Talk:Being Erica

viewership

I think it can be a bit misleading to present the viwership per 100 000s as the number then looks like a neilson rating. unless there are objections to this im going to revert this. thanks Ottawa4ever (talk) 23:48, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Support - Factoring by 100000s is significantly less common in everyday useage than factoring by millions. If the ratings are generally less than one million per episode displaying as an integer is easier to read. delirious & lost ☯ ^TALK 14:14, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Sources

I think it would be a good idea for people to source where they are getting the viewership/reception details from. I think its a great effort individual editors are taking with this, but we should source where the numbers come from for verifiability. In the mean time i have tagged this section for improvement. Thanks, happy editing Ottawa4ever (talk) 19:09, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Holland

There seems to be a lot of info about the Dutch rebroadcast of this show - why is this of any real importance? I'de love to see more US/Canadian info - as these are the primary target markets. Memsom (talk) 15:33, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

1) Because it's popular there.

2) Maybe because of the bond of steel between Canada and Holland because we liberated them during World War II. Ever visited a Canadian war cemetery in the Netherlands? Try it some time. You've never seen so many people in a cemetery. Just watch the reaction of an elderly Dutch person on discovering that you're Canadian and not American.

3) Maybe because Amsterdam has a Toronto Bridge to match the Amsterdam Bridge in Toronto.

Varlaam (talk) 18:44, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Season 3 Premiere Date

The article states the premiere date for season 3 as september 22nd 2010. That ist to the best of my knowlledge not correct.

The Article cites http://www.the-medium-is-not-enough.com/2010/06/being_erica_season_3_the_press_release.php, where as Premiere-Date Tuesdays at 9 p.m. on CBC Television Beginning September 22 is given. Only that in 2010 September 22nd is a Wednesday. @ErinKarpluk tweets: Be sure and tune in for #BeingErica Season 3 – Sept 21st 9pm on the CBC!. A schedule for CBC from the upfronts confirms that Being Erica is scheduled on Tuesdays. --Mountainshadow (talk) 15:50, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

• I have just checked Tribune's TVlistings.com site, and the season premiere is indeed on the 21st. Good catch. -- Gridlock Joe (talk) 16:14, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Location: Dr. Arthur's therapy room

Dr. Arthur therapy room (garage) looks like the Casa Loma Garage which is beside the Carriage Room. Is it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.206.68.142 (talk) 02:15, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Season 3 - Flaws and failures

Does anyone have a verifiable source regarding the following season 3 flaws and how it caused the ratings to fall? I want to add this to the article? Thanks.

Adam killed Season 3 of Being Erica

Adam killed Season 3 of Being Erica. I have nothing against that actor who plays the character Adam, but the Adam character killed Season 3. Half of Season 3 was all about Adam's backstory. Any basic screenwriting book will tell you that backstory is boring. But the writers of Being Erica ignored this basic precept.

First of all he's an Irish Mobster. An Irish Mobster in Toronto in the 2000's? First of all - wrong century. Second of all - wrong city. His father is abusive, and his mother is abusive and alcoholic. Adam's whole storyline was like a 2nd-rate Roddy Doyle or Frank McCourt novel.

Viewers wanted to see more of Erica, Kai, Julianne, Brett, Dr.Tom, Dr.Tom's daughter, Erica's friends and family. Writers could have shown us more of the behind-the-scenes machinations of the other doctors. That would have been cool. They could have made the other group therapy patients more intriguing. But no, what viewers got instead was not just subtle bites and nibbles of Adam's backstory, but the whole all-you-can-eat buffet. And it was all for a character that the viewers had no emotional investment in. It was way too much Adam way too soon.

There was zero chemistry between Erica and Adam. Adam was just plunked into the story to provide Erica with a love interest, and a very unconvincing one at that.

Season 3 pro-gay moralizing - writers are preaching to the converted

Oh yeah, and what was all the pro-gay stuff? Don't the writers know that the Being Erica audience is already very liberal and very likely to support same-sex marriage? I mean, the gay couple was very cute, but their whole storyline basically felt like an after school special. Julianne even says in the penultimate episode of Season 3 that gays come in "all shapes and sizes". I suppose the writers were hoping that some person from Podunk with conservative views might adopt more liberal views upon watching Season 3. But really, in terms of aesthetic value, the whole storyline was the liberal equivalent to the Left Behind series. Heavy-handed moralism never makes good art. As well, the Being Erica writers are preaching to the converted. What's the point of that?

