You’ve got an extraneous letter “p” on the end of the link.
Here it is:
Later on you fall in love with the characters, but if you don’t think it’s at least funny from the start it’s never going to be funny.
What a narrow-minded view.
I was the same way. I watched it when it first came out and thought it was pretty…pedestrian and over-reaching, and trying too hard to be funny with it’s “fish out of water” premise. It did not seem funny or groundbreaking to me whatsoever.
When it came out on US tv and people started falling in love with it, I was like “gah, such simple people falling for this rube comedy!” But I gave it another shot, right after it was fully on Netflix, and ended up binging it all in a couple weekends.
I don’t even know what happened to change my mind. It really was bad in the first couple episodes. I guess I had to stick around to see what they were going for? Or to just get off my high horse about it? I think what drew me to watch it again was my LGBTQ friends gushing over it and me wondering why.
It’s not entirely wrong. I thought it was very jarring that they are in small town America and no one had a problem with the rich gay son. It struck me as somewhat fantasy. And that no one really resented the Rose’s for being rich - so that they owned the shithole town that all these people lived in.
The lack of black and brown people (aside from one exception) was conspicuous as well, but there are plenty of small towns which have those demographics.
Nitpick but technically, they’re in small town Canada.
My take is, I think she points out a lot of accurate things. And, it’s always valuable to consider the perspectives not included in the “universal” love and praise of a show/movie/art.
However, the position that Schitt’s Creek is the “worst show on TV”, or that its flaws make it uniquely awful is . . . well, hard to defend.
If this author took the same lens to almost any show being broadcast (streamed, or whatever) right now, I think it’s laughable that anyone would consider Schitt’s Creek to be the worst offender in promoting the racial/economic/gender/sexuality status quo.
Add me and my wife to the list of people who (a) gave the show a try based on rave recommendations, and (b) hit a wall of obnoxious, selfish, stupid characters in the early going and bailed out in perplexity.
Upon the strident insistence of friends, we have tentatively dipped back in, and (toward the end of the first season) it seems to be getting marginally more tolerable, but Lord it’s a rough go.
I rage quit that review.
I was very much the same way. My girlfriend liked it from the beginning so I stuck with it and came to like the characters quite a lot.
I think your take on Johnny Rose is wrong. He was not a high powered businessman. He used to be a high powered businessman. He was just a rich man at the beginning. He made his money with video rental stores. It was clear that he never grew with the times and his business sense was still back in the 1980s. Which is why he had such a hard time starting back up and why someone was able to rip him off so completely.
This was exactly my reaction–after trying it after some positive reviews here.
I remember a similar negative reaction after a few minutes of Arrested Development.
My wife and I watched maybe 2.5 or 3 seasons of it. It was fine. It was entertaining. I didn’t have any of the gut-negative hate-it hate-it hate-it reactions that some in this thread did (although it did drive me batty how little sense “owns the town” ever made). Eventually we got bored and stopped.
And then suddenly a few years ago everyone was raving about it and it won all the emmys. And… I just don’t get it. Here are comedies from the past 15 years that I think are MUCH better than it:
-Fleabag
-The Good Place
-Bojack Horseman
(those three in particular I will got to the fucking mats for)
-Parks and Rec
-Community
-Arrested Development
-Broad City
-Master of None
-Archer
etc.
That’s a take, for sure, but I’m not sure I entirely agree with it.
Recently I read an author (CL Clark, of The Unbroken) describe her book as “queernorm,” a fantasy in which queer relationships are completely unremarkable. It’s a way to take the focus off that and imagine a society that at least gets that right (in her novel, the society gets nearly everything else wrong). I think Schitt’s Creek is a bit of a queernorm fantasy. There’s at least one scene, in season 5, when
Patrick comes out to his parents
where homophobia is referenced–but it’s just as quickly renounced. Having an aspirational escapist fantasy like this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
As for race: I’m not familiar with small-town Canadian life. Is it realistic to have a town that’s as overwhelmingly White as Schitt’s Creek? I kinda assume so, but I speak from a position of ignorance. Certainly we need more diversity in entertainment, and it’s a fair criticism that they decided to set it in such a White town as an issue of authorial choice; but I’m not sure if it’s unrealistic.
As for class, this show in no way makes the rich people aspirational. They’re horrible, and it’s only as they slowly shed the trappings of their upper-class culture that they become remotely bearable. It’s a riches-to-rags story in which only the loss of their wealth allows for any sort of redemptive arc. Several episodes drive this home, as they briefly encounter rich assholes from their previous lives and realize how repulsive those people are–and by extension how repulsive they once were.
The reviewer completely misreads this part of the show. The most likeable characters on the show are Stevie and Twyla, working-class folks just scraping by.
I agree they’re both likable. I don’t know how to do spoiler tags, but Twyla might not be as she appears.
Yes. Jeez what a fine example of woke stupidity. It’s a sitcom. It’s escapist entertainment. It’s not supposed to be An In-depth Inquiry into the Serious Issues of Our Time. It’s funny that the writer calls Dan Levy pompous and self-important. What a giant projection. And I know openly gay people in small towns who are accepted by their community.
I like the show, but I can understand why people might not. There is a fair amount of cringe, which I don’t like either, and the characters are very mannered and quirky. I enjoy the redemption arc, though, and some of the humor lands for me.
It depends; Canada is a large country. But in Dufferin County where some of the filming was done, visible minorities range from 18% in Shelburne to 8% or less in other areas.
Fair! I have a little more than a season to go. Overall, I think the point stands: while a modest income is no guarantee that a character will be sympathetic (cough Roland cough), a high income is almost a guarantee that the character will be terrible.
I guess the thing that keeps me from thinking of it as a Canadian village is that there isn’t a First Nations person to be seen (even in crowd scenes, as far as I’ve noticed).
I agree with the others that it picks up in season 2. IMHO season 2 is about as good as it gets, and it starts to stall at the end. It is nothing like a show with typical broad based appeal, some people will never like it, some people will love it, based on my very lightly sampled personal poll, most people fall right in the middle on this one.
Note that “8% or less” translates to significantly less for some municipalities:
Schitt’s Creek could plausibly be 97% White and Aboriginal.
From that previous link, it looks like 1 in 80 folk in that county are First Nations. I don’t know how many first nations folks are visibly so, nor whether the First Nations folks are segregated from white folks within yer average Canadian county.