Margaret Lyons

The winding path to the rain-soaked kiss is the whole joy of the movie “Four Weddings and a Funeral.” But the path of the TV show “Four Weddings and a Funeral,” beginning Wednesday on Hulu, is dreary and predictable. If the audience isn’t having any fun, and the characters don’t seem to be having any fun, what’s the point?

The show, which has almost nothing in common with the film except for a London setting, comes from the creators Mindy Kaling and Matt Warburton, but without any of the clever sparks they brought to “The Mindy Project.” Though it is set in England, the four main characters are American. They are allegedly best friends, but no one has anything in common nor do any of them have any chemistry, platonic or romantic. The inevitable couple seems like a bad match, and no two characters seem like they’re on the same show. Do not go to the chapel; do not get married.

Part of the draw of the film “Four Weddings and a Funeral,” released in 1994, is that it’s about the fun crowd, the viciously funny and raucous group you wish you were sitting with at weddings, rolling your eyes at the stuffy ceremony but later dancing with abandon. I would not want to sit with any of the characters in this adaptation. Everyone is either lousy or boring or both.

There’s Maya (Nathalie Emmanuel, “Game of Thrones”), a political speechwriter whose relationship with her married boss blows up, so she decides to join her college crew in London. She never mentions a work visa, and even though she’s a speechwriter her own dialogue is brittle at best. Emmanuel seems lost and a little too wounded — she never gives Maya enough guts to be funny.

Then there’s Ainsley (Rebecca Rittenhouse, “The Mindy Project”), whose parents pay for her apartment and design business, where she nonetheless feels comfortable calling her employees “Tony 1” and “Tony 2.” Her boyfriend, Kash (Nikesh Patel), dreams of a different life completely. Ainsley’s made one friend in England, Gemma (Zoe Boyle, “Downton Abbey”), whom she actually seems to hate.

Carrying a torch for Maya since college is Duffy (John Reynolds, “Search Party”), a barely competent teacher who has Hugh Grant hair and glasses but none of the actual haplessness. He wants to be a novelist, would you believe it? Finally there’s Craig (Brandon Mychal Smith, “You’re The Worst”), a fashion-conscious banker who is in love with a woman so cartoonish she goes on the show’s equivalent of “Love Island.”

Almost no conflict arises, because conflict requires friction and friction acts on mass — none of the characters have any weight whatsoever. A sneeze could destroy this entire series. Liking “Mamma Mia” is not a personality. Wanting to publish a short story in The New Yorker does not make you interesting. Wishing you were an actor instead of a banker is not inherently cool. Living off your parents’ largesse, ungratefully, is not adorkable.

One reason the show is so lifeless is that none of the characters listen to one another. There are occasional solid zingers, but they’re not considered jokes within the show. When Ainsley bails on Gemma, Gemma’s doting husband is incensed and decides to confront Ainsley about it. “You’ve hurt the feelings of the best person I’ve ever known, and I know Hugh Laurie,” he spits. That’s a good line. Who could hear someone say that and not have any kind of reaction? Oh, just one of the main characters.

“Four Weddings and a Funeral” asks us to buy a lot of hokey nonsense, and sure, I’ll accept people being way too good at dressing up for costume parties and having laughably stupid habits of writing longhand letters that never get sent. But I will not accept being subjected to a cover of Coldplay’s “Fix You” that is meant to be evocative. It’s 2019! I refuse.

The show is a strange misfire at every level. The self-conscious references to other rom-coms make it seem even worse in comparison, and Andie McDowell’s appearance as Ainsley’s mother — not as her character from the original “Four Weddings” — is just a reminder of how far the show has strayed from the light. Even the funeral isn’t very sad.

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‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’

Wednesdays on Hulu

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/30/arts/television/four-weddings-and-a-funeral-review-hulu.html" id="313094bb-fd94-3844-a83a-59ca34a18811">The New York Times</a>.

Rom-coms are supposed to have a sense of inevitability. It’s the journey, not the destination. Shopgirl and NY152 will always get together, even if it takes Kathleen and Joe all of “You’ve Got Mail” to do so. Someone may run through an airport, or race through the streets on New Year’s Eve, or give a rousing and personal speech, and that process is the beauty of the genre.

