Television Reimagined, 2020 (Part 2)

Two weeks ago, I put up a blog post sketching 2020-era episodes of popular TV shows. I’m returning to the concept for one more round today, looking at five more shows.

Like last time, this post looks at what five TV shows might look like if they’d had a 2020 episode embedded in one of their seasons. The focus is largely on coronavirus, but protests, fires, and more find their way in, too. Note: this is an exercise in fan fiction and fun, not intended to minimize the hardships others have faced, but rather to provide some levity and thought experiment amidst a largely awful overarching situation.

One more clarifier: the setup is not so much imagining that a new episode were filmed under the current constraints around social distancing, etc., but rather what the world within the show might look like if the characters were experiencing 2020 circumstances.

If you’d like to skip directly to shows you’re familiar with, the ones covered in this post are:

Riverdale
Community
Entourage
Modern Family
Glee

--

Series: Riverdale
Title: Chapter 14: Sick of Killing
Series Placement: Season 2
Synopsis:
With everyone indoors to protect against the pandemic, a serial killer is going on a home invasion spree, wiping out those who can’t defend themselves—the elderly, people who live alone, the incapacitated. The grownups all act shifty, only to admit this all happened in Riverdale decades earlier, too, and they didn’t want to scare the kids by telling them. Besides, that killer was caught by Archie and Jughead’s dads when the killer went after Veronica’s mom; they beat him to death in what courts ruled self-defense, though Fred Andrews has felt guilty about it ever since.

When a single mom and child are slain, Archie takes matters into his own hands, taking a ragtag crew of buff boys patrolling to try to catch the killer. Rather than finding the culprit, Archie finds his way to cryptic message from the person responsible, challenging him to come alone to fight him in an abandoned warehouse. Archie doesn’t tell anyone what he found, but does show up for the fight. There’s a boxing ring set up, and his masked opponent welcomes him in for a fight for the soul of Riverdale.

Archie wins the fight, and gets carried away, straddling and pummeling the killer well past unconsciousness. He stops himself, though and calls for an ambulance.

Fred and FP reports that the killer—particularly in his beaten state—looks almost identical to the original killer they beat, and must be his son. Archie is troubled in the aftermath by the killer, but all the more so by how close he came to killing him. When Betty visits with him, he tells her he has written a song about it. He struggles to play the chords on his guitar with a fingers swollen from punching, but nonetheless forces out his melancholy, introspective tune.

--

Series: Community
Title: Intro to Immunology
Series Placement: Season 2
Synopsis:
The study group is meeting over Zoom, but the chemistry is off, with people talking at the same time and Troy and Abed incapable of getting the timing right for their handshake. Meanwhile, Pierce doesn’t understand what Zoom is and thus has not been participating, though he was invited. He runs into Britta on campus, where they’re the only two from the group taking in-person classes (Pierce because he doesn’t think online classes are a real thing, Britta because she’s the worst). She references that the group misses him, which he takes as a cue they’ve secretly been meeting and excluding him and he becomes embittered about that.

Pierce takes up residence in the otherwise unused study room, and on the promise of distributing Hawthorne wipes with which to sanitize, attracts a crew of ne’er-do-wells including Chang, Starburns, and Leonard to join him. They mostly make fun of people walking by wearing masks for buying into the pandemic hoax. Britta sees the group and tells the original study group what’s going on. Jeff declares the online group study isn’t working anyway and it’s time to take their study room. The group is energized. Abed likens it to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine when the Cardassians took back their planet from the Dominion.

The original study group confronts the new unit and after a heated exchange of words, Pierce fakes a heart attack. Leonard says he can’t watch someone else die and Starburns flees because things are getting too real. Pierce sends Chang, specifically, for help. Once the original study group members are the only ones present, Pierce reveals he was faking it and knew his real friends would stick with him. The Dean shows up and reveals a plan he and Annie hatched to install plexiglass dividers in each study room to facilitate continued in-person study.

Bonus: coda: Troy and Abed host their faux morning show via Zoom, interviewing Avery Brooks from Deep Space Nine before he realizes there are no viewers. He leaves. Alexander Siddig signs on late and they carry on with the show without missing a beat.

