This post is about how the Fall 2020 Network TV primetime shows represented the Covid-19 pandemic’s Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) worn by the characters in the contemporary stories’ episodes.
And in case you didn’t already know, for the average person wearing PPE, a mask should cover the mouth and the nose, gloves should be worn or hand sanitizer used after touching surfaces and before touching the face, and people should keep at least 6 feet apart when they can in spaces large enough to, ideally whether outside or inside. If inside, windows should be opened and/or ventilation systems should filter out virus microbes and allergens. If outside and the area is relatively uncrowded when eating or drinking, masks can be off but for that limited time. People should be wary of removing their mask and standing within 6 feet of those who are randomly passing by, not part of their households, and/or not part of their social pods. Basically, keep aware of "stranger-danger!"
This study focuses on NBC’s Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, This Is Us, and Superstore (and including Saturday Night Live being both fiction and non-fiction at the same time). And ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy, A Million Little Things, Black-ish, and The Conners. The grades themselves do not incorporate thoughts on the stories being told but how they incorporate the pandemic and the rules to adhere to.
Grading from worst to best representations of PPE:
F = A Million Little Things
D = Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
C+ = Superstore
B- = Saturday Night Live
B = Black-ish and The Conners
B+ = This is Us
A = Grey’s Anatomy
A Million Little Things gets an F for FAILURE!
*With rights reserved.
When Season 2 ended it was early winter 2020 Boston. Eddie decided to leave the bar and called Katherine to say he’d be coming home. Halfway through crossing the street, an old pick-up truck hit him on purpose, and sped off.
When Season 3 premiered, it picked up right at that moment. Everyone gathered in the hospital waiting room to learn Eddie’s fate. He woke up but couldn’t feel his legs. A month passed before he was allowed to leave the hospital and go home. As Eddie’s wife Katherine packed things away, she turned off the television that showed a news interview with Dr. Fauci about the impending pandemic. SHE TURNED OFF DR. FAUCI!
When Katherine is returning to work, she says it’s been a
month of Eddie adjusting at home.
Thus, in the world of the show, at least two months pass since Eddie’s accident, bringing the characters into late March to early April 2020. There is no further increasing awareness let alone any further mention of the Covid-19 virus. In our actual late March and early April, the world’s many cities and even rural areas were already in quarantine and thousands of people were dying daily.
It would be one thing for the story to not involve the actual world’s pandemic at all, and to continue their story as they planned all along. It would have been acceptable to give their audience a pandemic-free escape. That despite whatever we experience, those characters are completely untouched. But it was reprehensible to have Katherine shut-off the TV that was making reference to the pandemic. And to do so at the hospital is incredibly more disrespectful!
If the show will be taking its sweet time entering our full-blown pandemic world, to show it in the remaining Winter 2021 aired episodes, then I will come back and update this post with a new grade. But until further notice and with all rights reserved, this show gets an F. The question is though, now that we’re in the world of distributing vaccines, would audiences really want to relive all that our Winter 2020 was in their Winter 2021?
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit gets a D for
(so very) DISAPPOINTING!
I used to be one of those hardcore fans who was addicted to this show and its numerous marathons of reruns. But then I cut the cable cord and lost touch with the series.
That is until I decided to check-in on SVU’s Season 22 for this article, expecting its characters wearing full and proper PPE in actual NYC locations. Especially given that NYC was the epicenter of the world’s pandemic cases and deaths in Spring 2020 and that this is one of the longest running shows, filmed at actual NYC locations, fictionalizing actual headlines, as well as incorporating not only police in and out of uniforms, the court system, hospitals, and the diverse denizens from every walk of life, I expected to see almost everyone (speaking and non-speaking) in full-faced masks (and maybe gloves), keeping 6 feet apart, getting temperature checks, using hand sanitizer every other minute, and with some in the scene not (just for the realism).
I was so very DISAPPOINTED. What I did see was incredible disregard for the mandates in place since Spring 2020. Had I not seen A Million Little Things, then SVU would have gotten the F. None of the principal characters let alone day players were adhering to the NYC pandemic mandates! How hypocritical! How ethically wrong!
Season 22 takes place in September 2020. Though there was a late summer lull in the crisis, so that gyms reopened and 25% indoor dining capacity allowed, all of its episodes featured terribly improper PPE representation.
The premiere episode opened in Central Park with a Black man’s cell phone footage documenting a ‘Karen’ accusing him of trying to harm her and her son, though really he was just exercising. When some police officers arrived, the son had discovered a semi-conscious raped man in the woods near them. The woman wore her mask at her chin, and the Black man Jayvon wore his bandana at his neck. They were standing approx. 6 feet apart. The uniformed officers were not wearing masks, and some bystanders were wearing masks while others not, taking videos of them. When Olivia Benson got to the scene, she took off her mask and walked with a uniformed officer not wearing his mask, the crowd had increased, and so did the number of police. Amanda Rollins is seen not wearing a mask standing within 6 feet of a man recording everything on his phone, who wore his mask at his chin. (New-ish) Officer Katriona Tamin stands next to Olivia not wearing a mask. Fin Tutuola then comes by with a previously seen officer, neither wearing masks.
In Captain Benson’s office, she, Fin, and Carisi (now an attorney for the DA’s office) are huddled around her desk watching Jayvon’s recording we saw open the episode. No one is wearing a mask or keeping 6 feet apart. The windows in that office don’t open. Carisi takes a bit of hand sanitizer but that’s it. When the camera angle moves to show Jayvon in the interrogation room alone, his mask is off. When Olivia, Fin, and Carisi enter the room, Jayvon doesn’t put his mask on. And you can’t stay 6 feet apart in there between everyone. And those windows don’t open either.
At the hospital, Rollins and Tarin first talk to the male nurse at his desk about the victim Eric. He is wearing a hospital (gauze-like) gown, a hair cap, and gloves but he is not wearing a mask and his face shield is up. Rollins and Tarin have their masks on but they are within 6 feet of each other. When Rollins and Tarin talk to Eric’s mother and brother in the waiting room, neither of them are wearing their masks anymore, and the mother has hers hanging on her wrist and the brother has his at his chin. They are all within 6 feet of each other. In the hallway walking to the elevator, they only put on their masks when the brother approaches them to have a separate conversation about Eric’s actual whereabouts but does not put on his mask until he goes back to be with his mother. All pointless attempts given they’ve just been around each other without wearing them.
Back at the precinct, Carisi gets his temperature checked before walking into the pit, not wearing a mask. Other uniformed officers in the background are wearing their masks, still within 6 feet of each other. Carisi and Olivia rejoin Jayvon and Fin in the interrogation room and same as before, no one wearing masks, and standing within 6 feet.
At the Irish bar, Rollins and Tarin are interviewing the owner, no one is wearing masks and they are within 6 feet. I am already getting tired of writing this description, and it’s not even halfway through the episode! But what’s even worse, is Rollin’s line to the difficult owner: “We don’t care if you black out your windows or stay open past last call…” WHAT THE F* SVU?! I get they’re not the detective unit responsible for those kinds of misdemeanors, but at a time when dining rules are in place to protect the public from contracting a deadly virus which too many New Yorkers have suffered and died from, Rollins should definitely have cared about what that owner is doing to not only hamper the investigation but also putting who knows how many others at risk, including herself!
