The Cabin
Season 1, Episode 5
Written by Amanda Walsh
Directed by Paul Fox
Synopsis: When Johnny and Moira spend a night away from the motel in search of some privacy, Alexis and David have very different ideas on how to pass the time.
Rating: ★★★☆☆
One of the unspoken ground rules in Schitt’s Creek is that, despite everything they’ve been through, Johnny and Moira’s relationship is rock solid. They may occasionally bicker (though never to the extent that they do with their kids, or that the kids do with each other), but their marriage is a loving, supportive one. And, as we learn in this episode, that includes an active sex life.
We discover this fact at the same time that David and Alexis do, as David casually walks into his parents’ bedroom before retreating in horror at what he sees (though mercifully we don’t). Johnny and Moira, having hastily donned robes, follow him into the other room protesting that they have a right to privacy, that what they were doing was perfectly natural, and that he should be ashamed of being so shocked. ‘Shame on you, for attempting that position at eight o’clock in the morning!’ David retorts.
Johnny tries to persuade Roland to fix a lock on the connecting door between the two rooms, but Roland has a better idea. He and Jocelyn have a cabin in the woods (‘a little love nest for the lady and me’) which Johnny and Moira are welcome to spend the night in. Johnny is initially reluctant but Moira convinces him that it could be a good idea. David and Alexis, meanwhile, are delighted at the prospect of having both rooms to themselves, even if only for 24 hours.
David announces to his sister that he is going to move into his parents’ room for the night because, as he puts it, ‘your mess is making me anxious’. ‘What mess?’ she asks, mystified. Cut to a wide shot of Alexis reading a magazine while lying on crumpled bedding, with piles of clothes and clutter spilling onto the floor. David, in contrast, is standing next to his neatly made bed, packing his overnight things into a little wheel-along suitcase for the journey of ten feet or so into the next room. It’s a lovely visual gag that neatly sums up the difference in their characters.
Johnny and Moira arrive at the rustic cabin to find it surprisingly charming (‘I was half expecting early Unabomber,’ Moira observes). They start busking a scenario in which Moira’s car has broken down in the rain and Johnny invites her in for the night. ‘First let’s get you out of those... dry clothes,’ he purrs seductively. Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara play this coquettish dialogue with tremendous glee, suggesting that it’s the kind of thing the characters do regularly to keep their relationship fresh and exciting. It’s tempting to see their fondness for role-playing as a nod to the actors’ early careers working together in Toronto’s improvised comedy scene. When this was shot in 2014, Levy and O’Hara had been friends and colleagues for 40 years, and it shows in the undeniable screen chemistry between the two.
There’s a hint as to where this storyline is going when Johnny picks up a framed photo of Roland and Jocelyn clad in fishing gear with two friends, one of whom is Bob. ‘And his partner,’ coos Moira. ‘Roland has gay friends! I’m shocked and delighted.’ ‘I think that’s his wife,’ suggests Johnny, earning a gentle correction from Moira: ‘No, they’re both called husband.’
Later, Johnny and Moira are lying in bed basking in post-coital bliss. It’s evidently been quite a session. Moira looks serenely satisfied, as well she might judging by the effort Johnny has clearly been putting in – he’s panting for breath and can’t see out of one eye. Heading into the other room to fetch them something to eat, he’s mortified to discover Bob sitting reading quietly on the sofa, along with the other person in the photo, who turns out to be his wife Gwen. It becomes horribly apparent that they’ve been there quite some time; Bob good-naturedly explains that they didn’t like to interrupt, especially as Johnny seemed to take a little while to get going. It’s their cabin, of course; Roland and Jocelyn’s is a mile up the road. After hastily getting dressed and gathering their belongings, the Roses leave in a flurry of awkward apologies.
Meanwhile, Alexis is keen to make the most of her parents’ absence by holding a party at the motel. David, who just wants peace and quiet, proposes a games night instead. There are some cute scenes between him and Stevie where she sends up his control freakery, played in a way that clearly indicates the growing bond of friendship between these two.
David’s micro-managed games evening quickly gets derailed as it becomes clear that Alexis has invited a bunch of random strangers with a keg of beer, and he eventually storms off to bed. Watching him unravel in these scenes is true cringe comedy – especially for anyone bold enough to admit that David’s frustration with people who won’t take the rules of the game seriously might just be something they recognise in themselves. 🤐
A little later, Stevie comes to seek him out and persuade him back to the party. There’s a drunken game of charades going on next door; she confesses that she is more like him than she cares to admit, hates losing and needs him to help her win. Assured that everyone is too drunk to remember his earlier hissy fit, he reluctantly agrees. As with all their scenes together in this episode, Emily Hampshire and Dan Levy give multi-layered performances that hint at so much more beneath the surface.
The coda to the episode has Johnny and Moira back at the motel, reinvigorated after their break and playing yet another role-playing game, this time with Johnny as a gawky handyman trying to fix a chain lock onto the connecting door – which lasts barely 30 seconds before an oblivious Alexis bursts through. An interesting touch is that Moira in this scene is browsing through a copy of Craft Magic, the same magazine that Gwen was reading earlier at the cabin. Is this a hint that Moira may be starting to feel a little more at home?
In structural terms this is a somewhat atypical episode of Schitt’s Creek. Whereas most feature three or even four largely disconnected storylines, this one has just two – Moira and Johnny’s desire for privacy, and Alexis and David’s clashing ideas about how to make the most of their absence – and even then the secondary plot is a direct consequence of the first. There are even thematic links between the two, such as the contrast between David’s rigid idea of social game-playing and Johnny and Moira’s joyfully inventive role play. ‘The Cabin’ is Amanda Walsh’s only writing credit for Schitt’s Creek (although as a story editor throughout the first two seasons she will have had a significant role in shaping the series); while this is not necessarily a standout instalment, it would have been interesting to see her contributing more to the writing of the show than just this one episode.
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Moira-ism: (after David’s reminder that she once took the wrong baby home from pre-school) ‘Alexis looked Chinese as an infant. How many times must I defend myself?’
Fun fact: although this is not the first time we’ve seen Alexis boop David on the nose (she did it when he arrived at the tailgate party in ‘The Drip’), it’s the one that cemented it as part of her character. In an interview Annie Murphy recalled: ‘I realised very early on that booping Dan Levy on the nose was a source of great delight for me because it was a source of great annoyance for him. So I just ran with it and booped him as frequently as possible, both on and off screen. I think we were sitting on a bed together in the first season, and I remember doing it and just seeing the David Rose exterior crumble a little bit and the annoyed Daniel Levy come out, and I was like, “Oh, this has to stay.”’
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Previous episode: Bad Parents
Next episode: Wine and Roses