confused: he thought he was doing something nice for them, and that she would be happy and grateful. Maggie calms down and explains that this isn’t what Aunt Dee would’ve wanted. Jonathan says he understands, and then slinks off to his AirB&B.
Maggie runs off to find Dex. She assures him that she was not trying to go behind his back, admitting that she did go to Jonathan at first but then, as the week went by, she started to want to honor Dex’s dreams for Aunt Dee’s company. Now, she says, she doesn’t know what the right thing to do is. Dex says “I think I do.” He hands her a stack of paperwork and says he is selling her his half of the business and stepping away.
Does… he just have an attorney on retainer? Who, like, lives in his back pocket? Because HOW? This all happened in the span of three and a half minutes.
Dex and his dad have a heart to heart. Dex doesn’t really want to lose the candy shop, but he also doesn’t want to get in the way of Maggie’s dreams. Dad encourages Dex to tell Maggie how he feels. Dex agrees. And as it turns out, so does Dead Aunt Dee! Dex opens his last letter, which reads: “Now it’s your turn. Write a letter to someone special to you. Be vulnerable and express your true feelings.” Behind the note is a blank piece of stationary, which is a classy touch, Aunt Dee.
Cut to Maggie coming home to find Dex’s envelope sitting on her front porch. She opens it to find Dex’s bizarrely childlike handwriting spelling out this message: “I trust you to take over the shop. Holding onto little things matters much more. Laugh, memories… even a token from Aunt Dee, which she asked me to keep close.”
OK so this is where I get lost, because A) this note makes zero sense, just as a basic sentiment, and B) it *definitely* makes no sense as some kind of secret code that makes Maggie realize that the “token” Aunt Dee gave to Dex is the key to the special music box from the movie’s opening scene. I feel like my Hallmark interpretation skills are well honed and extremely on point. Were there deleted scenes? Did I get up to refill my pumpkin spice beverage and miss, like, half a plotline?
Maggie runs to Dex’s house but he isn’t there. His dad is, though, and he tells Maggie that Dex took off on his bike, needing time to think. Maggie is all “I know exactly where he went, having known him for 5 whole days,” and so Dex’s dad does the logical thing and offers her the use of his motorcycle, no questions asked, and off she whirs.
She finds Dex at the clearing and runs to him, saying. “I got your letter. You were right. [omg, about WHAT? That note said NOTHING] It is the little things. But it’s also the big things. Being home, with family, in Dee’s house, in her shop, being reminded of everything I love. I was a closed book. Until you. You can do anything you want with the shop. I just don't want to lose you.”
Make it make sense.
Maggie has brought the music box along with her. She tells Dex that it’s clear that Aunt Dee was trying to bring them together. Dex reaches into his pocket for the key, but it’s not there. He’s lost it! Dex is forlorn but Maggie says it doesn’t matter. “We found what we were supposed to find: each other.”
But then – again, inexplicably – Maggie remembers that, hey, Aunt Dee always had a spare for everything, and, hey, there is a poem on the inside of the music box that matches a poem that Aunt Dee has framed in her office, and so Nancy Drew and Encyclopedia Brown head straight there and find the backup key because of course they do. They insert the key into the music box, unleashing both a melody and a wrapped maple candy bearing a personalized note from Dead Aunt Dee inside the wrapper. I know we’re supposed to find this sweet, but I”m sorry, it’s just factually unsettling.
Maggie calls Jonathan, who is still in town for some reason, and tells him they have a business proposition for him, which they announce to great fanfare later that evening, at the festival. Maggie and Dex are planning to expand Aunt Dee’s Candy Shoppe to… get this… online sales. Not just any online sales, though. Online sales THROUGH A WEBSITE.
I wish I were kidding, but Token POC Zack is all “I have so many ideas for the website,” and Dex is like “yeah, it will be just like browsing in the shop…” and Zack bursts in, elated: “But from ANYWHERE!” The assembled crowd murmurs with excitement, because Brattleboro Vermont is a pristine wilderness as of yet untouched by Al Gore’s Internet.
Everyone disperses to enjoy the festival. Maggie and Dex gaze lustily at each other. “Good job partner,” says Dex. “Back at you, partner,” coos Maggie. They share a kiss (kind of a horny one by Hallmark standards, to be honest) and then ride away on a motorcycle. Fin.