I could go on to pinpoint all of this episode’s mistakes representing PPE and social distancing, but I’ll cut to the end, to the grand jury room. There are no windows that open. The perpetrator is sitting on the witness stand giving his testimony. Carisi is at his podium asking the questions and directing instructions to the 12+ strangers – sitting with plexiglass between them. However, these jury members are wearing their masks improperly, mostly women: at their chin, hanging from an ear, covering a mouth but not nose, and one just covering the bottom lip. One woman is not only wearing it at her chin but she’s resting her hand at her cheek. And back at the hospital, Rollins and Tarin are telling the victim’s family the Grand Jury’s refusal to indict, no one is wearing masks or standing 6 feet apart.
Although only two more episodes would air in Fall 2020, they all feature the same lowest-level of PPE and social distancing adherence. Not even the supposed hyper-vigilant characters are seen taking the rules as seriously as they’re characterized to.
This is a NYC born, bred, and now veteran aired program that has seen all of the disasters this city has experienced in its 22 years. Which means they’ve faced 9/11, the Recession, Hurricane Sandy, and Trump’s presidency, on the large scale, not to mention the more local matters particular to the Five Boroughs. I can’t help but need to shame this show for the complete disregard! This is New York, and they are New Yorkers, filming in New York City. Governor Cuomo is not only in our world but the show’s too, and he’d be so pissed! If Cuomo does know about how shockingly terrible his mandates are represented on this show, I hope he calls out the showrunners and somehow makes an appearance on the show putting Olivia, Carisi, and everyone in their place. But on his behalf, I say: WEAR YOUR DAMN MASK!
Superstore gets a C+ for Checked-Out
I remember back in Summer 2019, as I was being driven to the Burbank airport for my return flight to JFK, I caught a glimpse of the actual Cloud-9 warehouse store and parking lot where they film Superstore. It looked so real, as if it were a strong Costco competitor.
America Ferrara did not want to renew her contract with the show. But her character Amy’s relationship with Jonah would need to end. Because of the pandemic, her good-bye arc had to move into the following season for Fall 2020.
The show used Amy’s rescheduled move to California for a corporate job as a reason to show the imbalance of responsibilities between the suits and her store’s co-workers/friends, doing zoom meetings for hours on end and still interfacing with customers. Zephyr’s initial handling of safety protocols to the staff was zilch, but customers would first get masks instead of staff, Amy got creative and turned the costumed stuffed Teddy-bears’ bandanas into masks for them. And at morning staff meetings people would stand 6 feet (or so) apart.
As the virus progressed, and corporate finally got a better handle, the staff were given proper protections on the floor and staff morning meetings were held in a semi-outdoors location., still keeping 6 feet apart. When lead characters interacted with the various customers, it allowed for some good humor at the pandemic’s expense. As we saw so early on back in March, many people actually hoarded toilet paper and other necessities, and thus so did Cloud-9 customers. When staff noticed there would be nothing left for themselves to buy with their discount, they also hoarded what they could but hidden above the ceiling tiles – causing a large enough pile that couldn’t hold, coming down and getting mauled by voracious customers. After Sandra just finished fully sanitizing the shopping carts, one picky customer ‘Goldilocks’ her way through them all. One man lifted his mask slightly from his face to sneeze just where Glenn and Dina happened to be standing. And so she had to hose him down outside.
Throughout the Fall 2020 aired episodes, characters wore their masks properly when they were on the store’s floor helping customers. But they would remove their masks partially or fully when talking to each other, usually standing within 6 feet in employee-only areas. Despite working closely together, they are interacting with so many customer-strangers, not to mention whoever they interact with outside of work hours, that keeping their masks on should have been necessary during all working hours between staff. The only two who could conceivably get away with partial mask-wearing in private at the store is Amy and Jonah because they lived together.
With a large group of characters, working mostly indoors for long hours and having dozens (if not hundreds) of strangers with their own mask or non-mask wearing behaviors, Superstore shows below expected PPE portrayal.
Saturday Night Live gets a B- for Bending the Rules
SNL is taped in front of a live studio audience, at Rockefeller Center in the heart of NYC. On a (mostly) weekly basis for over 40 years, each episode has performed that preceding week’s politics, pop-culture, and random comedic skits by its talented roster of actors and crew. One of their most vivid moments in its history was when there were firefighters gathered on stage for the monologue, still covered in debris dust from when the Twin Towers’ fell on 9/11. So, you know they can tackle disaster, by helping the country laugh and heal from trauma.
SNL was shut-down for several weeks until an announcement was made that a few spring episodes would be self-taped skits, and edited prior to airing. With all the performers quarantined wherever they lived or were staying for the foreseeable future, they did what they could on their own or with what could be mailed to them from the production’s team.
By the fall, NYC’s once epicenter coronavirus rates significantly decreased enough to enter Phase 4 of Governor Cuomo’s reopening plan. It would allow film and television shows to go back into production – of course with the industry’s safety protocols. But, among those that could not open as fast were movie theaters, any live stage theatre productions, and indoor concerts. Live performances with a randomly collected group of ticketed audiences were considered especially heinous. So how did SNL circumvent the rules? Everyone had to be tested in the same way that other television productions required, following all the quick-change rules for hair & makeup, crew’s skit production designs, and actor groupings. Additionally, instead of regular persons who would stand outside for hours prior to the show to get tickets to be part of the sitting audience, seats were offered to the show’s friends and family, and some VIP frontline workers. Everyone in the audience, stage crew, and performers (except when on-camera) would have to wear masks.
When SNL returned to air for Season 46 on October 3, 2020, its formula was as it always had been. There’s the cold open, the guest host’s monologue, various skits including pre-recorded videos, the musical guest performance, Weekend Update, and at the end everyone gathers on stage to say goodnight. But there were noticeable changes in it its premiere with host Chris Rock and Megan Thee Stallion.
A parody of the first presidential debate, had Joe Biden (played by Jim Carrey) take out a measuring tape to make sure his podium was at least 6 feet away from Trump’s (played by Alec Baldwin), and then moves his a few inches further away. Having made new opening credit photos/videos, the performers were seen on empty NYC streets, wearing masks (partially or fully). As the music plays to welcome Chris to the stage, there’s plexiglass separating the musicians, who then put their masks back on when finished, and Chris takes off his mask for the monologue. When the camera shows the floor’s audience, Chris says they are all medical professionals who have treated virus patients, wearing their own masks (and not a uniform mask provided to them), but sitting very close together (all within 6 inches of each other), wearing bracelets for what ‘zone’ they are in.
