At times, Love in the Time of Corona is engaging, kind of heartwarming, even fun, in the same way Modern Love often managed to be. There is, I feel, a market for these kind of anthology stories, and I wouldn’t be opposed to many more of those. Just, maybe, not ones that are this on the nose?
This is, at first glance, the biggest problem with Love in the Time of Corona, how very real it is. We’re not quite at the point where we can see the COVID-19 pandemic as something to laugh at, or even an inescapable part of our lives we must all plan around. Instead, we’re stuck in this void of anxiety that the show never truly knows how to manage.
Sure, some of the storylines are interesting, and it’s somewhat interesting, in an academic way, to think about the different struggles people are going through in these times. But maybe that’s best left to the news and/or documentaries and not, you know, scripted programing.
Ironically, the pandemic is inescapable. Medical show after medical show has announced they would tackle the coronavirus pandemic in their new seasons, and that’s bound to be even more dramatic than this rom-com, so I would just like to take this moment to tell them all – including the very show I’m reviewing:
Too soon.
No, seriously, way too soon. That scene near the beginning where James is getting ready to go to the grocery store and he’s donning a face covering and the gloves and Sade is looking at him all anxiety, and he doesn’t even get everything in the list, which is fine, they can just order it …that was me last week. And I need a bit more separation than a week to be able to appreciate something like this.
Not to mention that I kept looking at the different quarantine situations and thinking: but why are these actors filming together? That can’t be safe. How did they even do this? Were they in different places? The must have been.
And then over, and over and over again for every scene I watched.
It’s very, very distraction to be worried about the safety of the actors on your TV screen for reasons other than the plot of the show they’re on is attempting to get them killed.
Yes, life is precious and moments like the one we’re living through make all of us not just realize that, but feel like we have to share this knowledge with the world. And yes, we’re all going through it, in many different ways, and it’s super hard to imagine what other people might be going through as we’re caught up in the middle of our very own drama.
But maybe that’s okay, for now. Maybe self-care is just getting through the day, or making sure your immediate family does. Maybe the TV we need is the kind that’ll make us forget about the world outside the walls we can rarely leave these days, not the kind that will make us reflect on how badly things still look outside.
We have the news for that, and sadly, we’re still kind of required to pay attention there.
So consider this one of those things I watched so you didn’t have to. Love in the Time of Corona might be a fun thing to watch in five or ten years, but it’s really, really not right not.
It’s just uncomfortable.
The limited series Love In The Time of Corona aired two episodes tonight, on Freeform, and will air two more episodes tomorrow at 8/7c.
