What I Watched During my Covid Reinfection
What I Watched During my Covid Reinfection
"The Bear," "Trying," and "Never Have I Ever" kept me (somewhat) sane.
I’ve watched a truly embarrassing amount of television since getting Covid again, because I literally couldn’t do anything else for over three weeks. As such, this post is not going to be very deep. Here’s a non-exhaustive list of what saved me from despair:
“Trying”
“Trying,” a British sitcom on Apple TV, is about a very cool and cute couple, Jason and Nikki, living in London. They want to have a baby, but can’t get pregnant, so they decide to adopt. In the first season, they’re learning the ins and outs of the adoption process through the British government, which involves lots of interviews and vetting, which the main couple botch in ridiculous and zany, but ultimately lovable ways. It was genuinely funny and touching in parts, but saccharine in others once my brain started working a bit better. I especially loved Imelda Staunton as the couple’s zany social worker and Ophelia Lovibond as an unhappily married mom. The third season suffers from the absence of their characters – Lovibond left the show to star in HBO Max’s “Minx.” A few other quibbles included the extremely cheesy soundtrack jingle that played whenever something sweet happened, and the fact that the two work as a customer service rep and ESL teacher, respectively, yet somehow live in Camden, a hip, desirable, and wildly expensive neighborhood, but they act like it’s dumpy and affordable. Big Williamsburg 15-years-ago energy.
Brain power requirement: 3.5
Score: B
“Girls” Season 1 Rewatch
My friend recently started watching “Girls” for the first time, so naturally I had to revisit the chaotic beautiful mess of a show that made moving to Brooklyn after graduating from Oberlin the most embarrassing thing you could possibly do in 2013. The show that launched 1,000 think pieces (and Adam Driver’s career) was a big deal at the time, as was overanalyzing and criticizing Lena Dunham every time she breathed. I watched the whole thing when it came out, and it became sort of a hate-watch in later seasons. But 10 years on, I thought it might be fun to revisit. My friend had an interesting theory that the Girls represent the parts of ourselves we hate most and try to hide from the world; the reason they are so detestable is that they encompass those qualities only, and lack the social awareness and common sense to try to hide them, or, god forbid, improve themselves. I rewatched the first season, and actually found myself gaining more of an appreciation than when I’d watched the show initially. It’s a clever show, the dialogue and writing is funny (and cringe), and at the time there was truly nothing like it on television. Dunham was only 24 when the show came out and directed and wrote the majority of season 1’s episodes all by herself. As a 32 year old, I now see that’s pretty impressive.
By the end of the first season, though, any redeemable aspects of the girls’ characters had been flattened into detestable dimensions (except maybe Shoshana), and by season 2 I wasn’t laughing anymore, just depressed.
Brain power requirement: 4, due to cringe level
Rating: B
“The Bear”
The Hulu show “The Bear” has critics and Twitter thirst traps alike losing their shit. I was excited for the show; I’ve worked in restaurants and there is so much narrative potential in that world. Despite this, there aren’t that many shows about what it’s like to work in a restaurant. Suffice it to say, this show could (thankfully) not be less like “Sweetbitter.” As others have stated better than me (and even mocked on Twitter), the show is meticulous in its details of the kitchen. I was expecting the show to feel gritty, but man, these characters are always dialed up to 11. The mode is perennially crisis, and without any variation in the level of that crisis. With little respite, it’s hard to take after a while. And even though the show bills itself as so authentic, etc., I couldn’t help but notice that it felt like something was off. There were things that felt unlikely: a sous chef in a beef sandwich shop? A designated pastry chef? On that budget?
Plus, Chicago, where “The Bear” takes place, is a big deal in the show. We know this because of the random montages of Chicago landmarks, Rod Blagojevich (really?) and Barack Obama, and because of the soundtrack featuring two of my favorite songs as a 16-year-old girl in the suburbs of California– “Chicago” by Sufjan Stevens and “Jesus, Etc.,” by Wilco. Like, did the soundtrack people just go to Spotify and search “Chicago Playlist”?
According to real Chicago substacker Ashley Ray, yes, they probably did. Her article is titled “The Bear: At Last, A Chicago Show For People Who Are Not From Chicago And Have Never Stepped Foot There,” which is perfect, and it also completely ruined the show for me. River North, where the gritty working class restaurant is located, is apparently a place where windows regularly get shot at and where most of its lowly residents have never heard of a thing called “risotto.”
In actuality, according to Ashley, “if you know Chicago, you probably broke out laughing when you realized this guy is trying to say River North is a delicate ecosystem that can’t be “gentrified.” If you don’t know Chicago (like most of the critics who wrote about The Bear), I guess you would buy this! But, River North is home to the Rainforest Cafe. River North is home to some of the most expensive restaurants in Chicago. It is not really an area of the city where real people live, it is mostly where people commute to work and you leave as fast as you can because it costs $10 a minute to even breathe over there.”
Despite all this, the acting in “The Bear” is great, and the show does a good job of capturing grief, running away from it, and how people can hate each other one moment and love each other the next. (Crossover alert: That’s Desi from “Girls”!)
Brain power: Ouch, cousin. So much yelling.
Rating: B+ before I googled “River North,” C+ after I did
“Never Have I Ever” Season 3
(Warning: Spoilers for Seasons 1 and 2)
I was skeptical about starting “Never Have I Ever” season 3, a show I wrote about earlier this year. I was worried that it had run out of things to say, and wasn’t interested in watching Devi develop her relationships with Paxton. As a fellow nerd in high school, it just doesn’t feel authentic to me that Paxton, a popular dude, would be interested in Devi – not because Devi is unattractive or uninteresting, but because that’s just not how the high school hierarchy works. I myself was cursed with an obsessive multiyear crush on a popular guy in high school and seeing Devi and Paxton together still gives me PTSD. Also, the actor who plays Paxton is 31. With the current discourse about inappropriate age gaps and grooming in Hollywood, this is just so weird. Apparently, the show’s casting director didn’t realize how old he was before they cast him, which, okay. But it’s distracting! The guy has crow’s feet!
Despite this, I loved this season! The first two seasons featured some pretty deplorable behavior from Devi, but this season showed growth. Her super strained relationship with her mother calmed down, and it was just all around a more peaceful watch. But still fun! Her friends Fabiola, Aneesa, Eleanor, and Ben are a delight, and though Kamala has less screen time, when she does have it she is witty and hilarious. As David Canfield writes for Vanity Fair, in season 3 the show finds its “silly-sad sweet spot.”
Brain power: 3
Rating: A-
