vox--2020-12-23--The Lost Year: A new dress, new self-acceptance, and a sudden onset of the soul

This is The Lost Year , a series of stories about our lived experiences in 2020 , as told to Vox critic at large Emily VanDerWerff .
Accepting your own trans identity is one of the hardest things any person can do .
But during much of 2020 , I ’ ve been talking to trans people who have found themselves coming to grips with their gender identities for the first time , because quarantine has locked them away with their own thoughts .
One such person is Sophie ( not her real name ) , who contacted me over @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sudden , but actually inevitable , acceptance of her own transness .
We struck up a friendship and have been talking off and on since then , and I ’ ve found her story of how lockdown pushed her to finally confront questions that had been building in her head for a long time incredibly compelling .
Sophie is from the United Kingdom , where on top of the pandemic , the year 2020 has seen an endless parade of anti-trans nonsense , from long bromides issued by J.K. Rowling to a horrific @ @ @ @ @ @ @ difficult for trans children to gain access to necessary medical care .
Sophie continues to thrive amid such dispiriting circumstances , while also speaking about the journey she ’ s on in a way that I found deeply moving .
Here ’ s Sophie ’ s story , as told to me .
Several months before lockdown , I had what at the time I described as a nervous breakdown .
I came out for about three days , then went back in the closet again .
I went out to a gay @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
He could see something was wrong , and I was like , “ I ’ m a man .
Everyone ’ s looking at me like I ’ m a man .
It ’ s all wrong.
” A few days later , I was sitting at home , and something wasn ’ t right .
And I looked down at my very hairy legs and thought , “ Oh , this has to go.
” I jumped in the shower and shaved my legs very quickly , so much so that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ My flatmates pretty much battered my door down , because they thought I had done something terrible .
And I had just done a really bad job shaving my legs !
[ Laughs ] But eventually , I was , like , “ Oh , I had a nervous breakdown .
That was weird.
” I thought , “ We ’ ll get that done , and then I ’ ll set aside a couple days to think about it .
I ’ ll just take a couple days to think about this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it ’ s no big deal.
” And then lockdown happened , and I decided to be scientific about it .
“ Let ’ s just have an experiment here.
” I kept a journal of everything and described how I felt , with the evidence for and the evidence against .
I also shaved more body hair .
Like , “ I ’ m getting hot and sweaty , but it ’ s the summer .
I ’ ll just get rid of [ my body hair ] .
I couldn ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shaved my arms , when that hair came off , I cried in the shower .
I didn ’ t realize how much I had hated that hair being there until it was gone .
I was so relieved .
I decided to order a dress off the internet .
I thought , “ I ’ ll see myself in the dress , and I ’ ll look ridiculous .
It ’ s 18 quid .
Haha , it ’ ll be a funny story.
” I deliberately went for a dress that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , boxy , gray thing .
I tried it on with my back to the mirror , and I turned around ready to laugh and move on with my life .
And as soon as I saw myself , my brain said , “ That ’ s a woman .
She ’ s got very broad shoulders and a lot of muscles .
She ’ s got big eyebrows and beard shadow .
But that is undoubtedly a woman in there.
” I looked in my eyes , and it was very strange @ @ @ @ @ @ @ time .
I had looked in the mirror previously and thought , “ There is a cheeky , handsome guy , and he looks fine.
” But that day , for the first time , I saw myself .
And I knew I was trans .
Holy shit .
I went out in the dress and my mask , and people looked at me like I had some horrible disease .
Some of them had pity in their eyes , and some of them hostility .
The pity was just horrible .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s fucking do it.
” I went to the supermarket in this dress , and I found that my body language automatically changed .
When I was 15 , there was this girl who sat next to me in geography .
The “ other boys ” were always , like , “ She ’ s got great tits , a great ass.
” But I always noticed the way she slightly turned her wrists when she picked something up and the way she arched her neck when she sat down .
I thought @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and I now recognize I wanted to look and be like her .
And when I picked something off a shelf [ at the supermarket ] , I realized I was doing the thing she used to do automatically .
I felt like I had been acting since I was 3 years old , and for the first time , I wasn ’ t .
I was just being natural .
I didn ’ t have to be taught this .
I didn ’ t need to learn this .
I had felt @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Like there is something absent in me , some light that does not turn on that everyone else had .
I used to be obsessed with the image of people finding out they were robots .
I once wrote a poem about a kid who discovers he ’ s a machine .
He learns he was made , and he is property .
They take him away , and they break him down , and they throw him on a scrap heap , and he freezes and dies .
But that day @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was , like , “ Bam , there ’ s the soul.
” It really was like the finger of God had come down to be , like , “ Shit .
Sorry .
I left that bit out.
” Suddenly , memories took on a different texture and made sense .
I started sleeping better .
I was scared , obviously , but I thought , “ Shit .
This is good.
” I would go and work out in the park .
People thought I was a man , but I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ve got a secret .
I ’ ve got a soul now .
No one knows it , but I ’ ve got it .
I found it.
” I knew it was going to be a hard and long road .
