When I heard the concept for Love in the Time of Corona, I thought I was in for a heartwarmingly interconnected story in the vein of Love Actually or Valentine’s Day. And at first, that’s exactly what I was getting! But as the limited series went on, all I could focus on was the backdrop of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
Instead of rooting for Oscar (Tommy Dorfman) and Elle’s (Rainey Qualley) respective romances, I was thinking about how unlucky in love my quarantine swiping had been. Rather than hoping James (Leslie Odom Jr.) and Sade (Nicolette Robinson) could work things out, I was preoccupied with them having to deal with the same mistakes we all made at the beginning of the pandemic. It all felt simply too soon for networks and streaming services to start churning out pandemic-centric media.
For medical dramas like Grey’s Anatomy and The Good Doctor, it wouldn’t be realistic for them to ignore what’s happening in the real world. Even for shows like This Is Us, which according to Deadline has decided to “attack things head on,” a