It's the most wonderful time of year, and we at Defector are proud to bring back our series discussing some of the most, uh, available holiday movies.
Sabrina Imbler: Thank you for joining me in watching the first and hopefully the last Christmas movie I’ve ever seen about a consulting firm. In our world, Santa relies on elves to determine whether children are good or bad. In the world of She’s Making a List, Santa has outsourced the naughty or nice lists to the Naughty or Nice Group, which relies on an algorithm to determine the inherent goodness and badness of children. Before we talk about the movie, I need to ask: What do you make of Santa's strategy?
Israel Daramola: Well, Christmas needed its Moneyball, it needed analytics. I’m always saying this.
Dan McQuade: The first words in this movie are a voiceover from Naughty or Nice Group employee Isabel: "Since the beginning of time, there was the naughty or nice list." I spent the film’s remaining runtime grappling with the theological implications of this. In the She’s Making a List universe, Santa predates Jesus. I could grapple with this for days, months, years. But I can easily answer your question: It was a bad idea to outsource the list, from what I know of this world. Santa is literally magic. Why does he need to hire a third-party logistics company to make the list? Furthermore, what led Santa to make this move in the first place? Did Santa hire McKinsey after some Christmas incident?
Sabrina: These are all really excellent points. I did feel like She’s Making a List was missing some Jonah Hill–type number-cruncher to take us inside this famed algorithm. And I too was extremely disoriented by the statement that the Naughty or Nice List has existed since the beginning of time, when the universe first expanded in the Big Bang. So in a time before atoms, just primordial elements, Santa and his system of moral determination emerged fully formed from the forehead of some cosmic god. The Naughty or Nice list existed before there were any children, human or any other animal. And why did Santa decide to offer this contract to a little-known consulting firm as opposed to a titan of industry, like Bain or McKinsey?
Anyway, we soon see the face of Isabel, who is Naughty or Nice Group Inspector 036. It’s Lacey Chabert! But she’s hard to recognize, because she’s "undercover" reporting on "Level 2 violations of mischief," which looks like stalking children. What did you two think about the nature of Isabel’s work?
Dan: I don’t think this just "looks like" stalking children. It is! You see a jolly green elf checking out some kids, you know it’s a Santa employee. You see Isabel skulking in the bushes, you are immediately calling the cops.
Israel: First off, I understand why Lacey Chabert is constantly in these movies. There is like a natural cheeriness and pipsqueak energy to her voice that remind you of Christmas in a weird way. As for this character she plays, I’m confused about her status within this corporation. She’s an inspector and she’s doing the on-the-ground dirty work of stalking children, but then in the office she’s girlbossing it up and has a lot of access to very important people. Seems like they’re not making roles clear over there. I don’t like it.
Sabrina: Israel, this was also extremely confusing to me. We learn early on from Lacey Chabert’s sinister boss that she’s in line to become a partner at the Naughty or Nice Group. But her actual job appears to be putting on various Spirit Halloween costumes and ratting on children. She also says she’s inspected children all around the world, and her job appears to require her to fly out on a moment’s notice. How is this financially viable? Shouldn’t inspectors focus on geographical regions? How many inspectors work for the Naughty or Nice Group? Santa is presumably funding the Naughty or Nice Group, which makes me wonder, how is Santa bankrolling this? Is Christmas a for-profit institution?
Also Lacey Chabert reveals that she was recruited to work at this consulting firm, Mission: Impossible–style, after having a tumultuous childhood as a nomadic orphan. (As Isabel describes it: "I was on my own from a young age.")
This actually felt like the most realistic part of the movie to me. It reminded me of this hedge fund called Bridgewater that recruited so aggressively at my college that they kind of ended up stalking students.
Dan: The more we see of the Naughty or Nice Group, the less confidence I have in their business plan. This was one of the most realistic parts of the movie for me too, Sabrina. The owners of NoNG are running a scam of some sort, I just can’t quite figure out the endgame.
Israel: Can we get to this single father and his daughter? (Girldad season!) First of all, is this the ideal version of a Hallmark movie man? I feel like they all look like this exact person.
