The Washington Post - 06.04.2020

KLMNO

Style

monday, april 6 , 2020. washingtonpost.com/style eZ su c

Pro Football Hall of Famer Bobby Mitchell dies at 84. Sports, C8-C10

coronavirus

so, no baseball, hockey,

basketball, football. and that

is just fine for the booming

sport of marble racing. c3

carolyn Hax

a woman with stage 4 cancer

worries about burdening the

son who invited her to live with

his family. should she? c4

kidsPost

schools may be shut, but meet

our april class of kidsPost, luz

chamorro’s gunston Middle

school sixth-graders. c4

BY KAREN HELLER

In new Hampshire, florists, garden centers

and plant nurseries are considered essential

businesses. In many states, more than you

might imagine, golf courses are open as an

essential outdoor recreation activity.

Recreational marijuana dispensaries are

deemed essential in some states where people

are forbidden to eat in restaurants or imbibe

in bars. Gun stores are essential in many

states. Where they’re not, lawsuits have swift-

ly followed.

Liquor stores are essential businesses al-

most everywhere — almost because of Penn-

sylvania, where they’re not.

During the coronavirus pandemic, all

states are not equal.

one state’s weed is another states’s posies.

We’re in the middle of an “essential” crisis.

The definition of that word dictates how we

will live for our unforeseeable future. some

decisions will surely clog the courts. Mean-

while, essential versus nonessential workers

has become the new caste system.

There is some consensus these days on

what we need, essentially, to live. We need

food, though perhaps not as many carbs as

new homebound bread obsessives are baking.

We need access to health care and meds and

24-roll packs of toilet paper. Hardware stores

are necessary to keep shelters in place.

Laundromats are essential for people without

laundries. our pets’ well-being, even those of

aging, indifferent, decidedly nocturnal fe-

lines? essential. We need gas to anxiously

drive to these places. In cities, we require

bike-repair shops so we can safely pedal to

them.

Then things get muddy.

Many decisions are left to governors, in

consultation with state health officials, as

well as mayors a nd county executives. What is

see essentials on C2

Essentially, it’s all relative

Gun shops, liquor stores, your workplace: What remains open depends on who’s deciding.

A month ago, it

would have

seemed unlikely

— ridiculous, even

— that the most

riveting duo in

America would be

the empire state’s

combative

governor and his kid brother, the

wide-eyed cable-news host.

But here we are.

new York’s Andrew, 62, who

leads the state with far and away

the most covid- 19 cases and

deaths, is appearing almost daily

on live television to explain the

grim numbers on his Power Point

slides and dispense soulful

guidance about staying socially

distant but spiritually connected.

Cnn’s C hris, 49, is infected

with coronavirus but continued

to broadcast his evening show

from the basement of his home,

where he is quarantined and

sometimes feverish.

To gether on the air their

pointed-but-affectionate

sparring has been surprisingly

addictive viewing.

one of my millennial children

has taken to texting me in new

York City from 300 miles across

the state in Buffalo: “Cuomo

brothers on Cnn alert.” ( In one

text he acknowledged: “strange

life I’m living.”)

sometimes comical,

sometimes somber, sometimes

emotional, their joint TV

appearances have become one of

the strangest outgrowths of the

coronavirus pandemic — almost

as compelling as another favorite

distraction of this hunkered-

down nation, the true-crime

documentary miniseries “Tiger

see sullivan on C2

Have the

Cuomos

crossed an

ethical line?

Margaret

Sullivan

BY SUZANNE BERNE

What could be more suspense-

ful right now than the question of

whether a virulent disease, re-

leased into the world, can be con-

tained? In a time filled with un-

nerving ironies and coincidences,

another arrives in Chris

Bohjalian’s most recent novel,

“The Red Lo-

tus,” which

delves into bio-

logically engi-

neered patho-

gens and the

possibility that

profiteers and

unscrupulous

laboratory sci-

entists have

created a

plague for sale.

Bohjalian

specializes in

well-re-

searched, topi-

cal thrillers

with complex plots a nd f lawed but

principled heroes struggling with

some of the world’s most intracta-

ble problems. His 21 novels have

involved homelessness, animal

rights, human trafficking and

genocide, to name just a few; sev-

eral have also focused on ethical

issues in alternative medicine,

from midwifery to homeopathy.

But with “The Red Lotus,” he has

managed to be topical in a way he

could not have predicted.

set over 10 days in Vietnam and

new York, the novel opens with

Alexis Remnick, a young eR doc-

tor, waiting by a hotel pool not far

see book world on C3

book World

A pandemic

plot that is

prescient,

diverting

tHe red lotus

by chris

bohjalian

Doubleday. 400

pp. $27.95

BY HANK STUEVER

Quibi? Well, if you insist...
It’s yet another subscription
service, launching Monday with
two dozen TV s hows (to start), the
twist being that episodes clock in
somewhere between six and nine
minutes each. Quibi’s founder is
Hollywood mogul Jeffrey Katzen-
berg; the first batch of shows
features an array of big names
(Liam Hemsworth, sophie Turn-
er, Chrissy Te igen, Jennifer Lo-
pez) and fast ideas.
The point is to lure young-
adult eyeballs with easily con-
sumed content in all genres —
dramas, comedies, reality shows,
documentaries. It’s television for
people who’ve never owned one,
meant to be viewed mainly on
phones or tablets, in the chunks
of time that one might otherwise
spend noticing one’s surround-
ings — waiting in lines, riding in
the back seat of a Lyft or forced to
engage in random small talk.
Quibi says: Fill all that head space
with Quibi!

Critic tempted to pan in nine

words, including: blech.

However! After spending the

weekend surfing through the ser-

vice’s initial shows, it’s difficult to

deny that Quibi is on to some-

thing. This clever, fun-size format

is probably what YouTube and

Facebook should have devised

when elbowing their way into the

streaming TV game, because it so

easily comports to what we al-

ready know about the ceaseless

distraction that our phones be-

came.

People love TV more than ever,

but they often find the portions

too big. (You want me to watch

six seasons of one-hour episodes?

Who plans to live that long?) or

there’s some other daunting bar-

rier to entry besides the time

investment, such as sitting down

and paying attention. Quibi gets

rid of all that.

Its shows glide past with such

efficiency (in horizontal or verti-

cal display, your choice) that it

almost feels silly to take notes on

see notebook on C2

critic’s notebook

Don’t be too quick to dismiss Quibi. It might be onto something.

Patrick Mcelhenney/Quibi

will Forte and kaitlin olson play a couple trying to become house-flipping stars on Quibi’s “Flipped”

Victoria Fogg/the Washington Post/istock