Lockdown probably compounded that .
But I knew I was getting out of [ that soulless existence ] .
I thought , “ I don ’ t have to stay here .
I ’ m going to be raptured .
I ’ m going to get out of this .
I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ thing that I don ’ t want to be anymore .
The promised land is not closed off to me .
This is not something I have to see through a window like a child in a Dickensian novel , pressed up against the glass .
This is real .
I can have this if I want to.
” In Britain , legally speaking and medically speaking , you ’ re in a horrible situation .
Trans adults here — we don ’ t have the same legal and bodily autonomy that other @ @ @ @ @ @ @ through menopause and wants hormone replacement therapy , she can get it from a general practitioner .
If I want the same drugs , I have to wait to see a specialist and be diagnosed with a mental illness .
If a cis person in the UK wants to get married , you need some ID .
A cis woman can show her passport , and that ’ s enough .
My new passport says F , but if I want to get married , I need to ask permission from the gender @ @ @ @ @ @ @ recognition certificate .
And it is notoriously difficult to get them to say yes .
Even as an adult , we do not have bodily or legal autonomy in the way that other people do .
When we say we want informed consent [ a system by which trans people can be prescribed hormones by self-identifying as trans ; the United States has an informed consent system ] , it ’ s painted as this radical thing .
But it ’ s what everyone else in Britain already enjoys .
Every time I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ like there ’ s some horrific news on the same day .
I think I came out as trans pretty much the same day as J.K. Rowling published her manifesto .
I got my passport on the same day as the High Court decision to take away puberty blockers from trans kids .
But I ’ m not adrift and alone anymore .
Women have fought for bodily autonomy and legal autonomy for centuries .
And I am not alone in that fight .
I have centuries of feminism to draw on for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have the courage of many , many people , cis and trans , before me .
I have that strength .
I have that at my back .
I couldn ’ t come out to anyone in person , because of Covid-19 .
A lot of it was done by phone and email .
In the UK , you have to get a diagnosis of being mentally ill before you can then get an endocrine appointment .
And in order to be diagnosed with dysphoria , they will ask you , “ Are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I had to tell my family pretty quickly and over the phone , which wasn ’ t easy .
My brothers were cool about it .
But my parents ...
I want every parent to know that if your child comes out as trans , whatever the next word is out of your mouth , they will remember that word for the rest of their life .
Even if you change it .
Even if you go back on it .
I will take to my grave the sound my mother made when @ @ @ @ @ @ @ anguish and disappointment and the way I heard my father in the background saying , “ What ?
!
” And my mom said , “ He thinks he ’ s trans.
” I will never forget that .
It ’ s like pulling teeth with them .
My father wouldn ’ t speak to me for a month .
My mother came down to see me , basically to come down and try to stop me , I think .
I wore the clothes I wanted and the makeup I wanted , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ she said , “ You look weird.
” And she said my voice was the same .
I later discovered my father had come down on that trip , but he had refused to see me .
He was afraid I would answer the door in a dress .
So I practiced my voice a lot , because that ’ s what my mother commented on first .
They came down to see me again , and for the first 10 minutes , it was a little awkward .
But they got used @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cogent , and I made us all lunch , and we could have a conversation .
Everyone saw I wasn ’ t insane .
It ’ s two steps forward , one step back with them .
When they see me , they ’ re reassured .
But then they go home again , and a week later , it ’ s back to square one .
We ’ re an English family .
You can ’ t talk about this stuff in my family .
I have a trans cousin , who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , “ Uncle John ’ s nephew .
Sorry .
Niece.
” She ’ s spoken of with this weird shame .
Our family history goes back centuries .
And of the three “ boys , ” I was chosen to carry on the name of my father and grandfather , the name that has been in my family for almost 500 years .
They really are hung up on the name .
I ’ m going to feel the pressure of the family history come Christmas .
There hasn ’ t been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for centuries who isn ’ t spoken about in shameful terms .
I will be having Christmas dinner underneath an enormous painting of [ a renowned ancestor ] .
That ’ s the legacy , and I can say , “ Actually , there is a queer version of this.
” I ’ m very much my parents ’ daughter .
And I ’ m proud of the ways I ’ m like them .
They have interpreted it as a rejection , but it ’ s not for me .
It ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
A few days ago , Sophie reached out to me again to say that she is now at her parents ’ house for Christmas , and it ’ s going well .
“ My dad used my name for the first time yesterday !
” she said .
“ He seems to save it for special occasions , when he really wants to make me feel welcome , and the rest of the time , him and my mum dance around using any name of gendered language at all .
But they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Falling for your mailman in lockdown ( but not getting the happy ending you wanted )

This is The Lost Year, a series of stories about our lived experiences in 2020, as told to Vox critic at large Emily VanDerWerff.
Accepting your own trans identity is one of the hardest things any person can do. But during much of 2020, I’ve been talking to trans people who have found themselves coming to grips with their gender identities for the first time, because quarantine has locked them away with their own thoughts.
