In A Global Pandemic: Are We All Living in Schitt’s Creek?
By: Lizzie Finn
Tags: Life Lessons, Pandemic, Schitts Creek, Arts And Culture, TV Series

In A Global Pandemic: Are We All Living in Schitt’s Creek?

If so, maybe we should embrace it and become better, deeper, richer people.

Due to circumstances outside their control, a once-wealthy, successful family loses everything and must hunker down together in a tiny, tacky living space (motel).

This family has one goal. Escape this impoverished, cramped hell and get their old spacious and decadent lives back as soon as possible.

That, in a nutshell, is the premise for Schitt’s Creek, a quirky and beloved Canadian fish-out-of-water comedy. After six glorious, and progressively-funny seasons, the show recently aired its series finale, leaving me emotional and teary-eyed.

The show’s premise — a family is forcibly separated from their livelihood and comfortable, spacious life — is also, strangely, the premise of humanity’s current existence.

Due to circumstances beyond our control, we have all been forced to hunker down with our families in cramped living quarters. And like the Roses, many of us can’t wait until it’s over so we can get back to normal.

But what if, like characters in a TV show, we are meant to learn lessons from these conflicts and obstacles?

What if we are in a place of no return?

Poet, activist and humanitarian Sonya Renee Taylor recently said about this pandemic:

“We will not go back to normal. Normal never was. Our pre-corona existence was not normal other than we normalized greed, inequity, exhaustion, depletion, extraction, disconnection, confusion, rage, hoarding, hate and lack. We should not long to return, my friends. We are being given the opportunity to stitch a new garment. One that fits all of humanity and nature.”

If Schitt’s Creek didn’t start airing five years ago, I would think the creators recently wrote this series as an allegory for our current crisis.

Greed. Inequity. Depletion. Disconnection. The show explored many themes that relate directly back to Taylor’s commentary above. Normalized does not equate to normal. The things our society places a high value on are not necessarily healthy, functional, or good for us.

Sometimes, it takes a global or personal catastrophe to help us see what truly matters.

Stranger than fiction

Daniel Levy, plays David Rose, the beating heart of Schitt’s Creek, and is also the creative genius behind the series. Is it possible Levy saw this global sheltering-in-place coming five years ago? Of course not.

Levy merely understands the power in probing the selfishness of human nature and the importance of social connections.

He also knows how to milk laughs from tragedy.

In some ways, real-life in 2020 is indeed stranger than fiction. Our current predicament might even be laugh-out-loud funny if there wasn’t so much at stake for so many people.

Take away the threat of death and the global economic collapse, and we are being presented with an intriguing philosophical question:

Can we be happier with a stripped-down life — one without all the busyness, productivity, consumption, and daily distractions?

Rock Bottom

The Rose family — Johnny (Eugene Levy), Moira (Catherine O’Hara), David (Daniel Levy), and Alexis (Annie Murphy) arrive in Schitt’s Creek — a town they bought as an ultra-expensive gag gift. It’s their only remaining asset, and they have no place else to go.

Besides its cringe-inducing name, Schitt’s Creek is a tacky small town beneath the worldly and sophisticated Roses in every way. The townspeople lack glamour, celebrity, and status — all of the things the Rose family values as external validations of success and self-worth.

At first glance, the Roses are so vain, obnoxious, and money-obsessed, that it’s hard not to cheer for their downfall.

However, throughout the series, we learn to love and appreciate the Roses and their sincere hearts, solid work ethics, and crazy costumes. At the same time, the Roses learn to love and appreciate those things about themselves.

We begin to have compassion for the Roses when we realize the depth of their humiliation. They didn’t just lose their lucrative business, family fortune, and material possessions. They’ve also lost their social standing — and with it — their power, community, and identities.

Who are these people if they can’t buy their way out of any problem?

What they gained

From day one, the town of Schitt’s Creek welcomes the Roses with open arms. Nobody cares about their loss of wealth and status.

It is at the Schitt’s Creek Motel, in their cramped, shared living quarters, that the Roses deepen their family ties and build the kind of support system that will last them a lifetime.

By becoming part of this new community, the Roses learn (as do we) that losing their wealth was a gift, not a disaster.

They actually gain so much more than they lost.

And in reality, they never lost anything that truly mattered.

They didn’t lose each other. In fact, without their money to fly around the world and pursue their separate adventures, the family spends every day together, and they become much more bonded. Their love and affection for each other grows tremendously, and it feels earned and authentic.

They didn’t lose any real friends or trusted colleagues. Those old relationships were weak and thin, lacking loyalty and authenticity. Real friends and colleagues do not abandon us when we hit rock bottom.

Escape from Schitt’s Creek

As I prepared myself for the series finale, I wondered if the Roses would indeed finally make their escape.

It seemed logical to me that they should remain in Schitt’s Creek forever as they had become entwined with the community — both personally and professionally (but I won’t spoil the ending here).

Despite feeling stuck for years in a place they were initially ashamed of and despised, the Roses took quite an internal journey. They traveled so far, in fact, that going back to their previous lives no longer seemed like a viable option. These are not the same one-dimensional people who arrived in Schitt’s Creek in episode one.

Whether they physically leave Schitt’s Creek now is beside the point.

The town of Schitt’s Creek — with its stripped-down values and sense of social connection — will always live inside of them.

No going back

I told people recently that I feel guilty about enjoying my time during this pandemic.

I’m not anxious or afraid (and luckily not worried about my finances at the moment). My life hasn’t changed that much — I still write, work, study, and teach from home. I’m not cooped up with little kids bouncing off the walls, and there’s no home-schooling to drive me crazy.

And if I’m candid — I don’t miss the hectic busyness of the world.

I’m also not sure I want to go back to the way things were. Having weathered a string of personal struggles in the last seven years, there are a lot of things about that world that no longer work for me.

In midlife, I’ve been ‘stitching a new garment,’ as Taylor suggests. I’m seeking connection, meaning, challenge, and purpose. I’m going inside to find my core values and strengths, instead of looking for external validation from others.

I thought this sheltering in place would be harder than it is. But I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything. Instead, I’m busier than usual — writing more, teaching more, studying more, and socializing way more.

My life feels full without feeling forced. I’m not trying to keep up with anyone else or prove my worth. And I don’t feel depleted or exhausted from trying to meet someone else’s standard of living.

Best of all, I feel more connected and less alone than before this sheltering in place began.

This pandemic is not easy, and I’m not ignoring the strain it is putting on us. But in this crisis, the veil has come down. It is apparent that we can do a lot of things better. Also, we are stronger when we do things collectively. It is a strength, not a weakness, to rely on one another.

Sometimes it takes hitting rock bottom and losing everything we have for us to awaken to our true gifts and potential.

In their lives before Schitt’s Creek, the Roses were shitty people. The forced separation from their ‘normal’ wealthy lives created an opportunity for growth and true abundance.

In times of adversity, we can wilt and die, or like the Rose family, we can lose our prickly thorns, and blossom and grow into beautiful, colorful flowers.

And we might just become better, deeper, richer people.