When a small town is a character (6)
I’m relatively new to Schitt’s Creek, the Netflix/Pop TV sitcom that recently ended a six-year run. While watching, it occurred to me that the town itself is a character. From the seedy motel to the Tropical Café to the crazies that inhabit a city actually named Schitt’s Creek, you feel you know the locale as if it were a person with his or her own set of quirks.
That is true of the fictional small town on television.
How lovely was Stars Hollow, Connecticut? Yes, it too had its share of nutty residents, but could Lorelei and Rory have been so beloved anywhere else? We learned to love almost everything about Stars Hollow from Miss Patty’s Dance Studio and The Dragonfly Inn to Luke’s Diner. Recurring characters such as Taylor and Gypsy and Liz and Babette became our friends — Lorelei and Rory and Emily and Paris were family.
Take Pawnee, Indiana. The geographical love of Leslie’s Knope’s life is itself a pivotal figure in Parks and Recreation. We know Lil Sebastian and Perd Hapley, and the giant pit — a central element that was the main plot point in the opening episodes. We know Tammy One and Tammy Two and the sister city of Eagleton. If a city can have a sister, then it is a character, logic would have it.
If you remember Cicely, Alaska, where Joel Fleishman had to serve as a doctor to repay his medical school tuition, you’ll see that a city can be drawn and evolve just like a well-written character. Northern Exposure presented a perfect picture of the small town with identifiable characteristics usually attributed to people — kindness, eccentricity, loneliness and hope.
Some television small towns border on the dark side. The city of Fairview was less known as its more famous thoroughfare, Wisteria Lane. Populated by Desperate Housewives, Fairview included its fair share of untimely deaths. Twin Peaks took it one step further with eerie supernatural overtones.
The quintessential small town was Mayberry. This is where we first met a community that actively came together to raise Opie (by the way, what is that a nickname for? Opioid? Opalescent? Optometrist?). Andy Taylor had help from Aunt Bee and Barney and even semi-regulars liked Floyd. Mayberry definitely had its own personality.
As we plow through Schitt’s Creek, we see parallels to all these shows that preceded it in making a fictional set a character.
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