COVID on TV: What are shows telling us to remember, and what are they telling us to forget?
How too many shows have incorporated an oversimplified version of the pandemic into their narratives
The premiere of This is Us Season 5 was the first time I saw a fictional TV show incorporate COVID-19. And, honestly, my initial instinct was to turn it off. It felt weird to see fictional characters parcel out mask-wearing and self-isolation, and I wasn't sure if I wanted COVID in my fiction when I couldn't get it out of my real life.
But I couldn't help but feel curious as to why the showrunners had decided to include it. This is Us creator Dan Fogelman was quoted as saying that "it almost felt irresponsible not to take on the moment." I think this sense of needing to cover COVID-19 might be the reason why so many other shows, like Superstore, Prodigal Son, and Grey's Anatomy, have incorporated it into their storylines. As viewers, we know, of course, that these shows are fictional — but the presence of a very real pandemic places them in more of an in-between of fact and fiction than usual.
Michel-Rolph Trouillot, a historian who wrote about how we remember the past, has said that most people learn about history from sources that aren't subject to any rigorous vetting process. This includes TV shows, which can choose to portray real events but are not obligated to hold to any specific standard of what is true. These shows, then, provide an interesting opportunity to track how fictional accounts of COVID are recording history at the same time as we are living through it. If it's true that people in the future will learn details about this last year based on its portrayal on TV, then it's important to ask: what are these shows telling us to remember, and what are they telling us to forget?
Many shows seemed eager to rush through the bulk of the pandemic. Both This is Us and Superstore began their new seasons with montages that skipped through the spring and summer of 2020. In This is Us, I was surprised when one character was able to get both his first and second vaccinations in episode 10. Time in fictional shows is malleable, of course, but something felt off about seeing a pandemic, that in real life has been characterized by waiting, end after only 10 episodes.
Prodigal Son, a procedural drama about a serial killer's son-turned-FBI profiler, had an even more starkly condensed timeline. In its Season 2 premiere, one character mentions that he used contact tracing during a COVID prison outbreak. And that's ... it. No masks, no distancing, no more COVID. One of the show's creators, Sam Sklaver, has said that the show exists in a world where the pandemic lasted only a few months — though that's not made clear from watching. It struck me as odd that they felt obligated to include the pandemic but also wanted it to interfere as little as possible with the storyline.
It seems to me that there is a desire to portray COVID onscreen but without all the inconvenience. These shows, understandably, have their own plotlines to get to. But when that inconvenience has been so intrinsic to the pandemic, can you really get rid of it and still have a truthful portrayal of the last year? This is Us is full of scenes where the first minute of dialogue is spent justifying how the characters present can be in a room together; they've isolated, or gotten tested, or quarantined. But the hygiene theatre always ends with everyone getting to be there. No one has to stay home while wishing they could be somewhere else with the people they love.
Superstore, a comedy about employees working at a big-box store, also takes some liberties with when to be accurate about COVID restrictions and when to be more flexible. In an attempt to tone down the masks a bit, showrunners opted to have characters wear masks in customer-facing situations but not amongst one another. This move alleviates some of the technical difficulties of filming in masks, but comes at the cost of accuracy. However, the show does do an excellent job of portraying the dark absurdity that has accompanied the seriousness of the pandemic. In one episode, characters embrace being called "heroes" by their corporate employers minutes before opening a shipment of "safety equipment" — only to find that it's not PPE but anti-looting gear. The show's brand of humour was well-suited to reminding us that throughout this pandemic, essential workers have often been praised instead of protected.
Grey's Anatomy, though, is the only one of these shows to consistently acknowledge how COVID-19 has intersected with pre-existing societal divisions. Within the first five minutes of its season premiere, Grey's highlights how COVID-19 disproportionately affects Black people — a point it continues to raise throughout its season. While all of these shows contain some reference to the Black Lives Matter movement, Grey's Anatomy was the only one to make clear the connection between the two issues: Black doctors on the show reckon with the grief and frustration of treating an unreasonably high number of Black COVID patients, particularly in an episode where they treat people injured at a Black Lives Matter protest (most shows don't go so far as to name the movement explicitly). It also doesn't shy away from looking at how COVID cases have been affected by income or how certain political parties benefited from fostering misinformation.
It's the absence of these sorts of details in most of the pandemic-era fiction I've seen that I find the most worrying. My fear is that most representations of COVID on prime-time TV shows will uphold a narrative that's just not accurate, either on or offscreen: the story of a straightforward, universally recognized evil and an "All in this Together" response. The fact is, the effects of the pandemic have been complicated by inequities that already existed, and the crisis has further exposed dividing lines like race and income — which has meant a very different pandemic experience for some people than others, with the most vulnerable among us getting hit harder and more often.
Perhaps it is unrealistic to expect TV shows to spend their airtime on all the nuances of the pandemic. Their main focus ultimately isn't reality, and one thing I've learned this year is the value of some escapism every now and then. But right now our pandemic fiction is tempered by pandemic reality, and it's easier to spot the discrepancies — which might not be the case for future viewers.
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