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One Year of Solitude: A Pandemic TV Diary
Spring, 2020
Season 1–3: ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT
We were supposed to be in Mexico for two weeks. Hybrid work/vacation. Knowing we wouldn’t have WiFi in the place where we’d be staying, my husband packs an external DVD drive and the first three seasons of the Mitchell Hurwitz show, ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT so we have something to do at night after we put our six year-old to bed. At first, it’s funny to revisit a series we discovered the first year of our marriage. We laugh at the same things we laughed at in 2004.
The army had a half day.
There’s always money in the banana stand.
I’d have to get up pretty early to be drunk by one o’clock.
The pandemic hits. We are in Mexico for months instead of weeks. Re-runs. Re-runs. Re-runs. The jokes no longer land.
Summer, 2020
Season 6: ALONE
Good humor is the log splitter; the thing keeping me warm and safe in my survival mode. The contestants on this program get to take ten things with them to the arctic. If I had to choose only ten items to shelter in place with they would be…what? WiFi, my computer, my computer charger. My daughter. Books for both of us. And there go my ten things. In ALONE, medication doesn’t count toward your ten…
