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Television in the time of COVID...

My stories have come back... I don't watch reality TV so network television's Fall season is the first I'm seeing of television in a post-COVID world. Talk about what you see... how's this whole situation affecting the scripting/production/whatever? You can talk about reality tv, too.

I watch three shows right now - Superstore, Station 19, Grey's Anatomy. The latter two are real "period pieces" right now. (the period is spring of this year) They just skipped over the period where medical guidance was "no masks for non-medical people" and are harshly judging people for not getting in line. They are continuing directly from last season(s) but Station 19 had several more episodes in the bank than Grey's so I know the timeline probably doesn't work but will not revisit to try to make sense of it.

Also, characters are hanging out in public because that's socially acceptable in April in this alternate universe. It does make sense that Lieutenant Andy Herrera would do this even if it were a bad idea. (little Station 19 "humor" for all us fans on this board!) Anyway it's probably for the best that they just film these as if they're using "best" COVID practices right now but on all three shows characters are constantly having unmasked conversations with each other in closed rooms. Debbie Allen was shouting at Maggie in Grey's Anatomy in a boardroom! For fun/catharis! Don't do it! (Debbie Allen's character actually has cancer)

On Superstore, they are constantly filming group meeting seasons in a warehouse with an open door.

This probably has nothing to do with COVID but I'm so fully greyspilled that I like Jo Wilson now. I never expected this to happen. Anyway, I will wait for you all to watch every episode of Grey's Anatomy and its spin-offs Private Practice and Station 19. I still need to catch some of its webseries.

Excited to see the Black Lives Matter... In This, the Time of COVID, season of Brooklyn Nine-Nine in 2021.
 
Speaking of Netflix, I'm imagining GLOW having a fourth season where they inexplicably film as if there's COVID in the 80s, with all these network TV half-measures. Sometimes wearing masks and occasional moving a bit away from each other to social distance but you as the viewer know these failures to socially distance are scripted and filmed repeatedly.

I don't watch this but some shows take a different path...
 

FelixSH

(He/Him)
I want all TV to play in an alternate reality, where COVID never happened. I mean, not ALL TV, but I don't want to be remembered every time I watch an episode of anything.
Also, didn't know that "I Am Not OK With This" was a victim of this stupid virus. Lame.
 

ThornGhost

lofi posts to relax/study to
(he/him)
I heard that Conan had gone through some format changes right before Covid and then Covid forced even more drastic measures on the production and watching it now is just fucking wild. Just Conan and Andy in this weird empty theater, sitting far away from each other, neither wearing suits. Remembering how slick it was even a year or so ago compared to now just feels like the show collapsed around them but they just kept filming and it is just great. For Conan, producing shows through the writer's strike back in the naughty aughties probably helped prep him for alternative ways of creating television.

Honestly I much much prefer seeing media set in present day deal with Covid on screen because otherwise it just feels like weird cognitive dissonance to watch these shows when I'm trying to relax.

Like the channel or not, Red Letter Media's "Half in the Bag" eps with Mike and Jay in quarantine, felt somehow escapist. I couldn't say how exactly without feeling trite, but it did.
 

Mightyblue

aggro table, shmaggro table
(He/Him/His)
I mean, even RLM has scaled back sorta heavily; the Best of the Worst stuff had been trending into guesting semi-famous movie/nerd culture figures as the fourth person on the panel for a long time and pretty much all of the post-COVID episodes have been Rich/Mike/Jay + Jack or Josh on occasion. They've also been doing more in-depth show dives and retrospectives in place of Half in the Bag since no new movies really.
 

ThornGhost

lofi posts to relax/study to
(he/him)
Yeah, I think more what I'm driving at is that I appreciate shows that have acknowledged and dealt with Covid in an on-screen way. RLM has done that in their fiction which was weirdly nice and cathartic for me.

Shows on YouTube as well as more quickly produced shows like Conan mentioned above have the flexibility to be able to do that. Scripted shows have been less able to deal with it due to their long lead time.
 
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