One such person is Sophie (not her real name), who contacted me over the summer to talk about her seemingly sudden, but actually inevitable, acceptance of her own transness. We struck up a friendship and have been talking off and on since then, and I’ve found her story of how lockdown pushed her to finally confront questions that had been building in her head for a long time incredibly compelling.
Sophie is from the United Kingdom, where on top of the pandemic, the year 2020 has seen an endless parade of anti-trans nonsense, from long bromides issued by J.K. Rowling to a horrific High Court decision that makes it absurdly difficult for trans children to gain access to necessary medical care. Sophie continues to thrive amid such dispiriting circumstances, while also speaking about the journey she’s on in a way that I found deeply moving.
Here’s Sophie’s story, as told to me.
Several months before lockdown, I had what at the time I described as a nervous breakdown. I came out for about three days, then went back in the closet again. I went out to a gay club at 1 am with my ex-boyfriend. He could see something was wrong, and I was like, “I’m a man. Everyone’s looking at me like I’m a man. It’s all wrong.”
A few days later, I was sitting at home, and something wasn’t right. And I looked down at my very hairy legs and thought, “Oh, this has to go.” I jumped in the shower and shaved my legs very quickly, so much so that the bathroom was covered in blood. My flatmates pretty much battered my door down, because they thought I had done something terrible. And I had just done a really bad job shaving my legs! [Laughs]
But eventually, I was, like, “Oh, I had a nervous breakdown. That was weird.”
I thought, “We’ll get that done, and then I’ll set aside a couple days to think about it. I’ll just take a couple days to think about this gender thing. I’m sure it’s no big deal.” And then lockdown happened, and I decided to be scientific about it. “Let’s just have an experiment here.” I kept a journal of everything and described how I felt, with the evidence for and the evidence against.
I also shaved more body hair. Like, “I’m getting hot and sweaty, but it’s the summer. I’ll just get rid of [my body hair]. I couldn’t understand why, but when I shaved my arms, when that hair came off, I cried in the shower. I didn’t realize how much I had hated that hair being there until it was gone. I was so relieved.
I decided to order a dress off the internet. I thought, “I’ll see myself in the dress, and I’ll look ridiculous. It’s 18 quid. Haha, it’ll be a funny story.” I deliberately went for a dress that was horrible. It was a big, boxy, gray thing. I tried it on with my back to the mirror, and I turned around ready to laugh and move on with my life. And as soon as I saw myself, my brain said, “That’s a woman. She’s got very broad shoulders and a lot of muscles. She’s got big eyebrows and beard shadow. But that is undoubtedly a woman in there.” I looked in my eyes, and it was very strange. I saw myself for the first time. I had looked in the mirror previously and thought, “There is a cheeky, handsome guy, and he looks fine.” But that day, for the first time, I saw myself. And I knew I was trans. Holy shit.
I went out in the dress and my mask, and people looked at me like I had some horrible disease. Some of them had pity in their eyes, and some of them hostility. The pity was just horrible. But I was like, “Let’s fucking do it.” I went to the supermarket in this dress, and I found that my body language automatically changed.
When I was 15, there was this girl who sat next to me in geography. The “other boys” were always, like, “She’s got great tits, a great ass.” But I always noticed the way she slightly turned her wrists when she picked something up and the way she arched her neck when she sat down. I thought I had a crush on her, and I now recognize I wanted to look and be like her. And when I picked something off a shelf [at the supermarket], I realized I was doing the thing she used to do automatically. I felt like I had been acting since I was 3 years old, and for the first time, I wasn’t. I was just being natural. I didn’t have to be taught this. I didn’t need to learn this.
I had felt for years that I was somehow soulless. Like there is something absent in me, some light that does not turn on that everyone else had. I used to be obsessed with the image of people finding out they were robots. I once wrote a poem about a kid who discovers he’s a machine. He learns he was made, and he is property. They take him away, and they break him down, and they throw him on a scrap heap, and he freezes and dies.
But that day I looked in the mirror, it was, like, “Bam, there’s the soul.” It really was like the finger of God had come down to be, like, “Shit. Sorry. I left that bit out.” Suddenly, memories took on a different texture and made sense. I started sleeping better. I was scared, obviously, but I thought, “Shit. This is good.” I would go and work out in the park. People thought I was a man, but I was, like, “I’ve got a secret. I’ve got a soul now. No one knows it, but I’ve got it. I found it.”
I knew it was going to be a hard and long road. Lockdown probably compounded that. But I knew I was getting out of [that soulless existence]. I thought, “I don’t have to stay here. I’m going to be raptured. I’m going to get out of this. I don’t have to be this thing that I don’t want to be anymore. The promised land is not closed off to me. This is not something I have to see through a window like a child in a Dickensian novel, pressed up against the glass. This is real. I can have this if I want to.”
