{"id":90400,"date":"2021-03-24T15:58:42","date_gmt":"2021-03-24T15:58:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/?p=90400"},"modified":"2021-03-24T15:58:42","modified_gmt":"2021-03-24T15:58:42","slug":"to-soon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/featured\/to-soon\/","title":{"rendered":"To soon?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019ve noticed that some television shows have been incorporating the Covid-19 pandemic into their recent episodes. (There are some spoilers here, so read with caution!) A medical series, \u201cThe Good Doctor,\u201d featured it in two episodes and then, magically, the pandemic was over. The popular series \u201cThis is Us\u201d is trying to set a good example by making sure that the characters wear masks when meeting up with people outside of their households &#8212; until they actually walk up to each other to talk. Then the masks come off. I\u2019ve heard that acting on TV is about facial expressions, so it makes sense that the producers don\u2019t want faces hidden. The pandemic is sort of the background but doesn\u2019t overwhelm the storyline.<\/p>\n<p>Another series, \u201cA Million Little Things,\u201d seems painfully accurate. A restaurant owner sees her business crumble as staff call off sick and customers stay home. Another character is about to shoot his first movie and production stops, ending, or at least postponing, his life\u2019s dream. Borders shut down keeping some characters from traveling home. The characters are confused about what is going on and how long it will last, just like we were a year ago. This is all too real.<\/p>\n<p>Watching the events that have happened over the past year be incorporated into entertainment is inevitable, but maybe it is too soon. People continue to suffer, and lives have been turned upside down. While there is a bit of light at the end of the tunnel as vaccines become more available, that tunnel is long. We don\u2019t know yet how this turns out, so it\u2019s painful to watch when all you want is to be entertained.<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, dystopian fiction featuring plagues of some sort has been around for decades, maybe longer. It\u2019s fun to read books or watch movies where the world has gone mad while safely sitting in a comfy chair. It feels quite different when events around you resemble the story.<\/p>\n<div class=\"spaced-bottom padded--tight scheme--lightest-grey\">\n<h4>Commentary Competition<\/h4>\n<p>Enjoyed the topic? Have a relevant anecdote? Disagree with the author? Leave your two cents on this post in the comments below, and our favourite response will win a $50 Amazon gift card. The competition closes two weeks from the date of publication, and the winner will be announced in the next Simple Talk newsletter.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019ve noticed that some television shows have been incorporating the Covid-19 pandemic into their recent episodes. (There are some spoilers here, so read with caution!) A medical series, \u201cThe Good Doctor,\u201d featured it in two episodes and then, magically, the pandemic was over. The popular series \u201cThis is Us\u201d is trying to set a good&#8230;&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":110218,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[47125,53],"tags":[123655],"coauthors":[11292],"class_list":["post-90400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorials","category-featured","tag-prompt"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/110218"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90400"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90400\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90403,"href":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90400\/revisions\/90403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90400"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=90400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}