Carl’s Funeral
Season 1, Episode 9
Written by Kevin White
Directed by Jerry Ciccoritti
Synopsis: Johnny is asked to speak at Bob’s brother’s funeral, Alexis realises that dating a vet means dealing with animals, and David and Stevie get high.
Rating: ★★☆☆☆
Memory can play strange tricks. Before sitting down to rewatch ‘Turkey Shoot’, and recalling the titular hunting expedition without much enthusiasm, I was pretty sure I’d be giving it a two- or at best three-star rating. Then I actually watched it and was pleasantly surprised at the amount of solid story and character development that fills the rest of the episode. ‘Carl’s Funeral’ similarly defied my recollection, but sadly in the other direction. I remembered it as a classic but, except for the hilarious final moments, for the most part it’s disappointingly downbeat.
An unusually subdued Roland and Jocelyn call at the motel with news that Bob’s brother Carl has died. Beyond a perfunctory sympathy, Johnny and Moira aren’t sure how they’re expected to react, since they didn’t know Carl. ‘We barely know Bob,’ adds Moira, somewhat unhelpfully.
It seems, though, that Carl certainly knew Johnny, and held him in high esteem; so much so that Bob has expressed a wish for Johnny to be a pall-bearer at the funeral. Johnny is mortified (it’s not really clear why – shouldering a coffin is a solemn duty but not a particularly arduous one), and on the spot invents a back problem that supposedly prevents him doing any heavy lifting. For corroboration he turns to Moira, who has lost interest and is toying ineffectually with a steam iron (one of the rare times that we see her tackling mundane chores). ‘Honey? You know, my back?’ he prompts, with a hint of desperation. ‘The thing with my back?’ ‘Oh, it’s terrible,’ she gamely agrees. ‘And his arms are so weak. Little muscles, like corn nuts.’ ‘Yeah, we’re just talking about my back, sweetheart,’ he peevishly responds, with the side-eye that is becoming one of the hallmarks of Eugene Levy’s performance.
Later, in an awkward encounter with Bob at the café, Johnny has his arm twisted to say a few words at Carl’s funeral in lieu of helping to bear the coffin. As he walks home with Moira, she recalls a similar experience at the funeral for a crew member on Sunrise Bay; ‘I didn’t have a thought in my head, so I stood up and sang “Danny Boy”. Not a dry eye in the house.’
Meanwhile, David and Alexis are concerned about some new occupants of the next room: a loudly bickering couple with a screaming baby. David heads for the office to report the intrusion of the ‘skaggy’ couple to Stevie. ‘They’re my cousins,’ she brightly announces. ‘[And] they’re definitely skaggy.’ ‘Wait, so you’re related to Carl?’ asks David, in what seems a strange leap of logic. How does he know the new arrivals, Sean and Bree, are related to Carl? His assumption seems to be that the couple are in town for the funeral, but we’ve seen nothing to suggest that. I’m not sure if this is a slip-up in the script, or whether the information was conveyed in some earlier dialogue that got lost in the edit, but either way it’s an odd plot hole.
Alexis decides to go and stay with Ted for a few days, in his pristine bachelor pad which he has prudently sprayed with Febreze, having eaten Indian the night before. Alexis is overjoyed at her new surroundings: ‘It’s so much nicer than the motel. At least you know what the smell is.’ Unfortunately, that’s pretty much the last decent gag in this storyline. The remainder depicts the couple’s attempts to get romantic being constantly thwarted by a pair of inquisitive pooches that Ted is looking after. Annie Murphy and Dustin Milligan play this material gamely, but the joke is overly drawn out to make the point that Alexis isn’t comfortable around animals.
Meanwhile, back at the motel, Bree and Sean (whom we now know to be Carl’s stepson) have filled their room with a bunch of equally skaggy friends and are drinking and getting stoned, accompanied by loud rock music. David is attempting unsuccessfully to break things up so he can get some sleep when, to his surprise, he encounters a wasted Stevie among the ‘mourners’.