In Britain, legally speaking and medically speaking, you’re in a horrible situation. Trans adults here — we don’t have the same legal and bodily autonomy that other people do. If a woman goes through menopause and wants hormone replacement therapy, she can get it from a general practitioner. If I want the same drugs, I have to wait to see a specialist and be diagnosed with a mental illness. If a cis person in the UK wants to get married, you need some ID. A cis woman can show her passport, and that’s enough. My new passport says F, but if I want to get married, I need to ask permission from the gender recognition panel to give me a gender recognition certificate. And it is notoriously difficult to get them to say yes.
Even as an adult, we do not have bodily or legal autonomy in the way that other people do. When we say we want informed consent [a system by which trans people can be prescribed hormones by self-identifying as trans; the United States has an informed consent system], it’s painted as this radical thing. But it’s what everyone else in Britain already enjoys.
Every time I reach a transition milestone, it seems like there’s some horrific news on the same day. I think I came out as trans pretty much the same day as J.K. Rowling published her manifesto. I got my passport on the same day as the High Court decision to take away puberty blockers from trans kids. But I’m not adrift and alone anymore. Women have fought for bodily autonomy and legal autonomy for centuries. And I am not alone in that fight. I have centuries of feminism to draw on for the fight that lies ahead. I have the courage of many, many people, cis and trans, before me. I have that strength. I have that at my back.
I couldn’t come out to anyone in person, because of Covid-19. A lot of it was done by phone and email. In the UK, you have to get a diagnosis of being mentally ill before you can then get an endocrine appointment. And in order to be diagnosed with dysphoria, they will ask you, “Are you out to anyone?” So I had to tell my family pretty quickly and over the phone, which wasn’t easy. My brothers were cool about it. But my parents ...
I want every parent to know that if your child comes out as trans, whatever the next word is out of your mouth, they will remember that word for the rest of their life. Even if you change it. Even if you go back on it. I will take to my grave the sound my mother made when I told her. The groan of anguish and disappointment and the way I heard my father in the background saying, “What?!” And my mom said, “He thinks he’s trans.” I will never forget that.
It’s like pulling teeth with them. My father wouldn’t speak to me for a month. My mother came down to see me, basically to come down and try to stop me, I think. I wore the clothes I wanted and the makeup I wanted, and I opened the door, and she said, “You look weird.” And she said my voice was the same. I later discovered my father had come down on that trip, but he had refused to see me. He was afraid I would answer the door in a dress.
So I practiced my voice a lot, because that’s what my mother commented on first. They came down to see me again, and for the first 10 minutes, it was a little awkward. But they got used to it after they saw I was cogent, and I made us all lunch, and we could have a conversation. Everyone saw I wasn’t insane. It’s two steps forward, one step back with them. When they see me, they’re reassured. But then they go home again, and a week later, it’s back to square one.
We’re an English family. You can’t talk about this stuff in my family. I have a trans cousin, who is referred to obliquely as, like, “Uncle Fred’s nephew. Sorry. Niece.” She’s spoken of with this weird shame. I’m going to feel the pressure come Christmas. There’s never been an openly queer person in my family who isn’t spoken about in shameful terms. I’m very much my parents’ daughter. And I’m proud of the ways I’m like them. They have interpreted it as a rejection, but it’s not for me. It’s coming home for the first time.
A few days ago, Sophie reached out to me again to say that she is now at her parents’ house for Christmas, and it’s going well. “My dad used my name for the first time yesterday!” she said. “He seems to save it for special occasions, when he really wants to make me feel welcome, and the rest of the time, him and my mum dance around using any name of gendered language at all. But they are really trying!”
Tomorrow: Falling for your mailman in lockdown (but not getting the happy ending you wanted)


vox--2020-12-23--“Life is too short”: 5 people who made bold decisions during the pandemic

It happened late one night , about three months into the pandemic .
I saw an alert in Facebook Messenger from a person I didn ’ t know .
“ Hi , Dori .
I am from Dublin , Ireland .
I believe we have the same father.
” My stomach dropped .
I sat up .
My free hand slapped my husband ’ s chest as he dozed off next to me .
“ Someone is writing me on Facebook to tell me they ’ re my brother , ” I told him .
The man in the message @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shock me and understood if I didn ’ t want to connect .
But for him , “ it was the right thing to do .
Life is too short not to make contact with you.
” With everything going on , this was just too much .
There was a pandemic raging .
My husband was furloughed .
I had been working from home providing psychotherapy to patients on Zoom , struggling with compassion fatigue .
My children were homeschooled and grieving their “ normal lives.
” Still , my husband convinced @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be a good thing .
I have been estranged from my father , who is originally from Ireland , for over 20 years due to his alcoholism .
He and my mother , a Jewish girl from Teaneck , New Jersey , met young and married against their parents ’ wishes .
When their whirlwind romance fell apart , my dad returned to Dublin and had another child .
A few years later , he came back to the US , and to my mother , and they had me .
But he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ my half-brother , now writing to me on social media .
Raised as an only child , I always wished I had a sibling .
I was lonely as a kid and I ’ m grateful my three young daughters have each other in the pandemic .
But before I became attached to the idea of a brother , I needed evidence .
I told him I wanted to take a DNA test and he agreed .
