Murray is forced to do the special, though, because—as his producers (Amy Poehler and Julie White) repeatedly remind him—he is under contract. And because, Poehler also reminds him, with an indeterminate amount of irony, “Everything that’s fun is always hard.”

But! Murray is saved, kind of, by a huge blizzard that hits New York. As a result of which none of his show’s planned guests—George Clooney, Miley Cyrus—can make it to the taping. Instead, he enlists the help of Chris Rock, whom he runs into while he’s trying to leave the Carlyle. He brings Rock to the set. And then, clad in green Christmas sweaters with holly-based boutonnieres, they sing a delightfully awkward duet of the religious Christmas slow-jam “Do You Hear What I Hear?” Then come, via various shenanigans, duets with Jenny Lewis, Maya Rudolph, and the Carlyle’s pastry chef.

If all this sounds not just delightfully awkward, but also full-on bananas, that’s because it most certainly is. “It’s starting to feel to me like Christ-mess,” Michael Cera, as Murray’s wannabe agent and a general “Hollywood sleazebag,” puts it. “As in,” he elaborates, unnecessarily: “What a mess.”

And: indeed. A Very Murray Christmas is not just jarringly uneven, or even insistently dada: It’s just … confusing. The plot has a Mad-Libs quality to it; the musical performances generally resemble karaoke songs sung without the benefit of Auto-tune; Murray’s character vacillates confusingly between a curmudgeonly old man and a caring one. In a call-back to Scrooged, Murray refers to himself as “The Ghost of Christmas Present.” Then he gives sweet romance advice to a bride (Rashida Jones) who’s had her Christmas Eve wedding ruined by the storm. All of this culminates in the bride and her groom-to-be (Jason Schwartzman) singing the extremely non-holiday song “I Saw the Light in Your Eyes” together.

The unkind reading of all this is that it is the result of hubris of a particular Hollywoodian strain, the kind that stems from the fact that the entire thing revolves around Murray’s curmudgeonly charisma. We’ll watch this, the thinking seems to have gone, because of Murray and his constellation of stars. Which precludes the need for a compelling—or even sensical—plot. And which precludes the need, too, for a consistent tone. Neither fully ironic nor fully earnest, the whole thing radiates confusion. This is Hollywood, once again taking solipsistic delight in laughing at itself.

The kinder reading, however, is that the show—this big, flashy, confusing Christmess—is a reflection of a broader confusion about Christmas. “Do You Hear What I Hear?,” sung by comedians. The pastry chef, professing his Yuletide loneliness. It makes extremely little sense, except in the context of a culture that itself isn’t sure what Christmas is supposed to be about. Love? Religion? Baked goods?