Schitt's Creek (Season 1)

Schitt's Creek made a pretty bad first impression on me when I first watched it, and for a while I didn't quite think of the show as anything more than pretty decent, even by its legitimately great last few seasons. However, upon rewatching it, I realized I may have been selling this show short, even if you might have to watch it a few times to fully appreciate it.

Schitt's Creek is a show about a rich family that loses all their assets and has to move to a small off-the-grid town that they own called, well, Schitt's Creek. There, the patriarch of the family Johnny desperately tries to sell the place to no avail, and the spoiled children Alexis and David have to learn how to get a job, make friends, and enter an actually genuine relationship. As the show progresses, all four members of the family go through some great character development as they become better people and further integrate into the town without losing what makes them special, but you wouldn't know that when watching Season 1 for the first time. As a matter of fact, while most of the show falls in line with Parks and Rec in tone, Season 1 is actually fairly cynical and resembles Arrested Development a lot more. Even the romantic drama feels far more trope-y with love triangles, drunken sex, and accidental proposals compared to the more mature and supportive relationships created in later seasons. As a result, without the show's distinct wholesomeness that made it so popular, Season 1 feels a lot more crass, cruel, and frankly generic. 

It doesn't help that the writing isn't the funniest in this season, as many of the running gags like Bob's run and Twyla's dark stories haven't been fully established yet. Before my rewatch, I thought that this was one of the unfunniest comedy seasons I ever seen (might have been a bit of an overexaggeration given Community Season 4 though). When read as a script, this first batch of episodes isn't anything amazing. However, this is a show where I can definitively say that the actors elevate the material higher than it has any right to go. The cast in Schitt's Creek is phenomenal, especially the main four. Catherine O'Hara as Moira is the obvious standout with her odd inflections and hysterical breakdowns, but Dan Levy (David) and Annie Murphy (Alexis) both give their characters these unique quirks that really bring them to life. Even outside the core four, though, there are a ton of likable characters that appear so often that it makes Schitt's Creek feel like a real small town. As mentioned before, the character development is really good too, and while bigger strides are taken in later seasons, I like the baby steps a lot of the characters take to socialize and lead lives. I used to find the more static characters like Roland to be a bit weak at first, but now I really like how they spend the season actively trying to help the Rose family feel a bit at home.

Despite my gripes with the season, there are a few episodes I really liked:

Wines And Roses: As a whole, this episode was pretty decent, with some funny material in Twyla's yoga class along with Ted's first appearance, but the real highlight is Moira shooting an ad only to botch up most of the words (and it gets even worse when she's drunk).

Honeymoon: In its later seasons, Schitt's Creek becomes one of the gayer shows I've seen, but this episode laid the groundwork with its positive depiction of pansexuality that managed to be funny ("isn't it that cookware fetish?") and genuine ("I like the wine and not the label"). Even outside of that, this was just a very funny episode with high Johnny and Moira and that hilariously awkward dinner party that pokes fun at just how ridiculous this season's romantic drama is.

Town For Sale: Town For Sale is the only finale in the series to be a bit of a downer, and one of two to end on a big cliffhanger. However, it still feels climactic as the family tries to tie loose ends after thinking they're finally going to be able to leave. Alexis was especially funny as she accidentally gets engaged to Ted, but the cliffhanger with David driving away was also pretty great.

Overall, Schitt's Creek's first season makes a weak first impression with a cynical tone it can't quite nail and some unremarkable writing, but the acting is amazing from the get-go and it holds up really well on a second viewing. 

2/5 Stars