In the skits themselves, there’s a variety of ways in which the PPE is represented. First was a super-spreader event at a federal building, where people can change their names. A street reporter wore his mask below his chin while talking into the mic and the interviewees – who took off their masks to speak. When they’re interrupted by a House Dept. rep with a statement at a podium (played by Chris) he is not wearing a mask and the doctor behind him (played by Pete Davidson) wears his mask at his chin. When they reappear with another statement, the character Jeffrey B. Epstein (played by Kennan Thompson) wears his mask properly but takes it down each time he speaks). In an already-recorded music video, the ladies wear their masks properly to cover the bottom of their face, which the male singers are curious to see (to make sure they’re still attractive). But for Megan Thee Stallion’s performance on stage, she is not wearing a mask and there is no plexiglass that we can see between her stage and the audience.
When everyone gathers at the end of the show, they are all wearing their masks, but standing within 6 feet, hugging and patting each other on the shoulder for congrats. Chris’ mask is below his nose and Megan’s is semi-transparent with beading.
One of the requirements for indoor filming is to have a minimum air filtration system in the studio – which may have been upgraded in the summer’s interim. And as of this late there have been no reports of audiences or performers getting the virus as a direct result of SNL. Nonetheless, it’s still highly concerning for so many people to be in such notorious close quarters.
There had been a few controversies surrounding the show’s return. SNL’s production had paid a handful of random audience ticket holders as if they were employees (but had quickly nixed the practice moving forward), and their second episode’s musical guest Morgan Wallen had to be replaced by Jack White because Wallen had willfully neglected the required quarantine rules. Wallen would later get a second chance to appear on the seventh episode with host Jason Bateman, and to act in a skit referencing his mistake but being grateful for given the second chance.
Saturday Night Live is an American television institution. And as a well-oiled machine that understands its influence on the audiences watching across the country, it has a responsibility to not only abide by the current mandates of PPE and social distancing required off-camera in order to operate, which can’t help being shown on-camera, but also to incorporate those real mandates into their on-camera antics – as well as to provide some alleviation from the current stressors of those mandates. It’s a very tight line to keep up for a new episode each week.
In that first episode, it’s clear what choices they made to include and exclude. Masks are props rather than actual PPE for the actors while acting. While the stage musicians are given the barriers between each other. But audiences chairs are sat too close, while the musical guests are expected to perform in their full costumes and dance routines with background singers, without any barrier from the audience. Between the crew and cast though, it’s already well-known that they spend 90% of their week preparing for each live airing, so they’re already part of each other’s ‘quaranteam’.
But as you watch the season’s episodes, those initial on-camera protocols loosen. When Issa Rae comes on stage, she’s not even wearing a mask – and neither are the following weeks’ hosts. Adele even speaks volumes louder in her monologue. When Dave Chappelle comes on stage for his monologue, he is not only smoking a cigarette, but he’s given an ash tray for it to rest upon between his puffs – which in itself is against an already long-standing NYC indoor smoking ban. (*I can't find info on if he/the show was fined.) In the winter finale’s cold open, Beck Bennett plays VP Pence getting the vaccine, and Mikey Day as the doctor administering the shot. Although the latter is wearing gloves, he is not wearing a mask or even a face shield to play the proper role of doctor.
Black-ish and The Conners share a B for Bothersome
Black-ish’s Season 7’s premiere was technically episode 3. It showed a really positive representation of PPE wearing and socially distancing mandates, especially because Bow is a doctor working at a hospital treating covid-19 patients. She takes it seriously, and sees the damage the virus is doing every day of work. But her resolve decreases along with everyone else’s.
The show opens with Andre “Dre” Johnson talking about how the pandemic ruined their Summer 2020, because no one could do a damn thing. There is real footage of closed store signs, Los Angeles highway traffic signs telling people to “Avoid Gatherings. Please Stay Home. Save Lives”, a world map of the virus’ outbreaks, basketball’s pre-bubble cancellation, the family playing video games while Pops and Ruby get intimate upstairs, and then Bow’s returning home after a long day bringing bags of takeout dinner – which Dre refuses to eat, and reminds Bow to change clothes before entering the house.
In the Johnson household, everyone is keeping to the quarantine rules. Diane and Jack are remote learning from the kitchen table. Dre is working from home, taking Zoom meetings with his also remote co-workers. Junior is constantly video-chatting with his girlfriend Olivia. And, Bow is screaming out the window to the neighbors for hugging without wearing masks.
When Bow arrives at the hospital for work, there is an outside staff designated gathering area. An open tent has been set up with (buffet-styled instead of individually wrapped) gifted foods, coffee, etc. Doctors and nurses are wearing their scrubs, masks and face shields (if not eating), and hand sanitizer stations. She sits with friends/colleagues Drs. Paul and Smith (both women of color), and takes her mask off to talk, sitting within 6 feet of each other. When Bow gets a phone alert from her house’s front door security camera, she questions whether Junior is breaking their quarantine bubble, having Olivia over in-person. She expresses her emotional disappointment. “I can’t do my job if I have to think about that…I did not sign up to fight a deadly virus with one arm tied behind my back.” The others concur with looks of sympathy and understanding. They’re all in the trenches concerned for their families and patients. When Nurse Larry comes back to their table wearing full PPE, and says they have a “Code Black” all three doctors get up, put their masks and face shields on, and walk towards the hospital.
Bow’s monologue is moving and her concerns are real. But it gradually diminishes over the next several episodes, until episode 6 when Ruby and Pops remarry.
Dre says they will have the “pandemic wedding of their dreams”, and the story pivots away from their household’s small gathering to Pops’ estranged family attending. When Dre opens the door to find his Uncle Norman (played by Danny Glover), he immediately calls him out for not wearing a mask and not listening “to CDC recommendations about traveling during the pandemic.” Norman says he “doesn’t listen to the government, but did get a negative covid-test” before arriving. To which Pops welcomes Norman in without qualm.
Later on, when Pops announces that the other siblings will be arriving to the house and attend the wedding, Dre is upset, goes upstairs, and Bow follows him. As they’re discussing, Norman comes out of their master suite bathroom – which was considered off limits. Dre kicks him out of the house. But it is the conversation between Bow and Dre, it shows how different a stand Bow feels about the pandemic. As she’s supposed to be still working at the hospital (even though we no longer see scenes of her there), Bow is not at all concerned for distant (figuratively and literally) relatives to be in her house without knowing their safety precautions. She says they "can have the wedding outside, screens put up, and everyone sit at a comfortable distance…that it’s just an imposition for a couple of days."
How nonchalant does that sound? Bow knew that Olivia had been living alone and quarantined before she even approached the front door but her reaction was a level-10 panic. And even though she’s so happy for Ruby and Pops’ ceremony and wants it to be a special celebration, she doesn’t have any concerns for the additional wedding guests?!
It takes a second round of convincing Dre to let his family over. And when we see the rehearsal dinner gathering held in their semi-outdoors patio and backyard, there are no partitions, and no one at least 6 feet apart, let alone wearing any masks – not even hanging at their chins as they eat. Pops sits on a couch with his two sisters, Norman, and a nephew standing. The food is served behind them buffet-style, and there’s no hand sanitizer.