Next day, a deeply hung over Stevie is attempting to clean the trashed room. While consoling her, David finds a stash of marijuana hidden inside a pillowcase. ‘If you’re offering,’ she tells him, ‘my answer is yes.’ Later we find them both completely stoned, just as Sean and Bree are heard arguing outside. In the nick of time before the squabbling couple enter, Stevie and David make it through the connecting door into the adjoining room – which happens to be the red satin-draped ‘love room’ we saw in episode 4. Their shushing and giggling intensifies until, suddenly and unexpectedly, they begin to kiss passionately. In a nice touch, Stevie knocks against a switch on the wall and we discover that the room is equipped with a glitterball.
At the church, while waiting for the funeral to begin, Johnny has been desperately trying to glean some last-minute snippets of information he can use to say something, anything, in his eulogy. Carl, we discover, died in what Bob describes as ‘a freak accident... He was trying to unhook his belt from the ceiling fan, and apparently it got knotted around his neck.’
When his moment comes, Johnny’s attempts to improvise some bland pleasantries about Carl’s character are rudely hijacked when Bree, whose baby has been crying lustily throughout, takes a phone call from Sean who is apparently in a bar. She swears loudly and leaves. This is all too much for Johnny, who completely loses it and begins to rail against the ‘godforsaken’ town, ‘the misery of our lives here, and how we might never escape this place’. Moira comes to the rescue as she leaps to her feet and, with a sly wink at Johnny, launches into a sultry rendition of ‘Danny Boy’, promptly joined (in a variety of keys) by the rest of the grateful congregation. Apart from the note of comedy introduced by Moira’s singing, this is possibly the bleakest scene in all of Schitt’s Creek. That Johnny, normally the one member of the Rose family who tries to stay positive about their predicament, should be the one to crack in such spectacular fashion is as depressing as it is unexpected.
Over in the café, Ted is apologising to Alexis for placing her in an awkward situation the night before. He says he loves the dogs, but ‘I also really love...’ Alexis looks at him expectantly, until he adds: ‘...the way that our relationship is going right now.’ He’s bought her a present, too: a book called Opening Your Heart To Animals – A Guide To The Benefits Of Caring For Something Other Than Yourself. Ouch. The book’s title may hold a sting, but hidden inside is a somewhat more palatable gift in the form of a room key for a hotel in Elmdale where the couple can spend some dog-free nookie time. It’s amusing to think that, as a vet, Ted will be familiar with the balance of discipline and reward used when training animals, and is perhaps applying the same principles here.
The funeral mercifully over, Johnny and Moira join the other mourners in the town hall for the wake. Everyone is full of praise for her ‘Danny Boy’ rendition in the church, and Bob implores her to deliver ‘one more chorus... for Carl’. She graciously accedes, and what follows is a comedy highlight as she begins with an elaborate vocal run-up before launching into the song itself. Catherine O’Hara’s lingering pauses after each word are matched by Eugene Levy, hesitating before taking a bite of his sandwich with immaculate comic timing. Dan Levy has said that ‘this is why my Dad is now an Emmy-winning actor,’ and it’s hard to disagree.
Aside from that glorious ending, and David and Stevie taking their relationship to the next level (which will have an iconic payoff in the next episode), this entry doesn’t really hit its marks. The show’s developing theme to this point has been the transformative influence the town is having on the Roses. Viewed in that context, this episode – emphasising as it does the more dismal, hopeless aspects of life in Schitt’s Creek – feels out of place. The starting point of any TV comedy has to be the script, and Kevin White was responsible for writing some standout episodes across the first four seasons of Schitt’s Creek. However, despite the actors adding some nice touches of physical comedy that elevate the material, sadly this is one of White’s weaker offerings.
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Moira-ism: ‘Let's pilfer a few sandwiches and make a gracious French exit.’
Fun fact: While chatting to Stevie in the motel office, David browses through a leaflet promoting the 40th Annual Corn Festival. On the back is a list of things one can do at the festival, prominent among which is ‘Eat a lot of corn’.
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