It’s never easy to make a TV show, but it’s been especially difficult in the year 2020.
Most productions were forced to shut down when the coronavirus pandemic hit with multiple episodes left to film, and over the past few months, many have begun to film again. But no production can just go back to the way things were, and many onscreen stories can’t either.
While The Goldbergs is firmly set in the 1980s, long before COVID-19 existed, most other shows that have returned this fall are set in present day—and they all had a choice to make. Some made the choice to ignore the pandemic completely. Others leaned heavily into it, and still a few more put the pandemic in the background and otherwise went on their merry way.
As voracious consumers of TV, we’ve had some seriously mixed feelings about the portrayal of this strange time on TV.