Most TV Shows Get This Major Plot Point Totally Wrong. This New Netflix Series Nailed It.

"I was prepared to cry buckets. Like any medicated zillennial, I had worshipped at the altar of BoJack Horseman, the Netflix hit about a washed-up sitcom actor who is also a horse.From 2014 through early 2020, the series redefined adult animation: It was surreal, structurally inventive, and a merciless satire of show business. I knew that creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg's next project would bring an avalanche of wordplay-and, sooner or later, tears."

"What I didn't anticipate was how Long Story Short, Bob-Waksberg's new Netflix series, would force me to sit with my own grief over the COVID-19 pandemic. The animated dramedy follows the Schwooper siblings-Avi (Ben Feldman), Shira (Abbi Jacobson), and Yoshi (Max Greenfield)-over decades, exploring how childhood experiences ripple into adulthood. The early episodes make no mention of the virus. Then, 16 minutes into Episode 4, Shira and her children appear in N95 masks at the grocery store."

"I know-it's a hard sell. Had I known about the COVID element ahead of time, I probably wouldn't have been so eager to watch Long Story Short. I've heard the sentiment from friends and co-workers and strangers online: Nobody wants to see a COVID story. We don't want to revisit that terrible, painful thing. We turn to TV for escape-or at least to escape that."

Long Story Short is a Netflix animated dramedy that follows the Schwooper siblings—Avi, Shira, and Yoshi—across decades to show how childhood experiences ripple into adulthood. The series subtly incorporates the COVID-19 pandemic, introducing masked grocery scenes and lockdown surrealism before revealing that the family matriarch died from COVID-19. Pandemic moments are interwoven with absurdist and structural storytelling, blending humor with grief. Many contemporary television shows either ignore the pandemic, briefly acknowledge it, or devote specific episodes or arcs to it. Audience resistance to COVID stories often leads creators to omit or minimize pandemic representations.

Read at Slate Magazine