--

Series: Entourage
Title: Alone Together
Series Placement: Season 2
Synopsis:
Drama is obsessive about keeping the house “hermit crab sealed” (aiming for hermetically, which E gives him a hard time about). Johnny says he’ll whoop him after the pandemic is over, but he’s not touching another human being until that time comes. Vince says Johnny’s overreacting, given their whole plan is to quarantine as a closed community, safe in its isolation.

As the guys, minus Drama, drive around LA for provisions like food, a new plasma, and a high end laser tag kit, they accumulate new women to join them in their bubble, with Vince taking the lead, Turtle announcing new prospects as he sees them, and E cautioning that the more people they invite, the greater the chance someone will already have coronavirus and infect everybody. That is, until he runs into a woman he hooked up the month before and invites her along.

The closed community becomes a full-fledged party at Vinnie Chase’s house that draws media criticism. Ari calls, and Vince thinks he’s going to chastise him for the mass gathering. Ari has different concerns, though, as wildfires are closing in on their location. This news spreads and the party starts dispersing as people flee the area. The episode closes on the core four and their dates flying off in a private flight, New York bound.

--

Series: Modern Family
Title: Getaway
Series Placement: Season Six
Synopsis:
As summer hits, everyone has a combination of cabin fever and sorrow about not getting to see each other after the families have each quarantined in isolation from each other and the rest of the world. Jay has been particularly vigilant about not leaving the house, but finally breaks to say he, Gloria, Manny, and Joe should go to their beach house a half hour away for a getaway. Little does Jay know, Gloria has already been going there to relax weekly, on the premise of going grocery shopping. She really orders everything online, has it delivered to the beach house, and then drives home with it. She forges plans to clean up the patio area where she usually hangs out before Jay sees it.

The Dunphys make plans to go to the house, too, since Jay isn’t leaving the house anyway. Haley has been using the beach house for secret nighttime rendezvous with her new boyfriend and is on a mission to find the bracelet she thinks she left behind on the patio. Meanwhile, Cam and Mitchell plan to go to the beach house, too.

Everyone is in a hurry to get there and get settled in time for a weekly Skype dinner among the three family units (in place of a recurring in-person dinner they would have), and to rearrange furniture and play with lighting in time to not make it obvious on camera where their family is. They all converge on the house in close succession (each park of out of the way so the neighbors won’t see they’re there—Jay because he doesn’t want to interact, the others because they worry the neighbors will tell Jay someone is at the house). After a series of comedic close encounters, with the other families each realizing Jay and Gloria are there, and hiding, the families realize they all made the same choice. All is revealed and they have their family dinner together after all.

--

Series: Glee
Title: Change of Plans
Series Placement: Season 2
Synopsis:
The Glee Club gets thrown for a loop when Regionals get moved to an online format through which teams will participate in an elaborate (and not entirely realistic) live video conferencing interface. At Sue Sylvester’s prodding, the district is also cracking down on social distancing rules. The kids on stage won’t be able to get within six feet of each other and they’re not allowed to have a live audience.

After some impassioned in-fighting, the kids come to a consensus they should scrap their current set and come up with new material. Rachel panics about what this will mean for their staging, but Finn reassures her the choreography will come naturally to them and they’re at their best when they're free of having everything planned out.

Their set leads off with Rachel on the solo for “From A Distance” in the style of Bette Midler. That gives way to a transition to Limp Bizkit’s “Rollin’,” led by Artie in the wheelchair--a song he'd pitched and arranged months earlier and everyone had rejected as being too on the nose, even for them. The limited time to plan makes them go along with it. They close with Nelly Furtado’s “I’m Like a Bird,” which sees half the kids start without microphones. A nervous Emma asks Will what they’re up to as they watch the stream, but he reassures her they know what they’re doing. Kurt has the solo on the first verse and on the chorus lyrics “fly away,” he and everyone else with a mic tosses it through the air across six feet to a partner who catches the mic and to carry on seamlessly. Finn’s got the solo next before Rachel takes them home. Mr. Schuester tears up watching.

The Glee kids win.