Merry Christmas, Ted Cooper! (2025)

Meteorologist Ted Cooper is the always upbeat on air weatherman at WKJU Channel 7 News in Corning NY. He has been offered the weatherman job at a station in the bigger market of Buffalo which is closer to his hometown of Lackawanna but he has yet to accept it in being loyal to his current boss who gave him an opportunity when no one else did. Although he is looking forward to returning home for the Christmas holidays, during which time he has offered to shoot some promos for the Gingerbread Invitational as a favor for his older sister Kate who is organizing the fundraiser to build a new children's wing for the local hospital, those that know him don't exactly know why he would be so happy about Christmas as he has a well known history of personal disasters at Christmastime, his coworkers who have even taken bets on what disasters he will face this year. It is in a few of those disasters that he runs into his high school crush, who is now emergency room physician Dr. Hope Miller, who has only recently returned to Lackawanna to live. While he always thought Hope was out of his league, she letting him know that she wasn't and isn't leads to them going on a date. It isn't the continual personal disasters that he still incurs, or the misunderstanding that they have about a missed date that threatens their burgeoning romantic relationship, but rather Ted's always positive outlook on life which she believes has some disturbing rationale underlying it all and which she cannot ever understand. —Huggo