Hallmark Movie Channel introduces first ever gay couple

    Marty Blader, Sports EditorJanuary 25, 2023Leave a Comment

    Hallmark+advertised+The+Holiday+Sitter+well+before+it+came+out.

    Emma Fudacz

    Hallmark advertised “The Holiday Sitter” well before it came out.

    The Hallmark Company has a Holiday monopoly with several television networks that consistently play rom-com Christmas movies from the last weekend of Oct., until Jan. 1. The Hallmark movie channel rolled out 31 brand new movies for the 2022 Holiday season, several of them going against the channel’s Christian norms: racially diverse casts, a variety of religions, and new to the channel is starring a gay couple in “The Holiday Sitter.”

    The film starred Sam Dalton, played by Jonathan Bennett, who takes on the role of a last-minute babysitter for his niece and nephew. His lack of experience with children forced him to call in a neighbor, Jason DeVito played by George Krissa, with which he ends up falling in love with.

    “The Holiday Sitter” follows the same movie-making formula as the rest of the Hallmark Channel movies: a busy city worker moves back to a small town; they run into an attractive love interest; they begin to fall in love, but then there’s a conflict; the conflict is resolved, most often at a tree lighting ceremony; and they share a polite kiss as the scene fades out.

    While a cheesy premise, “The Holiday Sitter,” thankfully, follows this same formula because it’s about time that movie-making companies make traditional rom-coms with gay characters as the leading role. The thing that society neglects to recognize is that people want a regular rom-com, that’s just two men that are in love. Nothing else needs to be different.

    The film was not trying to make a political statement on why gay men should be the leading roles, instead, it was just a feel-good movie starring a gay couple. In order for all of society to normalize gay relationships in films, film studios need to simply make a good movie with a gay couple.

    Hallmark’s strides in the modernization of their company are an extremely positive push towards normalizing minority groups. In the past the Hallmark Christmas movies starred white, heterosexual actors celebrating Christmas, but there is now becoming a noticeable change in this normality starting with “The Holiday Sitter.”