In the meantime , we emailed and sent photos and learned we had a few things @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was deep , so was our love for travel , which had frustratingly been put on hold due to Covid-19 .
Then in August , the test came back , stating we shared 24.6 percent of the same DNA , an accurate number for the company to name him as my half-brother in the relative finder feature .
We recently had our first video chat , talking for over two hours .
He and his wife are easy-going , funny , and kind .
They are reassuringly normal .
He recently asked me @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” to ask me for my home address since he and his wife would like to add us to their Christmas card list .
I happily said yes .
Covid-19 has forced many of us to stay still .
For some , fears of mortality and uncertainty can be immobilizing ; it can be easy to fall into despair or avoidance , especially when you feel cut off from the world as you once knew it .
But it also makes sense that some people would reevaluate their life ’ s path , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ life-changing decisions .
My half-brother chose to contact me .
But I also chose to engage with him and reconnect with a part of myself I had written off 20 years ago .
The pandemic reminds me that life is precious .
Life is surprising .
Life can change quickly .
I spoke with four other people who have also made bold decisions in the pandemic .
Most of those choices have come out of love — of others , of learning to love themselves .
As one woman told me , nine @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ we need to be human , to lead from the heart and prioritize love and joy and humanity , especially now in this moment , with so much loss and devastation.
” Our conversations have been lightly edited and condensed .
The couple who got married after six months of dating For years , like everyone else , I ’ d been internet dating .
I was also doing a lot of hiking and events on Meetup to try and meet women there too .
Last year , after Thanksgiving , I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the same time , I saw a woman on Meetup who was pretty and I sent her a message .
In it , I wrote her a joke : “ How many tickles does it take to make an octopus laugh ?
Tentacles.
” She loved it and gave me her number .
We texted a little bit , so I invited her on the hike .
When we met there , I found out she was from Japan and had been working here on a visa .
She also lived an hour @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dating sites , not Meetup , there are so many filters you add , especially when you live in LA .
Dating someone who lives an hour away ?
Forget it .
Someone who is only here temporarily ?
No way .
We started dating , even though her visa was up in July .
In February , we started to talk about where the relationship could go if she was leaving in a few months .
The idea of marriage had come up , but I had only been dating her for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t want to get married right then .
Then the pandemic happened .
I told her she should lock-down with me in my apartment because I was afraid we wouldn ’ t be able to get to one another .
At that point , we didn ’ t know how bad the pandemic would really be .
But after a month of living together and working from home together , I told her she should stop paying rent on her apartment and just live with me full-time .
I knew I wanted @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with first .
What we were doing was part of the path to marriage , eventually , but there was a timer on it with us .
In normal times , I probably wouldn ’ t have done all of this so fast .
But she is awesome .
We get along so well and are a great match .
We were in love in this crazy situation , and just thinking , “ What is waiting going to do ?
” We got married on May 23 .
We went to this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ street from me .
I ’ ve driven by it a hundred times before and never thought anything of it .
It was just me and her and Joshua , the officiant .
The pandemic for me is like sink or swim .
It ’ s time to make serious decisions .
The woman who started recovery for her eating disorder When restaurants shut down in March , my first thought was , “ Oh , thank god , now I don ’ t have to go out to dinner with my friends @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to eat in front of people .
I can lie about what I ’ m having to eat because they ’ re not going to be with me.
” And I was excited .
I knew I had these thoughts in my head since lockdown started , but I didn ’ t realize I was acting on them until two months later .
I couldn ’ t concentrate at work , I was messing up things that I ’ m usually good at .
That ’ s when my eating disorder , which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ into high gear .
In July , some people I know had tragic things happen to them .
Thinking about that I realized , “ I ’ m killing myself right now .
What am I doing ?
” I have all these people I need to be safe and strong for , and I can ’ t do that when I ’ m starving myself to death .
I told one of my friends — saying it out loud for the first time in my entire life — “ I have an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it.
” With the support of my boss , I took a leave of absence and entered a four-week intensive outpatient program at a recovery center .
Individual and group therapy sessions were from 8 am to 2 pm , Monday through Friday , and all on Zoom .
I have since returned to work and I now go to therapy twice a week and see a nutritionist once a week .
I also see my primary care doctor once every other month for weigh-ins because I threw my scale away .
That @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it .
I ’ m very nervous when I think about another lockdown happening .
I know my eating disorder is my response to stress and one of the only coping mechanisms I ’ ve had .
I ’ ve had days where I ’ ve had breakfast and lunch and my two snacks and no problems , and then a dinner that I have had before and I am comfortable with , and I go to eat it and I cry and I can ’ t do it .
So I go @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a friend .
I figure out how to get through it .
There are things that I want in the future , authenticity being one of them .
I couldn ’ t live the way I was before .
I never could truly let anyone in .
It ’ s a lot of hard work .
I ’ m not always happy I made this choice , but I don ’ t regret it .
The woman who decided to do fertility treatments after loss When we had some trouble conceiving our first @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a doctor for fertility treatments .
They followed my cycle , gave me a shot , and I got pregnant .