Dan: Andrew Walker plays Jason, the male lead. The instant I saw him, I decided I hated him. But I can be honest why: I am so, so jealous of Andrew Walker’s jawline. But he doesn’t quite look real in this film. They’ve dolled up this handsome man into some sort of uncanny valley of hotness.
Sabrina: Thanks for bringing us to Girldad Jason, Israel. I was glad to see they cast a hot man for Lacey. He bumps into her while she is in Parking Inspector drag. But throughout the movie, I really struggled to find any other identifiable traits beyond him being the Father of a Daughter.
Israel: Well, all that precious characterization time is saved for the daughter who lost her mom and is acting out, a thing that Lacey Chabert has never considered a kid might do before for some reason. But analytics is a cult and you have to follow the math over there, I guess.
Dan: My wife felt the same way as you did, Sabrina. I actually typed out her exact quote: "Why is he asking her out? They have nothing in common! They don’t have banter!" Their meet-cute is Jason demanding Isabel fix his Christmas lights. That’s a bit of an ask.
Sabrina: Let’s do the math on Charlie, the daughter of the father in question. Her "naughty" behavior consists of doing magic tricks that presumably help her steal money from other kids, feeding a dog that is sitting under a sign that says "Please Do Not Feed This Dog," and having a dead mom. On the basis of these facts, things are looking bleak for Charlie's niceness.
Dan: Based on this film, it is easier to get into heaven than to get on the nice list.
Sabrina: After calling her assistant for advice about what to wear, Lacey Chabert decides to go on a date with Girldad Jason. This goes against the fraternization protocol of the NoNG, but Lacey is willing to risk it all to walk around a purgatorial holiday market with this sexy single father. Their date was confusing to me. They kind of wander around various stalls, picking up and putting down objects. At one point Lacey Chabert names all the smells of various candles, leading Jason to confess: "I have never met anyone like you before." What did he mean by this? Because she’s a really good smeller? Is this another skill they optimize for at the NoNG?
Dan: Jason is so handsome, he meets a woman and immediately gets her to agree to do free electrical work for him. There is no way he’s lacking for dates. I don’t think he means anything. He is just lovebombing her, as the kids say. And, uh, it’s working?
Israel: She a real sniffer. He don’t know what to do with her, but he respects it.
Dan: I really want to talk about Jason’s career arc. He was once a food critic, "one of those snobby, mean ones, I would nitpick everything." But after his wife died, he didn’t want to be negative anymore, so he "dug up all the places I’d hurt with my reviews, and I went to go work for them, give 'em a second chance." How? Is he doing free PR for them? Is he a busboy, a server, a line cook? He said he trashed restaurants based on menu fonts. Why would any of these places want to hire him? Honestly, I want to see that movie.
Sabrina: I interpreted this to be the film introducing us to another kind of consultant. Lacey Chabert is a consultant who can assess the fundamental villainy of children and Jason is a consultant who can turn a struggling pizza restaurant into a struggling pizza restaurant that also serves natural wine.
Israel: This is a movie about how great consultants are, unlike mean old critics, they bring positivity and help. Thank you so much, movie.
Sabrina: And the film posits that the ultimate consultant is actually a child, specifically Charlie, whose idea for reintroducing the joy of pizza to a pizza restaurant helps revitalize the pizza restaurant. That’s the magic of consulting at Christmas!
Soon, however, Lacey Chabert begins to question the value of her consulting work as her boss introduces her to the NoNG’s new Superalgorithm, which will determine naughtiness or niceness with 99.9 percent accuracy. This raised the question: What accuracy were they working with before? Lacey Chabert is now doubting the algorithm because the algorithm says Charlie is naughty, even though Lacey Chabert is beginning to feel like Charlie is nice, especially after she learns Charlie visits her older magician mentor from whom she learns all her tricks. This was one of the more baffling plots in this truly baffling film.
Israel: It’s just funny to me and very much tech-brained that no one has considered that bad behavior might have context. But I guess that’s true in real life too. But I’m always happy to meet a magician to help us understand a child more, I guess.
