As Twitter user @jishnu_bandu so eloquently put it, in the era of COVID-19, in some of the dimmest of times in recent history, one must remember: “As you binge watched your thirteenth entire series, or read a book, or sleep to music, remember. Remember that in the darkest days, when everything stopped, you turned to artists.” This is true. We have all become heavy, gluttonous consumers of all forms of media.
One only needs to look as far as Netflix’s shares for an indicator of our heavy consumption of such media, which have gone up 60% since the start of the year. Not just Netflix, there has been a surge in shares across streaming platforms of all kinds, including Disney+, Hulu and HBO. The nation’s heart has been captured with the likes of “Tiger King,” “Schitt’s Creek,” “Avatar: The Last Airbender” and “Ozark.” I myself admit to only a couple hundred hours of binge watching.
Having watched a range of movies, television series, documentaries and Korean cooking videos, I would like to believe that I am open to most types of viewing media, and am willing to give most a fair shot at being “the one” to choose to pass my time with. Then my editor suggested that I watch “Love in the Time of Corona.”
“Love in the Time of Corona” is a play on the classic “Love in the Time of Cholera” by Gabriel García Márquez. It is available for streaming on FreeForm and is produced by Joanna Johnson (executive producer and writer on the Freeform’s drama series The Fosters). Loyal to its name, it tells the story of four different couples(ish) during the coronavirus pandemic.
The nation has watched the likes of “PEN15,” “The Real Story of Paris Hilton” and “Indian Matchmaking.” Some of us even managed to find the bootlegged versions of “Mulan” or “Tenet.” Personally, at some point, it is less about the absolute top-tier quality of a movie or show, and more about the escapism that a couple hours of sitting motionless in front of my screen provides me. I sat through two hours of “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” in the same room with a very chatty couple and a brazen headache. I can get through most viewings.
I could not finish this show. I made it through about an episode and a half before calling it quits (this is my apology to my editor — I really tried, Emily!). I could not finish it, I do not wish to finish it and I would not wish finishing it on anybody else.
The first episode introduces us to four relationships: separated parents Paul and Sally, sticking it out for their college returnee daughter; best friends and roommates Elle and Oscar, who begin to court the online dating scene together; Nanda, with an estranged husband at a rehab facility and Sade and James, younger parents, questioning the possibility of a second child.
The show draws in viewers with a catchy, literary title and a promise of fulfilling the Bechdel Test. And yet, even after drawing us in with some long sought-after bi-representation, we are left stranded in a falsely cheery narrative of love in the time of Corona for upper/middle-class people who have no real connections to current social events. Perhaps this is because the entire show was filmed at the cast’s houses with little to no interaction with the outside world. Does the show get a pass for following social distancing requirements? No.
In one sentence, the show is a gimmick. There is something for everyone — this appears to be the thinking behind the screen writing. Gen-Z (the presumed target audience) will be satiated with the annoying cuts to characters promoting social justice and awareness in catchy one-liners (“Not everything is about money, Jordan!”). The Millennials get to see their minimal, yet unattainable dream of being homeowners portrayed on screen.
The rom-com take on a pandemic, which as of this moment has killed 259,000 people, as a rom-com, is too much, too soon. In my darkest times, this is not a show I would turn to watch. “Love In the Time of Corona” is neither comforting nor motivating, nor does it provide any actual perspective on the world we face today. There is range of diversity, both race, sex and age-wise. But hitting the bare minimum of character representation does not dismiss the fact that the entire show is glamorizing one of the most destructive events of our lifetimes, nor the fact that the show in its entirety is simply extremely cringey.
