It's interesting that the pandemic remains essentially unrepresentable in narrative TV, film, and fiction. Creators are essentially producing narrative in an alternate timeline where the pandemic never happened.
This made a kind of sense back when it seemed like the pandemic might last a year or two. (Remember all the people dreading The Pandemic Novels to come, and calling for escapist media to not go into it?)
But even as it seems clear that the pandemic is going to go on--albeit, hopefully, in a much less deadly form--for a while longer, it's a lot weirder that pop culture, as a whole, is just going to pretend it never happened.
Which is to say, a kind of macro-decision was made--when the pandemic was a CRISIS--to just not get into it. But when the CRISIS evolved into the normality (of more WFH, banal masking, low but not nonexistent death rates), the decision stayed the same
You know, the one TV show I really would have liked to see incorporate The Pandemic is High Maintenance
It seems like the shows people are mentioning that HAVE incorporated the pandemic are heavily skewed towards procedural dramas, which makes a certain amount of sense. Those shows are always desperate for new stories anyway, and the "torn from the headlines" mode is perfect.
A few folks quibbling with "essentially unrepresentable" in my mentions, naming about a dozen shows that have represented it, which is fair. But if we named all the shows that have ignored it, we'd be here for days.
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