Sabrina: Let's talk about Charlie’s relationship with Lacey Chabert. Charlie is watching her dad start to date Lacey Chabert, who Charlie is convinced is a spy, because Charlie keeps seeing Lacey Chabert in her weird "undercover" outfits. If you were a child, would you be excited if your parent was dating a spy?
Dan: Honestly, Charlie has plenty of reasons to be wary of her dad’s new relationship. Perfect Jawline Man is late for a date; he apologizes and says he was dropping his kid off at Chuck E. Cheese. You can’t do that! A parent or guardian has to stay while the child plays. Jawline is so into this woman he abandons his child to go on a date. As for the consulting firm, Charlie has every reason to be wary of this person who keeps following her around dressed in different outfits—especially when one is "old-timey ice cream man." I do like that the consulting firm in this movie is incompetent.
Sabrina: Yeah, as the movie trudged forward I became more assured that it was taking an anti-consulting stance … I think.
Israel: Well, let me say something nice about this movie. I do think that the ultimate lesson here is that AI and all the analytics in the world cannot stand up to the human eye test. That’s the real value, and I’m glad they know ball at the end of the day.
Sabrina: Totally, Israel, I was surprisingly moved by that conclusion! After Lacey Chabert learns about the superalgorithm, she has a come-to-Santa moment and tells her boss that the system is broken, that she thought she was making a difference in the world with her Naughty or Nice inspector job, but that she realized ultimately that people are complicated and she was doing more harm than good. This felt like a real Christmas miracle. I wish more people would do this in real life (quit their evil jobs).
I was confused, however, by the fact that despite the NoNG’s apparent panopticon—a room teeming with surveillance footage that Lacey Chabert introduces as “The Pit”—did not capture her major workplace violation on its many cameras. If the NoNG is constantly filming the children of the world to understand if they are naughty or nice, how did they not catch Lacey Chabert flirting with Girldad Jason? I might suggest the NoNG hires an outside consulting firm to take a second look at their surveillance efficiency.
So Lacey Chabert quits her job and is sitting on a bus stop where her assistant finds her and tells her to go to Girldad Jason’s pizza opening. Lacey Chabert is like, thank you, and the assistant is like, that’s my job as your assistant! I was confused by this. Her assistant seemingly still works for the NoNG, and Lacey has quit, so seemingly the assistant would be reassigned? Do all the NoNG inspectors have assistants? And do they all rely on their assistants for dating advice? Lots of workplace violations at this consulting firm!
Dan: I would believe basically anything you told me about why the assistant keeps working for her. The universe of this movie is fascinating. Santa is real—Charlie has to tell her father this fact—and there are occasionally little blips of magic. Also, not one person in the film besides Lacey Chabert has a last name. I checked the subtitles: They never even call him “Santa Claus” in the film. Though I guess it doesn’t matter what any character is named.
Sabrina: When Lacey reunites with Jason at the Pizza Restaurant, he reveals that he replaced the coal in Charlie’s stocking with presents—classic girldad move—and she reveals that she was a consultant hired to spy on his child to assess whether she was inherently irredeemable. They navigate this conversation with surprising ease and come to the only logical conclusion, which is that they have to get a one-on-one with Santa.
Dan: It was unsettling to see Santa without his hat.
Israel: It would’ve been cooler if they were gonna take Santa hostage or something, but I guess that’s too much for the Hallmark Channel.
Sabrina: Were you guys surprised by how easy it was to meet Santa? It felt like anyone could just walk in. How did he have no meetings on his calendar the day before Christmas? I guess that’s the power of outsourcing. Also we learn that Santa is based in Delaware … presumably for tax purposes?
Dan: I was surprised how easy it was to meet Santa, especially this close to Christmas. But what was even more surprising was how quickly they got a flight to Wilmington Airport.
Israel: I feel like Santa being a tax dodger should be a bigger deal. What else is Santa doing shady? Are the elves being paid? Do they have health insurance? How do we know he wasn’t at the Inauguration this year?
