Netflix’s new Christmas movie makes me wonder if women are okay

Netflix, getting started eat Hallmarks lunch as a nice little dessert after it already is had everyone else’shas a few new original Christmas movies at the top of the streamer’s most popular list right now. These are genre games aimed squarely at Christmas movie fans that tackle all the expected clichés. One, The merry gentlemenis about a woman who saves her parents’ small-town music venue by staging a men’s revue, à la Magic Mike. But I’m here to talk about the other, Hot Frostywhich has reached no. 1 on Netflix and has become a bit of a viral sensation that honestly makes me wonder if women are okay.

IN Hot FrostyLacey Chabert (most recently from Hallmark, where she did over 30 Christmas movies) plays a young widow, Kathy Barrett, whose husband has died of cancer, and who in her grief has let her house slowly fall apart. (This is a Christmas movie, so “falling apart” means the furnace is broken, there’s a leak in the roof, and there’s a hole in a step on the stairs. The exterior still looks beautiful.) Kathy, Driver the local diner, of course, an establishment located naturally in the adorable center of her small town. The diner seems to be doing okay – at least it’s well attended – but you can tell by her interactions with her co-workers that she’s a woman on autopilot.

All this changes when Kathy accepts the gift of a red scarf from a kind older friend and thrift store owner who promises that all she has to do to meet someone new is put herself out there. “Good things come to you when you’re out in the cold,” says the friend with a wink. This line foreshadows what will end up happening next ie not that Kathy wears the scarf to a bar and meets a man (that wouldn’t be very Christmassy!), but rather that she puts the scarf around the neck of an absurdly hunky snowman someone made as an entry for the town’s snow sculpture contest. She takes a picture with her iPhone and then goes home to sleep.

In a swirl of icy glitter, the snowman comes to life, and it turns out that it was Dustin Milligan who played the hot vet on Schitt’s Creek. Milligan spends a lot of time in this film with her stomach out, a fact that (as connoisseurs of this genre would say) makes this film a bit “spicier” than some other Christmas films. In fact, once the snowman is “born”, he only wears the scarf, which magically stays in front of his crotch as he moves around and learns about his new body. This snowman – he calls himself Jack, after the patch on a set of work clothes he takes from the same thrift store – is born with a deep and abiding loyalty to Kathy, the one who brought him to life.

Part of the case regarding Hot Frosty is that you shouldn’t think too much about Jack’s biology (that’s just movie magic) or motivation. He is here for Kathy. There is an expression in romanticism used to describe very supportive and friendly heroes: cinnamon roll. These are guys whose gentle nature is their appeal. In movies and TV, think pure cuties like Kristoff from Frozenor Peter Kavinsky from To all the boys I’ve loved before series. But this trope can go way too far and you end up with simple heroes like Buddy Elfwho has one 6 year old brain but still get a romance story, or my personal least favorite, the brain-bleached baby that True blood‘s anti-hero vampire Viking Eric (Alexander Skarsgård) comes into being after losing his memory due to a witch’s curse. (God, I hated seeing him cinnamon roll like that, needing someone to take him in and babysit him, wearing basketball shorts on the couch watching TV at Sookie’s house. But I digress!)

IN Hot Frostythe “newborn” Jack’s innocence and enthusiasm knows no bounds. He learns things from the television, like how to repair a roof and how to cook. He’s up on the roof, not wearing a shirt, because he can’t get too hot because (I have to remind you!) he’s a snowman. He is confused by the reaction of an elderly lady who sees him on the roof and runs over a curb because he is so hot. He doesn’t seem to understand what sex is, and there’s a funny sequence where Jack offers to push the elderly lady from behind to get her car off the curb. (She enthusiastically agrees, and the humor in the scene comes from Jack’s ignorance.) He helps middle schoolers dress up for a holiday dance and is super into it. In her rapt excitement over Jack’s antics and her protectiveness of him when the sheriff (Craig Robinson) puts him in jail to make a law-and-order statement to his constituents, Kathy reminds you of none other than a mother who have a very precocious and adorable preschooler.

In the end, Jack somehow (don’t think too hard) turns into a real man, and Kathy and Jack start a new chapter in their lives. Because it’s Kathy herself who finally fixes the oven, you have to think to yourself, She’s out of her hole. She’ll be fine. It only took caring for, and falling in love with, a creepy underworld blank slate of a man to do the trick. “Is this a Jesus movie?” Rachel Handler askedtongue on the scales, on Vulture. I am more inclined to agree with this assessment, from @towerofgrog on Xwho points out that a lot of “cheesy, fun media, especially holiday media” for women is “based on the premise, ‘What if there was a really attractive man who wasn’t socialized like normal men at all?’ ” Not to get too violent about that kind of fluff, but that’s exactly what it is Hot Frosty is. Jack never would appointed to Donald Trump’s cabinet! He has no history. He is the perfect man.

But Hot Frosty will also please Netflix viewers who like abs and Schitt’s Creekand Netflix viewers who like Christmas movies and Netflix viewers who will find it really funny The office‘s Robinson and Brooklyn Nine-NineJoe Lo Truglio plays the small-town sheriff and deputy, respectively, and Netflix viewers enjoy Easter eggs, as does Chabert’s character, who glimpses a Lindsay Lohan Netflix Christmas movie on TV and says, “It looks like someone I went to high school with.” If Hot Frosty‘s popularity is any indicator, more of this will come. Maybe next time the next Kathy will drape her scarf over a pumpkin pie.