Being Erica

Dr. Tom: I asked you a simple question. Do you want to fix your problems or not? Yes or no.
Erica: Yes.

A Canadian comedy-drama series about a 30-something woman named Erica Strange (Erin Karpluk), who believes her life has been full of regrets. After a particularly bad day, she is approached by a therapist called Dr. Tom (Michael Riley). He offers assistance, which turns out to be in the form of sending her back in time to relive portions of her life. While this is supposedly to allow her to make changes, often the result is that key events happen anyway, but they give Erica a fresh perspective which can then be applied to present day situations.

Episodes typically begin with events in the present (and occasionally a monologue), which may involve her family, friends, or co-workers. At some point, Erica ends up in Dr. Tom's office, after walking though an otherwise normal doorway. This leads to her revisiting a past regret. Generally, the episode concludes with a return to the present storyline, some aspect of which can now be seen in a new light.

The show premiered in Canada in January of 2009. It was picked up for a twelve episode second season that started September 2009, and a thirteen episode third season that began in September 2010. Later seasons introduce more therapists and more patients to the cast. The series takes place in Toronto, where it is also filmed.

There are currently plans for UK and US versions of the show.

Tropes used in Being Erica include:

• Affectionate Nickname: Julianne calls Erica "chicken."
• Alternate Universe: The episode "What Goes Up Must Come Down", 2x11, features Dr. Tom showing Erica a revised present where she had won the lottery.
  • The first season finale had a very distinct alternate reality after Erica ended up changing the past drastically. However, Erica barely notices the change, save for Leo being back from the dead, only to be killed off seconds later. Then she gets a do-over.
  • Episode 4x08, "Please, Please Tell Me Now" seems to raise this possibility. There's two versions of 2019: one where Erica dies in the Union station bombing... and another where she survives. Every decision Erica and others make spawns an alternate reality; possibilities Erica is shown include one where she'd stayed at River Rock, one where she'd married Ethan, one where Leo had never gone into the barn where he would later die, etc.
• Book Ends: The fourth season premiere is entitled "Doctor Who?". The fourth season finale is entitled "Dr. Erica," which could itself bookend the title of the series premiere, "Dr. Tom".
• The Cameo: Jay Manuel; George Stroumboulopoulos.
• Canada, Eh?: Averted. The show portrays a fairly realistic (at least, as realistic as you get on a T.V. show) and non-stereotypical version of urban Canadian life. Which isn't surprising, since it's a Canadian show.
• Camp Straight: Brent.
• The Cast Showoff: "Fa La Erica" certainly has a scene like this when... Reagan Pasternak (Julianne) starts to sing. She's quite good, to say the least.
• Character Blog: http://www.cbc.ca/beingerica/blog/
• Dead Guy, Junior: A beautiful moment comes out of this in Season 4. Sam names her son Leo, after her and Erica's deceased older brother. Barb is visibly moved upon finding out.
• Mr. Fanservice: Both Ethan and Kai, along with some other characters.
• Girl-On-Girl Is Hot: The Season 1 episode "Everything She Wants" has a lot of this, as Erica explores her "feelings" for a lesbian friend, since one of her regrets was hurting her friend by not making her discomfort with the friend's advances clear in the past. However, once she travels back to the past, she begins reconsidering and wondering what she likes about the closeness with her friend. That closeness gets physical.
• The Glorious War of Sisterly Rivalry: Julianne and her sister Georgia, as revealed in episode 4x02. Their parents called Georgia "the smart one" and Julianne "the fun one," unintentionally causing them to envy each other for years.
• Groundhog Day Loop: In the third season episode "Wash, Rinse, Repeat", Erica has a 4 hour loop thanks to Dr. Tom, after she gets the news from Kai that she can't be found in 2019.
• Guyliner: used to a point with Future!Kai
• I Should Write a Book About This: Indirectly (or perhaps a new sub-trope, "I Should Publish a Book About This".) In the final episode, series creator Jana Sinyor has a cameo as an author named Jana, pitching a book idea to Erica about a young Jewish woman dealing with regrets that have held her back in life -- basically, the core premise of Being Erica itself.
• Informed Judaism: Completely averted. Erica's father is a rabbi, Erica and her family are seen being religious on screen, and Erica is frequently the one to explain various points of Jewish tradition to other characters.
  • Unlike some shows which undoubtedly just call a character Jewish to sidestep the "diversity" thing but have no intention of seriously exploring religion, in this case the series creator and showrunner, Jana Sinyor, is actually Jewish.
• Meaningful Name: Erica has an occasional nemesis whose name is "Antigone". (Antigone, antagonist, geddit? Nyuk Nyuk.)
• Mental Time Travel: Erica replaces her former self, keeping her memories of the future. And in "Fa La Erica", she goes back and replaces Julianne.
• Mind Screw: Poor Erica gets one in 3x12, "Erica, Interrupted". It's how the Doctors determine who gets to become a Doctor. Erica wakes up in the same fashion she did in the pilot--and is told she was in a coma for two weeks, and that the two years of memories she has are all a dream. "Dr. Tom" is her neurologist, Dr. Wexlar; "Julianne" is a nurse at the hospital, etc. She's almost committed, and ends up on a bridge talking to her subconscious (Leo), where she tells him that even if the therapy was a dream, it changed her... thus passing the test and entering Doctor training. Unfortunately, she's only the second group member to have passed; Adam and most of the others have failed.
• Mundane Fantastic: The world is exactly as we know it, except that it features time travel therapy, other-dimensional office space, and (as of season 4) a character who is "a little bit psychic."
