We’re in the middle of a global pandemic, and no matter where you live, how much money you
have, no matter your race, age, relationship status: this pandemic is impacting you in some
way. Just like many others, I’ve been contemplating the effects of this deadly infectious virus
and praying I don’t catch it. For the longest time, I only left my apartment to go to the grocery
store. I spent many hours alone, as I live by myself and I’m able to work from home. I’m a single
extrovert who liked her alone time at night after I had spent all day socializing with friends, so I
chose not to have roommates. Enter a pandemic, however, and living alone has backfired. I
am grateful that I don’t have roommates so I don’t have to wonder if they’re telling the truth
that they’re staying safe and clean, but at the beginning of this quarantine I had been greatly
missing human interaction. I turned to streaming services to kill the time and to not think so much
about what was going on just beyond my four walls.
I have always been partial to sitcoms, even from a young age. I grew up in a sheltered home, so
my introduction to situation comedies were classics like The Dick Van Dyke Show, I Love Lucy,
Laverne and Shirley, and racy Taxi when my mom wasn’t in the room.
The Jeffersons, Good Times, The Bob Newhart Show, and The Brady Bunch were on all the time in my childhood home. I learned all I needed to know about television from these and countless other generally
harmless shows that played on network channels. They were formulaic, but still maintained
their funny because of the stars and the chemistry of the casts.
At the beginning of quarantine, I was drawn to ridiculous reality shows that I’d never cared to
watch prior to a pandemic that made me stay in the house for days on end. The start of us
being locked away for what we thought was going to be two weeks, or a month tops, I wanted
to branch out and be adventurous. I tuned into tv shows that everyone was talking about on
social media so I could a part of the larger discussion and include myself in conversation with
others on the internet. However, as the days turned into weeks, and now months, my interests
have shifted to something safer and more familiar. Thankfully, the choices on streaming
services have started to release entire series of my childhood favorites. Maybe I wasn’t the only
one craving nostalgia in such a tumultuous and uncertain time.
Who else is binging Moesha and Sister, Sister? The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air is available to stream
as well as Living Single. So many of the shows I grew up on are so accessible and I’m over the
moon about it. Even if the world isn’t at rest, at least I can be inside my apartment with my
childhood friends on screen.