TV Takes On Pandemic: How Well 14 Shows Incorporated COVID, Ranked

Art has been imitating life an awful lot this fall: No fewer than 14 scripted shows opted to write in the coronavirus pandemic to their new seasons... even as the seasons in question were delayed by the pandemic itself.

The most obvious COVID storylines have popped up on medical dramas like Grey's Anatomy and The Good Doctor, but the pandemic has crossed over to other genres, too. The Conners and Superstore are among the comedies to incorporate the coronavirus and its impact, while many a procedural crime drama — including NCIS: New Orleans and S.W.A.T. — has featured masked, socially distant characters, too.

In the list below, we've ranked TV's efforts to represent the real-life health crisis, based on how interestingly, seamlessly and/or sensitively the coronavirus was written into each show. While some series portrayed the pandemic realistically, others took a more tone-deaf approach — quite literally, when it came to Bull's musical episode.

Note: We did not include shows like NBC's Connecting or Netflix's Social Distance, as those revolve around the coronavirus for their entire seasons.

After you cast your vote in our poll below, keep scrolling to see our ranking of TV's COVID episodes, then hit the comments with your thoughts!

Along with its mothership series, which only acknowledged the pandemic by way of one masked-up scene, FBI: Most Wanted would probably have been better off not incorporating COVID at all. After getting frustrated with his father for being loosey-goosey with the COVID safety precautions, Jess and his colleagues rarely wore masks or stayed particularly far apart during the Season 2 premiere. Plus, the case of the week would have been compelling enough as an examination of class struggle; writing in the pandemic as part of the perps' motivation felt clunky and needless.

GRADE: D

The legal drama's season opener (titled, ahem, "My Corona") took a tongue-in-cheek approach to the strange world we now live in, exaggerating via a dream sequence the extreme, COVID-safe courtroom measures that threatened to castrate Bull as a jury analyst. Meanwhile, the at-times musical dream sequence itself spoke to the anxiety many of us have felt as the quarantine marches on and on... and on. (Minus a letter grade for subjecting us to that satanic CGI baby stand-in.)

GRADE: C-

Few shows this fall have handled the mortality of the pandemic as effectively, as seen through the eyes of overworked coroner Loretta Wade. (Her mission to help a young woman locate her brother's misplaced remains served as a lens for other professionals who deal in death, including doctors and morticians.) That said, the muddling, season-opening murder mystery, which cast aspersion on a humanitarian medical ship that had been distributing subpar PPE, sent an odd message about do-gooders.

GRADE: B-

With Rainbow as a doctor working at a hospital, the ABC comedy had a solid platform from which to address the pandemic: Bow's monologue in the premiere, which dealt with how people weren't taking COVID-19 seriously enough, packed a timely punch. But just a few episodes later, that same Dr. Bow hosted Ruby and Pops' backyard wedding, complete with multiple (!), unmasked (!!), out-of-town (!!!) and elderly (!!!!) guests, and didn't seem too bothered by any of it.

GRADE: B-

The working-class sitcom found humor in the pandemic as it related to the family's never-ending struggle to make ends meet. This, in turn, afforded the series another opportunity to draw on the franchise's considerable history and reopen the old Wellman Plastics plant in its Season 3 premiere.

GRADE: B

While its sister shows, Chicago Fire and Chicago P.D., have acknowledged the pandemic with the occasional masks and mentions of diminished programs/personnel, Med has gone all-in on exploring how the virus has ravaged the healthcare industry. The new season opened with an extensive sequence showcasing the hospital's new protocols, while also introducing a COVID ICU unit. The docs, too, were rocked on a personal level: Dr. Charles was recovering from the virus, Will had thrown himself into premature cohabitation with his girlfriend and April found herself fighting for her COVID patients. But we have to dock some points for the confusing on- and off-mask wearing inside the Emergency Department, which required an explanation.

GRADE: B

Save for some mask-wearing and a racist, anti-Asian incident directed at Tan's mother, the CBS procedural is same as ever — instead choosing to direct its attention to the nation's civil unrest with a season premiere that was set shortly (and ironically-on-purpose) before the death of George Floyd and the protests that followed.

GRADE: B+

While most shows are figuring out how to incorporate COVID into their storylines, South Park essentially incorporated itself into the virus, producing a literal "Pandemic Special" to touch on various aspects of our new normal. The hourlong affair offered a surprisingly mature look at the effects of this quarantine on children's social and emotional wellbeing, which was nice... but it also implied that the pandemic began when one of its characters had sex with a pangolin in China while Mickey Mouse cheered him on. Some things can never be unseen.

GRADE: B+

It was the first medical drama to tackle COVID, and, two weeks later, the first one to pretend that COVID never existed. Tonal whiplash aside, the two-part premiere did a great job reflecting the severity of the coronavirus — a beloved nurse and multiple patients lost their battle with the deadly disease — and the toll it has taken on first responders.

GRADE: B+

As the first broadcast series to do a COVID episode with its remotely produced Season 1 finale, the CBS legal drama has been ahead of the pack in terms of incorporating the coronavirus pandemic into its storytelling. From the finale's Zoom trial amid a backlog of cases to the Season 2 premiere's socially distant courtroom, complete with clear dividers, the show has seamlessly shown the impact of the virus on the criminal justice system and prisons, where Emily's at-risk client tragically contracted and died from COVID.

GRADE: A-

Although the pandemic loomed large over the Grey's Anatomy spinoff's Season 4 premiere, it was treated as a new given, just another challenge, one to which our firefighters rose with their trademark fortitude and good humor. Never did the show neglect to remind viewers that life goes on (Maya and Carina made googly eyes over their masks, and Travis spotted his dad on a gay hookup app) and, sadly, so does death (reeling from her mother's "resurrection," Andy eulogized her father, who you'll recall was killed in the line of duty in Season 3).

GRADE: A

The NBC drama did a nice job of taking Kevin and Kate's birthday trip to the cabin — shown in a flash-forward long before COVID-19 was a grim household name — and weaving the pandemic into it in a believable way. (Yes, we know, no one in Rebecca's walkabout was wearing masks. We'll cut the show a wee bit of slack there.) Since then, we've seen Kate tell Kevin to socially distance, we've seen masks aplenty, and we've heard Randall and Beth discuss how the illness has nearly destroyed her fledgling dance studio: All in all, a reasonable and realistic handling of our current situation.

GRADE: A

In the ABC drama's Season 17 premiere, COVID-19 hit Grey Sloan the way it did every hospital: hard. When we caught up with our doctors in April 2020, they were exhausted, physically and emotionally, and at least one could take it no more. (In the two-parter's final moments, Meredith, who'd later test positive, collapsed, setting the stage for her jaw-dropping "reunion" with late husband Derek.) Thankfully, saving the episodes from being total downers were new flashbacks that were alternately uplifting (DeLuca returned sex trafficking victim Cindy to her family) and hilarious (Jo and Jackson's ill-fated hookup). It was a delicate balance to strike, but the show pulled it off with the precision of... well, a surgeon.

GRADE: A

We never thought we'd want to relive the early days of COVID, but Superstore proved us wrong. The Season 6 premiere delivered belly laughs throughout as it sped through the first few months of the pandemic to show how ill-prepared Cloud 9's essential workers were for the new demands of the job, including the rush of customers desperate to get their paws on toilet paper and hand sanitizer.

GRADE: A+