Father knows less
Even as a dad, Call Me Fitz’s lead remains as unlikeable as ever
Richard Fitzpatrick remains an a-hole.
After three seasons in which the used car salesman played by Jason Priestley was governed entirely by his remarkably unstrained id, where he drank, lied, cheated, swilled, swindled, fornicated and betrayed with abandon, the fourth season of Call Me Fitz had the potential for a watershed moment: the antihero was now a father.
“There were two ways to go with the baby,” says Sheri elwood, the show’s creator and showrunner. They could have introduced a softer side to their scruffy lead, she says in an interview. “Three Men and a Baby shenanigans,” and assorted other hijinks. First, Fitz would learn how to fasten a diaper one-handed with a highball glass in the other, and eventually he would he learn a heartfelt lesson about the meaning of parenthood. “but I don’t know if we’re ready for that kind of thing,” elwood says.
Indeed they are not. Instead, Fitz carts the baby around like the little poop sack that it is, and only shows concern for the child when he misplaces him — not out of any fatherly love, but because he sees the baby as a sales tool at the dealership. empathy is for losers. Fitzpatrick’s lack of appeal has been at the crux of the series since its inception. elwood developed the show on spec, and when she was shopping it around, the question was asked: “could you make the lead character more likeable?”
Likeable leads have tended to be a standard requirement for a series. And, even with the trend of anti-heroes in recent cable dramas, there was always an element to the characters that would allow viewers to root for them. Tony Soprano was at heart a doting father. don draper can make a killer speech. Walter White, at least in the early days, had honourable intentions.
but Fitz? Fitz is a wreck. As are most of the people in his life. These are, as elwood puts it, “characters who can’t get their s--t together.”
‘These characters are fundamentally flawed. It’s like watching a car wreck’
At least they are consistent about it. Into the fourth season now, viewers aren’t expecting richard or anyone else in his family to suddenly turn their lives around.
“These characters are fundamentally flawed,” elwood says. “It’s like watching a car wreck. There’s a part of the audience saying, ‘don’t do it, don’t do it.’ ” Then they do it.
Filling out the backstory of the Fitzpatrick family — the broken home, the decidedly non-tender parents, the troubled sister — has also given Fitz a bit of depth beyond the drinking and the cursing. He’s a product of a bad situation.
“Now, we get it,” elwood says. “He’s not just randomly being an a--hole.”
even if he isn’t, so far, much of a father. This coming season introduces an arc in which Michael Gross — yes, that Michael Gross, of Family Ties fame — becomes a nemesis of sorts for the Fitzpatricks. If nothing else, it gives fans of television history a chance to witness a rivalry between Steven Keaton and brandon Walsh. We have waited too long.
elwood is cagey about giving much of anything away about Gross’s character, other than to say he is “everything the Fitzpatricks are not.”
That doesn’t necessarily mean he is all good, though. Or more to the point, that the family Fitz is all bad.
“They are honest, and they are what they are,” elwood says. “Not many people can say that.”