HeWasCalledYClept (talk) 21:58, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Barring the existence of a scientifically-conducted poll or CBC internal audience research, I doubt you will find any published sources to back your opinions. You might be better off publishing these opinions in your own blog. --Gridlock Joe (talk) 00:18, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

And that blog should be called "Bitter Fangirl Speaking", probably. It's really amazing to see how some people can honestly see Wikipedia as the right place to publish personal opinions like those. It's like now I'm going to the page about cheese and write a section where I explain why everybody should hate cheese since I do. --Kumagoro-42 11:09, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Bitter? Why do you say that? That's not the right word. Season 3 produced more a sense of boredom and eye-rolling as opposed to embitterment. (Though I am still a big fan.)HeWasCalledYClept (talk) 07:06, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

I have recently seen Season 3 on DVD. (I am curious to know why the CBC takes so long to release DVDs when there are no extras, commentaries, subtitles, and so on.)

I personally concur with a lot of what ...YClept has said. There appeared to be an agenda for Season 3.

But I don't see that an Erica audience is a "liberal" audience. (That is an American term; we have always had the word Liberal in this country. We didn't say "liberal" in the US sense here decades ago; we said "open-minded". You can vote Tory and watch Erica.) I would say an Erica audience is a Canadian audience.

As noted above, the Talk page is not officially for private opinions.

In my view, however, opinions can generate discussion which can lead to someone finding a citeable source for the article.

Maybe a reviewer in the Netherlands has said something interesting about this even if a Canadian reviewer has not. If so, that can be in the article.

Dutch viewers, go crazy, find a citation.

Varlaam (talk) 18:44, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Season 4 - Will there be one and will the writers jettison Adam?

Unfortunately, I doubt there will be a Season 4 of Being Erica because of how Season 3 went, but here's an idea for Season 4. Get rid of Adam! Here are some ideas. The writers are free to use these ideas.

- Season 4, Episode 1 can be called "Don't worry, Adam is not in this episode and his character will be written off in Episode 2 of Season 4". This way, the show will be re-centered around Erica, and the writers can make an episode that is intriguing and exciting. And viewers won't have to watch Adam.

- Season 4, Episode 2 can be called "Conflict of Interest". What will happen is that Erica will have a patient of hers travel back in time to fix a regret. But when that patient fixes their regret, it will also somehow change Adam's history. Adam's history changes in such a way that he never encounters Dr.Tom or Erica (perhaps he ends up with Beatrice after all). Erica is devastated that Adam is no longer in her life. So she then has to decide what to do. She has the power to undo her patient's fixed regret, or she can let the fixed regret stand. Therein lies the conflict of interest. She consults Dr.Tom, but Dr.Tom won't tell her what to do. Ultimately, Erica decides to let the fixed regret stand and now she has to find a new love interest. No more Adam.

If anyone has a reliable source regarding the existence of Season 4 and also Adam, let me know and I will add the info to the main article.

HeWasCalledYClept (talk) 22:17, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Please refer to the talk page guidelines: "The purpose of a Wikipedia talk page (accessible via the talk or discussion tab) is to provide space for editors to discuss changes to its associated article or project page. Article talk pages should not be used by editors as platforms for their personal views on a subject." --Gridlock Joe (talk) 00:20, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Canadian spelling

Any of the spelling that is American I have corrected to reflect Canadian spelling, because it is a Canadian show. I.e. colours, traveLLing, behaviOUr, etc. I would love to change the date format to the official way which is dd/mm/yy. Does anyone have a problem with me changing the date format?SAMK71 (talk)

• I think this is appropriate. If it were a British show, British spellings would be used.HeWasCalledYClept (talk) 19:22, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Colour me Canadian; I support your behaviour regarding this fine programme.

Those of us who are of a certain age insist on programme, as we were taught in school circa Grade 3, and not "program", which appears purest American to my eyes. Varlaam (talk) 01:47, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

(Toronto, Canada West, Province of Canada – hey, everybody, what do you think about this Confederation rumour?)

