Why I Couldn’t Connect to Schitt’s Creek – No Matter How Hard I Tried.

I began watching Schitt’s Creek on Netflix during a particularly difficult time in my life, looking for something easy going and funny. I’d heard great things about the series created by father and son team Eugene and Dan Levy, and was curious to see what all the fuss was about. Considering the show had just ended, my intention was to binge it and catch up as quickly as I could.

 

But I have to say, it was a struggle. Despite hearing about how bingeworthy it was, I found myself only watching one or two episodes at a time, sometimes leaving weeks in-between my viewings, and it was only this week that I finally finished the last season. And although I did enjoy some aspects of the show – the main cast was strong, especially Catherine O’Hara, and the relationship between David and Patrick was extremely well done – I couldn’t understand where all the massive praise and 93% rating on Rotten Tomatoes was coming from. I couldn’t put my finger on exactly why I wasn’t enjoying it that much, but upon reflection I’ve come up with a few things that bothered me:

 

The side characters are all pretty terrible.

The great thing about most fish-out-of-water stories are the characters that our protagonists come into contact with, whose whacky nature and humble background inevitably have an impact on us, the audience, and the leads. When you think of Arrested Development, another (much better) series about a family who lose their fortune, you also think of the hilarious side characters like Gene Parmesan, Bob Loblaw, Anne, or the family lawyer Barry. Among many others.

The side characters in Schitt’s Creek are bland and unfunny. They actually began to annoy me to the point where I felt a visceral reaction towards them. Particularly Roland, the town mayor, whose character is crass, disgusting, and just not funny, to the point that it made me angry whenever he came on the screen. His boring wife Joslyn also irritated me. And so did Ray, the town’s resident ‘Jack-of-all-trades’ who, again was just not funny in the slightest.

 

Only the café worker, Twyla, has some funny moments and a sparkle of depth here and there but is ultimately still incredibly bland. They’re all just so dull. No memorable lines, no interesting B-plots, they’re all just complete 2-dimensional characters with very little thought put into them. This was a particular problem with Stevie, who I’ll go more in depth about later. But in contrast to the main characters, the members of the Rose family who I really enjoyed for the most part, the side characters are really just nothing special. I mean, they’re fine. But for a fish-out-of-water or rags to riches show that’s all about small town life and kooky small-town characters, they should have made much more of an impression. And I also noticed that we are rarely introduced to any new characters. It’s like we just see the same few, boring faces over and over. I was relieved when Patrick was introduced, because he actually had some character and a quiet, grounded humour about him. He felt real. The rest of them felt like cardboard cut-outs with obvious jokes stapled to them.

 

It wasn’t really that funny.

I just didn’t laugh all that much. Catherine O’Hara’s Moira Rose, and her novel pronunciation of various words which has become lauded amongst fans of the show, was the only character who ever made me laugh out loud. Alexa and David were funny sometimes, and I liked Johnny Rose as the ‘straight man’ of the family (although he was a little dull at times, but I guess that was the point). But for most episodes, I just didn’t laugh. Like, at all. In fact, if you asked me to recall a funny moment from the show, right now as I’m writing this off the back of completing it, I would honestly struggle to think of an example. Except for Moira’s pronunciation of ‘baby’, and Alexa’s ‘Little bit of Lexis’ dance. But in a six-season run, that’s pretty weak.

 

Stevie’s character arc is all over the place.

Stevie didn’t annoy me the way Roland did. She annoyed me even more.

Can someone please tell me what was the point of her character? What did she do? Why was she there? At first, she was introduced to us as this streetwise, snarky and dark character who was sure to stir up some sort of trouble or have conflict with the family. But all she did was walk around and complain and pull bored faces for the majority of the series. It was honestly depressing whenever she came on screen. She zapped the energy out of any scene she was in. And when she finally DID get a real storyline, wanting to travel and explore the world, breaking out of the rut she’d been stuck in for years, it literally went nowhere. It was like the writer’s just couldn’t decide what to do with her character. You could argue that her decision to go and become an air hostess was necessary for her to come back and go into business with Johnny, making the most out of an opportunity she’d always taken for granted, but why couldn’t they have just done that in the first place? It just felt like filler, to be honest. It felt like a storyline that was meant to go one way, and then went another, leaving unfilled cracks in its wake. And Stevie’s decision not to go to New York in season six, asserting that she didn’t need to go to a big city she just ‘needed to know that she could’, completely affirmed all of this for me. It made no sense for her character motivation. Literally nothing changed for her. She had grown in theory, but she was still behind the desk, unsure of herself and somehow LESS confident than she had been when we first met her in season one.

 

In fact, this was a pretty common thing that I noticed in the show. That certain storylines seemed confused and unsure as to where they were going or why they existed; like Alexis leaving Ted for Mud (who, by the way, completely disappeared), only to go BACK to Ted. Or David and Stevie sleeping together to reveal David’s pansexuality which, again, was never mentioned again. It just felt like the writer's got lazy at times, or struck in one direction before realising they weren't sure what was to follow, so they'd retreat back to safety.

It’s overhyped.

I think this was my main issue with the series. And aren’t we all a bit guilty of this? When someone tells us how much we're going to love something, there's a small part of our brain that says 'Don't tell me what to do.' The show is fine. If I had discovered Schitt’s Creek years ago, and I was the only one of my friends watching it, maybe I’d be up in arms about how funny and underappreciated it was. When you’re told how amazing and hilarious something is, sometimes it can set expectations that are just too high.

 

But I didn’t have that problem with Arrested Development.