Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Social Distance’ On Netflix, A Remotely-Produced Anthology About How Different People Cope In Quarantine

Social Distance is a remote-produced anthology — created by Hilary Weisman Graham, with Jenji Kohan is one of the executive producers — where we see people trying to handle the early days of the coronavirus crisis in funny and dramatic ways. It’s the latest in a wave of remotely-produced shows, a wave that likely has reached its apex, since in-person production has started on shows that haven’t already had their renewal notices reversed (coughGLOWcough). Can Kohan and the other writers and producers take the quarantine show in a new direction?

SOCIAL DISTANCE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A shot of a barbershop. “April 2, 2020.” On a Zoom screen, a man says “I’ve been social distancing for months before this shit blew up.”

The Gist: The first episode is about Ike (Mike Colter), who has been sober for 18 months — the Zoom meeting at the beginning of the episode is an AA meeting — and is holed up in quarantine by himself, because his girlfriend recently broke up with him. It’s been a rough go of it for the barbershop owner; his business is closed, he’s living alone, and he just doesn’t know what to do with himself. He Insta-stalks his ex and sees she’s with someone new; he calls an old friend who talks about all the good times they had when Ike was still drinking. Finally, he calls his sponsor Gene (Steven Weber), who tells Ike to make the most of the time. Ike builds a following by taking Instagram pics of him and his “bae” — his potted fern — which helps him until things come crashing down.

In the second episode, a family does a Zoom funeral for a recently-deceased patriarch, where siblings Miguel (Oscar Nuñez), Reina (Daphne Rubin-Vega) and Santiago (Guillermo Diaz) are at odds until “Uncle” Tony (Miguel Sandoval) speaks. In the third episode, Imani (Danielle Brooks) has to watch her daughter Madison (Isabella Ferreira) on webcams as she putters around their tiny apartment alone. It’s the only way she can watch her as she takes care of Earnestine (Larita Brooks), a paralyzed woman who speaks through a computer; when Earnestine’s poetry professor daughter Marion (Marsha Stephanie Blake) keeps making excuses for not visiting, even when the nursing home Earnestine is in goes on lockdown, an interesting arrangement is made.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Pretty much anything that was remotely-created during this pandemic: Connecting, Love In The Time Of Corona, Isolation Stories, Coastal Elites.

Our Take: Social Distance takes a somewhat different approach than the shows mentioned above does. Like Isolation Stories, each episode features a new set of actors telling a new story. Where Social Distance differs a bit is that it shows all of the tools we use to stay connected; besides the classic Zoom screen, we see people’s Mac desktops and FaceTime. We see social media scrolls. We even see the Wyze phone app where Imani watches her daughter via webcam. It seems minor, but these mockups of people’s screens help shape a full picture of how we are all staying connected these days.

The episodes we watched did fine during the funny parts, not as fine during the serious ones. Like much of what has come out of “these challenging times”, the remotely-produced shows that deal directly with how the pandemic is affecting people, Social Distance seems to struggle when it comes to making that turn, when it’s time to stop laughing and put [waves hand] all this in perspective. Even in the episode with Danielle Brooks, our favorite of the three, had some clunky moments, like when one of Marion’s students starts singing to Madison and, after an argument, Marion finds herself saying the same harsh things to her not-daughter that her mother said to her. It was a bit of a clumsy turn, even if it included a happy ending.

But what we appreciated was the sophisticated nature of the humor we saw in each 16-22-minute episode. In the funeral episode, for instance, there’s a shot right at the very end that ties everything in a bow and shows just how absurd and surreal the times we’re living in really are. T

Fortunately, there aren’t a ton of knowing “remember when we did this?” references, like we’ve seen in other quarantine-themed shows. Yes, we know that the search for toilet paper felt like years ago instead of months, and we’ve laughed out of recognition when we’ve heard those lines in other shows. But it’s also refreshing to not hear those lines, and just have stories about how the humans relate to each other has so utterly changed because of COVID. Let’s hope the rest of the episodes follow suit.

Sex and Skin: Nothing.

Parting Shot: After a relapse that all the world saw on his Instagram, Ike returns to the Zoom AA meeting, and everyone welcomes him back.

Sleeper Star: The fern that Ike puts in his Instagram posts is tough and has a lot of personality, especially when he drunkenly rants at it over steaks.

Most Pilot-y Line: When Ike looks at an old video of him talking to his ex-girlfriend, his voice sounds oddly manic. We get the technical issues involved, but it sounded like a completely different actor than the smooth Mike Colter.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Since Social Distance is an anthology, you can pick and choose which episodes you want to watch. That’s good because, like most anthologies, things are hit-and-miss. But the episodes we saw were funny, avoided some COVID-era cliches, and told heartfelt stories without getting too cloying.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream Social Distance On Netflix