• Named After Somebody Famous: Lenin (his parents are communists.)
• Peggy Sue: The show is all about Erica going through Peggy Sue plots. Occasionally, we see other characters do this with their own lives, too.
• Playing Gertrude: Jenny and Katie are supposed to be around Erica's age, but both of their actresses are around ten years younger than Erin Karpluk.
• Posthumous Character: Erica's older brother, Leo.
• Product Placement: Very blatant at times, unfortunately. In one episode, we see Judith's boyfriend finish a presentation for TD Financial, complete with their trademark green armchair. In another, Julianne's assistant introduces her to Tetley Infusions.
  • 4x08 gave its entire cold open over to a scene in which Erica and Julianne test drove a 2012 Ford Focus, complete with a salesman in the back seat explaining the car's features. The whole scene was literally a car commercial.
  • There is a contest to appear on an upcoming episode of the show. The role? Eating McCain's thin crust pizza, so expect that to show up soon.
    • Or not. This was handled in the most spectacularly clumsy fashion I've ever seen a product placement (even worse than the Ford Focus ad); the "prize" was an appearance on a Season 5 episode, even though the contest didn't begin until several months after it had already been announced that the show wasn't going to continue beyond the end of Season 4. The contest was subsequently revised to offer a contingency prize "if" Being Erica wasn't renewed for 2012.
• Put on a Bus: Ethan, after season 2 and a messy breakup with Erica.
  • The Bus Came Back for one episode, after which he's put on a plane instead.
• Double Standard Rape (Male on Male): Heavily subverted. When Leo is sexually assaulted while at university, his fraternity brothers find it hilarious. The show does not agree with them.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Sam delivers a brutal one of these to Erica in her do-over day (2x05, "Yes We Can"). Faced with a day without consequences, Erica uses part of it to tell Josh how she really feels about his and Sam's marriage. When this leads to Josh and Sam fighting, Sam tearfully and angrily yells at Erica for interfering when her own life has been such a mess.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Premise of the show.
• Shout-Out: The first episode of the fourth and final season is called 'Doctor Who?'
• Sweeps Week Lesbian Kiss: There is certainly a lot of this (and a bit of undressing) in "Everything She Wants".
• Time Master: Dr. Tom of the present shows up in Erica's history (in various guises, ranging from a policeman's uniform to Pimp Duds). Dr. Tom also gets this from Dr. Nadiaah when he gets treatment.
• Timey-Wimey Ball: Tends to happen and actually taken Up to Eleven since you have multiple people doing Mental Time Travel all at the same point in time but from different starting points but also engaging in situations where they physically end up somewhere else all together such as when visiting therapists. Just explaining what goes on is almost as confusing as trying to figure it all out.
  • For instance, in "Physician Heal Thyself", Kai and Erica are talking and he notes that in his original timeline, he did one thing, but in this timeline, he did something else. Meaning that for him, Erica's timeline is an alternate universe to him even though it's the 'right' universe for her.
• Verbal Tic: A fairly subtle one. Erin Karpluk (Erica) never seems to follow a noun with a verb; she always switches to a pronoun first. For example, instead of saying "Ethan was insecure," she'll say "Ethan, he was insecure."
• Weirdness Censor: You'd think people would start noticing other people basically teleporting around all the time. It helps that it only happens when walking through doors, but sometimes other people are going through the door with her, and don't seem to notice anything odd.
  • Called attention to in "Moving On Up" when someone sees Erica walking into a bathroom into a therapy session. She then walks out of the session back into the room she just left... from the front door. He's a little freaked out.
  • And because she's in therapy, she lacks a weirdness censor for that, allowing her to notice that Kai also has doors that open to the wrong place. Which was almost certainly not intended to happen, as this is his past, and people aren't supposed to mess around with other people's decisions in the past like he does with Erica's.
  • Somewhat played with in "Wash. Rinse. Repeat." at the end of the episode. Having been suddenly summoned to Dr. Tom's office (in non-door ways), when she's ready to leave, she opens the door and pauses as if to look out into the 'real world' and figure out where/how/when exactly she'll end up.
• X Meets Y: Described as Quantum Leap meets Peggy Sue Got Married.
  • Alternatively, Quantum Leap meets In Treatment.
• You Can't Fight Fate: In the season one finale Erica saves her brother's life in the past, only to have him die in the present.
  • Additionally, a recurring motif in many episodes is that even after Erica travels back to change a situation by acting differently, very often the event she was trying to avoid still occurs -- what actually changes isn't the event itself, but her understanding of why it happened. For example, in one episode Erica blames herself for her parents' divorce, because her mother moved out of the house just a few hours after she called her mother a "Nazi" when her parents were arguing; in her session, she avoids the inflammatory comment and goes on to discover the real reason her mother moved out that night, which is that her father was having an affair. In another, she gets fired from a summer job at Black Creek Pioneer Village for abandoning her post at the candle shop to help Jenny round up escaped animals from the barnyard, causing the unattended candle shop to catch fire; in the revised reality, she refuses to help Jenny and stays at the candle shop, but still gets fired for not being willing to help out in an emergency.