TV Does The Pandemic

Grey’s Anatomy, New Amsterdam, and The Morning Show

This post was inspired by a review by tv critic Richard Lawson of episode five of this season’s “The Morning Show.” He described the show as “weird” and “not terribly interested in realism.” “It’s difficult to know,” he wrote “whether the people behind The Morning Show are trying to make soapy nonsense or if they are operating on the belief that this is heavy, important stuff.” The episode portrayed how the isolations of the (pre-vaccination) Pandemic year affected the relationships of some of the main characters, and seemed like some “heavy, important stuff” to me. Calling it “soapy nonsense” was beyond irritating. What a guy thing! I thought, to cut down my mother’s favorite form of tv viewing at the same time as dismissing a show focused largely on intimate relationships.

Interested in how other fictional shows had dealt with COVID, I posed on facebook, asking about other series. And discovered that except for shows whose settings were hospitals (hard to avoid the subject of the pandemic there) the trauma we’d gone through was barely touched. It was as though during the period in which shows had shut down because of COVID, the pandemic itself ceased to exist.

There were a few intimations before the disappearance. On “The Morning Show” Alex (Jennifer Aniston) contracted COVID and did the first episode of her prime time show sweating (and somehow still looking like a fresh, smooth peach), reflecting on life and death in front of the camera. In an episode of “The Good Fight,” the sky suddenly erupts with huge, circular balls of lightening that no one has ever seen before. Mesmerized, one character muses that it must be the “beginning of end times.” Another replies: “One more thing to worry about.”

We thought we were pretty jaded about disaster then. Trump was our president—the surreality which “The Good Fight” had taken on all season. But looking back at that episode now, it’s hard to not see the moment as a an inchoately brilliant metaphor for the inevitability that Trumpian chaos would unleash a karmic disaster that would pay us all back for being so stupid as to elect him. By the night Trump held the Bible upside-down while police tear-gassed peaceful protesters against the murder of George Floyd, any illusion of normalcy was pretty much gone. Many of us watched the protests “sheltered in place,” trying to be safe from the invasion of the elusive new viral danger that Trump appeared to be as oblivious to as the humanity of, well, everyone but himself.

When the numbers finally forced him to admit it wasn’t merely another Democratic hoax perpetuated by the fake news, Trump turned daily televised “briefings” —surrounded by worried-looking scientists unsure how to represent reality without humiliating the president or/and getting fired—into opportunities to minimize the danger (“no No big deal; it’ll be gone in the spring”) and promote untested and dangerous “cures.” He mocked those who weren’t manly enough to go without a mask, and urged citizens to be brave “warriors” and risk infection for the good of the economy (while he and those close to him are tested every day, and when he contracted COVID himself he was given state-of-the-art treatment as yet unavailable to the rest of us.)

Ultimately, Trump abandoned the briefings and just let the virus do its thing as states “opened up” willy-nilly, their citizens’ fates determined by whether they were led by cautious, science-respecting governors or those who followed the Edicts of Trump. With no national leadership, every rumor, every bit of speculation, every fragment of partial data, like the particles of viral protein themselves, had its way with us—particularly those without access to health care, and communities of color, many of whom worked in essential, virus-friendly jobs.

It wasn’t surprising to me when I asked my Facebook friends how their television habits had changed during the pandemic, that many of them had begun to avoid the news completely. Many felt it was for the sake of their mental health; they were “not their best selves” on a diet of pandemic information. And for those of us who still kept up with the news compulsively, it now came to us from the living rooms, kitchens, and libraries of reporters and pundits—and exhausted doctors and nurses, trying to convey to viewers the scope of the disaster that Trump assured us would magically disappear one day—“and very soon.”

How has television captured those times? Of the two most popular doctor shows, “New Amsterdam” did the best job (and in just five minutes) when it resumed airing after a truncated previous season, of conveying the reality of hospitals in those days. (Try to overlook the irritatingly chipper intro of Ryan Eggold, who played Max, the hero-doctor of the series):

“New Amsterdam” lost its audience after a few seasons and was cancelled. Some television critics believe the show “may have turned off some viewers looking to escape from real-world medical maladies with fictional ones.” “Grey’s Anatomy” gave them plenty of that. The show devoted an entire season to COVID, but while the doctors complained endlessly about how terrible everything was, they never even looked tired let alone had their faces bruised by masks, and the ongoing plot centerpiece—the near-fatal illness of Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) had weekly escapes into a dreamy, pastel fantasy of her meeting long-gone friends and lovers on a pure white beach as she struggled between life and death. The trope is gaggingly familiar—during crises she almost joined them, but it “wasn’t time yet” for her, and they helped call her back to life. (If you saw Patrick Dempsey holding her close, you knew the next scene would show her stats plummeting.) And when the other doctors, in a :”last desperate attempt” to get Meredith to wake up after her vent is removed, bring her little daughter Zola to her bedside, of course her eyes open. (Wonder why no-one thought of bringing Zola to her earlier in the season? You don’t need to answer that.)