We just needed a little help .
It wasn ’ t until last year that we decided to try to have a second child .
I got pregnant easily — I was 40 and really proud of my body .
But sadly , I lost that baby .
My ob-gyn said to try again for a few months and if I didn ’ t get pregnant , then we might want to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ work proved my egg quality was starting to decline , my doctor told me “ this isn ’ t a red light , but it ’ s a yellow light.
” That ’ s when I went to a fertility doctor .
But then I got pregnant again on my own .
It was a chemical pregnancy and I lost it early on .
I was devastated .
I just wanted to hide from the world .
I needed a break .
Three months later , in February , we did an IUI @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t work .
Every month you try to get pregnant and don ’ t , it feels like another loss .
It ’ s a roller coaster of emotions , overwhelmingly exhausting , both physically and emotionally .
Then Covid happened , and it just all felt like too much .
When the lockdown started , the clinic stayed open ; reproductive health care was considered essential by the governor of New Jersey .
There was a moment when I thought , “ Is this the worst idea ever ?
” I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ so adding the multiple clinic appointments felt like excessive exposure .
But I didn ’ t have time to wait until after the pandemic .
Doing fertility treatments in this time was so out of my comfort zone , but my egg quality was only getting worse .
My fertility window was so small , it even felt like it had closed .
I ’ m sure many people are putting their family-building on hold , but the clinic waiting room was always filled with socially distanced patients — clearly there were many @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fear of Covid stop us from our desire to be pregnant .
Perhaps , Covid is pushing us to do the treatments sooner than later .
I got pregnant in June .
I didn ’ t tell anyone I was pregnant until I was 20 weeks because I was so nervous about experiencing another miscarriage .
I was showing , but nobody saw me , so it was easy to hide .
Now that people know , I make sure to note that this is not a pandemic pregnancy .
There are couples @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , for sure .
But we are not one of them .
This pregnancy happened during the pandemic but not because of it .
This was no accident .
The pandemic pushed me to get pregnant in the nick of time .
The woman who opened herself up to love — and her sexuality Love was the furthest thing from my mind .
I work in a leadership position at a domestic violence agency .
I was overwhelmed with managing coworkers and hundreds of clients in their isolation .
But while working from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ experiences with a person I had worked with for over a year and a half .
We started forming a connection as friends through Zoom and text .
We shared experiences that we never had with others .
Just so you know , I don ’ t become friends with people I work with .
I have my professional universe , which is very contained , and my personal universe stays private from that .
I always felt the need to keep walls and boundaries up in order to be considered professional , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ role .
Coworkers knew I have kids , and that ’ s pretty much it .
None knew any aspects of my identity .
But nine months of Covid has taught me that life needs to be a whole other way .
We need to be human , to lead from the heart and prioritize love and joy and humanity , especially now in this moment , with so much loss and devastation .
In doing so , I started to fall in love with this person .
Even though we had known @ @ @ @ @ @ @ half and worked in the same space every day , we fell in love before we had ever touched .
The first time we hugged each other was a post-quarantine embrace .
I really do credit the way we had to communicate with fostering our connection .
I do not think there would have been any way we would have come together if we did not have the space and distance that we were gifted .
There was a moment when we both knew we had feelings for the other .
They asked @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and have a beer with me in my backyard ?
I spent four days thinking about it .
Wrestling with my established barriers , my life expectations , my role at work , and knowing that accepting that invitation would mean surrendering .
It felt like a crossroads of listening to my heart or staying closed .
I actually don ’ t think there ’ s any other way to be right now than to lead with your heart .
I ’ m not out about my sexuality at work .
I actually @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sexuality with labels ever .
I have always loved who I love regardless of gender , but I never wanted to put myself in any box .
My sexuality has always been a spectrum .
The person that I love is queer and trans and is out at work , so by being in a relationship with them , I would need to share aspects of myself that I had guarded .
This is the first time in my life I have ever had to put a label on my identity since we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about our relationship .
Many just assumed I was straight .
I ’ m trusting this journey of getting to know myself through love .
There is still love in this world .
Dori Kavanagh is a social worker and psychotherapist .
Her practice focuses on adoption , infertility , and complex family building .
She lives in New Jersey with her husband , their three daughters , and several rescued pets .

It happened late one night, about three months into the pandemic. I saw an alert in Facebook Messenger from a person I didn’t know. “Hi, Dori. I am from Dublin, Ireland. I believe we have the same father.”
My stomach dropped. I sat up. My free hand slapped my husband’s chest as he dozed off next to me. “Someone is writing me on Facebook to tell me they’re my brother,” I told him. The man in the message said he wasn’t trying to shock me and understood if I didn’t want to connect. But for him, “it was the right thing to do. Life is too short not to make contact with you.”
With everything going on, this was just too much. There was a pandemic raging. My husband was furloughed. I had been working from home providing psychotherapy to patients on Zoom, struggling with compassion fatigue. My children were homeschooled and grieving their “normal lives.” Still, my husband convinced me that responding to this stranger could be a good thing.
