Schitt's Creek: A Silver Lining

2020. Wow. What a year. She’s really outdone herself, hasn’t she? The world as we know it has completely changed in a matter of months and everyone has been affected by the disaster of a year 2020 has been. My life flipped upside down while I was in D.C. on spring break and I received an email from our dear president Andy Hamilton notifying students that the university and dorms would be closing for the remainder of the semester. I rushed back to the city the next morning to pack up my room, find a storage unit and move my things there, and get on a flight back to Houston, where I would live at home with my parents for the next three months.  

For a lot of us, the idea of having to live at home for an indefinite amount of time was anxiety-provoking. It’s hard to go back to cohabitating with your parents after having a taste of independence, especially when that freedom was manifesting itself in New York City. Not only am I free of curfews and house rules in college, I have the liberty of doing whatever I please in a place that has everything to offer. That's like, independence x100. I was certainly wary of how living with my family again would go, we generally get along but also have our issues as anyone else does. The beginning days of quarantine went well as I spent my time on Zoom, TikTok, and Netflix. The only schedule that I stuck to while living at home was going to the kitchen for lunch around noon, always eating dinner at 6:30, and watching TV with my parents after we ate. I would’ve never thought that this simple routine of spending time together after dinner would allow us to bond and keep the harmony in our house for three months when we should’ve been at each other’s throats, at least according to our track record.

For as long as I can remember, watching TV has been an activity that I do with my mom. As a child I watched 30 Rock and SNL with her, in high school we watched Jane the Virgin, and in quarantine I turned her on to Central Park on Apple TV+. My dad falls asleep early, as I feel most old fathers do, so he rarely watches TV or movies with us. He’s the coolest person ever until a timer on his iPad rings at 8:45 PM and it’s off to bed for Hulse. After he hobbles back to the bedroom from our living room, my mom and I often flip through streaming services looking for something to watch. One night we decided to start Schitt’s Creek because one of my professors had shown clips of the series in a class I was taking that semester. We invited my dad to watch the pilot with us but he declined and went off to bed; little did he know that he would be crying through the entire finale six weeks later. We were hooked after the first episode and while watching the second the next day, my dad decided it was worth his attention after all. He didn’t end up watching the pilot until months later, after we had finished the series. 

My parents and I became obsessed with Schitt’s Creek and were maybe a little bit too attached to the characters themselves. The characters of the main cast were so ridiculous yet managed to be so relatable at the same time. We found ourselves deeply resonating with the story of having your life turned upside down and being stuck with your family in isolation as a result. Like the Roses, I was displaced from my home in New York and had to unexpectedly move back to Texas. I went from a place of comfort and independence in a thriving city to discomfort back in my childhood home. I no longer felt safe wearing crazy clothes to the grocery store, people would stare at me for simply having glitter makeup on. Moving back home was quite the culture shock for me, similar to the culture shock that the Roses felt when they moved into the motel. 

As I adjusted to my new environment, I also had to learn how to live with my family again. I hadn’t lived at home since 2018, with the exception of holidays, and it was definitely an adjustment to get back into the swing of things in my childhood home. Alexis and David also had to learn how to peacefully cohabit and have patience with their parents when they moved into the motel, for they had never really had to live in such close quarters with Moira and Johnny before that moment. Like Alexis and David, I had to adjust to the lack of privacy, independence, and freedom that living with my parents entailed. But similar to the show, I felt a newfound sense of respect from my parents while living with them. Quarantine was the first time I truly felt seen as an adult by my mother and father and they got to know me better as an individual rather than only knowing me as their child.

The theme of Schitt’s Creek that most bonded my family’s situation in quarantine to the series itself was the idea that hardship allows us to reinvent ourselves and come out of adversity better and stronger people. Alexis, David, Moira, and Johnny had never spent much time together before having to move to Schitt’s Creek. Even though they constantly complained about their new conditions and living with each other was a challenge, the characters were all better for it by the end of the series. The relationships between the main characters were allowed to blossom because of their displacement and new circumstances. While quarantine could’ve been an absolute disaster for my family and we could’ve totally ruined our relationship, our bonds actually became stronger. Living with my parents for three months allowed me to get to know them better as people, for up until that moment, I had really only known them as parents. Sometimes after dinner, before watching Schitt’s Creek, we would sit and chat in our backyard until the sun set and it was too dark to see each other anymore. My dad would tell me stories of his reckless twenties and I realized that this short bald man sitting in front of me used to be quite the hippie back in his day. Our talks would lead into intellectual discussions about politics and humanity and my mom would share her own ideas about the world. She’s one of the smartest people I know, and a baddie too. They were also able to get to know me a little better and see the person that I’m becoming. While the idea of moving home in the middle of the semester was unexpected and not ideal at first, I will forever cherish the quality time I got to spend with my mom and dad during quarantine. We were allowed this time together for a terrible reason yet in a way, it ended up being such a beautiful period in my life. 

We finished season six about a week before I returned to New York. Like I said, my dad cried through the whole finale and my mom and I shed a few tears here and there. Our time together that had started out as a simple routine of hanging out after dinner was finally coming to an end. I would’ve never guessed that a global pandemic and a Canadian TV show would be what allowed my relationship with my family to grow as much as it did. Now, I talk to my parents everyday. We talk often in our group chat and FaceTime every couple days. We’re able to have smooth conversations without accidentally setting someone off. We say I love you at the end of calls, that never used to happen! My time spent at home even helped my parents' relationship with each other a bit. As a child I only saw them as bickering parents, but now they’re road tripping around the country in my mom’s convertible, isn’t that so cute? Maybe it was the forced isolation, or the positive energy radiating from the show we were watching, or just the fact that we had grown as people since I moved to college and could now work in harmony as a family unit. Whatever the reason may be, Schitt’s Creek was the silver lining in my pandemic story.