The late 90s/early aughts produced a bumper crop of both blonde female teens/20somethings who wanted to be pop stars and teen/20something guys who wanted to be in a boy band. Unfortunately, the era had two dominant blonde female teen/20something singers in Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera and two dominant boy bands in Backstreet Boys and NSYNC, leaving everyone else competing for a distant third. This describes the situation that Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey of 98° found themselves in when they first began dating in 1998. While 98° did have some commercial success, inluding an album that peaked at #2 and being featured on Mariah Carey's #1 hit "Thank God I Found You", they were still an mostly an afterthought. That's still better than Jessica, whose biggest album at this point had peaked at #6 and hadn't sniffed the Top 10 in singles since her debut went to #3.
Luckily, when Nick and Jessica got married in 2002, celebrity docuseries were all the rage thanks to the runaway success of The Osbournes. So MTV was receptive to one featuring these two C-listers as they navigate life together. Newlyweds: Nick & Jessica premiered in August 2003 and became an instant hit, thanks to the revelation that Jessica was about as sharp as a bowling ball, as evidenced what would become the show's signature moment, when she couldn't figure out if Chicken of the Sea tuna was chicken or tuna.
The show somehow did wonders for Jessica's lagging music career, as her album In My Skin, which had originally flopped, rose back up to #2. So naturally, a Christmas album would follow, and ABC would give the couple an hour of primetime to promote it and themselves with Nick & Jessica's Family Christmas.
The title should be taken literally because, outside of Brian McKnight and the two members of 98° who aren't Nick's brother, every other guest on the show was one or the other's family members. That means that there's quite a bit of screen time devoted to Jessica's sister Ashlee, who had an even bigger 2004 than Jessica, having a #1 album and a top 5 single hit with "Pieces of Me". Of course, 2004 was also the year of her Saturday Night Live meltdown, which happened a little more than a month before this premiered. There was no mention or even reference to the incident on the special, though I don't know if it was because this was filmed before the SNL appearance or Ashlee understandably wasn't ready to make fun of it yet.
It's a shame, because a reference to that might have helped enliven what is, quite honestly, one of the more excruciating variety hours I've ever seen. The songs are fine--while neither Nick nor Jessica (nor Ashlee, for that matter) have a powerhouse voice, theirs are still solid and the songs are delivered with gusto. Unfortunately, the special seemed to also be designed as a showcase for the couple's comedic skills, and in that area, they are woefully lacking.
To be fair, the writing is so weak that I could see Meryl Streep having trouble with this material. But Jessica is utterly lost in playing herself. The special leans very, very, very hard into dumb blonde material so ho-ho, there's Jessica preparing egg nog with whole, uncracked eggs straight from the carton in it! Ha-ha, there's Jessica being fascinated by how light switches make lights go on and off! Hee-hee, there's Jessica getting her tongue stuck to a pole! There's even a few pre-filmed parodies, making fun of the then new The Apprentice (with Nick and Jessica aping Cheeto and Ivanka) and Lost, along with a gross commercial parody that has Jessica and some random fat guy licking Nick's armpits (a segment that I think was designed to show off Nick's shirtless physique). Oh, and some of the commercial intros and outros showcased bloopers! Are you laughing yet?
Granted, variety specials always involve some level of navel-gazing, but this seems to take it to the extreme. Instead of being an introduction of the couple to the wider audience who doesn't watch Newlyweds, as well as a commercial for her Christmas album, this special seems designed exclusively for the Nick and Jessica superfans, the ones who would actually enjoy seeing home video footage of the couple as kids and hearing testimonies from various Simpson and Lachey relatives about what they were like as kids.
The special ends as it seemingly has to--with Nick and Jessica bringing literally dozens of their various family members onstage (including Jessica's creepy father/manager) so the whole combined family can sing--or at least lip sync--to "O Holy Night".
It's rather ironic in a special obstinately designed to celebrate family, this would be the last one that the Simpsons and Lacheys would be part of the same one. Late in 2005, Nick and Jessica would split up, and they would file for divorce that December, only a bit over a year after this aired. Both are now married to other people, and Simpson would write in her 2021 memoir that Newlyweds was definitely a factor in their breakup, as both of them lost touch with what was real and what was "real".
Through that kaleidoscope, Nick & Jessica's Family Christmas can be seen as something kind of sad, an attempt to continue to play the happy couple when they were anything but. But sad undercurrents or not, this is an awful hour of television. I'm glad the pair has moved on, and you probably should to, and resist the temptation to revisit them in happier, or "happier" days.
Next time: A Christmas special that maybe should have been a St. Patrick's special.
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