On Tuesdays, I do a Top 10 list. This season, I am doing Top 10 characters from various TV shows. With the Emmys coming up this Sunday, I am looking at last year's Emmy darling with the Top 10 Schitt's Creek Characters!
Ronnie is an underrated character in Schitt's Creek. She's always ready with a sarcastic comment or an eyeroll when one of the more outrageous characters does something more, well, outrageous. But she also became a more developed character as the series went along. We started to see that there was more to her than just a sarcastic quip and she had some deeper qualities. I would have liked to see the show go a step further and maybe even put her in the center of an episode or two but oh well.
9. TWYLA SANDS
It took me much longer than it should have to realized Twyla was played by a member of the Levy family. She was never given a ton of things to do, but she made the most of them with a sweet spirit and a couple surprising moments (especially in the finale). Although the show had a lot of heart, there were many times it could be a little cynical, especially earlier in its run with so many cynical characters. So a character like Twyla and her optimism was essential.
I'm not too big a fan of the Schitt family. Roland was the most notable character to not make my list and Mutt didn't have much of an impact on me either. But Jocelyn does make the list as the funniest member of that family. She's another character who developed more as the series went along and her ability to smile through every angry moment, particularly with Moira and especially when she was furious, was mined for a lot of comedy.
7. TED MULLENS
Now we're getting into the really key characters. Ted was not the soulmate for Alexis after all (at least not during the run of the show) but he was a key character in her development and a really likable personality. He was goofy at times, naïve at times and headstrong at times. Sometimes a character can be more important for how they impact another character than what they do themselves and that was the case here. Ted grounded Alexis in ways that really catapulted her character forward.
It's hard to remember, considering how the show ended, that Patrick didn't even appear until Season Three and wasn't a regular until Season Four. He became so integral to the story as the series marched to its conclusion. Patrick grounded David even more than Ted grounded Alexis and he made David a much more likable character. But Patrick was also more of his own character than Ted and one who had a story that was easy to invest in. All the Schitt's Creek characters are likable but Patrick was perhaps the one that was the most purely good-hearted.
5. STEVIE BUDD
The highest ranking non-family member really felt like a part of the family by the end of the series. Stevie went on a great journey during the series. At the beginning, she was little more than a sarcastic woman working a dead end job. By the end, she was much more sure of who she wanted to be both personally and professionally. Emily Hampshire could convey so much meaning with such micro expressions and in a show with a lot of heightened characters, that was necessary.
4. JOHNNY ROSE
Johnny was the straight man of the main family even with his quirks and while that may put him lower on this list than his family members, he is no less essential to the show because every good comedic ensemble needs a really solid straight man. Eugene Levy is a comedy legend and he effectively stepped aside and let others be wackier. Meanwhile, while Johnny may have been heavily responsible for a lot of the family's downfall, he was also heavily responsible for their rise from the ashes. His stories weren't always my favorite on the show but I recognize what an integral character he was.
If I had ranked the characters after just the first couple seasons, Moira would certainly have been #2 and might even have been #1. It's not that Moira got any worse as a character, it's that the two characters above her just got better and better. Moira is an iconic character with her large variety of wigs and most unusual pronunciations of certain words. She was always reliable for at least a couple laughs per episode just because of how zany and outrageous she was. She may not have changed as much as the other characters but that's ok. With the others evolving, it was fine for Moira to stay her nutty self.
2. DAVID ROSE
David was such an interesting character over the course of the show. He was entitled, just like all the rest of the family, and he never really lost that even as he became much more sympathetic. I think that mirrors real-life. People do change and people improve themselves, but rarely do they leave every bit of their former selves behind. So as compassionate as David became at times and even with all the growth he showed, the writers never betrayed his character by having him do things that weren't still at least a little bit selfish or a little bit true to his instincts.
As I've mentioned multiple times in this list, many characters got better over the course of Schitt's Creek. They were both better people and better characters by the end. The shining example of that is Alexis. At the beginning of the series, there are almost no redeeming qualities for Alexis. She is the entitled princess that we've seen a zillion times on sitcoms and reality shows. By the end, she is so much more than that. Alexis' journey of self discovery is really the heart of Schitt's Creek as far as I'm concerned and it's so satisfying to see where her character goes. On top of that, she's really freaking funny too with some of the most quotable lines of the entire series.
Tomorrow: A One Season Wonder look at Uncle Buck!
Next Tuesday: Top 10 The Wonder Years Characters!
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