D

Dan Levy, I want to make one thing clear: I harbor no ill will against you personally. Schitt’s Creek was great. Well, that’s what I’ve heard at least. I never got around to watching it, but the accolades and popularity among friends and family with good taste in television make me believe it really is as good as its reputation. Either way, you’ve created a highly successful sitcom that managed to stick the landing. You’re obviously talented and have the resume to outrun claims of nepo-baby industry-forced success.

Still, though, you haunt me. Your face has evolved in my life from something that inspired a thought of “oh yeah, that guy from that show that’s supposed to be good” to a specter that follows me through the commercial breaks of every program on Earth. As soon as a timeout is called in a football game, or an ad break starts on one of the streaming services on which I haven’t begrudgingly shelled out the ad-free upcharge for, it’s not a question of if your face will fill my television, but how, and in service of what industry. 

Within seconds, your form is once again burning itself into the diodes of my television. Leaning out of a helicopter, running on a treadmill, swiping a Citi card at a roadside gas station, selling me anything and everything — chips, candy, homes — with Heidi Gardner peering over your shoulder. I know she’s a Kansas City Chiefs fan, and I imagine that on Sundays even she’s thinking, “This is the fourth time I’ve tried to sell myself a home this last half-hour.” 

I understand that you don’t control how often these campaigns air, but I’m drowning in a sea of you, reaching for air and finding only new shapes of Tostitos.

I understand that CBC, Pop and Netflix aren’t forking out network-level money for the showrunner of even a successful show these days, but I have to feel the coffers are sufficiently fattened. 

Maybe I’m wrong, though. Maybe you’re trying to build a nest egg for the next round of Levy children. Maybe you fancied a flutter or two at the horse track and got in too deep. Perhaps you blew those CBC checks on thick-framed glasses, ran up a tab, and now Tom Ford himself has threatened to crack your kneecaps if you don’t pay for all that tortoiseshell. By all means, secure the bag, but please, stop turning my television into an all-Levy QVC network.

I don’t want to feel this way. I don’t want to react to a wiggle of your trademark expressive eyebrows by scrambling for the remote’s mute button like I’m looking for a gun in my bedside drawer during a home invasion. I simply can’t take any more of this advertising by gavage, watching you whirl through settings and costumes and pithy sign-offs like I’m trapped at a one-man show sponsored by Unilever. 

Soon, I’m afraid you’ll start showing up in my dreams, me running with lead-heavy legs down an endless hallway, while your snaking, ever-extending arm loops and pursues, a bag of M&M’s with one perfect corner tear rattling behind me.

Uncle! Mercy! Give me one night of rest without hearing the baying of the chasing hellhounds of Homes.com! At the very least, make another TV show before you become Troy McClure with less credits. 

I promise to watch it this time.

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