I have been estranged from my father, who is originally from Ireland, for over 20 years due to his alcoholism. He and my mother, a Jewish girl from Teaneck, New Jersey, met young and married against their parents’ wishes. When their whirlwind romance fell apart, my dad returned to Dublin and had another child. A few years later, he came back to the US, and to my mother, and they had me. But he never told us about his son — my half-brother, now writing to me on social media.
Raised as an only child, I always wished I had a sibling. I was lonely as a kid and I’m grateful my three young daughters have each other in the pandemic. But before I became attached to the idea of a brother, I needed evidence.
I told him I wanted to take a DNA test and he agreed. In the meantime, we emailed and sent photos and learned we had a few things in common: Our love for animals was deep, so was our love for travel, which had frustratingly been put on hold due to Covid-19. Then in August, the test came back, stating we shared 24.6 percent of the same DNA, an accurate number for the company to name him as my half-brother in the relative finder feature.
We recently had our first video chat, talking for over two hours. He and his wife are easy-going, funny, and kind. They are reassuringly normal. He recently asked me if he “could be so bold” to ask me for my home address since he and his wife would like to add us to their Christmas card list. I happily said yes.
Covid-19 has forced many of us to stay still. For some, fears of mortality and uncertainty can be immobilizing; it can be easy to fall into despair or avoidance, especially when you feel cut off from the world as you once knew it. But it also makes sense that some people would reevaluate their life’s path, act on their instincts, and make life-changing decisions. My half-brother chose to contact me. But I also chose to engage with him and reconnect with a part of myself I had written off 20 years ago. The pandemic reminds me that life is precious. Life is surprising. Life can change quickly.
I spoke with four other people who have also made bold decisions in the pandemic. Most of those choices have come out of love — of others, of learning to love themselves. As one woman told me, nine months of Covid-19 has taught her that “we need to be human, to lead from the heart and prioritize love and joy and humanity, especially now in this moment, with so much loss and devastation.”
Our conversations have been lightly edited and condensed.
The couple who got married after six months of dating
Jason, Los Angeles
For years, like everyone else, I’d been internet dating. I was also doing a lot of hiking and events on Meetup to try and meet women there too.
Last year, after Thanksgiving, I signed up for a hike. Around the same time, I saw a woman on Meetup who was pretty and I sent her a message. In it, I wrote her a joke: “How many tickles does it take to make an octopus laugh? Tentacles.” She loved it and gave me her number.
We texted a little bit, so I invited her on the hike. When we met there, I found out she was from Japan and had been working here on a visa. She also lived an hour away in Long Beach. On traditional dating sites, not Meetup, there are so many filters you add, especially when you live in LA. Dating someone who lives an hour away? Forget it. Someone who is only here temporarily? No way.
We started dating, even though her visa was up in July. In February, we started to talk about where the relationship could go if she was leaving in a few months. The idea of marriage had come up, but I had only been dating her for a few months and knew I didn’t want to get married right then. Then the pandemic happened.
I told her she should lock-down with me in my apartment because I was afraid we wouldn’t be able to get to one another. At that point, we didn’t know how bad the pandemic would really be. But after a month of living together and working from home together, I told her she should stop paying rent on her apartment and just live with me full-time.
I knew I wanted to marry someone that I had lived with first. What we were doing was part of the path to marriage, eventually, but there was a timer on it with us. In normal times, I probably wouldn’t have done all of this so fast. But she is awesome. We get along so well and are a great match. We were in love in this crazy situation, and just thinking, “What is waiting going to do?”
We got married on May 23. We went to this place called Same Day Marriage down the street from me. I’ve driven by it a hundred times before and never thought anything of it. It was just me and her and Joshua, the officiant.
The pandemic for me is like sink or swim. It’s time to make serious decisions.
The woman who started recovery for her eating disorder
Paige, Queens, New York
When restaurants shut down in March, my first thought was, “Oh, thank god, now I don’t have to go out to dinner with my friends anymore. I don’t have to eat in front of people. I can lie about what I’m having to eat because they’re not going to be with me.” And I was excited.
I knew I had these thoughts in my head since lockdown started, but I didn’t realize I was acting on them until two months later. I couldn’t concentrate at work, I was messing up things that I’m usually good at. That’s when my eating disorder, which has always been there, really kicked into high gear.
In July, some people I know had tragic things happen to them. Thinking about that I realized, “I’m killing myself right now. What am I doing?” I have all these people I need to be safe and strong for, and I can’t do that when I’m starving myself to death. I told one of my friends — saying it out loud for the first time in my entire life — “I have an eating disorder and I need help with it.”
With the support of my boss, I took a leave of absence and entered a four-week intensive outpatient program at a recovery center. Individual and group therapy sessions were from 8 am to 2 pm, Monday through Friday, and all on Zoom. I have since returned to work and I now go to therapy twice a week and see a nutritionist once a week. I also see my primary care doctor once every other month for weigh-ins because I threw my scale away. That was really hard, but I did it.
