Alan (coming into den): What are you watching, honey? OH MY GOD - is that...is that a chick flick?

Me (enthusiastically): Yes!

Alan (placing back of hand upon my forehead): Are you feeling all right, sweetheart? This isn't like you. This isn't like you at all.

Me: Oh, but this is the best chick flick ever! It's frickin' hilarious! It's almost like a wonderful satire of chick flicks, like Mad magazine does chick flicks, except it isn't tongue-in-cheek! It's actually serious and, somehow, that makes it even more funny than if they'd meant it ironically!

Alan (suspiciously): Explain.

Me: See, that's the heroine and she's a Pioneer Woman. Well, every single Wild West Prairie Cliche you can think of has happened to that woman in, like, 90 minutes' time. Widowed young? Check. Alone and desperate on the prairie? Check. Orphaned, no family? Check. Stranded and forced to marry a young widower for convenience's sake? Check.

Alan: I'm beginning to see the humour. Tell me, did her young, gallant husband get killed trying to defuse a poker fight?

Me: Sadly, no. Thrown from a hoss.

Alan: Well, that's no good. What a wuss.

Me: But he was thrown from a hoss while galloping about trying to capture their other hoss. Before he'd even had time to build them a cabin - she's sleeping in the wagon. Oh, and plus she's pregnant with his child.

Alan (grumpily): That's pretty good I guess, but killed trying to make peace in a saloon poker fight would have been better.

Me: But wait there's more! You haven't even heard the good part yet! Gets lost in a blizzard? Check. Pregnant? Check. In labor during a storm? Check. Forced to deliver with no help other than the handsome widower husband? Check.

Alan (hopefully): Did she get kidnapped by Indians?

Me: Sadly, no. But this is the Hallmark channel, and Michael Landon Jr. directed it, and everyone has been praying a lot, for guidance and stuff, so I suspect that the image of the noble, pagan savage and/or the blatant sexuality of a loin-cloth-clad brave is too much for the fragile rubric of this tale. All we really need is for the barn to burn down.

Hallmark Channel, Clark Davis shouting: Marty! Marty! Barn's on fire! Barn's on fire!

Me: HA! Barn fire? Check! And see, all her worldly goods except for her party dress she made over into a fancy dress for the tomboy stepdaughter upon whom she's supposed to be a feminine influence, were in her wagon which was in his barn so now she's LOST EVERYTHING!

Alan: I am both amused and dismayed at your delight in this poor woman's plight.

Me: Oh, she'll be all right. It's the Hallmark Channel.

Alan: So the young handsome widower is going to fall in love with the beautiful widow who just happens to be his wife?

Me: You know it! Only, basing this prediction on everything that has gone before, it'll be cheesier than Welsh Rarebit with Roquefort crumbles and Parmesan topping!

Alan: That's pretty cheesy. My only comfort is the fact that you seem to find this intensely amusing, rather than utterly romantic.

Me: Romantic is a dozen roses, a bottle of wine and a new video game. This is utterly hilarious. If only they'd book tickets on the Titanic for their honeymoon - which of course they can't, because it was sailing from England to here, but I see no reason for realism to interfere at this point, do you?

Alan: Maybe the stepdaughter will grow up to have a husband killed trying to stop a saloon poker fight.

[You want to know the REAL punch line? That's what happens in the sequels. Seriously.]