Dear Hollywood, No One Wants to Watch Your Quarantine Shows
I love watching TV. Aside from adding hundreds of dollars of clothes to my shopping cart and slowly watching them sell out, it’s one of my favorite things to do and fully the reason I have picked up zero hobbies my entire life. Even in lockdown! Reality TV, soap-y dramas, game shows, sitcoms, fun facts on the Music Choice channel—you name it, I’ll watch it. But when it comes to the emerging quarantine genre that will only serve as a bleak reminder of the fresh hell we find ourselves in, that’s a hard pass.
It’s bad enough we’re currently bombarded with scary-similar advertisements that hint at coronavirus, working from home, and staying inside at every commercial break. Now, Hollywood execs are threatening us with a slew of upcoming shows related to quarantine and “our new normal.” This new wave hasn’t even hit yet, but I’m fully over it already.
So far, some options we’ve been presented with are: Freeform’s new Love in the Time of Corona, which is pretty self-explanatory and sounds depressing AF. Then we have the Kardashians, who are filming a portion of the next season themselves on iPhones. Then we have ABC’s uninspired Bachelor greatest clips show. And if none of that sounds enjoyable (fair), there’s going to be a Selena Gomez cooking show about how she improved her kitchen skills during lockdown.
Look, I get it. People—even the celebrities and the entertainment industry—want and need to keep making money. I’m not trying to stop anyone's check, or saying I expect everyone to just sit on their hands and not try to make a living right now. But coming from someone who is truly eager to consume even more TV, producing quarantine-related programs truly feels like a futile effort right now. And when celebrities agree to these half-baked ideas, it feels like they’re just desperate to remain in the spotlight.
Could you imagine any recreational activity that would be less fun than watching someone DM another person and then risk everyone’s lives for a hookup? And I get that artists film entire movies on iPhones nowadays, but I can’t shake the feeling that Hollywood and the Kardashians are about to go all Blair Witch Project/documentary filmmaker on us. And I love Selena, but this feels like something that never would’ve been greenlit if studios weren't absolutely desperate for content. She’s so talented and deserves a way better show than this!
So, what’s my solution? As Cardi B once said, IDK, that’s not what I do. But I do think a good starting point would be to stream and air the shows we’ve been deprived of all these years. Like, what if Disney+ added Bug Juice to the platform? Or what if Bravo had another NYC Prep and Ladies of London marathon. Somebody could finally do me a solid and put all of Drag Race on Netflix. And E! could re-air Pretty Wild. There are options!
I’m not saying Hollywood should go on like coronavirus never happened, but I’d love for them to put a little more thought into these shows and their execution, instead of churning them out one after the other and hoping something sticks.
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