I’m Not Ready to Leave “Schitt’s Creek”
After six seasons and 80 episodes, “Schitt’s Creek” aired its immensely touching series finale last night. The Canadian sitcom was a slow-growing hit that exploded into the stratosphere last year and it seems likely that its pop culture legacy is only just beginning to form. Here, I review the final season and the series finale and comment on what’s next for the gang, at the Emmys and beyond.
[Author’s Note: The following article contains spoilers regarding the final season and series finale of Schitt’s Creek. If you have yet to watch it and intend to, I recommend that you bookmark this article and return to it once you are done watching.]
Last June, I wrote an article about my discovery of the Canadian import Schitt’s Creek. In the article, which you can read here, I detail how I discovered the clever, hilarious, and heartfelt sitcom along with millions of others as its fifth season gained big buzz in the U.S. following its premiere on Netflix. I watched all 66 available episodes in 53 days and even went to see the cast in person during the Los Angeles stop on their “Schitt’s Creek: Up Close and Personal” tour. Within two months, I had gone from only having a vague knowledge that a Canadian sitcom starring that hilarious pair from those Christopher Guest movies existed to becoming a rabidly obsessed fan boy.
The announcement that the sixth season would be its last hit me hard. I deeply respected their decision to go out on their own terms, ending at their peak rather than ending after several seasons of diminishing returns like so many other shows. But just because Schitt’s Creek decided that they were ready to leave, didn’t mean that I was ready to leave Schitt’s Creek. I am deeply invested in these characters and their remarkable evolution. Watching desperately out-of-touch, narcissistic misanthropes find meaning in life and unknown capacities for love and generosity over the course of dozens of hilarious half-hours was a remarkably cathartic and optimistic journey that nourished my soul while keeping me consistently entertained.
The show also undoubtedly resonated with me due to its beautiful message of acceptance, particularly of the LGBT community. The journey of David Rose from being a lonely gay man with fake friends, a history of disappointments, and virtually no self-confidence into a proud, happy business-owning man engaged to be married to a dedicated, stabilizing man is something virtually unseen in the history of television. Throughout the show, David was allowed to be needy, quirky, bristly, bizarre, and endlessly gender-nonconforming, while always being loved and accepted for who he was. Perhaps most importantly, he wasn’t sidelined with tragedy, which remains a ubiquitous narrative direction for the majority of LGBT characters in media. Rather, he was given a series of joyous developments that both deepened and broadened his character. In many ways, it’s what Ellen could have been had it not got torpedoed by network interference and a premature cancellation.
The Final Season
The sixth and final season of Schitt’s Creek premiered on January 7, 2020 on the CBC in Canada and on PopTV in the U.S. It aired one new original episode per week for 14 consecutive weeks, culminating in the finale that aired last night. Overall, the final season was one of its strongest. Future rewatches will help me decide whether it actually matches the top notch fourth and fifth seasons in terms of quality, but the fact that it even comes close enough that I’m undecided is a testament to how good the final run of episodes was.
There are several major plot arcs that span the final season, all of which were well-conceived and executed. One was David and Patrick’s impending wedding. Patrick preferred a subdued affair but David has been dreaming of this since he was a child. The season featured his search for a venue, picking his friend Stevie as a maid of honor, engagement photos torpedoed by a spray tan gone wrong, and a bachelor party in a local escape room. These are all typical sitcom setups that were made fresh by restrained writing that largely avoided slapstick and focused on the character’s relationships. Johnny’s conflict between wanting to give the son the wedding of his dreams and his very real financial limitations, Alexis’s struggle with not being the center of attention, and David and Patrick’s navigation of a tricky and stressful time brought what could have been trite into something substantive.
Another major plot arc was the expansion of Rosebud Motels. This plot arc prompted a host of hilarious scenes and allowed Johnny Rose to regain his past glory as a master businessman, Stevie to finally came into her own, and Roland and Jocelyn to stay in the action without having two of the show’s weaker characters taking up too much of the valuable remaining screen time.
The funniest arc of the season unsurprisingly belonged to Moira, the simultaneously egocentric, flamboyant, eccentric, level-headed, loving, and loyal matriarch played by Catherine O’Hara in what will surely be hailed as an iconic television performance for decades to come. Her arc mostly focused on her attempts to resuscitate her career and it drove two of the season’s best episodes — “Crows Premiere,” which chronicled her disastrous attempt to promote her campy new film premiering on an obscure streaming service and “Sunrise, Sunset,” which did a deep dive into her past (and potentially future) career as a soap opera star. As has been the case for each of the show’s 80 episodes, O’Hara knocked every scene out of the park with her bizarre and singular performance.