I have now formalized this decision with the notice up ↑↑↑ there.

Regarding dd/mm/yy:

That is trickier. I personally use dd/mm/yy, but many people do not; many Canadians are probably not aware that there is a Canadian standard different from the US.

Any movie poster in the Toronto subway uses that confusing US mm/dd/yy format without exception.

When I was designing software in the insurance industry, I set dd/mm/yy as the standard for data input.

But then, with certain brokers, their staff were accustomed to mm/dd data entry, and that was a genuine problem. So we had to make date format a field customizable on a per-office basis, with the new installation default set to Canadian.

Alas for our culture. Time to enjoy another twofour. Varlaam (talk) 02:05, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Group therapy patients

I just finished to watch all the episodes and I wasn't able to find any mentions of the patients' backstories listed here (Rebecca being an actress, Camilla being an alcoholic bus driver). Where is that from? Some official website, maybe? The source is not specified. --Kumagoro-42 11:09, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't recall their histories being mentioned on the show either.HeWasCalledYClept (talk) 07:07, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Coyote Ugly sequence, Episode 14

In "Being Dr. Tom", bare-midriffed Erica—please let us have that more often—dances on the bar in a location I can't place. But then Drs. Tom and Naadiah meet in what to me seems like the foyer of the Brunswick House, or, as we used to call it when we got beers there underage for 40c each, the Brunny.
Is that guess incorrect? Varlaam (talk) 01:39, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Shoes in the house?

Episode 15. Big family gathering at Erica's mum's, and everybody's got shoes on in the house.
What country are we supposed to be in again?
If they are really intending to do Canadian culture properly, then that issue should be addressed. That is an authentic Canadian thing; there isn't an immense pile of shoes at the front door in Britain or the US, the way there is in any Canadian household. Varlaam (talk) 03:06, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Well small wonder they're wearing shoes - they're shooting on a TV set which are a lot more dangerous than the floor of the typical household. In fact, you'll probably see shoes on the feets of all actors on Canadian-shot TV shows, regardless of whether they're set. Tabercil (talk) 03:28, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Acknowledged.

But what about realism?

That scene was explicitly called a family gathering, not some get-together with strangers and looser rules.

And the idiot brother-in-law gets food on his "Gucci" and sticks his bloody shoe on the table cloth. Has that ever happened once since 1867?

He would get a "What the <put your personal expletive ici> do you think you're doing?" from most guys I know, professionals all.

Varlaam (talk) 19:39, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Warning to Canadians visiting Mexico.

We need to be careful in Mexico since middle class houses there, in certain states, have scorpions and tarantulas, in the same way that we have sowbugs, and Mexican scorpions and tarantulas enjoy a cosy spot in a Canadian's front door shoe. Varlaam (talk)

Yes, I realize that comment is a bit of a non sequitur.

But I have stayed in a house there with scorpions, where I was explicitly warned about doing "the Canadian shoe thing". I still did the Canadian shoe thing there, since it is a firmly engrained facet of Canadian correct behaviour which a poisonous creature warning cannot undo, but I checked my shoes before putting them on.

I have seen a tarantula in the living room of a family of Mexican doctors. A deceased tarantula. A house inside the walled enclosure where the Mexican upper classes typically reside. No guard posts, like Trotsky's house in Mexico City, but walled and defensible nonetheless.

You have two varieties of scorpion there. One is dangerous, the other is really really dangerous.

It's like Australia, where every house has cockroaches, because their roaches can fly.

Gotta go to the store. I know where my shoes are; beside the front door where shoes belong. Varlaam (talk) 20:17, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

I wear my shoes indoors at home and at probably half of homes I visit. This is the first I hear of it being a Canadian thing to remove them. What are all these Canadian doormats on porches and steps for, if not wiping our Canadian shoes? Even the "everyone likes hockey" and "everyone knows how to drive in snow" rules have more truth than this. So, I find this show Not Guilty. InedibleHulk (talk) 20:50, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

---

Lily Frost Cameo?

