Originally published in print December 2020.
Not content with dethroning Hallmark as the king of cringey Christmas movies, Netflix aims to further expand their yuletide realm to include the small screen with the first-of-its-kind Christmas series, Dash and Lily. As sweet as a sugar cookie, but with all the substance of a gingerbread house, this show managed to make even this serial Christmas fanatic turn a cynical side-eye at the holiday season; also known as a ‘reverse Grinch phenomenon’.
Based on the first novel from the series of the same name by acclaimed authors Rachel Cohn and David Levithan, Dash and Lily centres around a You’ve Got Mail-inspired whirlwind teen romance. Fellow Christmas enthusiast Lily (Midori Francis), who is feeling uncharacteristically blue as the big day approaches, decides to find her own special someone for the holidays while her family jet off to celebrate without her. In order to achieve this, in a level of pretentiousness that would have no doubt thrilled me at the height of my John Green phase as a young teen, she leaves a red notebook full of challenges on the shelf of the infamous New York bookshop, The Strand. Miraculously, the notebook is not thrown out by a confused employee, or even scribbled in by a bunch of children, but is instead found by a handsome fellow teen with perfectly coiffed hair and a compatible sexual orientation; Dash (Austin Abrams). From here, the two prospective lovebirds write messages and dares for each other, with Lily hoping to rid Dash of his self-confessed Scrooge-like feelings towards all things festive, while Dash aims to push Lily outside her comfort zone and help her become more sociable.
Gradually, we are made believe that the pair begin to fall in love, despite never meeting. In lieu of some physical contact or verbal communication, the notebook is left precariously in public places and ferried between friends and family members, who act as uncompensated couriers of this budding romance. This brings the viewer on an idyllic, whistle-stop tour of New York in December, taking in all the hotspots from the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree to Grand Central Terminal. This setting had an added sense of magic given that the crowds of holiday revelers are notably absent this year.
While I would argue that the festive period has enough organic opportunities for magic and intrigue, the show tries a little too hard to add some cinnamon spice to the mix. We are told by every character on screen that Lily is a ‘quirky girl’, but it is hard to buy into her being a weird outcast just because she wears vintage clothes and likes Christmas a lot. Additionally, after going on two nights out in the city, she is treated like a war criminal by her family, which led me to believe she was a lot younger than 17. While the writers may have gone overboard embellishing the character of Lily, with Dash, it feels as if they didn’t try hard enough, leaving him pigeonholed into a typical ‘sad rich boy’ trope. These jarring characterisations made it hard to root for their relationship to work out, as both Dash and Lily felt as unrealistic as their meet-cute in contrast with the dynamic New York atmosphere.
While I do understand, and even embrace, that a certain degree of logic must be thrown out the window when it comes to rom-coms, I found it hard to stomach the fact that two complete strangers are able to form a full-on pair bond, dodgy handwriting and all, yet I can’t even get a text across in the right tone without a few strategic emojis. Am I just cynical, or is it actually possible to fall in love with someone you’ve never met? Maybe it truly is a Christmas miracle.
Critics will often complain that a certain movie deserved to be made into a TV series, as there was just too much content to pack into a mere two hours. With Dash and Lily however, I would argue that the opposite would have been preferable. Its premise may go beyond belief, even by rom-com standards, but still, the show’s format of Christmas cheer compacted into bite-sized chunks that can easily be consumed in-between study like a virtual advent calendar brought a smile to my face. This love letter to New York optimism and the festive spirit, for all its flaws, was an enjoyable watch. This may have been down to the accompanying joyful holiday soundtrack, or one too many glasses of mulled wine, or maybe the magic of Christmas is just alive and well after all.
