Welcome Back to the Dating Game
You might want to grab an alcoholic beverage and some snacks, because on this week's episode of Schitt's Creek we learned so much more about everybody's love lives than I ever thought we would, and there's a lot to unpack here.
After the disastrous Crows premiere, Alexis manages to play the whole thing off as a PR stunt and suddenly finds herself in high demand, right as she's getting ready to fly off to join Ted in the Galapagos Islands. Bob is wallowing in loneliness after Gwen left him and gets some emergency dating advice from Johnny, Roland and Ronnie, which goes about as well as you'd expect. And David and Patrick get a surprise visit from David's ex, Jake, and I kind of still can't believe what happens next.
SPOILERS AHEAD
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Alexis the PR Queen
There's really only one thing to do when a flock of trained crows attacks the crowd at your movie premiere and the news footage gets viewed more than 2 million times: act like you're a genius who planned the whole thing. Alexis and Moira are brazenly confident enough to pull it off, and now Moira is getting booked on morning shows and Alexis is getting flowers from PR agencies in New York.
Alexis is clearly elated by the win, but now she has a new problem: with her career about to take off, how can she fly to the middle of nowhere to vacation with her boyfriend for five months?
Moira's a great mother to Alexis in this moment -- she knows how much Ted means to her, but she also has the experience to see what a big achievement this is, and help Alexis weigh her options. "You are perched on the precipice of a dream come true, and you can jump knowing, possibly for the first time, that you can succeed at anything to which you put your mind."
And to think, just a few years ago Moira couldn't even remember Alexis' middle name.
"Have a Whiskey"
Patrick needs a new handmade coffee table because his old one didn't work anymore -- you know, that thing that always happens to people -- and who should show up to deliver it but Jake, the hot guy from Season 3 who dated David and Stevie at the same time, suggested a poly relationship, and later made a surprise appearance at Stevie's apartment where David and Patrick were trying to spend their first night alone together.
But unlike most of David's exes, who Schitt's Creek fans want to run through a wood chipper, you can't have hard feelings toward Jake. He's a simple guy with simple needs, making furniture and boning everything that moves, and who could judge him for that? Not me, especially when he starts hitting on both of them, says they make a beautiful couple, and tells Patrick his sweater "really brings out your lips." He invites them over to his place to "have a whiskey," which David later explains is a proposition -- and Patrick is into it! I've never seen a man so profoundly turned on by a well-made coffee table.
Just to be clear, I would never dream of insinuating David and Patrick are the kind of couple who'd have sex on the coffee table -- I'm just saying that you can't have David mercilessly teasing Patrick about his randomly missing table, in an episode that flirts with the possibility of a threesome, without people immediately assuming that they broke the old coffee table by having sex on it. That's all I'm saying!
Bob the Bachelor
Things are still going rough for Bob, who's crashing at Ronnie's place after his wife Gwen dumped him and took the house. (And I guess that means Ronnie and her partner Karen split up a while back. That's a shame; from the 90 seconds they were ever on screen together, they seemed like a nice couple.) She brings him by the motel in an attempt to get him out of the house, but Johnny and Roland don't want him moping around in the lobby either, so they team up to take him out for the night and find him a date.
Desperate dating efforts at the Wobbly Elm never go particularly well, especially with these three as your wingmen. Roland is his usual exasperating self, but it's worth it to get more scenes with Ronnie and watch them gang up on Johnny and his rusty dating techniques. Johnny's "pretend to laugh at Bob's joke to attract attention" trick almost gets them into a fight, and then finally Ronnie salvages the evening by pairing off with an attractive lady and introducing Bob to her single friend who's been having car trouble. "And that, gentlemen, is how it's done," she declares.
Just let lesbians take charge of these situations from the start, it saves time.
I Have So Many Questions
So, we're really doing this! David and Patrick go over to Jake's apartment, both of them clearly dressed like they're planning to hook up. Patrick even put on a cute little shirt he'd been hiding in the back of the closet, which means he's reached the "shopping for patterned short-sleeved button-ups" phase of his growth as a gay man and I think I might cry.
Here's what I want to know: is this supposed to be one last fling before they get married and settle down, or are David and Patrick actually this kind of couple? Sure, they've joked about this stuff before, and David once encouraged Patrick to go on a date with another guy just for the experience, but this isn't Queer as Folk we're talking about. Who ever thought Schitt's Creek would seriously explore this question, back when these two were bashfully flirting in the cute little store they just opened together?
And it gets even better, because Jake has invited about a dozen people to this thing, and the massage circle is about to start.
Wait, I'm Not Done
(That's what she said. (I'm so sorry.))
Here's the thing: these people live in a very small town in the middle of nowhere, and this would be an impressive turnout for a normal party that Jake just threw together earlier that day, much less a sex party. How long has this been a thing with Jake and his friends, exactly? Is there a Facebook group? Or is this like a monthly event, and David and Patrick might need to adjust Open Mic Night so there's not a scheduling conflict?
Seriously, wow. Welcome to Schitt's Creek, where everybody fits in and homophobia doesn't exist and a little group sex never hurt anybody.
All those questions will have to wait, because David and Patrick immediately bail when they see how many people there are. They might have been into a threesome, but a full-on orgy just isn't their thing. Stevie, on the other hand...
Stevie??!?
Okay, listen. It's easy to assume that Stevie is just hooking up with the hot guy she used to date because she's bored, something she used to do all the time. But that was before Cabaret, before Stevie decided "I need to push myself" and "maybe there's something more out there for me." She didn't fall back into bad habits when Larry Air didn't work out, either; she committed to finding happiness right where she is. And Jake didn't just ask her to hook up, he invited her to an all-genders sex party, and she was like, "Cool." Sarcastic, flannel-collecting, leather-jacket-wearing Stevie Budd.
I don't want to get my hopes up, but it's getting increasingly difficult to argue that she "only drinks red wine" at this point.
Alexis and Ted
Into the middle of this funny, sexually frustrated mess of an episode comes the sobering reality of Alexis and her relationship with Ted. As she gets on a Skype call with him and tries to talk to him about her career and the trip, he beats her to the punch and says she shouldn't come after all. "You would hate it," he says, and it's hard to disagree. He's constantly going away on work trips, and it's less of a beach vacation and more roughing it in bug-infested dorm rooms.
I wonder if this is what Moira meant when she said the secret to long-lasting couples is having little in common. Ted and Alexis can seem like opposites on the surface, but they're a lot alike, both highly ambitious and great at their jobs -- but they work in fields that seem completely incompatible with each other. Even if one of them decided to give up their dream job for the sake of the relationship, I doubt the other would let that happen. Right now, it's pretty hard to say if things will work out for them.
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Schitt's Creek airs on CBC in Canada and Pop TV in the United States.