Is it my wishful thinking, or is that Lily Frost, the singer/songwriter who does the beautiful theme song in the opening credits, in Season 2, Episode 5, as part of the swinging couple in the sex club? I'd love to write that up on the main page, but I can find no documentation for it; she isn't mentioned in the credits. -- Bytesmiths (talk) 06:56, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Spoiler Alert

I added this warning to the top of the list of characters. After giving Season 1 on DVD to a friend, she looked it up online and ended up here and THANK YOU ALL for ruining every surprise in the whole series for her. She tells me that usually character descriptions don't give away the entire plot of the show and once she started reading she couldn't stop herself. Maybe there is such a thing as too much information? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.32.2.73 (talk) 06:21, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not TV Guide; it is not our job to avoid giving away "spoilers" if doing so compromises the quality of our article. You're gonna really hate most of our articles about most movies and most TV shows and most books if avoiding spoilers is an issue for you — and we also have an explicit policy against inserting special "spoiler warnings" into our articles. Bearcat (talk) 07:21, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Expanding on what Bearcat has written, I will say English WP did use spoiler warnings extensively until two or three years ago. Some other languages of WP still use them.

As noted, this is an encyclopedia, with content for the ages. It is supposed to be factual and complete. It is not about cliffhangers.

If you don't want to know what happens to Rick and Ilsa in Casablanca, then don't read the Wikipedia plot summary before watching the movie.

The current plot summaries here for Being Erica should now or in the future be expanded to give a little more resolution.

Varlaam (talk) 18:07, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

"the most blatant example of in-show advertising" ever

Apparently the blogger for Toronto Life has never seen the US programme Chuck where a character will extol the virtues of a specific variety of Subway sandwich in, maybe, 50% of the episodes, once Subway became an official show sponsor.
I am not exaggerating; it became essentially a running joke, the lengths to which they would go, such as characters agreeing to conflict resolution only if the meeting occurred at a Subway sandwich shop, and where the slight was rectified by the purchase of a sandwich. The characters then bonded by consuming the same sandwich. And how long did that sequence run ...?
Now, those of us who are pretty old are possibly not alarmed by this since 40 or 50 years ago, shows would always stop with "Now for a word from our sponsors". That would be Geritol or Wonder Bread or Kraft Caramels and so on. Sometimes the product was mentioned by name by the principals of the programme.
So, in the specific case of Chuck, rather than seeing the same tiresome Subway ad at each commercial break, there is a funny scene involving the show's main characters. To this viewer, that represents an improvement on the 1960s.
Varlaam (talk) 17:56, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I'm pretty sure that for the purposes of the blog in question, only Canadian TV shows were relevant. The magazine is called Toronto Life, after all, and they've certainly never published weekly recaps of any TV show that didn't have a direct Toronto connection. Bearcat (talk) 01:29, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Just for the record, Community can beat both of those, they had one of their main characters actually have sex with a man hired to be the embodiment of Subway. i.e. He was meant to represent the literal personification of Subway. Not that that was bad. Beats corny fake brands shows are always using. I'm with Varlaam, reminds me of the old days, like when the characters and the narrator of The Whistler would go on and on about Signal Gasoline -Remember -you do go farther with Signal.Number36 (talk) 04:53, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

That example clearly functions on a second level as a metafictional device, in that it's at least as much an ironic comment on product placement as it is an actual product placement. As such, it's a very different thing than what's under discussion here, which is the "playing it straight"/"playing it sloppy" kind. Bearcat (talk) 16:21, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

US remake.

Any more recent information on the US or UK remakes? Number36 (talk) 11:53, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

I am frankly curious to see how somebody else approaches the same theme.

We had the UK The Office, then the US. UK Life on Mars, then the US.

Man about the House, UK. Three's Company, US.

We were spared a US Yes, Minister because they couldn't adapt it to the US political system.

As a Canadian, I am probably always going to be predisposed to prefer a UK version in these cases, but it's good to have choices or options. Studies say that Canadian and American culture are continuing to diverge from one another.

