Contains spoilers for “Long Story Short”
The COVID-19 pandemic is not a subject most viewers have been interested in exploring in their entertainment. Live-action TV shows that had to address it in 2020 did, but while some recent shows like “The Pitt” have addressed the effects of the pandemic, most have chosen to ignore the subject whenever possible. In animation, the field of entertainment that had the easiest adjustment to working from home, ignoring the pandemic was even simpler.
The list of animated TV shows that have even alluded to COVID is short. There were educational kids’ shows like “Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood” that taught toddlers about pandemic safety, COVID-inspired lockdown-themed episodes of “The Simpsons” and “Futurama,” and a few one-line references in “Rick and Morty.” But the only cartoons to make the coronavirus pandemic a part of their main storylines were those designed to directly comment on current events using quickly-produced, simplistic animation. “South Park” is the one everyone remembers, with its four hour-long COVID-related specials in 2020 and 2021. There was also the final season of Showtime’s Trump-parodying “The President Show,” but you probably forgot that one existed.
This all makes “Long Story Short,” the new Netflix series from “BoJack Horseman” creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg, stand out for how it works the defining event of the early 2020s into its decades-spanning family story. While it avoids showing the year 2020 — a year no one wants to return to — the episodes set in 2021 and 2022 are some of the best TV yet produced about the pandemic’s impact on our lives.
Long Story Short takes pandemic grief seriously
The most serious way in which the pandemic impacts the Schwooper siblings — Avi (Ben Feldman), Shira (Abbi Jacobson), and Yoshi (Max Greenfield) — is that COVID-19 claims the life of their mother Naomi (Lisa Edelstein). This information is revealed in Episode 4, “Shira Can’t Cook,” which is mostly set in 2021.
Shira and Kendra (Nicole Byer) are trying to get their kids into the competitive Altman Academy, and Shira tries to recreate her mom’s knish recipe to impress the faculty at their prospective family potluck. Her struggle to get the recipe right drags up a lot of feelings around losing a parent she had a complicated relationship with. After all that hard work, Shira decides she doesn’t want her kids going to Altman anyway because the potluck is indoors and increasing the risk of COVID.
Set in 2022, the season finale, “Uncle Barry,” gets even heavier on the experience of mourning during the pandemic. The Schwoopers are struck by the strangeness of going to an in-person funeral for their Uncle Barry (Danny Burstein) when Naomi’s funeral had to be a Zoom-only affair. Avi tries to steal his grandma’s broach — which Naomi always wanted — Shira seeks to get back at her cousin Joni for eating corn on the cob during Naomi’s funeral, and Yoshi gets lost in Vegas before retreating to a motel to observe Shabbat. The rest of the family catches up with Yoshi at the motel and shares memories of Naomi. “Everything was so hectic, she never got a real memorial,” Shira laments. Yoshi responds, “I think we are the memorial.”
Its most topical episode mocks conspiracy theories
Just as “BoJack Horseman” (one of the best canceled Netflix shows) would dedicate one episode per season to satirizing a hot-button issue — the Bill Cosby scandal in “Hank After Dark,” the abortion debate in “Brrap Brrap Pew Pew,” gun control in “Thoughts and Prayers” — “Long Story Short” gets most topical in Episode 6, “Wolves.” Set in 2021, the episode focuses on Avi’s daughter Hannah (Michaela Dietz) returning to school in-person and Avi getting mixed up with a group of “concerned parents.”
Avi is reasonably concerned about actual wolves that have adopted the middle school campus as their home during the year of remote learning. When he speaks out about it, however, he gets dragged into a parents’ group that would rather direct their “fight the system” energy towards various metaphorical “wolves:” frozen hot dogs, fluorescent lights, short bathroom stall doors, rules against parents applying sunscreen during school hours, and educators teaching that the Earth is round. Oh, and also caring about COVID at all — of course these “concerned parents” are anti-maskers who question if “anyone knows anyone who died of COVID.”
It’s absurd and satirically exaggerated, but also an extremely accurate portrait of the ways conspiracy theorists prey on those with legitimate concerns and then twist those concerns towards agendas that are actively harmful.
