Let us explain that major plot hole in ‘Home Alone’

Yes, yes, it’s only October 1st, but let’s concentrate on something a lil’ bit Christmas-y. Something like, let’s say, Home Alone —basically the cinematic pinnacle of Christmas and the holiday season. Now, I love me some Home Alone, and it’s a movie I’ve probably watched a million and one times. But there’s always been a massive plothole that has driven myself and thousands of others absolutely crazy. You know what I mean. The pizza plothole.

OK, if you don’t know what I mean, let me give you a rundown: Home Alone, of course, revolves around Kevin’s parents leaving Kevin — a young child who should not be unattended — at home, you know, unattended. They aren’t able to call Kevin to check on him because a tree falls, severing phone service to their house. This is something that is very important, because if his parents were able to call Kevin, there would be no actual plot. It would be a five-minute long movie.

Except later on in the movie, as if by magic, Kevin uses the phone to call Little Nero’s for his very own cheese pizza. What gives? Is pizza so heavenly that it defies earthly laws? No, probably not — it’s just a good old plothole. Which has been making us go nutty until one Redditor made it his/her mission to figure it out. And their explanation is honestly very, very relieving.

When Redditor okholm posted about the plothole, another Redditor, phire, pointed out something brilliant. “I always assumed the tree actually severed the main trunk line to the whole town, but local calls within the same exchange still worked,” phire responded in a comment.

So pretty much, the McCallisters couldn’t make a long distance call to their residence, but local calls would be a-OK.

Apparently, this is a pretty airtight fix to that plothole. According to AT&T Vice President-Federal Regulatory Hank Hultquist, it was possible to have local calls go through and long-distance calls down. “Everything is changing now because all of this phone capability is moving into the cloud, but in 1990, that was absolutely a plausible scenario,” he told The Huffington Post.

And the fact that the McCallisters were an ocean away from Kevin only made matters worse for them. “When you’re trying to call from Paris, now you’re relying on a whole series of connections including undersea cables, any one of which could have a problem, which would prevent you from reaching some particular telephone number,” Hultquist told HuffPo.

So just one question remains: WHY DIDN’T WE THINK OF THAT.

(Gif via, image via 20th Century Fox.)