At Ruby and Pops’ evening garden wedding, Dre and Bow’s eldest daughter Zoey seems to have returned from wherever she may have been staying (was she still away at college?). Guests’ chairs had been set up with some space between. No masks. Still no plexiglass. No hand sanitizer. And, even though there’s a tent set up, it’s for a dance floor. Not even the hired DJ is wearing a mask to protect herself – a stranger to the family of wedding guests. As the scene fades out, everyone’s been dancing within 6 feet of each other.
The pandemic’s PPE and socially distant mandates especially retreated to non-existent by the final aired episode. Dre has returned to in-person work where the common spaces have not been adjusted for socially distanced work. And no masks. When the Johnson family volunteers at a Compton recreation center, no one is wearing masks or keeping 6 feet apart. In a post-credits scene as the kids count how many guests will be joining them for Christmas, they say they’re “gonna need more chairs”.
For The Conner’s third season, the family is in dire circumstances of being evicted during the pandemic. For this constantly struggling working class family with a history seen by audiences going back to the late 1980s, they have overcome numerous obstacles.
As Dan approaches the house not wearing a mask after a long day at work, his grandson Mark wears a face mask, face shield, and takes Dan’s temperature. Everyone in the kitchen is eating dinner approx. 6 feet apart, with Becky coming up from her basement apartment hesitant to get seconds herself. Aunt Jackie comes in wearing her mask but takes it off when Mark tries to take her temperature (that she tries to run from). She claims to “eat disinfectant and crap sanitizer”. Her Lunchbox restaurant is surviving but other restaurants in the area are “dropping like flies”. Dan reads the newspaper and sees that the local plastics plant has started hiring again. Darlene is initially concerned for all those who would work there, standing so close together handling the conveyor belt items. When Dan’s neighbor (played by Danny Trejo) comes by, he wears a mask but takes it off to talk to Dan and be the one to serve his eviction notice.
Also living in the Conners' house is Dan’s girlfriend (played by Katey Sagal) and Darlene’s husband. And to round out the cast of principals, is Becky’s husband Emilio who has been hiding from authorities to stay in the States instead of deportation to be closer to their baby daughter.
When a police officer comes into the restaurant for his pick-up order, he is wearing his mask properly, and so does Emilio and Becky when handing him the bags. When Jackie shows up at Dan’s construction site for a delivery, he’s not wearing a mask, and she has taken hers off to talk – they are outside and on their own.
When Darlene realizes her writing career has failed, she decides to get a job at the plastics warehouse, where she sees Becky on the line too. They take their masks off to talk but they’re farther away from the other applicants. When they are working together side-by-side of at least two feet between them, they have their face masks down, their face shields up, and their gloves on.
As the rest of the season’s episodes largely feature Becky and Darlene working at the warehouse, their PPE practices become noticeably lacking, especially when they are in the common areas with other workers: the breakroom and the bathroom. Without windows to open, and not keeping 6 feet apart, with their masks off while talking or even just staring at their phones without eating, it’s so surprising they haven’t shown a character come down with the virus…even spoken about in passing.
But nothing prepares you to see that even in a veterinarian’s surgical room how blatantly Jackie disregards even regularly expected necessary doctor’s office health protocols. Neville (who has been neglecting to wear his mask in public) is wearing full PPE while conducting surgery on a horse. Jackie comes in wearing a mask and gloves, which she takes off, touches the horse’s tail, and then brings her mask back up, puts the horse’s blood covered tumor into a silver bucket, and then takes her mask down, and wipes her gloves with a towel. So gross.
I can point out other examples of improper PPE and social distancing wearing that could easily have taken this show down a grade, but the characters have plenty to say about the pandemic that follows the science and inequality protests.
Black-ish and The Conners feature two families of very different racial and economic backgrounds. But they reflect families with its numerous struggles and above all else, love. Even though they include the pandemic in different ways to different degrees, they both unfortunately can’t get their representations of PPE into a proper consistent manner.
This Is Us gets a B+ for Being There
Of all the shows studied here, this one represents the most mindful representation of PPE and social distancing mandates not just as how they should be but as how they are adhered to in a realistic way. Creator Dan Fogelman and his team of talented writers needed to seamlessly sew in the completely unexpected 2020 pandemic into their already intricately detailed fictionalized family quilt of timelines. Given how tightly the story is structured to exemplify how people are connected to each other through decades of history with decades to come, the show needed to without question include the pandemic. If This Is Us is to finish how it started by being part of the bigger American picture, the Pearson family would need to experience the pandemic just as the audience would; presumably with less tragedy of death though to keep the long-term plans going. (*Although, we didn't see Miguel in the flash-forwards.)
Season 4’s Thanksgiving 2019 episode revealed Rebecca would slowly decline into Alzheimer’s, presumably by Kevin, Kate, and Randall’s 40th birthday that would be in August 2020. She would be going about her day in a daze walking around town not far from the family cabin. She confused a young Black man for a young William Hill, got disoriented at the supermarket, and found herself alone and upset at a Chinese restaurant without her phone to call her son. She was returned to the family cabin by the local police, when Kevin said his fiancé was having morning sickness from being pregnant.
Season 4’s filming finished just when the pandemic Hollywood shutdowns happened. So the season’s arc had largely remained in tact as Fogelman long planned it. Kevin’s pregnant fiancé was in fact Madison. Rebecca decided, against her own wishes but to please Randall, that she and Miguel would go to St. Louis for a clinical trial and that as per the 40th birthday party at the cabin, Kevin and Kate would be there but not Randall.
Season 5 opens the moment Season 4 closed – with Kevin telling Madison he was 100% committed to their twins – with Madison saying it was all happening just as the world was falling apart. In the next scene presumably a few weeks later, Kevin comes to Kate and Toby’s house wearing a mask, but is told to step back to the front yard. Kevin takes his mask off, with Kate and Toby standing approx. 6 feet away. They do air hugs to celebrate and then see a neighbor standing outside wearing his mask on properly watching them. Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, Randall comes home to Beth and their daughters from a long day handing out PPE to residents. He takes off his mask and his clothes off in the foyer, and is given some hand sanitizer. He says that “after all that”, the St. Louis clinical trial had been cancelled, so that Rebecca and Miguel would continue their quarantine at the family cabin.
On the Pearson’s birthday, Randall planned to stay at home while Kevin, Madison, Toby, Kate, and baby Jack had made their way across the country in a camper RV to celebrate at the cabin with Rebecca and Miguel. By the time we see them all together, its after Rebecca had been brought home. Randall arrived not wearing a mask but had regular testing three times a week with negative results. Kevin and Madison had just returned from an urgent care center to check on their twins’ health, wearing full-face masks properly covering their faces in its entirety (except for when he takes hers down to see if she’s smiling after proposing marriage (she is)). Rebecca had been out all day not wearing a mask (as we’d seen in previous episodes' flash-forwards). Her interactions with the William look-alike, the Chinese waitress, and presumably the supermarket cashier, had not been corrected. And the police escorts were not wearing masks either. It is concerning but at least some precautions had been taken with Randall’s negative tests and Kevin and Madison’s mask wearing. Could Rebecca’s exposure to the townsfolk have made for even asymptomatically passing or receiving it? As the season carries on, it doesn’t seem that happened, with great luck.