Sabrina: Santa’s holed up in this kind of magical mansion, and his secretary has a crystal ball that is implied to control Santa’s calendar. She asks if they have an appointment, and Lacey Chabert says it’s a spur-of-the-moment type visit. This, amazingly, presents no problem, and Santa is ready to see them.
Dan: I like how the meeting with Santa goes. Lacey gives her anti-algorithm case, which impresses Santa. So he magically transports the head of NoNG to his office and fires him—and, the film implies, the entire Naughty or Nice Group. This is a movie where Santa fires hundreds, maybe thousands, on Christmas Eve. No more coal, but also no more jobs.
Sabrina: Oh my god, Dan, I didn’t even realize the implications of Santa ending his contract with a consulting firm that appears to have no other clients (is anyone other than Santa needing a Naughty or Nice List?) the day before Christmas. Hopefully he offered some good severance packages. I feel like this would make the news. In a world where Santa is real and eminently visitable, are people reporting on him? Will there be a Times exposé on the shocking NoNG Christmas Eve layoffs?
Dan: Any good consulting firm should be diversifying its clientele, but I can’t imagine NoNG did. They landed the Santa account, and they thought they were set for life. Or maybe Santa lays off all his workers right at Christmas, and rehires them each holiday season.
Israel: This is what I mean about Santa here. How do we know this wasn’t always the plan and he’s got a Naughty or Nice data farm building out in Iowa somewhere? Draining all the resources over there to make him richer. I’m starting to turn on this guy already.
Sabrina: Santa’s definitely got offshore accounts in the Caymans. He literally meets them in a red velvet tracksuit! He’s a high roller. But he does have a personal assistant who appears to be gay, so it’s not clear-cut who he voted for. When Lacey Chabert, Jason, and Charlie meet Santa, they all act like this is a pretty normal situation. I was surprised no one acted like it was a bigger deal to meet Santa, especially on such short notice. Santa also reveals he has a book on his shelf called Wishes From Isabel that he shows to Lacey Chabert. This book contains her wishes. Did he know she was coming? Did he just have this on his shelf? Does Santa have physical copies of books of the wishes of every child in the world or just the NoNG inspectors?
Dan: Maybe Wishes from Isabel is the new hot trend on BookTok, and this is just a coincidence.
Sabrina: The wish book was also confusing because it was called Wishes FROM Isabel but seemingly contained other people’s wishes ABOUT Isabel. It also had many pages but just three wishes: two from people in Lacey Chabert’s childhood and then one from Charlie. Then Santa says he’s gotta run and deliver presents, but Lacey Chabert briefly pleads with him to reconsider contracting with the NoNG. This is when Santa magically conjures Lacey Chabert’s old boss, Charlie does some magic tricks on him, and not only is Santa convinced to terminate his contract with the consulting group, but also he hires Lacey Chabert on the spot to "run the new operation." This was also very shady to me. He basically asked Lacey Chabert to commit to a job for which he did not list any salary, responsibilities, or benefits. Will Lacey Chabert have to move to the tax haven of Delaware, or can she work remotely from the Pizza Restaurant?
Dan: She won’t! This is how they pay off the Delaware joke: Santa didn’t move there for tax purposes. "Miss Kringle is a strong supporter of working remotely. How do you think we ended up in Delaware?" To clarify: Santa moved because his wife wanted to live in Delaware, and, uh, Miss Kringle? Not Mrs. Not Ms. Miss Kringle. In this film Santa is not married to his longtime partner. I wonder what their relationship is like. Has he even proposed? Get off your ass and get a ring, Santa.
Sabrina: The film ends with Lacey Chabert and Jason opening Christmas presents, sharing one extraordinarily chaste kiss, followed by an even chaster hug. What did we learn from this Christmas movie?
Dan: Don’t take a job in Santa’s workshop.
Israel: Sabermetrics was a mistake. AI is a mistake. The eye test is what matters, and also Santa is part of the one percent and he must be overthrown by the people.
