Schitt’s Creek snuck up on me.

I was aware of it, knew about it, but wasn’t super interested in it. This was honestly more about me than the show. There’s too much television and if I’m going to try something new, I need to be at least 82% confident in whatever show that is.

With Schitt’s Creek being both a sitcom and a comedy, my confidence level was not even close to being that high. Again, this isn’t really about them, but more about my own personal track record with sitcoms and comedies. There are a lot more turkeys than hogs if you know what I mean.

But once we started watching the show I quickly realized that much like the great Gob Bluth, I had made a huge mistake in putting off tuning in.

Schitt’s Creek is a genuinely funny show and much like Parks and Recreation once did, it pivoted, turning into not just a hilarious show, but an incredibly sweet show. Just like how Parks heads truly cared (and still do care) about that show’s characters, fans of Schitt’s Creek started caring about the Rose’s and Stevie and the Schitt’s and pretty much every other character on the show.

As the show wraps up it’s sixth and final season Tuesday night, I would attribute their shift in tone to why they have lasted as long as they have and have continued to operate at such a high level.

Unless your show is a true anomaly among the comedy ranks – something like Seinfeld or Curb Your Enthusiasm, where the style of comedy is so unique, relentless and able to continually shape-shift, making it constantly applicable to a variety of situations, at some point a comedy needs to shift gears and start to make you care about the characters.

The comedy gets you interested, but the characters’ ability to endear itself to the audience is the hook that never let’s go.

Running jokes help too and Schitt’s Creek has an incredible one. Since the jump, the show has continued to drop clues as to what kind of wild madness made up Alexis Rose’s past life, the life she led before her family lost everything. We don’t get an Alexis Nugget every episode, but when we do, it’s usually one of the episode’s funniest lines.

To help get a handle on the bulk of Alexis stories that are out there, I tried my best to organize them and put them into categories.

Dating History

Screenshot via Netflix

• She has “dated enough Wall Street guys”
• She once dated a Sultan’s nephew through “like half a regime change”
• She has dated all 3 Hanson brothers
• Her and Adam LeVine “just went for bubble tea”
• She was in a three-month affair with a Saudi prince but for two months of that “was trapped in his palace trying to get to an embassy”
• She was once casually seeing Prince Harry
• She was in a long-distance text relationship with Josh Hartnett while he was filming Pearl Harbor
• Would let her boyfriends date other women who she deemed to not be a threat, women like Pippa Middleton or Rihanna

Possible International Incidents

Screenshot via Netflix

• She once had a 7-year-old drive her around Mumbai
• She has been held hostage
• She had pill-swapping parties with her friends in Krakow
• She has gone through checkpoints in South Africa and says that they’re “like a drive-through, except everybody has a gun.”
• She outran the Yakuza at 21
• She once escaped from the trunk of a Thai drug lord’s car by bribing him with sex
• She was taken hostage for a week by Somali pirates while on David Geffen’s yacht and no one from the family bothered to answer her texts
• She was picked up by South Korea’s secret police on New Year’s and had to “sweet talk the consulate’s lawyer” to get her passport back
• She once passed off a mini horse & 3 guinea pigs as service animals to get through customs “so anything is possible.”
• She was taken to the Playboy Mansion by her parents when she was seven and apparently “had a wonderful time in the children’s grotto.”
• She got a back tattoo in Hong Kong when she was 12 that says “That’s Hot” in Cantonese

Acquired Skills

Screenshot via Netflix

• She has her license in seven countries, plus her F-class license (used specifically for transport trucks,) because she “had a lot of people to move”
• She learned how to play pool in the villa of a Ugandan diamond smuggler while playing for her friend’s freedom
• She knows the correct way to free yourself when held captive and restrained by tape

“In case you wake up in a chair with your hands duct-taped together, you can snap the duct tape by just raising your hands over your head, and then bringing them down really hard.”

• She knows how to negotiate in Arabic
• She once pretended to be a pizza delivery boy to get into Jared Leto’s Halloween party
• She took singing lessons with Barbara Streisand’s vocal coach

Past Employment

Screenshot via Netflix

• She was the face of an edible nail polish line that poisoned people (to be fair, the factory in Guangzhou assured them that the nail polish was lead-free.)
• She was hired to promote an energy drink at a Third Eye Blind concert
• She briefly starred in a reality show about her life, A Little Bit Alexis
• She was an original member of the Pussycat Dolls

Make sure you take notes. We only have one more season to learn about Alexis: International Woman of Mystery.

Categories: Television

Tags: Netflix, Schitt's Creek, Television