I used to be a huge fan of “Grey’s Anatomy,” but Shonda Rhimes took her genius elsewhere after a breakup with ABC and it shows. (See my review of “Queen Charlotte” for an appreciation of Rhimes.)

The COVID seasons of “New Amsterdam” and “Grey’s Anatomy” aired after the period of the pandemic that they depict was over. During that period in the televised “real world,” there was the Trump show, the weary, often tear-stained faces of hospital staff, and the novelty of peeking into the homes of commentators. I was fascinated by the different settings of the at-home broadcasts: the huge, stunning homes one would happily “shelter in place” in for a vacation, the unbelievably immaculate, white kitchens that no virus would dare invade, staged as if for a realtor’s showing, the “look at all my books” backdrops. COVID seemed unable to penetrate those sparkling homes, and it was utterly absent, as well, from the bingeworthy series on Hulu and Netflix that many of us turned to to keep us afloat.

It was a ghastly and surreal time. In an epilogue to a book I was finishing during the isolation, I wrote: “As with everyone else, the anxiety is taking a toll on me. I nap in the daytime more than I used to, eat more sugary stuff and drink more coffee than I should. I worry a lot about my daughter, who has a job caring for horses that takes her out into the dangerous world outside our house twice a day. I wipe things down a lot. I’m giving my eyes a rest from mascara, and my hair is longer than it has been since the Sixties. I talk on the telephone with my sisters, best friend, and therapist, and am grateful to have a spacious house to shelter in, Facebook friends to “converse” with and this book to write. (What will I do once I’m finished with it?) At night, post-Netflix, I snuggle under the covers with my dog Sean nestled against my back or curled up around my head like a furry hat, and listen for hours to Stephen Sondheim until he’s banished the demons and I fall asleep.”

What I didn’t write was that because my husband and I were seniors, my doctor had lectured me that our daughter should move out of the house immediately. I didn’t listen to her, but although she stayed with us, we barely saw her. I dished out her dinner on paper plates that she immediately took up to her room, and that was it until she came home from work the next day. I was also continually fighting with both her and my husband about safety precautions. (He was absent-minded; she was stubborn and rebellious.) I screamed at them a lot, but they presented a united front of obliviousness. Finally, after one especially heated discussion on the patio, I realized I no longer felt safe in my own house. So I made the decision to “move out” myself. Not out of the house — couldn’t afford that, and didn’t want to completely reorganize my life, especially during a pandemic. But I made what had been my office into a “quarantined” zone, moved all of my essentials — not just my research and writing stuff, but meds, make-up, safety supplies, etc. — into the zone. I also informed my husband and daughter that they were not allowed to enter without a mask and without knocking first, made sure that all the supplies they needed to be safe were on the kitchen counter, and declared a moratorium on my food ordering, cooking, serving etc. They’d have to learn how to do that themselves.

I guess it was sort of a “Lysistrata” move in that I can’t deny I was hoping they’d realize how much they needed me and change their ways. But mostly, I just craved a space in which I wouldn’t feel anxious all the time. I seethed with fury at them as I packed up my masks, sanitizers, and Coricidin.

So it didn’t seem at all “soap-opera”-ish to me when, on “The Morning Show,” Mia (Karen Pittman) spits fire and then collapses in angry, hurt, frustrated tears when her lover Andre comes back to their previously safe “love island” (the episode’s title) having been to several crowded bars, getting unmasked drunk because he’s just learned of Mia’s earlier relationship with Mitch. Doing everything you can to keep a safe space for intimate relationships to provide comfort and consolation, and then having your efforts destroyed by the carelessness of those you want to be with, was as realistic a depiction of the non-fatal but devastating effects of those days as I’d seen.

And then there was Bradley’s (Reese Witherspoon) total meltdown after her mother’s death. There had always been some reason not to go. There was the insanity of travel and quarantine, only to have to turn right back again. There was the luxury and love she was enjoying in Laura’s (Julianna Margulies) gorgeous Montana get-away. There was the reassurances of her brother that things with her mother were going ok. “Just stay where you are. I don’t need you getting sick too.”

