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In this week's episode of Schitt's Creek, you will complete this dumb Escape Room challenge and you will like it, do you hear me?
Stevie has put together a joint bachelor party for David and Patrick — but instead of the expensive gala David's been sending her seven-page emails about, the best she can manage is the Escape Room in Elmdale that Patrick is way too excited about, followed by drinks at the local dive bar. It also couldn't come at a worse time for the Rose family, as Johnny is anxiously waiting to hear back from a potential investor for the Rosebud Motels franchise, Moira is beginning to second-guess her recent career decisions, and Alexis still can't seem to get her life together after the breakup.
SPOILERS AHEAD
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At the cafe, Moira is regaling Twyla and Ronnie with her rejection of the Sunrise Bay reboot — but begins to doubt herself when Ronnie starts talking about how high-profile the role could have been. "It's just that a lot of people would have a really hard time saying no to that kind of work," Ronnie says. "Especially when you spent the last three years talking about how badly you wanted to get out of this place."
This is a valid point, but I got completely sidetracked by the offhand mention of how long the Roses have been in Schitt's Creek. There is a baffled, entertaining debate among diehard fans on how the show's timeline even works — because if David used his birthday as his ATM number in Season 2 and then Patrick took him out for his birthday in Season 3, and here's the date on the Open Mic Night poster, and Jocelyn was pregnant in this episode and gave birth in that one, and it always seems to be summer except for that one time when it was Christmas, then how long are we talking here?
The general estimate was 4-6 years. Nobody guessed three. But fine, three years it is. Time is a flat circle. This is Jeremy Bearimy in The Good Place and we’re all living in the dot above the I.
David swings by the motel and finds Alexis having a very bad day — wearing sweatpants, binge-eating yogurt, and crying over a dead potted plant. "Ted gave this to me," she says. "It's like the one thing left of our relationship and it's gone." Meanwhile her PR business is struggling because there are only a handful of people in Schitt's Creek who could use a publicist.
Unable to sit still when his sister is genuinely upset, David does his best to snap her out of it. "I never thought I'd have to say this, but there is only space in this family for one unstable sibling, and I have held that title for a very long time, so you are going to have to get it together."
Now his opinions about the bachelor party are beside the point, because making the whole family participate is the only way he can keep Alexis from crying alone in her room.
After Sunrise Bay fell through, the first gig Alexis could find for Moira was to be a spokesperson for radio commercials — and the client turns out to be our favorite airline, Larry Air. Alexis was with Stevie right after she quit her flight attendant job and heard all about how terrible Larry Air is, so she really must be off her game if she couldn't see how this would go.
Moira lasts about two minutes trying to deliver lines like "Never flown Larry Air? Try Larry Air!" before pulling an "I can't work like this" and asking Alexis if she's made a terrible mistake turning down the Sunrise Bay job (right next to the microphone where the client can hear them). The one good thing to come out of this is Alexis making a last-ditch effort to cover for Moira, giving us a rather brilliant Annie-Murphy-as-Catherine-O'Hara-as-Moira-Rose impression. You can see more of that impression here, courtesy of AM to DM.
Fending off multiple attempts from his family to bail on the party, David drags them to the Elmdale Escape Room, grimly puts on his "I'm Stupid" shirt and plastic "Bride to Be" tiara, and orders everyone to play along. They're all stressed out, preoccupied and in desperate need of the drinks they can't have yet — all except Patrick, who's having the time of his life.
Shutting down any remaining chance they could wriggle out of this and head to the bar, Patrick gets all genuine and sentimental on them. "The annual Escape Room challenge has been a Brewer family tradition for a long time, and I thought it could be fun to share it with my new family since mine couldn't be here."
It's a textbook example of how David Rose is a good person, even if he's not always nice. He'll make a fool of himself and even get weirdly invested in the whole thing, if that's what his family needs him to do — and he will complain about it the whole time.
David's attempt to distract Alexis from the Ted situation immediately goes off the rails when they realize the Escape Room has a Galapagos Islands theme, which she takes as a sign that maybe she should have gone with Ted after all. Moira views the whole thing as a metaphor for her life in Schitt's Creek and ominously declares, "We are never getting out of here!" There's an assistant in the room to help them look for clues, but all Johnny will do is hassle her to get his phone back. And there's Patrick running around yelling things like "The first number is 6, people!" and I love him so, so much, but I would have such a hard time not throwing things at him.
The good thing about the game is that it forces them to talk through these issues in order to get out, which is just what Alexis needed. With time running out and everyone getting shouty, she takes charge and solves the next five puzzles by herself in about two minutes. She didn't spend most of her life breezily escaping hostage situations for nothing.
Finally out of the Escape Room (followed by the long-suffering assistant who must have the weirdest, most annoying job), Johnny gets to his phone and plays his voicemails, skipping over the first two that are all about how much the Roses don't want to do the Escape Room. It's the news they were hoping for — a venture capitalist thinks Johnny has a solid idea for the Rosebud Motels expansion and invites the team to a meeting in New York.
This raises all kinds of questions about what the future is going to look like, but it's nice to linger in this moment for a bit: the Rose family all together with Stevie and Patrick, cheering and grinning like idiots, as happy as we've ever seen them.
At post-Escape Room drinks at the Wobbly Elm, David has a nice talk with Alexis, who seems like herself again and ready to move on. But the Galapagos trip and the potted plant were about more than just her relationship with Ted; she's beginning to realize that as much as she's grown thanks to living in Schitt's Creek, the town is getting too small for her. "Maybe it's time I think about being somewhere else," she says. "Finding a bigger pot to grow in." From the look on David's face, the idea of living far away from his sister again is more than he was prepared for.
It's an important development in a clever bait-and-switch the show has pulled off: with all the fuss and comedy of David's wedding planning, Alexis has been the stealth main storyline of Season 6, making the biggest decisions and having the most emotional moments. Looking back, the first episode began with Alexis wrestling with a suitcase, and David's over-the-top drama at the wedding venue was because he didn't want her to leave. Now it looks like the season might end on a similar note.
<<< PREVIOUS EPISODE: "Sunrise, Sunset"
Schitt's Creek airs on CBC in Canada and Pop TV in the United States.
