Movies and television shows have always been a source of escapism for me and, I’m sure, many others. Throughout the past year—the year that shall not be named—many of us have turned to our screens, which is something quite easy to do considering we have all been stuck at home. With streaming services like Netflix and Hulu, the ability to binge-watch a number of different things seemed like a welcome comfort when we couldn’t possibly watch any more of the depressing events we saw on the news daily.
But we can’t seem to escape the grasp of the dreaded Coronavirus—it’s plastered everywhere on our televisions! From news stories to commercials and even our favorite forms of entertainment. Ever since the pandemic began it seems like screenwriters and producers alike have drawn inspiration from these crazy times, but quite honestly the concept is getting tiresome.
When I go to watch TV, I’m doing so because I don’t want to hear about the terrible things happening in the world. I get enough of that watching the eight o’clock news. I watch shows as a means of escape—just thirty or so minutes of a break from the reminder that I am living through historic times. Especially as someone with health anxiety, a show entirely centered on a deadly virus is not something I want to see. Every symptom the characters have and the anxieties the show addresses are things I begin to feel at an alarming rate, but it seems like everywhere I turn there is a COVID-related story! From Grey’s Anatomy to the new reboot of Sex and the City, it seems like the screen is full of a reality we already know too well and would rather forget.
Grey’s Anatomy was one of the first shows to have a plot revolving entirely around the pandemic, showing the hospital deal with the spikes in the virus and the hospitalizations. Although I understand why the show writers may have wanted to write a storyline representative of the current times, I have to say, it wasn’t something I wanted to be reminded of quite so soon. While the new season of Grey’s Anatomy aired, most of the country was still on lockdown and the prospect of watching a whole series dedicated to the doctors dealing with the horrors of this new virus was a depressing one.
Now I know what you’re thinking—it’s a doctor show, of course it’s going to cover the medical issues the country was facing! Just watch something more uplifting like a sitcom, but even sitcoms weren’t immune to virus-related plots. South Park made a standalone episode titled “Pandemic Special,” showing the cast head back to school post-lockdown. Superstore opened season six with a speed through of the first few months of the pandemic—the rush on toilet paper and everything else.
It appears the reminder of COVID, quarantine and anything pandemic-related will be hard to forget anytime given the number of shows that have more COVID-related plotlines in the works. The new Sex and the City reboot has already been rumored to be tackling COVID and other shows like Shameless, Grown-ish, You and Curb Your Enthusiasm are thinking about incorporating pandemic issues into their new seasons.
I think it’s safe to say that once this pandemic is completely over, nobody will want to what they just so recently lived through on television in the form of entertainment. From here on out, I hope to watch shows that allow me to momentarily forget about the disaster that was 2020, rather than relive it.
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