Review: 'Four Weddings and a Funeral' Doesn't Send a Gift

The six-episode miniseries on NatGeo (which airs in two-episode blocs Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday) is based on the 1994 best seller by Richard Preston about the emergence of Ebola and other viruses. So it should have plenty of material: Ebola is a real disease, some of the characters are based on real people and you don’t have to work too hard to make a shrieking monkey seem ominous. But this “Hot Zone” is, alas, not particularly hot.

Julianna Margulies stars as Dr. Nancy Jaax, a military infectious disease expert who becomes concerned about a mysterious outbreak at a primate research facility in Reston, Virginia. Her husband, Jerry Jaax (Noah Emmerich), also works for the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, but he’s less concerned about the possible virus and more concerned about his wife. The show is set primarily in 1989, and it’s impossible to watch Emmerich drive around in an ’80s clunker and not think, “My time would be better spent rewatching ‘The Americans.’”

This happens again when Liam Cunningham shows up as Nancy’s renegade former mentor, and I thought, “Or how about ‘Game of Thrones’?” When Robert Sean Leonard showed up to defend his company’s blasé attitude toward monkey diseases, I wondered if “House” still holds up. Topher Grace, the only performer costumed in any identifiably ’80s manner, made me curious about the new season of “Black Mirror.” Given any opportunity to think about something other than “The Hot Zone,” I took it.

And not because I don’t love a good monkey necropsy — because boy, do I. I read the book “The Hot Zone” over and over again. But the miniseries contorts itself into a more traditional monster movie, with jump-scares and a horror score. It’s effectively startling, but it makes a farce out of something that shouldn’t need much goosing.

All the catastrophic effects of Ebola and other viruses are vividly depicted — shout-out to the facial blister department — but I never once had the feeling that any of these symptoms were happening to human beings rather than just sweaty props.

That vacancy is the biggest issue for the show: A tale of human vulnerability doesn’t seem to have any human beings present. The home-life stories that are meant to add emotional heft are distracting and brittle, and the characters are underimagined. Cunningham’s character might as well be the big-game hunter from “Jurassic Park” or Quint from “Jaws,” waxing on about how viruses are smarter than we are, how they’re “the perfect killer.”

That kind of forced reverie feels especially unnecessary because by far the most effective aspect of the show is its sense of reverence. All the rituals of investigation, the methodical rinsing and robing, the heavily enforced buddy system to go into cordoned-off contaminated spaces or high-risk lab environments: These are rites. We see those rites transform characters and consecrate spaces, turning something as ordinary as picking up a phone handset into a hallowed experience. But just as the show is about to illuminate a great truth, it backs all the way off, leaving us stranded.

Margulies, a three-time Emmy winner who is great elsewhere, never connects here. She’s also saddled with lines such as “I need to find another monkey to sample!” and “The Ebola virus spreads when we show each other love.”

This would be hilariously out of place no matter what, but it’s particularly galling after six hours that have plenty of conversations about fluids and feces and disease vectors but no credible emotions. There’s an absence of interiority to everything, a glassy distance.

Is that meant to echo the isolation of a hazmat suit? I don’t think it is, but that would have been cool.

It takes a whole 26 minutes, but yes: Someone does say “Welcome to the hot zone” on “The Hot Zone,” our first sign that we are in for something pat.

Review: 'The hot zone' stays tepid

One is symbolic — perhaps unfairly — of cultural uncoolness, while the other spawns viewing parties and obsessive podcasts from legacy media companies.

And yet both are getting the same kind of finale rollout, the kind a lot of shows get these days, like “Veep” just had: an announcement well in advance of the premiere that the coming season would be the show’s last, a full-court media press of oral histories and it’s-hard-but-it’s-time talk show appearances, well-placed tributes from high-profile fans. Clip shows and after-shows. Photos from the final table read on the cast’s Instagram accounts, and then maybe a photo essay of the final days in a magazine.

We’ve had months and months to gird ourselves. Which isn’t to say those finales will necessarily be good or beloved, just that fans of the shows have been well shepherded into the ideas that these shows are indeed ending.