Cast Member Prestige: Nikki DeLoach has an IMDB page a mile long, but the only entry on it that matters is her 1993 stint on the Disney Channel’s New Mickey Mouse Club. Andrew Walker is a Hallmark Guy.
Action:
We open, as all the best Hallmark films do, with a memory. Picture it: Brattleboro, Vermont, circa 1990. Our heroine Maggie is but a wee child, frolicking outside with her sister Jodi. The girls’ caretaker, Aunt Dee, is doing some kind of “trial run” of selling her homemade candy right there on the lawn. Maggie and Jodi toodle meaningfully with a wooden music box of some kind. We’re meant to intuit that the box is somehow special, although we don’t yet understand how or why. (Spoiler: we will never understand how or why.)
Flash to the present: Adult Maggie dines outdoors at a Minneapolis bistro, accompanied by a besuited man, Jonathan. Maggie and Jonathan are, as it turns out, investment brokers, and they are waiting on a lunch meeting with “Ella” of the extremely creatively named “Ella’s Pumpkin Patch.” When Ella arrives, Maggie immediately goes hard, cooing about the infinite possibilities of “expanding Ella’s Pumpkin Patch to the world.” Ella looks dubious, probably because she realizes that her business is [checks notes] a PATCH OF PUMPKINS.
We cut to a handsome man on a motorcycle, riding along a path that appears to be made entirely of autumn leaves. This is Dex, our hero. Dex pulls his motorcycle up to a business called Aunt Dee’s Candy Shoppe, goes inside, and banters with the Hallmark Token POC staffing the counter, Zack. As it turns out, the annual Sweet Autumn Festival is coming up, and the guys are excited. You know how guys are in the fall.
Now we cut back to Maggie’s lunch meeting, where Maggie is sharing her expansion ideas for Ella’s Pumpkin Patch: pumpkin coffee, pumpkin candles, etc. “You’ve really thought of everything,” says Ella, (has she?) “BUT” Sounds like Ella has decided she wants to keep the business small, family owned and operated. She backs out of the deal. Afterwards, Jonathan is angry but Maggie is calm. She’s going home to Vermont for the Sweet Autumn Festival and for the reading of her late Aunt Dee’s will, she tells him, and she will figure everything out as soon as she gets back. “Have a maple bite,” she says, and hands him a small wrapped candy.
I want a maple bite.
Maggie arrives in Vermont, where she finds that her sister Jodi has taken over the reigns of the Sweet Autumn Festival from the late Aunt Dee, who passed away 6 months ago. Jodi’s sharing the responsibility with Aunt Dee’s neighbor Dex – does Maggie remember him? Maggie does not. Hey, but guess what? Later on that day, when Maggie is walking around town and trying to take a phone call, she is distracted by the loud sounds of some hot asshole trying to get his motorcycle to start up. What an inconsiderate stranger, amIright? Oh well, not relevant, have another maple bite, time to go see about Aunt Dee’s will…
… which is a VIDEO narrated from the grave by Aunt Dee herself. Is this an actual thing that people do? Jodi presses play for the assembled crowd and dead Aunt Dee appears on screen, looking healthy and lovely, immediately chastising the living for crying. “A smile is a curve that can set things straight,” she live/laugh/loves. Maggie turns her head at the sound of a latecomer entering the back of the room and YOU GUYS it’s the hot motorcycle asshole! Maggie leans over to Jodi, all “who’s that?” and Jodi tells her “that’s Dex!” Aunt Dee leaves her motorcycles (ok Aunt Dee!) to Dex’s dad, her home to Maggie and Jodi, and her candy shop to Maggie and… Dex. Everyone, Dex included, is like WUH?
After the will reading, Maggie and Jodi chat. Jodi says that Dex and his dad moved onto the nearby maple farm a few years ago and became like family to Aunt Dee. Maggie is like what am I supposed to do with half a business? Jodi says “Aunt Dee doesn’t do anything by accident.”
