Schitt's Creek Archives - Owl Medicine: Shamanic Healing

This Is Us

OK, I have an admission to make. Karl and I are notoriously ‘late to the party’ on a lot of programs that people watch – sometimes for years at a time – before we finally take the plunge. I can rattle off several titles without even blinking an eye: Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, Sons of Anarchy, the Sopranos, Call the Midwife, Schitts Creek, just to name a few. And now we have yet another series to add to the list: This Is Us.

I know, I know. You’re probably thinking to yourselves, “Late to the party, Lisa? Good grief. The people hosting the party moved out three years ago!”

And that would be fair. Guilty as charged. We’re laggards – sometimes by decades!

Nevertheless…

If any of you share with us this tendency to eschew the wildly popular until it’s run its course, then I am here to tell you: This Is Us is worth your while. Unlike the Sopranos (which first aired in 1999 – 1999!), which was our last lengthy binge before this one, This Is Us only began in 2016.

Sometimes This Is Us bordered on creepy when the parallels to our own lives were hitting so hot and heavy that Karl and I could only look at each other with tears in our eyes. Of course, it’s a show – meaning, it’s fiction – and sometimes it felt like the piling on of experiences of the characters was stretching credulity. But hey, nothing’s perfect.

All in all, if you want to watch a show that has a lot of heart and characters you can empathize with, get annoyed by, grieve with, and feel touched by, this is one of those shows. You can get lost in their stories. And sometimes, especially in the midst of the extreme circumstances we’ve both witnessed and experienced first-hand over the past year, it’s cathartic to discover some story lines that take you somewhere else. Even if that somewhere else is your own past.

The Future

Actually, I’m psyched. In writing this little post this evening and searching for a clip or something to link to, I read that the episode we watched tonight is not, in fact, the end of the series. Woohoo! I thought it was – or at least plausibly could have been – given the pandemic and the vagaries of productions, etc.

My poking around actually revealed that another episode may be airing tomorrow night – Tuesday, 3/16/2021 – so ‘tonight’ for most of you reading this.

As far as the future and our television consumption goes, we’re going to try to watch as many of the Oscar-nominated films as possible.

All of this chatter about television programs and movies reminds me, though: I have at least four books beside my bed that are in varying states of completion.

(T-256)

Promise on the Horizon – Photo: L. Weikel

Schitt’s Creek

In an effort to avoid as much deliberately-induced anxiety as possible, Karl and I decided to abstain from political fare this week. We’re choosing instead to rely primarily on video clips embedded in news articles for a recap of the state of our country as viewed by the Republican Party. Which brings me to what we’ve been watching instead: Schitt’s Creek.

We only started watching this show, which ran for five seasons, about six weeks ago. It just aired its last episode on Netflix this past April – and I’m pretty sure we started watching it because of the affection expressed by viewers who seemed genuinely sad to see it end.

It took us a couple episodes to get into it, but the campy characters and their affectations are both over-the-top and endearing. There’s no violence or ugliness. It’s mostly about relationships, primarily superficial ones, but some of them are particularly playful and truly fun to watch develop.

Most importantly, though, the show is an easy, light, and playful escape from, well, the shit’s creek we find ourselves up, especially as Americans, if we’re clear-eyed and honest. And just catching some of the clips from the two evenings of the RNC extravaganza so far, makes it clear (if it wasn’t already) that we’re navigating without a paddle.

(No. I couldn’t leave it. It had to be said. You knew it was coming. I tried to muzzle myself but, in the end, I couldn’t resist.)

The truth is, we’ve streamed an especially generous number of episodes of Schitt’s Creek over the past couple of days – and the irony just had to translate into a blog post.

The Alternative

The alternative to me making lame jokes about the name of a television series and extolling its efficacy in allowing our minds to slip into neutral for an evening is – you guessed it – more cloud sharing.

Tonight we witnessed some towering specimens of magnificence, which then gradually gave forth to some startlingly ominous and threatening banks of darkness. And yes, the metaphors weren’t lost on us.

It was as if we were witnessing a water vapor enhanced exposition of the soaring visions painted last week juxtaposed against the oppressive boogeymen of fear and oppression on offer this week. What was most remarkable, perhaps, was the rapidity with which the transformation occurred.

Looking NW – Photo: L. Weikel

A Warning

All of which feels like an essential reminder and warning to all of us. Things can change dramatically (in a myriad of ways) in the blink of an eye. We make assumptions at our peril.

We mustn’t be afraid – but we also must, at the same time, remain vigilant and steadfast in what we know to be of greatest importance in life. We’re living in unprecedented times, and we’re being asked to choose the world we want to both create and leave as our legacy.

Do we choose to see and build on the beauty? On love? Or will we focus on the darkness, the fear, and the division?

It’s up to us. And our choices are our paddle.