Big shows have always gotten fanfare finale rollouts, but in recent years, and especially for the 2018-19 season, network, cable and streaming outlets have been big on farewell seasons for smaller shows, too. Netflix gave viewers ample warning about the end of “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.” The final season of “Broad City” was one big goodbye, an almost therapeutic guide through the main characters’ maturation process and thus the end of the freewheeling-young-adult premise of the show.

“Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” walked its audience and its protagonist through all the show’s what-ifs. The series finale of “Catastrophe” achieved a kind of ecstatic perfection that gave me spiritual resolution in ways I cannot attain in regular life. I will be crushed when “Jane the Virgin” ends this summer, but I will be as prepared as possible. Every living person who watched FXX’s “You’re the Worst” wrote a loving eulogy to it on a website, or ranked its episodes, or praised its depictions of PTSD and depression one last time.

Transitions, man. Anyone who’s ever torn a toddler from a playground or nudged a crowd from cocktail hour to the reception hall knows people need warning. We need structure. We need guidance. We need a dang minute to collect ourselves. We need closure.

And we’ve been getting it more and more. The “Lost” finale was on the calendar for years, and now it feels standard for shows to get a chance to wrap themselves up and for fans to be aware of that process. The vigil for next year’s “Supernatural” series finale began before its current season even ended.

To be clear, this isn’t a complaint. I love a warning period, and I love a mourning ritual. Even as ratings for any given show drop and drop, connecting with fellow fans has never been easier, and there’s something to be said for being able to dry one’s tears on infinity blog posts. “Goodbye” is better than “get lost,” even if the outcome is ultimately the same.

But this kind of finale ramp has made the regular old cancellation model seem jarring and downright cruel. Not that it was ever comfy-cozy, but now a cancellation feels like “.” in a text message instead of a “!!!” or something more genteel. A cancellation without a true finale feels hostile, even though it was once completely normal.

Fans treasured “One Day at a Time” because it was a funny, sweetheart show that represented marginalized people in humanizing, significant ways. And we could have accepted an ending — because all shows will end except the local news and “Wheel of Fortune.” (Take comfort, Constance Wu.) What was harder to accept was the abruptness of it all, the shock. Give us a six-episode farewell season like we’re human beings, for God’s sake. And The CW renewed every show on its roster, but ABC can’t figure out a way to give us even 13 more episodes of “Speechless”?

I’m not saying any of those would be good business decisions. But I’m not a business. I’m a flabby human with a working heart, and I want a one-hour “Detroiters” special, and I’m mad that Comedy Central canceled the show in December instead. I could have loved you better, “Counterpart.” “Santa Clarita Diet” could have gone full-bonkers. The “Murphy Brown” reboot never got to have a crossover with “The Good Fight.”

Finales have taken on a strange significance of their own as “sticking the landing” has become a meme unto itself — but also as reboots and revivals have meant the end of endings. They are now a precious spectacle, an impossible beauty, a relic. So having time to prepare the shrine doesn’t feel like so much to ask.

This article originally appeared in <a id="4ee667a0-2dca-4519-94a6-f46eb25a6510" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/14/arts/television/game-of-thrones-big-bang-theory.html">The New York Times</a>.

(Critic’s Notebook): Two of the biggest shows on TV are ending this week: “The Big Bang Theory” finishes its 12th season on Thursday, and “Game of Thrones” ends its eighth season Sunday night. One’s a multicamera comedy that fits squarely within network traditions, the other’s a flashy fantasy epic chockablock with violent murder.

The long, slow TV goodbye

So many of TV’s most prolific killers are stony-faced ciphers, immune to the fits and pleasures of human existence. Dexter’s fraught blankness is the whole point of the character early on; Jack Bauer has never known a moment of relaxed joy. But Villanelle, the glam assassin at the center of “Killing Eve,” is nothing but reactions. She sighs and grins and flinches; she rips into fast food; she screams at children.

It’s freeing, really. Take Barry on “Barry,” for the most relevant comparison. Bill Hader’s fantastic performance relies on the character keeping everything in, clenching his jaw until you can hear his teeth shift. Proximity to violence requires a divorced stoicism. Walter White becomes Heisenberg not just through meth-cooking but through rigidity. Everyone on “The Walking Dead” is in a scowling contest, and the prize for winning is more scowls.