Maggie finds a packet of brown paper envelopes left for her from Aunt Dee: one marked “Read me first,” followed by a series labeled Day 1, Day 2, and so on. The note in the first envelope instructs Maggie to open one envelope each day on the corresponding day of the Sweet Autumn Festival. “It’s not too late,” Aunt Dee writes, “for us to spend the festival together.”
The festival kicks off with predictable angst, Dex and Maggie haggling over the future of the candy shop at the opening ceremony. “You don’t know the business like I do,” Dex pouts. “Well I think Aunt Dee would want to take her business nationwide, which is MY expertise,” Maggie business-ladies. They are interrupted by Jodi at a podium, welcoming everyone to the festival. Maggie stomps away and calls Jonathan, telling him about being left half the business. Jonathan is intrigued – could this be an investment opportunity? “I will bring you a deal, one way or another,” Maggie promises. They hang up, then Maggie opens her Day 1 envelope from Aunt Dee. It reads: “Slow down like molasses, or in this case like maple syrup. Rediscover the art of maple sugaring.” I don’t get it.
But Maggie gets it! She sees on the festival schedule that Dex is hosting a maple syrup tapping demo on his farm and she makes a beeline. Dex asks her: “So city girl, you ever tap a tree?” Maggie is all, um, I don’t know, you clearly drove holes into the wrong side of these trees and now you won’t get maximum sap flowage but whatever, please share your wisdom. Dex is sputtery, all “it’s just a demo! For the kids!” Maggie smiles, asks him if they can talk. “I think we got off on the wrong foot. Clearly you meant a lot to my Aunt Dee” She proposes they spend some time getting to know each other. He agrees. They shake on it.
Later that evening, Dex discovers his own set of Aunt Dee envelopes! Dead Aunt Dee is crafty! Dex opens the first one and reads: “Keep this close to your heart as a symbol of what we’ve started together. It’s up to you to unlock the future.” In the envelope with the letter is a key.
The next morning, Maggie opens her Day 2 envelope. “Working in the shop with you brought me such joy. Relive those days with me and don’t forget to be a team player.” Maggie, following orders, shows up at the candy shop. “Good morning partner,” she chirps, announcing to Dex that she thinks Aunt Dee would want her to work in the shop this week. “You seem pretty confident about what Aunt Dee would’ve wanted,” snarls Dex. They argue (again) over whether or not Aunt Dee would have wanted to expand her business or stay small. “I’m gonna be here all week - why don’t we just try and embrace this and work together?”
Later, after a day presumably spent candy-ing, Dex is in his dark and lonely house and opens one of his Dead Aunt Dee envelopes. It reads: “Frustration comes with every worthy endeavor. Keep pushing through and when you need inspiration you know where to go.” Across town, Maggie opens one of her own: “Inspiration can only find you when you’re out looking, because inspiration is looking too.” That’s just word salad, Dead Aunt Dee.
But not to Maggie and Dex! They both head out immediately to grab a bite at the Inspiration Cafe – thanks, Dead Aunt Dee – where they are seated together, order drinks, and both re-emphasize their respective stances on the future of Aunt Dee’s business. Dex tells Maggie all about how Aunt Dee championed his maple farming, and Maggie describes her business in return. “You and I both know how great those candies are,” Maggie stresses. “Why not share them with as many people as possible. What do you say?”
Dex gazes at her across the table, then says: “Do you fish?” Dex! So random!
Cut to the most autumnal fishing scene ever. Maggie and Dex cast lines into some kind of creek that is literally surrounded by red and orange trees. They wax nostalgic about Dead Aunt Dee. You’ll never guess, but Dead Aunt Dee always disapproved of both Maggie’s and Dex’s previous partners! Then they both catch a fish at the exact same moment, like, that’s not how fishing works, but ok.
Back in town, Maggie runs into Dex’s dad, who tells her that it’s Dex’s birthday. So….naturally, that evening Dex comes home to find Maggie in his kitchen, serving up some kind of maple cake with his dad. Dad spills that Dex has a Big Top-Secret Dream, and Maggie begs to know what it is, and Dex demures and protests, and finally Dad spills it: Dex… wants to bottle and sell his maple syrup.
Like… he’s a maple farmer? Isn’t that kind of the whole point?
