Schitt's Creek: Escape Room (6x11)

This was really cute and I loved every minute!

Cons:

So now they're setting up the idea of Alexis needing to leave the nest and move away from the town, which I like and makes perfect sense... but it just reminds me again of Stevie's weird trajectory as a character this season. She was worried she hadn't seen enough of the world, so she tried to spread her wings. But then she immediately flew back to doing the same thing she started with, only now making it bigger. That's fine, but it doesn't match naturally with what she said she wanted. I keep wishing we could have seen her do a bit more exploring before she came back to the motel business.

Pros:

Johnny spends the episode waiting on a phone call from his old assistant, who is now a big-time investor. There's shenanigans, of course, where Roland mishears the name and doesn't deliver a message, and Johnny has to leave his phone outside of the Escape Room so he misses a call. But in true Schitt's Creek fashion, the scenario doesn't blow itself out of all proportion. Instead, we get good news - the investor is interested, and Johnny has a meeting set up with him! I love this success story, especially as it somewhat eclipses Patrick and David's bachelor party.

Alexis is trying to help her mom get gigs after she negotiated herself out of the Sunrise Bay reboot, but a radio gig for Larry Airlines does not go well. This was mostly a silly little diversion of a scene, but the comedy was on point, with Moira objecting to the lines she was reading, and Alexis trying to imitate her mother's voice in the booth.

The main reason for that little detour was to shine a light on Alexis and her needs. She's been going through her breakup with Ted, lamenting the death of a succulent he had bought for her, and frustrated by the lack of traction in her publicist business. By the end of the episode, she has regained some of her old confidence, and she starts to tell David she might want to move out of town and on to bigger things. This makes perfect sense for her. I appreciate that even though this is a comedy, the serious after-effects of Alexis and Ted's breakup have not been ignored. She's been in a really low place for the past few episodes, which makes perfect sense. It also makes perfect sense to realize that she's found a career she really enjoys and is good at, but that Schitt's Creek isn't the place to do it. I love this as a set-up for her character's endgame!

Patrick and David's bachelor party forms the backdrop for the family drama, but their relationship is rock-solid. I enjoy seeing them as a couple, with the normal pettiness and difficulty that can sometimes come in such a relationship, but their relationship doesn't need to be the main focus, because they are in such a good, steady place with each other. Patrick is really excited about the Escape Room, but the whole Rose family and Stevie are less than thrilled. It's so cute that he wanted to share the experience with his new family, since his family couldn't attend ("have they passed?" Moira asks, lamp-shading the fact that Patrick's family isn't around). And yet his enthusiasm ends up being infectious.

First, David gets oddly invested. Then, as Johnny becomes frantic to get back to his phone, the rest of the family gets looped in. Alexis, displaying her incredible poise and intelligence under pressure, ends up breezing through the last few clues one after the other, without pause. I love hyper-competent Alexis, and how her journey this episode really sets her up to say goodbye to Ted and move on to a new chapter in her life!

So that's where I'll stop - this was quite the fun episode, I greatly enjoyed it from start to finish!

9/10