This emotionality is one among many reasons “Killing Eve,” which begins its second season Sunday on BBC America, feels so fresh. Jodie Comer gives Villanelle a liveliness that almost feels like a sport. “Is it hard being bad?” a child hostage asks her in Season 1.

“Not if you practice,” she replies brightly. She must have practiced a lot. She is great at being bad.

And in most storytelling, that would be offset by a more grounded counterpart. Think of the florid sensuality of Hannibal Lecter versus the quiet gray of Will Graham on “Hannibal.” But “Killing Eve” doesn’t just have an expressive mouse, it has an expressive cat, too.

Sandra Oh’s Eve Polastri, a middle manager MI5 officer who becomes an expert assassin-tracker on this case, is just as reactive. When she panics, her eyebrows move into another time zone. When she’s relieved, her shoulders drop like she’s a discarded marionette.

Season 2 picks up seconds after Season 1’s finale, just after Eve and Villanelle have finally had their quiet moment together — a moment that ended when Eve stabbed Villanelle right in the gut. (“Sometimes when you love someone, you will do crazy things,” Villanelle explains.) Despite the serious wound, she escaped, and the season sets the two free again, free to chase and be chased for another eight episodes.

Eve isn’t sure what happened, and she’s afraid she’s a murderer. She tries to keep it together, tries to quiet this fear, and sits at an airport bar in a daze. A fellow traveler misunderstands the source of Eve’s paralysis, and Oh’s face moves from terror to comprehension to release. She starts giggling and then moves into full-on laughter, and not just the sad, exhausted laughter that happens when you hear a bad joke on a terrible day. It’s humanizing laughter, baptizing her back into the world of the living.

Everything that was good about Season 1 is still good in the first two episodes of Season 2, the only ones made available to critics. Emerald Fennell has taken over for Phoebe Waller-Bridge as showrunner and head writer, and luckily the dialogue hasn’t lost any of its verve. Oh and Comer burn just as brightly, and we get even more of Fiona Shaw’s Carolyn, Eve’s secretive boss.

It’s not all acerbic jokes and violent impalings, though, and that’s where the trouble lurks. Any time a show winds its way into “and there’s a secret cabal!” territory, things get a little iffy, as shows like “Alias” or “Chuck” or “Scandal” demonstrate. “Killing Eve” has “The Twelve,” a group we know almost nothing about, except that it dispatches assassins and has ties to various governments. The Twelve’s presence loomed over Season 1, but now it seems likely it’ll take front and center — I’m girding myself for double-agent and triple-agent secret infiltration stories that are rarely as interesting as two characters just telling the truth and seeing where that takes them.

The other hiccup comes in Episode 2, where a still-wounded (literally; she’s still oozing from her stab wound) Villanelle somehow becomes the world’s unluckiest grifter, even though we know she’s an elite criminal. It’s an invention of a problem, not a natural consequence or inevitable path, and it’s the kind of plot point that frightens me — partly thanks to one character’s always creepy doll obsession but mostly because it’s the kind of move a show makes when it doesn’t know what to do with itself.

“Killing Eve” is not other shows, and this isn’t a death knell by any stretch. But Eve and Villanelle — and also everyone alive, sorry — are their most interesting when they’re the most themselves. It’s not the deception that’s intriguing; it’s the honesty.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/04/arts/television/review-killing-eve-season-2.html" id="f31a77ff-8a52-3ff8-a4c4-63c17a0c0b1c">The New York Times</a>.

(Critic’s Pick)

Review: 'Killing Eve' Returns in Fighting Form

And the Army. And science. And Walgreens. It’s a wild tale: Holmes was a 19-year-old Stanford student when she dropped out of school to start Theranos, a company she said was developing a blood-testing device that could run hundreds of tests from just a finger-prick of blood rather than whole vials. But it couldn’t.

The story of Theranos’ Silicon Valley rise and eventual total collapse — the company has dissolved, and Holmes was indicted on fraud charges — has lent itself to multiple retellings in various formats, including long-read articles, a meticulously researched book and a podcast, among others.

Alex Gibney’s documentary “The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley,” premiering Monday on HBO, is the latest account of the ostensible visionary who managed to deceive a lot of people (including two former secretaries of state). If you’re already deeply familiar with the story, certain points won’t come as a surprise: Holmes’ apparent fascination with Steve Jobs and Apple is mentioned constantly across all the retellings (her black turtleneck aesthetic especially), as is her deep voice, perhaps an affectation, even though it’s really only notable if it’s fake.