Maggie is like “wow, that’s so great!” but Dex is all “it’s just a little dream, it will never happen.” Maggie and Dex decide they should enter the Sweet Autumn Festival candy competition together, teaming up to create a brand new candy flavor. Maggie leaves, then takes out her cell phone and calls Zack, mysteriously: “Sorry to call so late, but I need a favor…”
What’s the favor, you ask? When Dex comes in to the candy shop the next morning, Maggie and Zack are there to greet him with, surprise, a website offering pre-orders of his bottled maple syrup! Dex makes curmudgeon face. “It’s all happening too fast,” he ungratefully whines, and then he bolts, saying he has to help his father with the taffy demo on the farm.
Maggie won’t take no for an answer. She follows him to the taffy demo, thrusting her phone into Dex’s face to show him all the interest already generated by the new website, specifically five pre-orders and an “inquiry from Middlebury” to supply syrup for their farmer’s market.
Dex is all “wait, there are orders already?” and HARD AGREE, DEX. Vermont farmers’ markets are notoriously hard up for maple-themed products and would definitely be on the lookout for unestablished home-bottled syrup peddlers with prepubescent websites, this all makes complete and total sense.
Anyway, it doesn’t matter because the next thing Dex does is pour hot syrup over a trough of ice like Ma in Little House in the Big Woods and then guides Maggie’s hand as she twirls said syrup into taffy and I have forgiven all previous plot contrivances. Afterwards, they get on Dexs motorcycle and ride off through trees so autumnal they are basically fluorescent, arriving at some kind of clearing filled with wooden furniture where apparently Dead Aunt Dee used to take Maggie when she was a kid. Coincidence: Dead Aunt Dee *also* used to take Dex here for great conversations. Dex and Maggie sit and gaze at each other.
Maggie’s phone buzzes and it’s a text from her investment broker partner Jonathan: “Time’s almost up. How goes with the maple guy?” Dex hears the buzz and asks what’s up, but Maggie replies that it’s “just a project I might have to give up on.” It just doesn’t feel right anymore, she says. Dead Aunt Dee always encouraged her to go out and achieve her dreams, but lately Maggie feels like she’s just not fulfilled. “When you work so much, it’s hard to see it,” she Hallmarks. Dex is moved; they kiss.
The next morning at the candy shop, Maggie opens another Aunt Dee note. It reads: “When someone you love becomes a memory, the memory becomes a treasure. Share your treasures with those you love.” Wut. Dex walks in. They pointedly avoid discussing yesterday’s kiss, opting instead to focus on coming up with their entry for the festival candy contest. Candy montage!! There’s a bunch of flirty stirring and flirty measuring, all set to music, and at the end of it our candy connoisseurs have created a “maple chocolate with just a hint of pumpkin spice.” I mean, no. But also yes.
Dex goes to clean up. Jodi walks in and says “Looks like you two are getting along.” Maggie starts sputtering nonsense and Jodi is all YOU KISSED HIM. Maggie protests at first and then admits it.
Then they all leave the candy shop and go on a daytime hayride that’s filled with adults, which is something I feel confident does not exist. Am I wrong? Has anyone experienced a hayride in the daylight where sober grownups just, like, go for a ride?
Anyway. We’re back at the candy shop and Dex and Maggie are making eyes at each other over cups of coffee. “About the kiss,” Dex starts, and then he and Maggie talk over each other, doing a lot of “You go” – “No, you go” – and then a third voice interrupts out of nowhere and says “OK I’LL GO” and oh look, it’s investment broker Jonathan! “I’ve been thinking about your co-owner problem and I have ideas,” Jonathan announces. Dex looks shocked and hurt.
Jonathan starts spouting off about his plan for expanding Aunt Dee’s candy empire. “Do you have any idea how big the international market is for Vermont maple syrup? Aunt Dee’s face will be everywhere! She’ll be everyone’s Aunt Dee!” Dex is all accusatory, asking Maggie: “Did you have anything to do with this?” Jonathan is all of course she did! Dex storms out, saying he needs some air.
Maggie is mad. “You put this together behind my back?” she shouts. Jonathan is confused: he thought he was doing something nice for them, and that she would be happy and grateful. Maggie calms down and explains that this isn’t what Aunt Dee would’ve wanted. Jonathan says he understands, and then slinks off to his AirB&B.
