The Three People You Meet When You Don’t Like ‘Schitt’s Creek’

Tressie McMillan Cottom
4 min readOct 11, 2020
Lovely people, forgettable show.

Schitt’s Creek is not good. Let’s get that out of the way. Some of the performances may be lovely, but the show is not good. I am qualified to say this for two reasons.

One, I watch bad content to the point of obsession: Hallmark Movies, Murder She Wrote, C-List Netflix series, and the entire back catalog of Hart to Hart. I know bad television.

Two, I am more than familiar with the Schitt’s Creek genre and especially its stars. I watch Best In Show three times a month, more if it has been a particularly crappy month. Waiting for Guffman is my weighted blanket. It soothes me. I can recite entire scenes of What We Do In The Shadows, while drunk and sleep-deprived. Catherine O’Hara is basically Vivian, if she was Canadian. I want to marry Eugene Levy’s Mitch Cohen. I know the genre. I am the genre. I should love this show.

Despite being the audience for this show and having the world’s worst taste in popular culture, I do not like Schitt’s Creek. I am not confused about what Schitt’s Creek is. I’m not missing some vital piece of information about the show. I get it. I simply do not like it.

I make that distinction because when you do not like Schitt’s Creek, you are met on your journey into hell by three spirits. Each one is lying to you about how good Schitt’s Creek is because — and I cannot stress this enough — Schitt’s Creek is not good.

Hanger-In-There (HIT)

HITs just want you to not give up. Ever. On anything. They need you to know that if you “push through”, “commit” and “believe” that Schitt’s Creek will absolutely “pay off”. The pay off, as far as I can tell, is that you might cry at the season finale. What they never say is if you are crying tears of joy and relief that this long boring waking nightmare is finally over. You can cry for a far cheaper price than six seasons (at 30 minutes an episode and 10–12 episodes a season) of Schitt’s Creek. You can hit your pinky toe on the side of a coffee table. You can watch any of the top three best Tonya Harding made-for-television movies. Now, that’s a girl with a sob story and she manages to tell it in 90 minutes or less.

Choose Your Own Adventurer

Tressie McMillan Cottom

Sociologist. Writer. Professor. MacArthur Fellow. Books, speaking, podcast: www.tressiemc.com