Tina Fey, Mike Schur, and 35 other showrunners on the "coronavirus episodes" that could've been
Aux Features great job internet
One of the first things ‘90s kids did once self-isolation set in was to dream up their own episodes of Seinfeld. How, one wonders, would Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer deal with a global pandemic and a culture of social distancing? We even shared a script for a full episode, “The Quarantine,” written by one curious fan. Well, it turns out it’s not just fans wondering how their favorite characters would fare, but their creators, too. In an epic new feature, Vulture called upon 37 different showrunners and creators to share what own shows might look like in the face of COVID-19. They include storied sitcom writers like Tina Fey (30 Rock), Mike Schur (Parks And Recreation), and Christopher Lloyd (Frasier), as well as the minds behind drama series like Lost, The Shield, and 24. Even some current showrunners, like Gentefied’s Marvin Lemus and Linda Yvette Chavez and Dickinson’s Alena Smith, shared their thoughts.
For example, here’s Fey on what 30 Rock’s Tracy Jordan would be up to:
Tracy has already contracted and survived the virus (“My snakes eat bats and then I use my snakes to practice French kissing, so it was inevitable, Liz Lemon!”), so he would declare himself an immune “green person” and set out to help. (Tracy: “Like Mister Rogers said, ‘Look like the helpers.’”) So, dressed as a firefighter, he would volunteer his time delivering illegal box jellyfish to the elderly.
But the best part, perhaps, isn’t even the narratives so much as the way they’ve been presented here. Veep’s David Mandel, for example, imagined Selina Meyer’s coronavirus response as a chapter from her biography. Jason Katims, meanwhile, wrote a stern, low-key inspirational speech in the voice of Friday Night Lights’ Coach Taylor. “You will put yourself and your family and your community at serious risk if you act like a jackass,” he declares, and, Christ, will somebody please get this to Kyle Chandler?
INT.: PANTHERS LOCKER ROOM
COACH TAYLOR
The district announced schools will be closed starting tomorrow, so this is the last time we’ll be meeting for a while. Maybe a long while. The least important thing right now is football. However. Still damn important. You’re still on this team. You still have football responsibilities. We’re lucky enough to live in Texas. There’s tons of empty spaces. Go find one and do your running, do your suicides, do your stretches. If you’re a quarterback, hang a truck tire in your yard and throw a football through it an hour every day. Is that understood?
TEAM
Yes, sir.
COACH TAYLOR
Meanwhile. There is a certain segment of our population who believe that the rules do not apply to them. That they don’t have to worry about all this. And I’m staring at 60 members of that segment of our population right now. Gentlemen. You will put yourself and your family and your community at serious risk if you act like a jackass. So I’m asking you to take this is as seriously as you have taken anything in your life. Practice your social distancing. Stay at home. Your social calendars are officially on hold. And in case I haven’t made myself clear enough, let me state it more plainly. No parties. No sex. No physical contact. Is this absolutely clear?
TEAM
Yes, sir.
COACH TAYLOR
Good. Do not let me down on this one, gentlemen.
Jane The Virgin’s Jennie Snyder Urman recruited cast member Jaime Camil for a social distancing vlog from his character, Rogelio de la Vega.
[pm_embed_youtube id=’PLZQfnFyelTBOQ15kmHSgEbdjzLMWzZpL7′ type=’playlist’]And then there’s this brief, wonderful exchange between Frasier and Niles as written by Lloyd.
FRASIER sits at a table with a cappuccino.
FRASIER
Good morning, Niles.
NILES sits at a separate table with a cappuccino.
NILES
And to you, Frasier.
NILES, in rubber gloves, wipes his chair with his handkerchief, then moves on to wipe his open laptop. We now see they are in different houses and speak via Skype. NILES wipes his camera lens.
FRASIER
Not that I don’t delight in the squealing of your rubber glove across the camera lens, but Dr. Freud might wonder if an excess cleansing of one’s physical space doesn’t bespeak the distinctly unclean state of one’s own mind.
NILES
I have had impure thoughts during this confinement. Last night at virtual wine club, I assayed a ripe Bordeaux held more promise than the loose laces on a beer-hall barmaid’s peasant blouse.
Read the full piece here, which also includes a heart-swelling Elmo monologue from Sesame Street’s Ken Scarborough and an admiral’s log in which Jean-Luc Picard posits that we will emerge from this “stronger” and “perhaps more aware of the profound connections we have always shared.” A nice thought, that.