Maggie runs off to find Dex. She assures him that she was not trying to go behind his back, admitting that she did go to Jonathan at first but then, as the week went by, she started to want to honor Dex’s dreams for Aunt Dee’s company. Now, she says, she doesn’t know what the right thing to do is. Dex says “I think I do.” He hands her a stack of paperwork and says he is selling her his half of the business and stepping away.
Does… he just have an attorney on retainer? Who, like, lives in his back pocket? Because HOW? This all happened in the span of three and a half minutes.
Dex and his dad have a heart to heart. Dex doesn’t really want to lose the candy shop, but he also doesn’t want to get in the way of Maggie’s dreams. Dad encourages Dex to tell Maggie how he feels. Dex agrees. And as it turns out, so does Dead Aunt Dee! Dex opens his last letter, which reads: “Now it’s your turn. Write a letter to someone special to you. Be vulnerable and express your true feelings.” Behind the note is a blank piece of stationary, which is a classy touch, Aunt Dee.
Cut to Maggie coming home to find Dex’s envelope sitting on her front porch. She opens it to find Dex’s bizarrely childlike handwriting spelling out this message: “I trust you to take over the shop. Holding onto little things matters much more. Laugh, memories… even a token from Aunt Dee, which she asked me to keep close.”
OK so this is where I get lost, because A) this note makes zero sense, just as a basic sentiment, and B) it *definitely* makes no sense as some kind of secret code that makes Maggie realize that the “token” Aunt Dee gave to Dex is the key to the special music box from the movie’s opening scene. I feel like my Hallmark interpretation skills are well honed and extremely on point. Were there deleted scenes? Did I get up to refill my pumpkin spice beverage and miss, like, half a plotline?
Maggie runs to Dex’s house but he isn’t there. His dad is, though, and he tells Maggie that Dex took off on his bike, needing time to think. Maggie is all “I know exactly where he went, having known him for 5 whole days,” and so Dex’s dad does the logical thing and offers her the use of his motorcycle, no questions asked, and off she whirs.
She finds Dex at the clearing and runs to him, saying. “I got your letter. You were right. [omg, about WHAT? That note said NOTHING] It is the little things. But it’s also the big things. Being home, with family, in Dee’s house, in her shop, being reminded of everything I love. I was a closed book. Until you. You can do anything you want with the shop. I just don't want to lose you.”
Make it make sense.
Maggie has brought the music box along with her. She tells Dex that it’s clear that Aunt Dee was trying to bring them together. Dex reaches into his pocket for the key, but it’s not there. He’s lost it! Dex is forlorn but Maggie says it doesn’t matter. “We found what we were supposed to find: each other.”
But then – again, inexplicably – Maggie remembers that, hey, Aunt Dee always had a spare for everything, and, hey, there is a poem on the inside of the music box that matches a poem that Aunt Dee has framed in her office, and so Nancy Drew and Encyclopedia Brown head straight there and find the backup key because of course they do. They insert the key into the music box, unleashing both a melody and a wrapped maple candy bearing a personalized note from Dead Aunt Dee inside the wrapper. I know we’re supposed to find this sweet, but I”m sorry, it’s just factually unsettling.
Maggie calls Jonathan, who is still in town for some reason, and tells him they have a business proposition for him, which they announce to great fanfare later that evening, at the festival. Maggie and Dex are planning to expand Aunt Dee’s Candy Shoppe to… get this… online sales. Not just any online sales, though. Online sales THROUGH A WEBSITE.
I wish I were kidding, but Token POC Zack is all “I have so many ideas for the website,” and Dex is like “yeah, it will be just like browsing in the shop…” and Zack bursts in, elated: “But from ANYWHERE!” The assembled crowd murmurs with excitement, because Brattleboro Vermont is a pristine wilderness as of yet untouched by Al Gore’s Internet.
Everyone disperses to enjoy the festival. Maggie and Dex gaze lustily at each other. “Good job partner,” says Dex. “Back at you, partner,” coos Maggie. They share a kiss (kind of a horny one by Hallmark standards, to be honest) and then ride away on a motorcycle. Fin.
Love this, But do they win the candy contest?
ReplyDeleteHallmarking as a verb!
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