Schitt's Creek

Have you seen Schitt's Creek?  I have.  It’s really good.  And there’s where we could end this week’s post, but we all know that’s not going to happen.  You’ve clicked to read this and that means you’re my captive audience while I tell you things, some about the show in question, and some about other things that seem totally irrelevant, and probably are.  I’ve talked before (in any one of the previous 102 posts on Just One More Episode – please go back and make sure you’ve read them all) of the requirement to have different episode lengths covered among whichever boxsets you have in rotation.  You need something around the hour mark for a serious sit-down and viewing, and then it’s always advisable (by me) to have something sub-thirty minutes in case you find yourself with a snack to shove in your mouth but nothing to shove in your eyes while you’re doing it.  Schitt's Creek episodes are all in the shorter category so making your way through its five series is manageable and plenty of fun – at least, this was the recommendation from a dear friend on his completion of viewing.  And how right he was.

I will now explain a bit about the show, as, alongside so much other tempting content in your Netflix menu, Schitt's Creek is easily overlooked.  First, there’s the title.  We all know how I feel about a missing apostrophe in a programme name (Footballers’ Wives), so I won’t dwell here in this punctuation-based aberration.  Schitt's Creek is (hilariously) a shitty town, home to the Schitt family (lol) and, presumably, near a creek or similar body of water.  It doesn’t matter much, as it simply seems to be some sort of midwestern backwater, representing the cultural abyss our media has us believe exists between the two coasts of the USA.

More important is the family that moves to Schitt's Creek, very much against their will.  Cue the Roses: mother, father, son and daughter who, within the opening minutes of episode one, are transposed from the inordinate wealth of their New York lifestyle to their father’s one remaining asset, which happens to be a crap town he bought as a joke.  The financial particulars are vague, but the Rose fortune’s origins in the home video rental market are explained in more detail, if only so we can all laugh about a past where people had to leave their homes to borrow physical VHS copies of nineties movies (giving me reason to recall nostalgically trips to the Fetcham branch of Apollo Video where my sister and I would agonise over our choice, before selecting without fail something awful).  Let’s now go through each one of these Roses in turn, as you may come to cherish them as I do, despite their initial appearance on the show thumbnail provoking a whole load of meh when positioned beneath the new series of Stranger Things or the glossy sex-baiting of Riverdale:

Johnny Rose

Our paterfamilias is played by Eugene Levy.  You know, he was the awkward dad in American Pie.  In fact he was one of the few cast members to persist in appearing in every offshoot of that franchise, culminating, probably, in American Pie: We Shouldn’t Have Bothered With This One in which the character of Jim’s Dad has increasingly frank conversations about masturbation with ever younger teenagers until the cringe factor breaks right through to Operation Yewtree.  In Schitt's Creek, he is a kindlier soul who, across the seasons, comes to value the more important things in life once liberated of the burden of riches.  Primarily conveying emotion through the medium of large eyebrows, and always sporting a smart suit, Johnny is at his best when quarrelling with his wife.

Moira Rose

At first, I wondered where Moira had to go.  Her early comedy lines revolve around her lack of interest in her kids and her abundance of interest in her wigs (whose alternating appearances create a barrier to the character in that you have to check you recognise her each time she appears).  With every episode, though, more layers are added, about her companionship with Johnny, her ramshackle acting credentials and, most touchingly, her growing affection for the town and people of Schitt's Creek.  And then, Catherine O’Hara seems to discover how much fun she can have making Moira pronounce things strangely, and suddenly the most banal words take on cheeky extravagant twists (baybayyy).

David Rose

Playing Eugene Levy’s son is Eugene Levy’s real-life son, Dan Levy.  In fact, the pair of them created the show and write a lot of it.  Well done them.  It’s nice to do things with family.  David has a lot of the best lines, trolling everyone who speaks to him with sardonic irony.  I even wrote down his advice on what to do in New York: “Watch a series of Girls and do the opposite of what they do.”  As the Rose’s late-blooming heir, he’s not the fashion-victim disappointment to them he at first seems to be.  In fact, they root for his every relationship and support him as he becomes more independent in Schitt's Creek, as he leads the charge in gentrifying a run-down location.

Alexis Rose

And so: the spoilt daughter.  Played with great enjoyment by Annie Murphy, Alexis is at her best when hearing only what she wants to hear and when name-dropping Hollywood A-listers in all-too-brief tales of her youth as an enfant terrible.  There’s nothing she hasn’t done.  Like her brother, though, she too gradually lets down her cynicism about their new home, seeing her old life for all its valuelessness and investing in her relationship with local good-boy vet, Ted Mullens (played by 90210’s Ethan, all grown up).

The rest of the town seems to have been cast in about five minutes, with characters easily manipulated to serve whatever storyline that episode has cooked up.  Jocelyn Schitt, the mayor’s wife and eventual firm friend of the Roses, seems to have whichever personality suits the scene in question, while her husband, Roland Schitt, is invariably my least favourite thing about any given moment.  Nevertheless, the supporting cast are really only there for exactly that: to support the Roses as they make the most of their situation and learn what it means to be self-sufficient.  Stevie Budd gets perhaps the closest to them, mostly through her abusive friendship with David, which truly conveys what happens when two souls fully understand each other.

Maybe it’s its Canadian origins, but everything about Schitt's Creek is just so nice.  Its name might sound like a Samuel Beckett novel or play, but it’s infinitely more accessible.  There’s wit and there’s sentiment.  There are heartfelt gestures, such as when Patrick and David sing Simply The Best to each other, and there’s degrading ridicule (“Fall off a bridge, please!”) thanks to David’s ability to scathe seethingly scathing insults.  There’s a refreshing approach to sexuality (people just seem to fall in love with people – well – David does) and an uncovering of what’s truly important in this life: compassion (while taking the piss).  So let’s conclude.  I’ve seen Schitt's Creek.  It’s really good.  You’ve read this whole thing, so off you go now and watch it please.