Don’t Worry, It’s His Sister
Season 1, Episode 3
Written by Michael Short
Directed by Paul Fox
Synopsis: Johnny tries to convince the locals that their town sign is inappropriate; David looks for a job; and Jocelyn invites Moira to give her class some drama coaching.
Rating: ★★☆☆☆
With the town now up for sale, Ray is driving Johnny around to show him exactly what Schitt’s Creek has to offer. Apparently it covers an area of 4,500 acres. ‘And it’s all yours, Johnny! Must be a nice feeling, considering you don’t have a lot right now. You know, because of the crooked business manager.’ This clunky opening dialogue serves as a somewhat contrived reminder of the story so far.
It leads into the reveal of the notorious sign showing a man holding a woman firmly by the waist from behind as she leans forward to scoop water out of the creek. Supposedly he’s preventing her from falling in, but it’s depicted in a manner suggestive of something altogether less wholesome...
It’s a crude joke, to say the least, and one which Johnny will be forced to spell out in increasingly blunt language as the episode proceeds. How funny you find it will depend on your taste in humour, although I doubt if Ray’s uncomprehending response will make anyone’s list of the show’s top one-liners. ‘Oh, I think I see it now,' he simpers. ‘His shoulders are too big.’
Back at the motel, Moira is having what is apparently one of her periodic attacks of crippling self-doubt, after reading cruel jibes about herself online. This manifests in her submerging herself in drink and anti-depressants and crawling into a cupboard, decrying her ‘tormentors’. The last syllable is drawn out in an early hint of the bizarre speech rhythms that Catherine O’Hara will develop into an art form over the next six seasons. That aside, it’s not a particularly comfortable scene to watch, and unlikely to win over any viewers who, at this early stage, are finding the characters difficult to warm to.
Horrified to discover that his son is still using his credit card to buy stuff he has no means of paying for, Johnny insists David find himself a job. There’s an amusing scene where he has a tryout as a bag boy at a local grocery store. A supervisor watches with ill-disguised malevolence as David has to keep breaking off to take calls from his father asking how it’s going. It seems implausible that Johnny would do this, having earlier impressed on his son the importance of not being distracted during the interview. For some reason the calls are coming in to the store’s switchboard (‘David Rose on line one’) rather than to David’s mobile. Presumably this is for comic effect, as David has to repeatedly squeeze past the stony-faced supervisor to take the call, but again it doesn’t really make any kind of logical sense.
Johnny goes to speak to the town council about the sign, and here we meet two more recurring characters for the first time: Bob (John Hemphill) and Ronnie (Karen Robinson). We don’t get much idea of who they are at this stage; Ronnie, in particular, only has one line, and it’s a curt dismissal rather than an example of the withering sarcasm that will become her trademark.
Out on the street a furious Roland accosts Johnny and demands that he accompany him out to the town sign to explain what exactly he finds so objectionable. The painting on the sign is a source of immense family pride to Roland, as it depicts the town’s founder, Horace Schitt. (In Roland’s accent, it sounds like ‘horse shit’, and Eugene Levy gives a wonderful sideways eye roll when he hears this.) Horace was Roland’s great-grandfather; and the gene pool is evidently a pretty small one, if the likeness to Chris Elliott is anything to go by. Kudos is due here to the unknown scenic artist who created the sign which, dubious content aside, is a beautiful piece of artwork, convincingly antiquated and weathered. A nice touch is that, in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it close-up on the face of Horace’s sister, it’s evident that she’s distinctly cross-eyed.
There’s another subplot involving Alexis trying to find out more about Mutt, leading to her calling unannounced at his barn – where she discovers him evidently enjoying a nooner with Twyla. Annie Murphy plays the awkwardness of this scene beautifully.
Meanwhile, Jocelyn has suggested to Moira that her class, who are putting on an educational play for the younger grades about the perils of drugs, would benefit from a little drama coaching from a bona fide star. Still reeling from the online trolling she has been subjected to, Moira seizes on this as an opportunity to prove that she is still ‘relevant’. The subsequent scene is cringe-inducing as Moira browbeats the bewildered students into digging deep in search of their motivation. The methods she uses (‘What is it that you want?... [And] what is it you need – it’s different’) are fundamentally sound, but her in-your-face approach is too much for the students to handle.
Eventually she resorts to a slice of her own reality, telling the class that they too will become old, overweight and unloved and that the world will despise them for it. ‘So what? Who cares? When they get mean, you tell them to go to hell,’ she admonishes before collapsing face down onto a desk. It’s good advice, but harshly delivered, and a somewhat unsettling insight into the current state of Moira’s mental health. Isn’t this supposed to be a comedy?
All in all, another episode that struggles to get the tone right. We’re slowly finding out more about each of the principal characters, but the progress may be too slow for some. Good, relatable episodic TV should always be a marathon rather than a sprint; right now though, Schitt’s Creek is still stuck in the starting blocks.
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Moira-ism: ‘Jocelyn, have you ever been addicted to drugs? No? Then write what you know, OK? The quiet suffering of a woman trapped in a relationship with a simpleton.’
Fun fact: a scaled-down version of the town sign now stands outside the Goodwood Mercantile filming location, with Horace and his sister’s faces cut out so fans can poke their heads through and pose for photos.
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Previous episode: The Drip
Next episode: Bad Parents