When the extremely rich Rose family loses all of their wealth and possessions due to the actions of a fraudulent business manager, they are left with one possession that the government deemed worthless: the remote town of Schitt’s Creek, which the Rose’s had purchased in the past as a joke due to its comical name. “Schitt’s Creek” follows the family’s journey through their culture shock of having to live in a remote, underdeveloped town with virtually no money to their name. After coming to terms with the fact that the Rose’s will not be able to leave Schitt’s Creek any time soon, each member of the family experiences tremendous growth, realizing that relationships, romantic and platonic, are truly the only sources of wealth that matter.
One of the main storylines of the series follows David Rose, Johnny and Moira’s pansexual son, finding his eventual husband in Schitt’s Creek and the two of them starting their lives together. Homosexuality and the LGBTQ+ community are so intimately woven into plotlines of the series, primarily in relation to David’s character, but sprinkled amongst other characters’ development and plotlines as well. What separates Schitt’s Creek from the many other shows that have featured characters of the LGBTQ+ community in prominent roles, is that Schitt’s Creek does not highlight the plight that is frequently associated with identifying as anything other than straight, but rather focuses on the joy, acceptance, and commonality of non-straight people in modern day society. Many members, and parents of members, of the LGBTQ+ community have written to the creators of the show, thanking them for normalizing the presence of LGBTQ+ characters and depicting non-straight characters in happy relationships. In most television depictions of non-straight characters, their central role in the show is demonstrating how to deal with the struggles and backlash of homophobia, whereas “Schitt’s Creek” shows that members of the LGBTQ+ community can lead joyful and normalized lives without having to always be featured as activists and advocates for their community in their character development.