But if you just can’t get enough of this Silicon Valley fraud, or don’t know where to begin, this is your guide to what to watch, read and listen to.

The Beginnings

If you really want to go along for the full Theranos ride, start with the hagiographies, which together demonstrate just how easy it was for many in media to buy into Holmes’ persona and vision. Read the Fortune article from 2014, a Wired piece from 2014 or the New Yorker story from 2014 where Holmes, when asked to explain how a Theranos device actually works, said “a chemistry is performed.” She was on the cover of Forbes in 2014 as the youngest female self-made billionaire, and there’s also her Time 100 blurb from 2015 written by Henry Kissinger, a Theranos board member. She was on the cover of T Magazine, too, just before the scandal broke.

The Biggie

“Bad Blood” is the real be-all end-all of Theranos information, and some of the other material on this list draws heavily from it. Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou first broke the story of Theranos’ deceptions in 2015, and this comprehensive and fascinating book details every step in the company’s history and every step in his dogged reporting. “Bad Blood” is wild, and more happens on one page than in many other entire books. (There’s a Saddam Hussein cameo!)

Beyond the staggering facts Carreyrou reports out, this is the only work here that really drives home just how long it took for the truth to emerge. At one point while I was tearing through the book, I thought I must be getting pretty close to the company’s collapse; then I tapped my Kindle and discovered I was only 23 percent of the way through.

The Podcast

The six-part podcast “The Dropout,” produced by ABC Radio and ABC News’ “Nightline,” covers some of the same ground as “Bad Blood” and includes many of the same major players (including Erika Cheung, a former Theranos employee and one of the original whistleblowers, and Carreyrou himself.) The episodes wander a little — uh, Holmes always carrying papers around in high school does not seem like a particularly salient detail — but the portions that emphasize the legal side of things are quite juicy. “The Dropout” includes audio clips from depositions and spends a lot of time on the coming legal battles for Holmes and Theranos’ former president and chief operating officer, Ramesh Balwani, known as Sunny, who was also Holmes’ boyfriend. (On Friday, ABC also aired a “20/20” special of the same name.)

The Movie

“The Inventor: Out For Blood in Silicon Valley” airs on HBO on Monday night. While it, too, hits many of the same beats as “Bad Blood,” it also expands its scope a bit to examine the psychology of fraud, but in more specific (and compelling) ways than “The Dropout” does. The film’s director, Alex Gibney, also directed “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room,” “The Armstrong Lie” (about disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong) and “Going Clear” (about Scientology), among other documentaries, and this zips along with calm expertise. The footage from a batch of Theranos promotional videos directed by Errol Morris might be able to bend time with the potency of its irony, as Holmes gazes right into the too-bright lights and chuckles that she doesn’t have any secrets. “The Inventor” also notes some of the dangers of handling blood — and that Theranos machines would be, you know, full of blood even if they did work great, which they did not.

No, the Other Movie

Jennifer Lawrence is set to star as Holmes in a feature-film version of “Bad Blood,” adapted by Vanessa Taylor (“The Shape of Water”) and directed by Adam McKay. The project was first reported in 2016 and is in development, but doesn’t have a release date yet. We’ll see!

Even More

According to Vanity Fair, Holmes got a dog and named him Balto, and he peed in the Theranos offices.

This article originally appeared in <a id="2fdfee92-ff8b-435c-9801-78cf1b658fb2" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/18/arts/television/theranos-elizabeth-holmes.html">The New York Times</a>.

A Guide to Blood and Fraud in Silicon Valley

The tale of medical testing company Theranos and its founder, Elizabeth Holmes, is a swirling one, packed with lies, greed, secret romance, literal blood, metaphorical blood, power, secrecy and money.

A guide to blood and fraud in Silicon Valley

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/18/arts/television/theranos-elizabeth-holmes.html" id="85cb4e00-64ab-3910-ab8f-023e29ac7c32">The New York Times</a>.

Sometimes, though, self-worth sets us free.

“Shrill” is a show where that happens, and it’s lovely.