Because the premiere did not reshoot Rebecca’s day, we have to look also at the next episode for more pandemic precautions.
Toby and Kate met Ellie, a prospective birth mom for them to adopt the baby once born. They are at a park and other people seem to be in the far distance. Kate wants Toby’s opinion for which mask to wear: a flowers design, or a toothless cartoon smile? Because Ellie shows up mid-conversation, Kate immediately puts on whatever is in her hand, which happens to be the latter. Toby has a full face covering in a neutral color. Ellie is wearing hers properly as well. They sit at opposite picnic benches with at least 4 feet apart, without masks. When they offer to drive Ellie home in their car, they all have their masks on. But Kate and Toby take theirs down as they verbally fight with each other and then quickly recover, putting them back up as Ellie looks on, still wearing hers. In the car they all wore theirs but when Ellie is standing on the sidewalk in front of her home, as Kate and Toby are in the front with the car windows down, they remove their masks to say goodbye.
Kevin and Madison have still been living together, but while they are outside taking a walk, without other people around they aren’t wearing their masks. Madison’s hangs from a chain around her neck like a long necklace and Kevin is holding his. But when a masked female runner comes up to them for a socially distanced selfie with Kevin, they quickly put theirs on. As Madison takes a few steps ahead away, she takes her mask down, and when Kevin catches up to her he takes his down. In a disagreement, Madison heads home, and while Kevin is confused why she is upset, the masked runner re-approaches him for a second take, but Kevin is caught off guard and we don’t see him put his mask back on.
In these two scenes, its also not perfect PPE representation. Toby, Kate, and Ellie should have kept their masks on the entire time from the moment they met to the time they said goodbye. But at least they were outside for their meeting and didn’t touch. The same for Kevin and Madison for wearing their masks from the moment they left the house to the moment they returned. But at least they were outside alone and put them on once a stranger (who thankfully stayed masked) approached.
The characters’ majority of scenes are exclusively apart from other people. They are mostly taking place in their quarantined homes without visitors, or random people stopping by without masks that are removed when inside their homes.
In the last aired episode, Kevin and an actress Ava (played by the underrated Jamie Chung) are meeting for the first time in a Hollywood sound stage, standing 6 feet apart, when their director enters to greet them for rehearsal. Foster is wearing his mask but takes his off as he approaches them, still keeping 6 feet apart, and who’s assistant stays masked before heading back out. Foster thanks them for quarantining and testing. They sit in a triangular set-up. Foster at his desk, Kevin and Ava sitting 6 feet opposite from each other. But later as Kevin waits outside to talk with Foster, they are within 6 feet of each other without masks. When Foster’s assistant approaches with the golf-cart, Foster puts his mask back on and sits next to her. As they had all been quarantined and tested negative, presumably its safe (just as when Randall was in the cabin with the family) but not perfect.
When Kate and Ellie are in the doctor’s office for her check-up, they and the doctor are wearing masks (the latter even has an KN95!). Outside in the parking lot, neither wear masks but are standing 6 feet apart. Again, seems ok but not perfect.
Then for the scenes showing Randall with Jae-won and Malik in his city hall office, all three are wearing masks. But later, without Jae-won, Malik and Randall are not wearing their masks. As Deja had said earlier, they are in each other’s social-pod, and we must assume Randall is still being tested with negative results still as often. Considering however many people Malik had been around to at least get from Randall’s car to the office (while Randall had been going through every day), it’s a momentary pause for concern.
Perhaps you’re thinking I’m making excuses for the Pearsons considering how often they don’t have their masks on. But really it should be understood that for as long as the Pearsons are around people for scenes that were filmed during the pandemic, all protocols were reasonably followed. The series could not recreate those scenes of Rebecca around other people. They had made up for it moving forward. Because you will notice that the vast majority of scenes between the performers are in their own quarantine households. Randall, Beth, and their daughters are all filmed at home or at the office. Randall is not making cross-country flights like he did in previous seasons. He is wearing his mask completely over his face when near someone not in his pod. Kevin and Madison’s scenes are either in her house, near her house, at a doctor’s office, or at the cabin with those they’ve been quarantined with. When Kevin has met his new film’s colleagues, they’ve all been living by the actual Hollywood protocols required of them to keep them safe. In and around that sound stage is not a bustle of random background. Kate and Toby’s scenes are also in and around their own homes. Not even their neighbor has dropped by, or seen going for walks with Kate and baby Jack like they did last season. Toby can’t go to the gym anymore so that possible contraction is nixed. Not even Miguel and Rebecca have their contemporary scenes with her children’s households, presumably either they’ve stayed at the cabin or they’re quarantined in their Los Angeles home.
This is a show with so many cast members because the core family is seen not only decades into the past but decades into the future. And thus time is its greatest essence. Generally spanning from the 1970s to the 2040s, its expected to cover not only what we know to be history but what can be expected in the general sense. As far as we’re aware, the pandemic is the latest event to have an impact on the family for their daily routines, but Fogelman may have been inspired to make it more important as the season continues. But one thing for sure, is that if the world is going to carry on so that Baby Jack grows up to play a stadium concert of his hit song with thousands of fans in attendance, then there’s hope we and the next generation would be able to enjoy those return-to-the-previous-normal-times too!
Grey’s Anatomy gets an A for (mostly) All-Around AMAZING!
I can now finally express unbridled compliments!
Fall 2020 marked Grey’s Anatomy’s Season 17. Like L&O: SVU, it’s a television veteran show that’s previously included world-wide known events, had to shut-down production back in March 2020, shows a dozen lead diverse characters with essential jobs that have to be on the frontlines of the pandemic, has a female lead, and also shows characters’ personal lives. For everything that SVU did wrong showing PPE, Grey’s did it right!
The premiere Part 1 episode kicked off a month into the pandemic – April 2020. Richard had recovered enough from cobalt poisoning to feel ready to return to work at the hospital. But it’s not the same place he left. Similar to the comedy shorts on YouTube of people having to explain the pandemic to their past selves, or a friend explaining it to an awakened coma patient in the time they’ve been asleep, Miranda shows him around the hospital, and how the new safety protocols work for everyone. It’s a jarring tour, almost like Dante’s Inferno.
When Station 19’s firefighters and other people clap to welcome the hospital staff for their morning shift, EVERYONE IS WEARING A MASK AND MORE…PROPERLY!
When everyone entered the building, and the clappers walked away, Richard arrived (wearing a mask) from behind Miranda (wearing a mask and a face shield) as she is repeating a grounding mantra to calm her stress. She led him to the outdoor space where staff gather for a needed break (with everyone wearing masks), she listed out the rules for even being able to enter the building: temperature checks, etc.
Inside, people stand on a designated “wait here” floor spot to be checked-in by the gatekeepers. While Maggie and her boyfriend talk on video-chat, neither of them removes their mask. The call ends, with Jackson behind her, wearing his mask (drooping just ever so slightly to the bottom of his nose) that is not removed during their conversation. However, later when they have another video chat, Maggie is alone in the indoors breakroom, and takes her mask off, having it hang by her ear but touches her face: fingers to lip. Hopefully she’d already.
