No, I Don't Want to Watch a Show About Social Distancing, Thank You Very Much
When I heard way back in April that Netflix was making a show about quarantine, I was intrigued, but not overly excited. More than anything, I was curious to see how they would physically make the show in the height of a pandemic which made TV production nearly impossible. But I wasn't really hyped at the possibility of watching people cope with something we were still very much in the middle of. The show hit Netflix yesterday, and I'm sad to say that whatever reservations I had about it a few months ago were... pretty much spot-on.
The series is an anthology, meaning every episode follows someone different. I started with an episode featuring Oscar Nunez (The Office) who's trying to host a funeral for his father over Zoom. The episode follows his family as they struggle with tech problems (one uncle can't figure out how to un-mute himself), deal with the general awkwardness of having seven-ish people on one video call (you know, the "Wait, sorry, say that again," of it all), and mourn a loved one through a video screen. Is that accurate to the experience some people had during quarantine? Yes. But do I want to relive that now, sitting on my couch, while 59,000 people tested positive for COVID-19 yesterday alone? No. Definitely not.
I couldn't get through more than 15 minutes of that episode. It was like nails on a chalkboard. So I thought I'd try a different one, and I hopped over to the Mike Colter one, which follows his character as he tries to figure out how to be less lonely and stay sober during this isolation. Watching his character FaceTime friends and try to connect with people via a simulated iPhone screen was almost unbearable. I tapped out of that episode about seven minutes in. Look, let me be clear. I'm not saying these depictions aren't accurate. They definitely are, and the show does a good job encapsulating all the annoying, frustrating, sad, and depressing things that come with being alone. The problem is that many of us are still living the same reality we were months ago.
It would be one thing to watch this show two years from now and look back and think about all the bizarre things we had to do to stay connected during this time. Like, "Wow, people really did have funerals over Zoom, huh?" And, "I remember being just as lonely as these people seem to be. Thank god we're in a better place now." But we're not in a better place now! For much of the country, we are still in the throes of this pandemic, but it's almost worst because so many people are acting like we're not. It's impossible to enjoy this show because it's such a potent reminder of the hell we're still living through. The sad irony is that a show like Social Distance treats this pandemic as though it's behind us, simply by existing, as if it's something to look back on and reflect about.
When done right, movies and TV can reflect a moment in time in a way that is insightful, or emotional, or makes us all realize how lucky we are, etc. etc. But this is not one of those times. A show like Social Distance is a poorly-timed attempt at being deep, and I, for one, am not trying to watch that.
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