And then her mother dies. And Bradley becomes so unhinged that she projects all her own guilt onto Laura, in a fight that escalates into sheer mutual cruelty:

Bradley: You hated everything she stood for. And I stopped talking to her because I could feel it every time… You know what I fսcking think? I think you like to dress me up, a-and... and parade me around for your fancy fսcking New York friends. I'm like your little white trash pet… I think you don't even really like me. I think that it makes you feel better about yourself, because you're actually an elitist snob who hides out at the edge of the world so she doesn't have to deal... fսck you. ...with real people. fսck you. You must be so filled with spite, it just corrodes your insides. Think you're happy when people like my mom die, because they had... they get COVID 'cause they're uneducated, or they're hicks, or they're just not as fսcking smart as you.

Laura: You know what I think? I think there's a little part of you that's actually relieved. You're glad she's gone. You just don't have the guts to admit it, Bradley. And you need to grow the fսck up. You need to grow up and stop blaming me for all your shit. You can't just dump all your stuff on me! fսcking be proactive and stop rewriting some sort of history, Bradley. Your mother was a piece of shit. You're the first person to tell everyone about it.

This episode of “The Morning Show” was almost as great with couples fights as Siobhan and Tom’s spewing poison on each other on the balcony outside their apartment on “Succession.” It’s the “Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf” recognition that when people who know each other intimately let loose, it can become volcanic, un-moored from fact, oblivious to consequences. Paradoxically (at the same time as it makes perfect sense) it’s those with whom we feel the safest that we allow ourselves to go over-the-top hurtful with. The Bradley/Laura fight may have been one of the moments that seemed “unrealistic” to Richard Lawson. Not to me.

In this episode, though, it wasn’t the fight itself that got to me the most, but what brought it on—something that neither “Grey’s Anatomy” or “New Amsterdam” ventured anywhere near: the anger, sorrow, and guilt of not being with those you love when they died. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been told to stay away, as my older sister instructed me—“no, no, don’t come! It wouldn’t be safe for me”—when she first got sick (not from COVID, but during the COVID-panic.) It doesn’t matter if you’d been planning to go as soon as things got a little safer (I had the bed and breakfast reserved.) It doesn’t matter if the night before she died the nurse on duty told you her vital stats looked good. It doesn’t matter if the month before has been full of confusion. I will always be haunted by that little bit of relief I felt when she told me not to come. I will always berate myself for not being more alert to the signs that told me “Fuck COVID, fuck your travel phobias, don’t listen to her, JUST GO.” And I was angry. I screamed on the phone with our care manager, I was furious with the friends of hers who had offered advice, made decisions, took over the days that I should have been there with her. I imagined that no-one except my younger sister knew how close my older sister and I had been. I knew I had been spared a lot of horror by not being there. But I hated myself for being spared.

Krista Vernoff, showrunner of “Grey’s Anatomy”, had considered not including the pandemic at all. But she ultimately decided that “to be the biggest medical show and ignore the biggest medical story of the century felt irresponsible to the medical community, it just felt like we had to tell this story. The conversation became: How do we tell this painful and brutal story that has hit our medical community so intensely and permanently changed medicine? And create some escapism? And create romance, comedy and joy and fun?” They had no problem with the romance. I’m not so sure about the “joy and fun.” As for “telling the story,” the show had the doctors and nurses talking a lot about their misery and the misery of their patients, about the overwork of hospital staff, about the racism of the system. But “telling,” as all writers and teachers of writing know, can’t hold a candle to “showing.” That five minute intro to “New Amsterdam” showed more of the pain and brutality Vernoff claimed to want to capture than a whole season of doctors telling each other how awful everything was.

As for those of us who were sheltered at home, lucky enough to escape serious illness, “The Morning Show” is probably the first series to try to show us something of what we went through. There was a time—after the “before” and before the “after”—that most of what we see on television seems ready to forget. In reminding us of that time, “The Morning Show” also reminds us that we not really “after.” And I don’t mean in the sense of COVID remaining among us. We may not still be sheltering in place, but the surreality and consequences of the Trump/pandemic years has left many of us feeling vulnerable, tense, isolated from each other, afraid of relationships, vaguely sad, unsure of what’s real and not-real, scared, feeling the presence of death more acutely, and expecting more balls of lightening to rain down on us.

And they have.