Back outside, at the patient triage desk, an Intern administers a temperature check, wearing a gown, gloves, a hair covering, a mask, and glasses – who (basically) tells a racist patient to deal with whoever his doctor is or risk anaphylactic-shock.
Inside the tented make-shift outside hospital, everyone is wearing PPE! There are face shields, masks, hair coverings, gowns, gloves, and the full head covering with clear face shield, and oxygen hose with mic for amplified speaking voices. And hand sanitizer dispensers. Owen and Teddy are greeted by Miranda and Richard, with the former listing out that visitors are not allowed unless accompanying a child. Paramedics roll in a new patient on a gurney, they’re wearing masks and face shields. (All of this shows that actors can still be heard clearly while they have their masks on. So if any producer used that as an excuse to keep their masks down or off, Grey's puts them to shame.)
Then they talk about PPE for the staff. And Miranda has to say, “We are reusing what we have but we need more…”. When a patient in the ICU starts coding, Richard’s first instinct is to go in there and help but Miranda has to stop him even though “it goes against everything we teach.” Meredith appears, angry! She’s pissed that she’s lost so many patients so fast; especially ones that were doing well just a day before.
To say these first 9 minutes are difficult to watch is putting it lightly. But be-still my heart at all the PPE properly worn!
Miranda leads Richard to the completely cleared O.R. Schedule board. For these doctors whose sole reason for being is to surgically operate on patients, this makes their reality even more sad. But her spirits quickly lift at the sight of a UV sanitizing machine. Richard will later use this machine to surprise her with, showing how the staff’s PPE can be sanitized without degrading the materials.
When Tom Koracick enters the scene, he’s holding a 9-iron golf club, to keep people at a distance. He’s in charge of ordering more PPE for the hospital, to which he says is coming. Miranda is worried about his sales, because “there’s pirates out there”. When the shipment of PPE boxes finally arrives a few scenes later, they start tearing open boxes. And it’s all “booties” – the material coverings for shoes. No N95 masks, no gloves…nothing but booties. And no one takes it harder than Tom. He starts hitting the boxes with his golf club and falls to the ground crying. His mask falls below his nose, and then maybe down to his chin. But he touches his face: hands to mouth, breathing in heavily. *In a later episode, Tom tests positive for the virus.
When Meredith calls Schmidt about a patient that just died, her phone has a protective wrap over it. And Schmidt is in the makeshift outdoors tented waiting room for patients’ visitors. Everyone is spaced out, wearing gloves, masks, face shields, gowns, all as per their respective role as either doctor or visitor.
As Miranda is asking Owen about another burn patient who may have been turned away, Richard comes in, removes his face shield and touches his face mask (but leaves it on). And Miranda berates him for not yet completely reading the new safety protocol’s stack of books. “When I tell you to read the safety protocol, I mean read the damn safety protocol!” (*She’d give SVU’s team a piece of her mind if she could. And probably spit at A Million Little Things.)
When the first burn victim’s mom wanders around the hospital halls trying to find her son’s room, Richard sees her. They stand far apart wearing masks, but he does warn her she shouldn’t be there. Then takes her to the OR to see him.
Now here’s where I take points off. Meredith has understandably had a very traumatizing day, giving bad news to so many patients’ loved ones. She’s been doing this for the last month. And so she gets so angry and sad, she pushes over the short-shelving unit of medical supplies in the storage room. Deluca comes in to comfort her, and she says she’ll clean it up. She didn’t do anything to hurt anyone – but what if it was too late for some of those fallen supply items to be used? Could anything have broken when it hit the floor? All of those much needed supplies possibly in jeopardy because she couldn’t instead run out of the hospital to an outdoors area and scream or punch a wall! The only saving grace of this scene is that both Meredith and Deluca have their full PPE on.
When Richard shows Miranda the genius sanitizing of the masks, Miranda says after all Richard has given and sacrificed to the hospital so it and she can be the best it is, he has “earned the right to stay home, to stay safe, and to rest. This thing, it’s only gonna get worse”.
And again, in the last few moments of this premiere Part 1 episode, it loses a bit of safety momentum: the parents of the burned teenagers get into a fist-fight, blaming each other for the kids being at the party. When Mr. Morris puts a finger on Mr. Lee’s jacket, Mr. Lee punches Mr. Morris. They wind up injured, in need of having to get treated in the ER, including Miranda getting caught in the crossfire lightly spraining her ankle.
In Part 2 of the premiere, Meredith enters the outdoor space, takes off her mask, and takes in a deep breath. On the opposite wall, Jackson has his mask off, hanging on his ear. As Jackson starts to go back into the hospital, he puts on his mask, and Meredith takes a step backwards from him. Turning the camera in a different direction, we see Hayes, sitting down without his mask on and hand on his forehead, then touches his eye as he stands up. When he leaves her to go inside the hospital, he puts on his mask.
The scene cuts to Meredith’s home with Amelia, Link, and their newborn in the backyard, assumed to be on maternity and paternity leave, with the older kids inside the house.
As Maggie and (Debbie Allen’s) Dr. Catherine Fox discuss the hospital’s supplies, they have a moment of releasing anger by screaming out – how much they hate the pandemic and how helpless they feel. Although it’s a conference room (instead of an investigation room), the closed office is without windows that open. They are not wearing their masks but they are a good 10 feet across from each other. Does it matter that their aerosol droplets could be between them? Or, because they’ve previously passed all covid symptoms to get into the hospital, would it still matter? Later on at the end of the episode, Catherine is finishing up alone in the conference room, without a mask, when Richard walks in followed by Tom, both wearing masks. They still stand on opposite ends of the room, a literal and figurative triangle. When Tom leaves the room, and Richard and Catherine have their moment, she puts on her mask as they talk about getting covid tests so they can be intimate again.
Also to mention, when Teddy confronts Owen in the same outdoor space as earlier, both their masks are off but she’s standing 5 to 6 feet away from him. When Teddy is beeped back into the OR, she puts her mask on and steps away.
I want to note that throughout the premiere episode Parts 1 & 2, there are flashbacks to before the pandemic – stories that needed to be wrapped up that would have been shot had the show not needed to shut-down in actual March 2020. These flashbacks are contained moments between the lead characters, who would have been quarantined and tested to be on set and work without masks on. And also, that when characters do remove an item of PPE, it’s usually because they need to put on a fresh one, or they were alone momentarily and immediately put it back on when someone approached.
By the end of the episode, Hayes finds Meredith fainted in the parking lot. And the following episodes feature her in and out of consciousness, seeing Derek and George on a beach, as she’s being treated for the coronavirus as well.
