2x13 Happy Anniversary

[8.4/10] I have to be real -- about halfway through this episode I was hating it. It seemed like we were headed for the hackiest, wackiest, sitcom-y finale imaginable. Johnny fumbles the ball on his anniversary with Moira only to run into the Schitt’s after brushing them off! Alexis’s ex-fiancee tells her about a party being held by her other ex that she wasn’t invited to, which she crashes, only to run into Mutt’s new girlfriend! David and Stevie compete for the affections of the same guy after needling one another about high school dating prowess! It’s all so broad and dumb that I figured this season, for all the good work it’s done, was headed for a crash landing.

Instead, it soared from that point on. I don’t know if this was some kind of intentional feint, to lure the audience into thinking that the show was up to its old tricks and going for the cheap seats, but instead it pivoted toward something real and even touching in pretty much every storyline as it closes out its second season.

The Stevie/David bit is probably the least of them. David mainly got his major growth moment in the last episode, so it’s fine that his bit here is more of a lark. Frankly, their competing for the same guy, with it not being clear whether/if he was interested in both of them or just David felt more like a setup for season 3 than anything super relevant to the present moment. But it still positions them as friendly but combative after all they’ve been through, so I dug it, even if it wasn’t my favorite part of the episode.

But I did really like where they went with Alexis. I assumed that her meeting Tennessee, Mutt’s new girlfriend, was going to revert her back to (1.) offering her passive-aggressive compli-sults and (2.) compensate by hooking up with Ted again despite the fact that the poor guy’s been through enough. The episode started to head that direction, only to pull back and do something much better.

Instead of this experience being cause for backsliding in Alexis, it becomes another chance for her to grow and, most importantly, to develop her empathy. Instead of just feeling sorry for herself given the impact that seeing Mutt with someone else has on her, she realizes how shitty it must have been for Ted to go through that and asks him how he deals with it. He answers that he wasn’t okay, that he cried a lot and that it took him a long time, but that he eventually just got through it. Aleixs understands and even apologizes, and it’s a really sweet and human moment from someone who could be the show’s most cartoonish character (give or take Roland).

And yet, Roland factors into the episode’s crowning moment. I love the impromptu dinner party scene, where the Roses run into their wealthy former friends who just so happen to be passing through Elmdale. The Roses initially try to puff up their current living situation and laugh along with their old friends trashing Schitt’s Creek. They’re embarrassed at their current station and want to seem like they can still fit in with their former moneyed cohort, something especially tricky once Roland and Jocelyn show up.

The Schitt family are incredibly good sports about the whole thing, even as the rich visitors trash their town and even the restaurant they’re so excited to get to dine at. Eventually though, Johnny has had enough. He excoriates his former pals, declaring that for however much these interlopers think themselves above Schitt’s Creek, they’re shitty friends who left the Roses high and dry. Meanwhile the Schitts may not be terribly refined, but have been beyond generous with our refugees from the world of wealth.

I’m not sure there’s been a more heartening moment in this show than Johnny declaring that Schitt’s Creek is their home. It’s a vindication of the fact that however much the Roses may yearn for their more financially secure and, let’s face it, spoiled life, they’re increasingly realizing how equally hollow and shallow that life, and the people in it, were. While life in Schitt’s Creek is unquestionably harder, it’s also full of more genuine people, who are rough around the edges and have their eccentricities and blind spots as well, but who have done a great deal to welcome the Roses into their homes and lives despite the fact that the Roses themselves haven’t been the most gracious guests in the world.

And yet, they are trying and they have gotten better and they have fully and finally accepted themselves as a part of this place. (At least until the next finale-needed conflict arises.) There’s something incredibly sweet about the closing scene at Mutt’s party, where the Roses and the Schitt’s and their various friends and acquaintances all come and dance together. They affirm their love for one another. They join in the bonds of friendship and celebration and, subtly, the fact that they’ve become better people through all of this. That’s a hell of a way to end given where this one started.

You could say the same for season 2 as a whole. This year of the show started out pretty weak, with a string of rough episodes that made me wonder if the show had missed its mark. But while there were still bumps in the road, the show committed to depicting growth in each of the Roses over the course of these thirteen episodes, and earned this great finish in the process.

(As an aside, I loved the cold open with Johnny trying to cajole the kids into wishing their mom a happy anniversary, citing the neighboring Bloomfield family as a model, only for Alexis and David to suggest that the Bloomfields were a little too cozy. Their faux-sincere congrats for Moira, and her response that the kids were starting to sound like those weird “incestuous Bloomfields” was a hilarious punchline. One place where the show definitely stepped up its game in season 2 was the great cold opens!)