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For all you geeky math fans out there (counting myself in that group of course), Happy Pi Day! For the rest of you, I hope I don't have to explain at this point that the numeric run-on number Pi, frequently written symbolically as π, and often shortened to 3.14 in math textbooks so as not to run out of printer ink, is memorialized every March 14 (or 3/14, get it?).
While not exactly a “real” holiday, neither is Groundhog Day, yet February 2nd is still immortalized by a masterpiece of a film from Harold Ramis and Bill Murray. It therefore stands to reason, why doesn't Pi Day have its own classic rom-com to watch every March 14th? Of course I'm aware of the trippy 1998 film π, but this hardly qualifies as something the whole family can enjoy together.
I'm talking about the need for a Hallmark-esque adorable rom-com set on the nerdiest holiday of the year. And since none exists as is, allow me to fill that void (hey, that kind of sounds like a mathematician pick up line, does it not? We're already off to a great start!)
Imagine a world where a bookish mathematician, Dr. Fractman, who teaches at an Ivy League university and is married to his work allows himself one day off every year — no, not Christmas (he's agnostic as a man of numbers and reasoning, though Hallmark will only subtly hint at this so as not to alienate its religious base). I'm talking of course about Pi Day, his favorite holiday of the year, where every 3/14 he ditches work to participate in a national contest to see who can rattle off Pi to the farthest digit (like a spelling bee, but with numbers!).
Meanwhile, in a small town across the nondescript state, a sweet baker, Lilly Loveless, pines for bigger things, but feels she has to be the one to take over her family's struggling pie shop before it's turned into a condo by the evil local developer Maddox Bubbleburster. When Lilly finds out from the bakery's landlord that her parents are $50,000 behind on rent, the landlord gives her until the end of the month to come up with the money or risk losing the bakery forever! What is Lilly to do?!
Well, it turns out that Lilly is really good at memorizing things (because she secretly dreams of being an actress). So when she sees an ad in a newspaper — that she's not reading ironically but rather because that's still the primary source of news in the Hallmark-verse — explaining that the grand prize for an upcoming memorize-π-to-the-farthest-digit contest is $50,000 Lilly decides to take a trip to the big city to try to change her family's fortunes! Little does Lilly know she'll also be changing her life forever!
You see where this is going I hope.
Dr. Fractman and Lilly have a meet-cute at the competition, when he mistakenly assumes she works at the hotel or something, but then is shocked to see she's in the competition with him. He then sees her in an entirely new light when she recites π to the umpeenth digit, surviving the first round of cuts and making it to the second day of the tournament along with him.
But when a power outage the next day delays the semifinal round, Dr. Fractman and Lilly stroll across the city together during the blackout, discussing their hopes and dreams, and realizing they are the one piece that's missing in each of their lives to make one another whole.
But after a horrible mixup — Lilly baked a homemade pie for Dr. Fractman to tell him how she truly feels about him, but accidentally gave him a poisoned revenge pie instead that she had made for her ex-boyfriend, who randomly showed up late in act two to provide a needless plot complication.
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When Dr. Fractman falls horribly ill with food poisoning after eating the tainted pie, he is unable to participate in the last round of the π tournament, and he thinks Lilly sabotaged him on purpose. He never wants to see her again and returns to his ivory tower back in academia.
Cut to one year later, where Lilly, now a successful actress in a traveling play, is living her dream thanks to Dr. Fractman's advice, and used the money she illegitimately won in the Pi Day contest to pay to save her family's bakery. Although her decision to leave and become an actress was as much dictated by the shame she felt at how she had won the money as by her acting dreams.
When her play travels to the big city where Dr. Fractman happens to work, he conveniently notices a playbill around campus and decides to check it out. After Lilly gives the performance of her life, Dr. Fractman goes to find her backstage with a bouquet of flowers in hand — only to discover Lilly is back with her toxic ex-boyfriend.
When the jerk says something demeaning about Lilly's performance and storms off, she haphazardly chooses that moment to mouth under her breath “I wish he had been the one to eat the poisoned pie like I had planned all along…” Meanwhile, around the corner from the dressing room, Dr. Fractman gasps at the shocking reveal — he finally realizes it was all a mix-up and Lilly never wanted to poison him.
He approaches Lilly with the bouquet of flowers and declares his love and Lilly jumps into his arms for a chaste embrace. Before she kisses him, she looks at a calendar and says there's one thing they still need to settle…
Dissolve to the next installment of the Pi Day “Memorize π to the Farthest Digit” Contest. Dr. Fractman and Lilly keep going back and forth, taking Pi to ridiculous extremes. The image then dissolves to them in the future, now surrounded by their children, still engaged in a battle for Pi supremacy. And then cue one more dissolve to them as elderly senior citizens, surrounded by their entire brood, as they still recite Pi, surpassing all logic and believability.
As they look deep into each other's eyes, celebrating a lifetime of filling each other's voids, they wish each other a Happy Pi Day, and finally seal their love with a kiss. Coming next 3/14 to Hallmark Channel (fingers crossed)!