I’m going to skip ahead to the last aired episode of its Fall 2020 season. Miranda’s mother just passed away from the coronavirus, Tom’s condition is worsening but he shares a scene with Meredith as soldiers in war, and there is an emotional scene between Amelia and Maggie having a frank discussion about how young Black girls and women are not perceived in the same way as white girls and women. You can see when the camera’s shot has pulled away for a full view of where they are, that it’s an open-air tent, standing at least six feet apart but not wearing masks. They live in the same home, but they’re still at the hospital during a shift. We see Jo and Schmidt talk outside, sitting within 6 feet of each other, without masks – who have been living together as roommates. We see Teddy and Owen outside, standing within 6 feet of each other. And then in one of the last scenes, Maggie is in her hotel room, not expecting a visitor but has to answer the door covering her face with her sweater, and lets it fall when she sees her boyfriend with flowers – and they hug.
All in all, over the several episodes, Grey’s Anatomy’s characters maintained an exceptionally high adherence to the covid-19 safety protocols of wearing PPE and keeping socially distant. There’s bound to be some hiccups or moments of relaxed use, because they are human, but it’s incredibly less frequent and for such a short time than any other show seen for this article.
SOME THOUGHTS:
What I’ve seen across the board from all of these shows is that no matter how dedicated they try to be in its premiere, by its last aired of the year, they’ve all shown pandemic PPE fatigue.
Whether it’s the writers who wrote the scripts, the directors of the episodes, the showrunners overseeing it all, or the networks with final say, when a television show decides to incorporate aspects of our world into their fictional ones, the representation of characters wearing PPE and adhering to social distancing rules should have done their best – and for most of these shows, they needed to do much better.
Even though the mandates and protocols are taxing to adhere to off-camera, they had to still be conscious of what they were doing on-camera. Audiences take cues from what they see in their favorite shows. Sometimes it’s a conversation or thought starter. But influence runs deep if art is going to imitate life, and life is going to imitate art. If someone wearing a mask properly sees so many others on-screen wearing theirs improperly, will they start wearing it like those characters? And if someone is wearing their mask improperly but sees many others on-screen wearing theirs properly, will they start wearing it like those characters? *I don’t have the answer but I can say, obviously from my doing this post, I’d like to think that I wear my mask properly and will continue to do so regardless of how improperly some characters wear theirs.
In a conversation I had with a Hollywood producer discussing this article, he mentioned that when a television show or movie is re-run (even a decade later), certain aspects can seem too-dated to resonate with that future time’s audiences – like Friends, Sex and the City, and You’ve Got Mail. The characters’ friendships are still valued, but a lot of their humor is based in pop culture that has significantly shifted away from less kind jokes since. And computer technologies have advanced so much that theirs is obsolete. To avoid such a reception, there may be less visual reminders of the time it’s supposed to take place in. A show that is made in the 2010s to take place in the 2010s may not indicate exactly what year that is. Anachronisms are pointed out by the careful watchers, but usually a 2018 Toyota seen in a 2016 story won’t break the hypnotism. However, shows and movies do need to be careful when indicating a time that is still hyper-remembered or so soon after a major historical event that changes daily life. A story of a world taking place post-9/11 is not going to look like a pre-9/11 world. For example, leaving someone at the airport: after 9/11, only flight ticket holders can go to the gate, so guests usually say good-bye at the drop-off outside or at the ticketing machines and security. Janice wouldn’t have then been allowed to see Chandler’s flight take-off from the tarmac. But how would Friends’ producers have known to save that plot for 2002 instead of 1998? As the show instead did not include the 9/11 attacks into their characters’ world, there were smaller tribute cues made. For some movies’ stories that show a general sense of the year is used to shock the audience like in Dear John, Remember Me (or even Planet of the Apes).
Yet, for the above shows that explicitly live current fictionalized versions of our current actual world, need to continue as such and include the major daily life details – not just for continuing to resonate with its current audience (in order to more guarantee later on reruns), but otherwise would then become alternative or parallel worlds in a multi-verse so to speak.
Thus, if A Million Little Things is to completely ignore the pandemic in its upcoming shows, they will need to make up what life would continue to look like rather than take cues from our continued world’s existence. Or, as This Is Us time-jumped into the future long enough after the pandemic is supposed to have passed but doesn’t show enough indication of what daily life includes (à la Back to the Future II with flying cars and such), they’ve given themselves some leeway as we move out of the pandemic into a post-covid world.
But while we’re still in it, and seeing it, I want to note what aspects we have in our current world that are making it into the stories – both right and wrong.
New York State’s Governor Andrew Cuomo gave daily morning coronavirus update conferences, televised primarily for the state’s residents but made such an impression that people all over the country and even the world were taking note of his leadership style and mandates’ narrative. On April 15th, he made an executive order for EVERYONE to wear face coverings in public, starting April 18th; which was two weeks after the CDC recommended the same guidelines. He said that people should wear them when social distancing could not be maintained, but as we’ve started to hear stories of how people became infected, masks became something that should be part of your wardrobe when leaving your home (even in your apartment building’s hallways, elevators, etc.). In succeeding days and weeks, even months of conferences later, Cuomo kept up the mask mandate conversation. And, on June 13th, when he demonstrates how to wear a mask, he puts on one that hangs by his ears, with the covering below his mouth, at his chin, saying, “This is nothing. I don’t know what this is. This is like a form of a chin guard…This accomplishes nothing. It’s not a mask…It’s nose and it’s mouth.” With the mask covering his nose and mouth, “This is a mask.” Brings the covering down, “This is a chin guard. Nobody told you to wear a chin guard. Wear a mask.” He was saying this to the protestors and to the police. “And the law is the law for the police.”
In that last line, Cuomo was directly referencing all of the beat-cops and other officers not adhering to the mask mandate themselves. This matter became especially problematic when a fine was added to the law. At the end of September, “New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio that the city will impose fines on people who refuse to wear face coverings…The fine is up to $1,000.” And free masks would be provided to anyone not wearing it but if they still refuse, then face ticketed fines. However, within a week of the imposed fine mandate which NYC cops were supposed to aggressively enforce for the protection of the people to stop the spread, NYC cops themselves needed to be instructed and reminded and even sanctioned for not wearing their masks properly while on the job. Their mask wearing applied to “shared offices, elevators, halls and bathrooms…But officials carved out exceptions when officers are eating and drinking, adjusting their masks or having difficulty breathing.” (SVU's precinct's cops completely disregard such mandates.) An article continues to describe observing that “A police officer outside the 10th Precinct station house in Chelsea (Manhattan) around noon on Sunday was wearing a mask as she stood guard at the entrance. But a stream of officers and detectives entering and leaving the station did not wear anything over their faces.”
From this, in regards to how PPE was represented in L&O: SVU, there’s two ways to look at it. One is that the fictional police officers, etc. were not wearing masks as much or as properly as should have been just as the many non-fictional police were guilty of such. But then two, it’s a matter that the fictional police characters (and those in the courts and hospitals, not to mention the episode’s characters) SHOUJLD HAVE been wearing masks PROPERLY as the mandate requires. Just as those interviewed for the various newspapers’ articles said that the police should lead by example and follow the law, the fictional representation of those with authority should be seen following the law and setting a positive example of properly wearing PPE. While the fictional characters were not getting sick from the virus, thousands of actual police officers were infected, out of work, and died from the virus.