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28 Comments
You skipped the one from the creators of Modern Family, where Manny was annoying and Cam and Mitch forgot about their kid and the B plot just kind of sat there, but Ty Burrell was, as usual, delightful.
*sigh* give ty his own series.
How would Archie Bunker react?I don’t know who he’d blame for the virus (so many choices!), but I know he’d call Edith a dingbat and yell at Gloria and the Meathead for repeating something they heard on Rachel Maddow.
SFX: toilet flush. cue audience laughter.
Archie: “I ain’t getting that virus.”Meathead: “How do you know?”Archie: “How do I know?”Meathead: “How do you know?!”Archie: “Because it’s the Corona virus and everyone knows I’m a Bud man.”Cue laugh track.
That’s the same script as Married with Children.
Something something Hawkeye draws a virus on his surgical mask.
(In a Grouch Marx voice): This isn’t a pandemic, it’s a moidah!(In a maudlin voice): This isn’t a pandemic… it’s a murder!
We know the answer…..AITF was one of the entries, written by Lear himself.Archie and Edith enter through the front door, just returning from church, to find Gloria and Mike watching
the news. Before they can get their coats off, Mike says, “There’s a
pandemic, Arch. We need to practice social distancing. They want us to
be six to ten feet apart at all times.”Archie
responds, “Sounds good to me, Meathead.” He turns to Edith, “I’m gonna
take a nap. Wake me when it’s six to ten blocks apart. No, make that six
to ten miles.”
How was I supposed to know that? Why, that would require reading the article! That would require skipping over three paragraphs of set-up and dodging multiple links to related articles! I’m afraid that I just don’t have that much time on my hands.
One show that will probably get the opportunity to do a quarantine episode (or maybe a whole arc) is “Superstore.” While I have a fun time imagining individual character’s reactions to being told to stay at home, I think of all the shows currently airing they’re in the best position to go balls-to-the-wall with the premise. I just hope they can convince America Ferrera to come back for part of it.
In a year and a half or so, are we all going to be asking America Ferrara “you left Superstore for this piece of soapy melodramatic sludge?”
She’s incredibly talented. It sounds like she just wants to be able to open her schedule up to a larger variety of projects. Probably not all of them will be as good as Superstore, but I’m sure some of them are going to be great and they’ll be better with her in them.
oh god, Jonah will be insufferable about some thing he remembers from freshman biology.I want to see The Good Fight tackle coronavirus though.
Even more than the plot, all those little tags they have of random customers in the store will be fantastic.
somebody’s lickin’ a toilet for sure
Definitely Marcus
The funny thing is Parks & Rec has already done multiple outbreak episodes (The flu episodes, and “Emergency Response”)
Chris Traeger would LITerally be hoarding masks and hand sanitizer. Not toilet paper, though. Eagleton has all the toilet paper.
STOP POOPING
The Out of Context Parks and Recreation twitter account has been bringing up some good ones, but I think this has done the rounds the most:https://twitter.com/nocontextpawnee/status/1240094192472211457?s=20
Hopefully Larry David gets cracking on the next season of Curb Your Enthusiasm where he’s joyfully navigating a quarantined Los Angeles free of forced awkward social situations.He’d definitely get in a few rounds of golf. Call some millennials stupid for not staying home and watching TV. There’d probably be a bit about Richard Lewis wearing a hazmat suit out of fear of catching the disease.
Larry: What are you doing out here? You’re supposed to be inside, sheltering in place!Random woman: Oh yeah? Well what are YOU doing out here then?Larry: I’m out here warning people about the virus. I’m a warner!Random woman: You’re a warner? How do you know I’m not a warner? I could be out here warning people for all you know.Larry: Look, I know what a warner looks like. Trust me. And I don’t see you warning any body. You don’t look like a warner to me.
Those aren’t warners.These are Warners:
Faboo.
And I think we now see why it was a good thing 30 Rock got cancelled when it did.
the Rogelio scene is perfect.
Speaking of coronavirus fanfiction, as part of my ongoing quest to keep my anxiety complex under control I’ve been re-reading the Nero Wolfe stories which, given that he’s basically been practicing social isolation for eighty years, has led my mind to start noodling around ideas for how a Wolfe story set during the pandemic would work. With what I’ve got so far, Wolfe himself is having a rare old time because now he’s got the perfect excuse to just stay inside and keep hanging around his orchids and not seeing clients (maybe he can’t get some of the supplies for his fine cuisine which is making him sulk a bit), but Archie Goodwin is getting cabin fever and so basically prods Wolfe into investigating a crime remotely basically to give himself something to do.