Begin flashback sequence: you’re in your hometown bedroom, surrounded by a chaotic mess of clothes and neglected water cups. You’re comfortably flattened out on your bed, until the cracks of light seeping through your window force you to pull back the covers. The clock reads 12pm: you’ve slept past your Zoom class. With a shrug, you log into your streaming service of choice, crawl back into bed, and let the theme song to your favorite TV show lull you back to sleep — thus beginning the infamous “quaran-summer” of 2020. What was expected to be a three week vacation full of home workouts, bread making, and bullet journaling became a six month marathon of idleness. Many of our quarantine bucket lists ended up collecting dust as we gave into a hedonistic laziness: one that, in this era, heavily consists of media consumption.

If you couldn’t tell, that flashback sequence was a distinct reflection of my own “quaran-summer.” I spent my days — and nights — in a routine cycle of Broad City, Futurama, Community, and so on, ignoring my to-do list of filmography deep-dives & filmmaking ventures. In the spirit of my prolific TV bingeing, I’ve chosen a new name for my experience in quarantine: my own personal “bottle episode.” This refers to the TV industry code for an episode which uses only the bare minimum of resources when it comes to cast, locations, special effects, etc. I clenched tightly onto that to-do list towards the beginning of my bottle episode, more focused on my impostor syndrome than the prospect of actual fulfillment. But here’s the thing about bottle episodes: although they exist out of necessity, they challenge their respective writers to compensate with deep character exploration. I tore up my list after months of letting it shame me. I wanted to make sense of the feelings and habits I’d been viewing as roadblocks; I wanted to make use of my “resources.” Finally voicing these insecurities, I quickly realized I wasn’t alone.

Like myself, Emerson College junior Olivia Cigliano praises TV as a safe haven during her quarantine. “My favorite binge shows during quarantine were Big Little Lies and Normal People. I definitely reverted to my comfort shows too like Gilmore Girls, The Office, and Parks and Recreation, and returned to old favorites like New Girl, Community, Scandal, and Black Mirror (when I could handle it),” she reports. Like Cigliano posits, a balanced mixture of genres makes for a universally ideal quarantine recipe: a recipe for escapism, that is.

So, what is the phenomenon behind this need for escapism? The force that makes even the most menial tasks — e.g., beginning a new TV series instead of rewatching — seem impossible? Like several other large-scale crises in the past, COVID-19 has generated something called collective trauma: trauma experienced on a group level that produces significant changes in dynamic. Responses to collective trauma can include identity crises, individual & collective fear, financial anxiety, and of course, xenophobia, to name a few. Contrary to the “great equalizer” theory of COVID-19, is experienced to different degrees depending on one’s privilege — but speaking broadly, it has created a shared trauma response in the population at large.

One major facet of collective trauma is the insatiable desire for normalcy. Professor Christopher Santos, a screenwriting professor at Emerson College, notes escapism as being deeply tied to the TV medium itself. “In a way I think that comfort viewing and the rewatching of old episodes has helped many people maintain some sense of normalcy [and] nostalgia for an easier or more familiar time than the one we’re living in right now,” says Santos. “It also seems to be a fairly typical viewing response to any hardship — and it seems especially true of comedy. It can provide genuine relief and distraction from anxiety.”

The pandemic doesn’t entail a specific set of obligations (except health regulations) for all of us to follow. It’s not a competition. I’m not as caught up on film studies in the ways I intended, but rather than chastising myself for a lack of discipline, I am choosing to accept my reality. The notion that there is a “right” way to do things during the pandemic stems from the aforementioned “great equalizer” fallacy: it fails to account for individual circumstances. Holding onto something that comforts you in the face of trauma is not a failure, but a method of survival.