Additionally, one thing that I took notice of while watching the end of SVU’s premiere episode was that the majority of the Grand Jury were women, not wearing their masks properly. Meanwhile, according to a New York Times article from August 20th (and updated Sept. 10th), a team of reporters observed actual New Yorkers across the five boroughs wearing their masks – noting the demographics of men vs. women, and how they were wearing them. In their conclusion, more men didn’t wear a mask, but if they did it was worn improperly with “nostrils peaking over, mask under chin, mask dangling from one ear strap”. In Manhattan’s Harlem and East Village, 66% to 77% (respectively) of people were wearing masks. Thus, if SVU was going to properly show people wearing masks, they should have looked around to see who was doing what and at what proportions.
Even with the above actual information at hand, and from my own wandering around NYC neighborhoods, the stats for mask worn properly are higher than what SVU would make you believe.
In complete contrast, Grey’s Anatomy took its time to dive into the hospital safety protocols that would be represented in its 17th Season. As they’ve always had some outlandish medical problems, including a global pandemic into their narrative was going to be “medical story of our lifetimes.” ( ) In that Refinery 29 article, the writers met with real-life doctors (most of whom had already been longtime advisors) to better understand how to not only practically include but also narratively include what was part of their daily war against the virus. And it shows. Not just in the detail. But being able to have such detail. And all those PPE props!
Back when all of the productions shut-down, the virus was starting to climb into a Spring surge. Doctors, nurses, and staff were all not only under assault by the thousands of patients that needed care, but the rapidly decreasing access to their own PPE supplies. Real doctors, nurses, etc. without real masks, gloves, gowns, booties, etc. It was a disaster on top of a disaster. According to the CDC, medical professionals are supposed to wear the specific N95 respirator mask, gowns/aprons, gloves, face shields, hair caps, etc. and they’re not supposed to reuse them from one interaction with a patient to another, let alone surgery.
In our world, even by April/May, there was such a shortage of these required medical PPE items, socialite, philanthropist and businesswoman Bethenny Frankel was called upon to assist in acquiring supplies for New York hospitals. “There is no mask store.” When she announced she wanted to help, she got so many responses to field, but the majority were bogus. Except for one, that turned into a dark black-market tale. Though it carried on quite a way, thankfully “no money changed hands.” But this is represented when Koracick had probably tried to make the same sale dealing with who knows, and wound up with a truck full of booties instead of the N95 masks, etc.
But where did Grey’s, and any other show with hospital scenes in the time of covid get their season’s props of PPE? Back in spring, so many shows had donated their PPE props to hospitals and clinics, were enough supply orders refilled for the shows’ resuming production in the fall? Or did these shows take supplies from what would have been provided to the hospitals now? I can’t find an answer to this.
Grey’s opening narration from Meredith is: “There’s a lecture we take in residency that’s meant to prepare us for such surprises. It’s called Disaster Ethics. Where future surgeons imagine what they would do when the unimaginable happens.” This is a real thing. People who enter the medical field are signing up to help people with conditions are both treatable and not. So, Black-ish’s Bow (and her colleagues) did indeed “sign up to fight a deadly virus with one arm tied behind” her back. She just didn’t anticipate it would happen in her career.
Contagion (2011) was so heavily based upon actual research and scenarios, it’s been regularly referenced in news articles as well as the trades for being the most life-like. NBC’s New Amsterdam had filmed an episode to air in winter 2020, featuring a NYC-wide pandemic, but shelved it because one was actually happening. This is similar to how when Buffy The Vampire Slayer shelved its own episode of a school shooting, after the real-life Columbine school shooting happened. Or after 9/11, many movies and television shows removed the Twin Towers from plot scenes and motifs of the skyline. When there’s a tragedy in our real world, producers make decisions on if or how to incorporate those moments into their stories. Representation is important. For this pandemic to make it into fictionalized television shows as it is still happening, it means there’s no way to get it right from start to finish. But from what we know and how we’re living, the PPE and socially distancing aspects need to be represented properly as idealistically as possible (even taking into consideration some (but not a lot of) human behavior of risk and fatigue) for the here & now audience, as well as for the future reruns.
This Is Us not only tells a story that takes place in the here & now, but it takes its characters into the past and future. The actors in these past, present, and future scenes are all adhering to the rules that the entertainment industry has laid out so they can work. They are required to quarantine, to get tested, and to stay in their designated zones. For Sterling K. Brown, Justin Hartley, Mandy Moore, etc. are filming current-2020 scenes, they need to take off their own masks when they’re about to start rolling, wear the prop masks they’ve been given on-camera, and then between scene set-ups, wear their own masks again. But for Mandy Moore, Milo Ventimiglia, and the tween actors playing the younger Kate, Kevin, and Randall, they don’t have to wear any masks on-camera because there was no pandemic in the mid-90s. We all know that as part of our history. For shows’ and movies’ stories that are based in the past, in the distant future, on another planet, or any moment other than our 2020 and 2021, there is no PPE representation – only the off-camera adherence to the rules.
In 100 years (when I am dead) (but if this article can still be read) those future audiences who are learning about the Covid-19 pandemic and watching any of the above shows for how people wore PPE and socially distanced, they’re going to get mixed-messages. They’ll see of course photographs and videos from news archives, documentaries, personal family archives (if possible) but they’ll look to our fictional media as well. They’ll see Captain Olivia Benson not wearing a mask when surrounded by police officers, park by-standers, etc. who are all essentially strangers and not part of her quaranteam, re-enter her home to talk to her son in his room. They’ll see Meredith Grey taking all of the safety precautions seriously yet still somehow contracting the virus (suffering to the brink of death). They’ll see Rainbow Johnson slowly disregard her own fears. They’ll see Aunt Jackie not protect herself at residential and commercial customers’ deliveries, and improperly wear PPE at a veterinarian ’s office. They’ll see comedians try to make the world laugh but seating its audience too close together and too close to the stage while the musician is performing. They’ll see big-box store employees risk infection among themselves from the hundreds of the customer interactions. They’ll see a Hollywood actor stand too close to his director, and a city councilman not wear a mask around his estranged family. And they’ll see Catherine turn off Dr. Fauci.
Network primetime television seasons are usually 18 to 22
episodes. They usually cover September to May in real time, especially so they
can keep up with current daily life, as well as to include their holiday-special
episodes. What show has its cast of characters celebrate Christmas in May? The pandemic
has essentially be in the United States from March to now. Productions shut
down in March, and mostly picked-up again in September, airing their episodes
in October or November, with only a few thru December. But after the holiday
hiatus, more episodes will resume production and air. There are expected to be
fits and starts thru spring 2021, and maybe even fall 2021. For the above shows
that let the pandemic fall to wayside for more pre-covid looking plots, it’s a
dishonor to the reality of the situation. Nonetheless, all of those stories that do include the pandemic will
need to address that the pandemic didn’t just go away overnight or in 45 minutes like a plot-miracle.
It is expected to be included in the long run, and may carry into plotlines seasons ahead.
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