Remarkably, though, O’Hara did not give the best performance on the final season of Schitt’s Creek. That honor belongs to Annie Murphy as Alexis Rose. At the beginning of the series, Alexis was a globe trotting, Instagram-ing debutante experiencing rage and disgust due to her sudden loss of status. By the end of the series, she was a woman with increased confidence starting her own business and breaking up with the love of her life so that they could both follow their own passions. She gave by far the most nuanced and layered performance of the final season and in a just world she would be a lock for the Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series. (More on the series’ Emmys prospects later).
The Series Finale
It has become common practice for series finales to be “supersized,” with the final episodes often double or even triple the length of a standard episode. Schitt’s Creek bucked that trend by wrapping up with a standard half hour. Nevertheless, I actually see the final two episodes as a two-part season finale. They fit together beautifully in terms of tone, structure, and plot and fire on all cylinders to wrap up the arcs.
The penultimate episode, “Start Spreading the News” is one of the finest the show ever produced. David’s realization that he and Patrick are not on the same page about leaving Schitt’s Creek and moving to New York with his family led to a series of final scenes that made me sob like few moments in television history ever had. Meanwhile, Alexis’s revelation about Twyla — a secondary character played by Sarah Levy, sister to Dan and daughter to Eugene — gave both Annie Murphy and Sarah Levy some truly terrific material.
The finale, “Happy Endings,” accomplished pretty much everything a fan could have possibly hoped for. The episode took place within a 24 hour period starting on the morning of David and Patrick’s wedding day and ending with Johnny and Moira heading to the airport to start their new life. It featured a hilarious subplot involving a happy ending massage that injected some much needed silly and risque humor to the what could have become an overly saccharine episode. It featured Catherine O’Hara in a papal costume that should instantly win the show’s costume designers an Emmy. It used the wedding to give brief, final appearances to all of the series’ secondary characters, like Ronnie, Bob, and Twyla. And it featured subtle callbacks to countless high points of the series’ run, including the Schitt’s Creek town sign (see episode 3 — “Don’t Worry, It’s His Sister”), the song “The Best” (see Patrick’s heart-melting cover in episode 45 — “Open Mic”), Roland and Jocelyn’s baby shower (see episode 49 — “Baby Sprinkle”), and David’s passionate devotion to Mariah Carey (see episode 51 — “Singles Week”).
The series finale also deserves considerable credit for resisting excess. It did not feature big guest stars or the return of departed characters, both of which would have been a distraction in this case. It did not jump into the future and show us what became of everyone, but rather stayed focus on the present. Even the final goodbyes were rather subdued and largely sidestepped the sometimes emotionally manipulative ploys of other shows (e.g., the gushing speech, the ending voiceover wrapping everything up). They hugged, they cried, and they said “I love you” but not much else. That’s all we needed.
The Future
So where do we go from here? Well, the cast and crew will most certainly go to the Emmys in September (either in person or virtually if the country is still in coronavirus lockdown). The series got its first ever nominations last year and did so in three major categories — Outstanding Comedy Series, Outstanding Lead Actor (Eugene Levy), and Outstanding Lead Actress (Catherine O’Hara). It did not win any trophies last year, but it has two huge advantages at the upcoming ceremony. First, it is the show’s final season, which means bigger buzz and more urgency among voters to acknowledge it. Second, with Fleabag and Veep having wrapped their runs and Marvelous Mrs. Maisel delivering a somewhat ho-hum third season, competition is drastically reduced. Although I cannot predict with certainty how it will be received by the Emmys, I can tell you what I think it deserves and that is — at minimum — Emmys for Outstanding Comedy Series, Outstanding Lead Actress (O’Hara), Outstanding Supporting Actress (Murphy), and Outstanding Writing.
Regardless of the outcome at the Emmys, I expect that the entire ensemble will benefit from significantly heightened Hollywood profiles. I hope that Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara start getting substantial film and television roles that show off their tremendous range. I expect Dan Levy becomes a writing and producing powerhouse. And few things would make me happier, or be more deserved, than Annie Murphy becoming an A-lister.
We all know that the cast and crew of Schitt’s Creek will be fine, but what about all of those fans they left behind? Well, we’ll be fine, too. It will just take a while. Thankfully the 80 episodes of the show will always be there to revisit and although the show did not end with any obvious setup for a spinoff or reunion it most certainly was open-ended enough to allow for a revival of some kind in the future.
It may be a long time before something as clever, funny, heartwarming, and progressive as Schitt’s Creek is released. In fact, it may never happen. But rather than bemoan that the show left before I was ready for it to end, I am going to choose to be grateful that in this world so full of tragic things like corruption, violence, hate, and deadly viruses, we were gifted with something so life-affirming and love-affirming.
Check out recent articles by this author on the art of making a good series finale and the series finales of Modern Family, Will & Grace, and Homeland, as well as articles about the latest seasons of the streaming hits Dead to Me and Homecoming.