Aidy Bryant stars as Annie, a writer in Portland, Oregon, who’s stuck — stuck editing calendar listings at an alt-weekly; stuck dating a beardo dingus who treats her shabbily; stuck with the tedious ticker of society constantly running in her mind, telling her she’s bad and gross and lazy and worthless because she is fat.

Annie’s not an apology of a human being, which fat people and women and especially fat women are taught to be, nor does she spend every second of the day in despair. But by the time we meet her, she’s just about at the end of her rope. She’s sharp enough to joke that the man she’s sleeping with, Ryan (Luka Jones), is “like a disrespectful baby, but a man who knows better” — but she makes this joke to his mother, whom she meets in his kitchen, when his mom comes over to make breakfast and drop off his laundry.

“Shrill,” available on Hulu starting Friday, is based on the popular memoir “Shrill: Notes From a Loud Woman” by Lindy West and was adapted for TV by West, Bryant and Alexandra Rushfield. (West is also a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times.) Like “Transparent” and “Better Things,” it has the ring of seeming if not true, then true enough. Emotionally true.

Part of that sense of genuineness comes from the show’s giddy specificity. Annie’s roommate and bestie, Fran (Lolly Adefope), describes Ryan as “a normcore Ted Kaczynski.” (To his face!) Ryan’s current passion project is a podcast about Alcatraz called “Talk’n ‘Traz.” Gabe (John Cameron Mitchell), Annie’s awful boss, brags that he was “the original bass player in Bikini Kill.”

The main reason “Shrill” lands is Bryant’s unfussy performance. She radiates the wounded hopefulness of someone who’s ready for the next chapter of her life, and by the end of the six-episode season, she’s there. In the standout fourth episode, “Pool,” written by Samantha Irby, Annie goes to a body-positive pool party and has a ball. And she has an epiphany. In tears, she laments the “mind prison” she’s starting to recognize and reject, wishing she could have unburdened herself earlier from shame and self-loathing.

“It would have saved me so much time,” she sighs. “And pain.”

Not that “Shrill” is about misery, really. Annie is funny and some of her friends are funny, so there’s plenty of conversational silliness — jokes made for other characters’ benefit and not for the audience’s. Annie’s major foil is her boss Gabe, clearly based on West’s actual former boss at the Seattle alt-weekly The Stranger, Dan Savage. Here he’s rendered as cartoonishly once-hip, a wannabe bully who hassles Annie, claiming all he cares about is her health and health care costs, but who doesn’t even wear a seat belt. It’s not that what he says isn’t hurtful, but part of figuring out who you want to be is figuring out who you want to listen to.

As Annie is recalibrating, so is everyone else, whether or not she notices, which she mostly doesn’t. Fran wonders if she’s treated women badly in her rambunctious dating life. Annie’s mom (Julia Sweeney) and dad (Daniel Stern) cope with her father’s cancer treatments in different ways, none of which work all that well. A happily married friend admits to fantasizing about the deli guy, and even Ryan is putting forth his own kind of effort, demonstrating that he really is the best person to call if your dog accidentally eats shrooms. Change is incremental but it’s constant, and it’s everywhere.

The thoughtful and companionable humor of “Shrill” belies its subversive manifesto about self-liberation. Annie, after a day of indignities, spots a chic woman crossing the street, gorgeously carefree and on her way to buy a bouquet of flowers. She’s fat and she’s glamorous; she’s fat and fashionable; she’s fat and she sure looks happy.

That could be me, Annie thinks. Not because that would change everything — the world would still be bad. But living a life that doesn’t involve hating yourself, where you actually even loved yourself, despite the cultural pressures and messages — wouldn’t that be better? Imagine.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/14/arts/television/shrill-review-hulu.html" id="349f167a-305e-3ba8-ab0b-2d070b6d7eb0">The New York Times</a>.

The most dangerous thing a woman can possess is self-worth. Liking her own body, trusting her own instincts, valuing her own time and company, thinking she’s interesting and special, entering business and personal relationships based only on mutual benefit and respect. Sometimes this leads to advertisers having no idea how to corner us. If we don’t hate ourselves, how will we know what to buy? Sometimes self-worth leads to violence against us.

