Critic’s Appreciation: How ‘Schitt’s Creek’ Helped Us Celebrate Catherine O’Hara’s Genius (That Was Always There)

Actually, many funny things probably happened to, and because of, Catherine O’Hara over the past decade — but over the past decade, Catherine O’Hara got really famous.

If people take umbrage at that statement, I don’t blame them. Catherine O’Hara was definitely famous before Schitt’s Creek, but she was famous in a fragmented way that isn’t uncommon in the modern media landscape.

Yes, she was a Canadian national treasure and had been since the launch of Sctv. If you made a Mount Rushmore of comic sketch performers, Catherine O’Hara would be on it. But while John Candy and Rick Moranis and even O’Hara’s career-long professional partner Eugene Levy experienced above-the-title stardom, O’Hara went from being the most valuable performer in a sketch ensemble to being the most valuable performer in countless other ensembles,…