Varlaam (talk) 17:39, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

Season 4, Region 1

These DVDs are finally out. Karpluk looks like a total babe as usual.
Do these DVDs have some extras for a change?
It bothers me personally how CBC programmes never have any subtitling. I don't assume that everyone in the house wants to watch or know what I'm watching. I tend to keep the volume down and the subtitles up when I watch anything at all. Sometimes I practise my Spanish by turning on Spanish subtitles; that's an option.
But with CBC disks, there is nothing. Same thing with Republic of Doyle.
Varlaam (talk) 17:50, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

Conflicting info in sources for season 5 renewal/cancelation

There are 2 sources sited for whether or not Being Erica is returning for a 5th season, the first says that it is, the second that it isn't. Not only that but the second source seems to be from a Livejournal that as it no longer exists I'm unsure if it's a reliable source. Daedroug (talk) 18:28, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

It definitely isn't, at least not at this time. You can obviously never entirely rule out the possibility that at some time in the future someone will decide to revive it, but at the present time the fourth season finale was the last episode produced (and it certainly had an air of "finale" about it, if you saw it, although I think it dropped a few loose ends that could have used maybe one more episode to wrap up.) However, the "production" section does address one possible source of any uncertainty; there was a "product placement" contest during season 4 which tied itself to a hypothetical season 5 — but to date the CBC hasn't ordered one, the contest sponsor had to do some serious backpedaling while the contest was still open on what the prize was going to be, and the production company hasn't given any suggestion to date that they have any plans to produce further episodes. If things change in the future, we'll certainly get on it as fast as we can — but at present we have to treat the show as permanently wrapped, because there are no indications in reliable sources of any real plans for a season 5 at all.

That said, the LiveJournal source definitely had to go into the crapper, and the other source talks about the production and scheduling of season 4 (not 5), but says nothing either way about the end of the show — so thanks for the heads up. Bearcat (talk) 22:01, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Dr. Tom and How he Relates to His Patients

Underpinning a lot of Dr. Tom's help to his patients is his past relationships. His past relationship with his daughter led him to Erica, as an example. That relationship often colored his responses to Erica's inquiries. He often saw Erica as his daughter. This was brought out in several different episodes. In season 4 episode 5, he is dealing with his own life and some of the choices he made, particularly his relationship with Amanda, who was supposed to be fiancé, and started up with another guy at a party. I this character (I haven't watched all of season 4 yet) probably only made the one appearance, but she was important to Dr. Tom leaving his practice and getting on with his own life, so I feel that she should be included into the main article. DPHutchins (talk) 07:44, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Amanda is mentioned in Dr. Tom's character blurb. She does appear again after the episode you had seen at the time of this comment, but only briefly and her character is never really developed in enough depth to warrant her own separate section as her relevance to the show's overall narrative arc is exclusive to her effect on Tom's decision to retire. Tom's character blurb also already notes that "it is sometimes implied that Dr. Tom may partly be using Erica as a substitute for Sarah"; again, it's something that could validly be expanded upon a bit in that context but doesn't really merit special attention elsewhere as it's about his character and not anyone else's. Bearcat (talk) 16:16, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Hindsight

With the recent announcement that VH1 has picked up a new series pilot called Hindsight, I just wanted to add a note here to clarify that it is not appropriate for Wikipedia to describe the new series as a remake of Being Erica at this time. While the description of the show's basic premise has an obvious thematic similarity, one thing right off the top that the sources fail to do is to clarify whether each episode will have Becca visiting a different moment in her past in order to learn a lesson (the Being Erica model), or whether she's going to be permanently stuck in 1995 as an extended season-long or series-long story arc (which would make it way more Life on Mars.) So until reliable sources explicitly confirm that it's actually intended as a remake of Being Erica, and not just a series which is going to take an initial similarity of premise in a very different direction, it's not appropriate for us to engage in WP:CRYSTAL speculation about it. Bearcat (talk) 19:38, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

• I'm going to be bold and delete the reference. There is no indication of Hindsight being based in any way on Being Erica and the creator of Being Erica is not even credited. 68.146.233.86 (talk) 22:03, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

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Needs summary section

Can someone write up a summary paragraph of what this show is about? AngusWOOF (bark • sniff) 00:20, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

The article did at one time contain exactly what you're asking for, but it appears to have been removed at some point. I've readded a new section about the show's basic premise. Bearcat (talk) 00:33, 29 October 2017 (UTC)