Review: The Find-Yourself Beauty of 'Shrill'

The way Catherine O’Hara says “Alexis” is the most important spin on saying a name since Jerry Seinfeld snarled “Newman.” It’s affected and strangely accented, with too much time on the L sound, and extra air in the second syllable. It’s a to-do. And it’s one of the most consistent pleasures of the consistently pleasurable “Schitt’s Creek.”

That’s the show: funny and light and loopy, able to make a meal out of what seemed like a snack. The show’s fifth season, which starts Wednesday on Pop, finds it having perfected its formula. Big on love, big on reactions, big on outré black-and-white outfits.

“Schitt’s Creek” follows the Rose family’s fall from grace: Johnny (Eugene Levy) used to run a video store empire, and his wife, Moira (O’Hara), was a soap star. After their business manager wipes them out, all they’re left with is the deed to a town they bought as a joke gift — so they slink off there, with their adult children David (Dan Levy) and Alexis (Annie Murphy), and hole up in the town’s rundown motel. The motel’s surly clerk, Stevie (Emily Hampshire); the town’s dopey and disgusting mayor, Roland (Chris Elliott); and the mayor’s accommodating wife, Jocelyn (Jennifer Robertson) become fixtures for the Roses.

At a time when sitcoms are prone to seriousness — the “Will &amp; Grace” reboot had a frank discussion about sexual assault, characters have died from drug overdoses on “Mom” and an annotated copy of “Nicomachean Ethics” wouldn’t hurt for watching “The Good Place” — “Schitt’s Creek” is even more welcome. It’s silly but not stupid, and it’s feel-good in the best possible ways. The characters can be stuck up, but the show is Canadian: No one wants to be truly rude. The co-creators Eugene and Dan Levy — father and son in life and on the show — have created a sweeter, gentler world than ours; the problems are sillier and the solutions involve musical performances more often than the solutions in our dumb boring real lives seem to. Redemption is never more than 21 minutes away.

The family members never fully adapt to their new circumstances. But things do change: David eventually opens a skin care and lifestyle shop, Alexis graduates from a certification program, Moira joins a women’s singing group among other civic organizations and Johnny and Stevie eventually run the motel together. The more enmeshed the Roses have become in their Schitt’s Creek community, the more the show has blossomed.

Learning to trust that and to rely on the foundational gentleness of its world is how “Schitt’s Creek” has improved steadily since Season 1, which was often glib and noisy. Things picked up in Season 2; by Season 3, the show found its groove, with story lines arising more organically. Some of the contentiousness waned, especially between Alexis and David. While the siblings rarely get earnest with each other, they often make the exact same expression: a half-cringe, half-pout, while they look up and away, typically while complaining or avoiding something. The shouting among characters is now less chaotic and more direct.

The show also gave in to its romantic inclinations, and it’s all the better for it. Part of why “Schitt’s Creek” can get away with its zanier stories is that it is anchored by the unshakable love between Johnny and Moira, the realest thing in the show’s universe. In one episode in Season 4, while Alexis is pining for an ex, Moira comforts her by recounting when she herself pined for Johnny before they got together. Even though Alexis and her mother have a strained relationship — Moira has always favored David — it’s clear that Alexis knows, completely and firmly, that her parents’ love for one another is as solid as solid gets.

Of course Alexis’ path to love doesn’t run smooth, nor does David’s. David’s pansexuality isn’t ever a problem; it’s his issues with closeness that get him in trouble. His aversion to and awkwardness around intimacy — he’s only ever said “I love you” twice to his parents, “and once at a Mariah Carey concert” — keep things from getting too sappy. David’s burgeoning relationship with his business partner, Patrick (Noah Reid), moves from cute to #goals when Patrick serenades David with an acoustic cover of “The Best.”

“Schitt’s Creek” doesn’t have any real villains, and the biggest obstacles are only ever hubris or funding. No one’s truly against anyone else, and that underlying sense of collaboration creates a sense of peace when you watch the show. We’re all on the same team. The same ridiculous, over-the-top team.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/15/arts/television/schitts-creek-season-5.html" id="0a769575-ebd2-3087-ac51-6a71f4bab3c6">The New York Times</a>.

(Critic's Notebook)

'Schitt's Creek' Brings Love, Canadian Style

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