So if, like most people, you had something better to do last night than watch the Emmys, here’s the big news for you: time to watch Schitt’s Creek. Its final season won big – taking the award in every comedy category.

 

I very much agree with my former PJM colleague Stephen Kruiser. The Canadian comedy show Schitt’s Creek is something special. The Other Half and I have been binging it these past few weeks and loving it more and more. We’re now in season 5, the last one on Netflix now, but we’ll be buying season 6 on Amazon Prime when we’re done.

What prompted such binging enthusiasm for us? Perhaps the same for what prompted the Emmys to give Schitt’s Creek a historic victory, sweeping the category? The characters are simply very engaging, funny, and developed.

The show’s premise is what turned me off from watching it all these years: a very wealthy family loses everything and ends up in a town literally named Schitt’s Creek. So the types of characters I would not like, in a scenario that is deeply depressing, the opposite of what many aspire to with escaping the tiny country town for a high flying life in the big city.

But the show isn’t just about the four members of the Rose family, it’s also about the members of the community they encounter and eventually befriend. Chris Elliot as Roland Schitt, the mayor, is the first of many eccentric but ultimately decent and endearing characters who emerge and help the Roses. It’s that dynamic that makes the show get better and better – the community helps the Roses and the Roses then help the community. Perhaps that is the key element of what makes the show so special, in an entirely authentic and unpretentious and natural way the show depicts how a healthy community can function to lift back up those who have fallen down.

It’s also just very, very funny too.