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The first TV show I comfort-watched during the pandemic was “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.” For a month I spent my evenings watching my program and drinking wine and doing pet-themed jigsaws, which was the only way to stem the panic. I hadn’t seen the beginning of the show in ages, and I kept calling my spouse who hates the entire “Law & Order” franchise into the room to marvel at some little bit of funny dialogue or truly marvelous sleight-of-hand, at which she would usually laugh perfunctorily. But even in her annoyance, she couldn’t take her eyes off Benson (Mariska Hargitay) and Stabler (Christopher Meloni). “They’re really compelling, aren’t they?” she said one day, unprompted, and I nearly upset my thousand-piece puzzle of a dog park.
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, airing in June, not only normalized a “throuple,” with candidate Payton Hobart (Ben Platt) being with both Alice and Astrid, but also abortion. Payton happens to get both pregnant. While Alice keeps her baby to raise with Payton, she supports Astrid getting an abortion in the season finale. It even leads to a discussion about “a path that I want” and doing “whatever you want with your life.”
How poetic!
Roswell, New Mexico, Isobel’s (Lily Cowles), is pregnant with her dead, evil, alien husband s baby. Her fear comes to a head during a female retreat, when Isobel is told to “set herself free” and “throw your [fear] into the fire.” Ultimately, Isobel declares, “I choose to set myself free,” and is later seen swallowing an alien poison to have an abortion.
Could TV writers help curb the pandemic? This group thinks so Anousha Sakoui
Neal Baer has experience changing audiences opinions.
The pediatrician turned TV writer wove public health storylines into shows like “ER” as part of a campaign to popularize the use of designated drivers to reduce drunk driving. Now, he and others in Hollywood have enlisted medical experts to help them convince viewers to mask up and get vaccinated against COVID-19. The aim is to encourage writers and showrunners to address the subject matter in their characters and storylines without hitting viewers over the head with the message. That s what we do as writers, we have our characters persuade each other all the time, Baer said during a workshop for members of the Writers Guild of America on Wednesday.