february1–14, 2021 | newyork 65six. “There was no way people were not
going to hate the episode where Amy left,”
Ellickson said. But the pandemic became
a useful opportunity, a way to give
Ferrera’s departure a more meaningful
emotional foundation. The breakup is
sudden, and “it helps if they’re sort of in a
desperate place,” Ellickson explained.
“Amy is stretched ten different ways and
panics about a part of her life that, maybe,
if she were in a different emotional place,
she would’ve reacted to differently.”
“There’s almost this guilty feeling,”
Feldman said. “Contextually, we were
going into a sixth season, No. 1 on the call
sheet was leaving the show, and everyone
was turning to us and saying, ‘What are
you going to do now?’ ” As awful asit was,
covid became a way to redirect some of
the energy that had been lost with
Ferrera’s departure.
Many of Superstore’s most poignant
pandemic scenes also had nothing to do
with its lead characters. From the start, the
show’s most distinctive stylistic feature has
been tiny interstitial scenes shot with
extras. In them, you see people doing all
the silly, bizarre stuff they do when brows-
ing the aisles. The interstitials have been
funny and oddly emotional; they areanon-
ymous, and also intimate and specific. A
man stands at one of the TV displays, qui-
etly channel surfing. A customer holding
too many items drops one, tries to pick it
up, then drops the rest in the process. A
couple kiss passionately in the checkout
line, not realizing they’re up next.
Two interstitial scenes from thiscovid
season have stuck with me. One isbarely
two seconds long: a woman wearing a
mask, holding a scented candle to her
face. She sniffs, and her eyebrows furrow.
Can she not smell it through the mask, or
is she sick? Should she take the mask off?
The other is even more simple,just a
single nighttime shot of the store’s exte-
rior. The parking lot is littered with dis-
carded masks and gloves. covid isa spe-
cial, exacerbated circumstance, and yet
it’s only an exaggeration of all the stories
Superstore was already telling.
The news that this season would be
the show’s last came as a surpriseto the
cast and crew, but Superstore is at least
better equipped to end this way than
most shows would be. “It’s always been a
show about underdogs, people at the
mercy of these big forces that are well
beyond their control. covid fits inpretty
naturally with that,” Ellickson said. In a
show whose central message is that
working-class life can be reallyhard,
“covid is just another thing these people
PHOTOGRAPHS: are struggling against.” ■
ABC/HULU
(CONNERS,
BLACK-ISH,
BIG
SKY);
FOX/HULU
(9-1-1)
Write a Pandemichow (not) tosome network-tv shows rose to the challenge of incorporating
covid-19 into their story lines this winter—including Superstore
and procedurals like All Rise and NCIS: New Orleans—by acknowl-
edging the changed world. Others (NCIS, several CBS sitcoms) are ignoring
it altogether. Most shows’ covid strategies, though, fall somewhere on a
spectrum from “not great” to “total chaos.” kathryn vanarendonkTo Mask or Not to Mask?
There are no easy answers for how to deal with
masks on TV. But characters wearing masks on
the street and then immediately whipping them
off indoors does not seem like the right one.
➽ Law & Order: SVU: Cop protagonists remove
their masks whenever they interview a suspect,
regardless of setting. Doctors in hospitals take theirs
off to talk about the details of a case. ➽ The Conners: Characters pull their masks
down to speak to one another and regularly forget to mask up around their co-workers.COVID Is Over
Some returning shows committed
to the pandemic early in their new
seasons—then backed off as quickly
as possible with absurd results.
➽ The Good Doctor: Episodes one and two
tell a heartrending story about the trauma
and isolation of the pandemic. Episode three
startswithleadactor Freddie Highmore appearing out of character to explain
straighttothecamera that the rest of the season will be set in a post-COVID
future.➽Black-ish: The first episode of the season is about the stress of COVID;
byepisodesix,thefamily is hosting a wedding with guests from out of state.Pandemics Are for Other People
Then there are those that acknowledge there’s
an ongoing pandemic—while refusing to
deal with it. ➽ Blue Bloods: This cop show
opened its season with a story about a woman
desperately searching for her father’s body,
which was lost after he died of COVID in a
nursing home. And yet: no masks. No social
distancing.No further reference to the changed world. ➽ Big Sky: Residents of
Montanaoccasionally mention a pandemic as though it’s something happening on
another planet. Dialogue about how people want to believe in love, “especially in
pandemic times,” is bizarre when the world of the show is completely unchanged.Embracing Mayhem
Or you could use a global cataclysm
to make impressively strange choices.
➽ 9-1-1: Lone Star: Already known for its
bonkers disaster plotting, the show responded
to COVID by adding more disasters. In its
opening episode, a 5G-COVID conspiracy
theorist opens fire on a cell-tower repairman,
andfirstrespondershave to perform surgery 200 feet in the air. ➽ Bull: In this
pro on premi Bull song
in t t he has b amin bout of
COVID this whole time! The episode ends with a fourth-wall-breaking musical
lip-sync sequence in which the whole cast celebrates being back in production.