I’m very nervous when I think about another lockdown happening. I know my eating disorder is my response to stress and one of the only coping mechanisms I’ve had. I’ve had days where I’ve had breakfast and lunch and my two snacks and no problems, and then a dinner that I have had before and I am comfortable with, and I go to eat it and I cry and I can’t do it. So I go out for a walk or I call a friend. I figure out how to get through it.
There are things that I want in the future, authenticity being one of them. I couldn’t live the way I was before. I never could truly let anyone in. It’s a lot of hard work. I’m not always happy I made this choice, but I don’t regret it.
The woman who decided to do fertility treatments after loss
Jessica, New Jersey
When we had some trouble conceiving our first daughter seven years ago, we saw a doctor for fertility treatments. They followed my cycle, gave me a shot, and I got pregnant. We just needed a little help.
It wasn’t until last year that we decided to try to have a second child. I got pregnant easily — I was 40 and really proud of my body. But sadly, I lost that baby.
My ob-gyn said to try again for a few months and if I didn’t get pregnant, then we might want to consider fertility treatments. When my blood work proved my egg quality was starting to decline, my doctor told me “this isn’t a red light, but it’s a yellow light.” That’s when I went to a fertility doctor.
But then I got pregnant again on my own. It was a chemical pregnancy and I lost it early on. I was devastated. I just wanted to hide from the world. I needed a break.
Three months later, in February, we did an IUI cycle at the clinic. It didn’t work. Every month you try to get pregnant and don’t, it feels like another loss. It’s a roller coaster of emotions, overwhelmingly exhausting, both physically and emotionally. Then Covid happened, and it just all felt like too much.
When the lockdown started, the clinic stayed open; reproductive health care was considered essential by the governor of New Jersey. There was a moment when I thought, “Is this the worst idea ever?” I was anxious just leaving the house, so adding the multiple clinic appointments felt like excessive exposure. But I didn’t have time to wait until after the pandemic. Doing fertility treatments in this time was so out of my comfort zone, but my egg quality was only getting worse. My fertility window was so small, it even felt like it had closed.
I’m sure many people are putting their family-building on hold, but the clinic waiting room was always filled with socially distanced patients — clearly there were many women like me, not letting the fear of Covid stop us from our desire to be pregnant. Perhaps, Covid is pushing us to do the treatments sooner than later.
I got pregnant in June. I didn’t tell anyone I was pregnant until I was 20 weeks because I was so nervous about experiencing another miscarriage. I was showing, but nobody saw me, so it was easy to hide.
Now that people know, I make sure to note that this is not a pandemic pregnancy. There are couples who were bored and accidentally got pregnant, for sure. But we are not one of them. This pregnancy happened during the pandemic but not because of it. This was no accident. The pandemic pushed me to get pregnant in the nick of time.
The woman who opened herself up to love — and her sexuality
Annie, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Love was the furthest thing from my mind. I work in a leadership position at a domestic violence agency. I was overwhelmed with managing coworkers and hundreds of clients in their isolation.
But while working from home, I started sharing stories and experiences with a person I had worked with for over a year and a half. We started forming a connection as friends through Zoom and text. We shared experiences that we never had with others.
Just so you know, I don’t become friends with people I work with. I have my professional universe, which is very contained, and my personal universe stays private from that. I always felt the need to keep walls and boundaries up in order to be considered professional, especially as a woman in a leadership role. Coworkers knew I have kids, and that’s pretty much it. None knew any aspects of my identity.
But nine months of Covid has taught me that life needs to be a whole other way. We need to be human, to lead from the heart and prioritize love and joy and humanity, especially now in this moment, with so much loss and devastation. In doing so, I started to fall in love with this person.
Even though we had known each other for a year and a half and worked in the same space every day, we fell in love before we had ever touched. The first time we hugged each other was a post-quarantine embrace. I really do credit the way we had to communicate with fostering our connection. I do not think there would have been any way we would have come together if we did not have the space and distance that we were gifted.
There was a moment when we both knew we had feelings for the other. They asked me, do you want to come and have a beer with me in my backyard? I spent four days thinking about it. Wrestling with my established barriers, my life expectations, my role at work, and knowing that accepting that invitation would mean surrendering. It felt like a crossroads of listening to my heart or staying closed. I actually don’t think there’s any other way to be right now than to lead with your heart.
I’m not out about my sexuality at work. I actually haven’t been out about my sexuality with labels ever. I have always loved who I love regardless of gender, but I never wanted to put myself in any box. My sexuality has always been a spectrum. The person that I love is queer and trans and is out at work, so by being in a relationship with them, I would need to share aspects of myself that I had guarded. This is the first time in my life I have ever had to put a label on my identity since we decided to tell coworkers and board members about our relationship. Many just assumed I was straight. I’m trusting this journey of getting to know myself through love. There is still love in this world.
Dori Kavanagh is a social worker and psychotherapist. Her practice focuses on adoption, infertility, and complex family building. She lives in New Jersey with her husband, their three daughters, and several rescued pets.


vox--2020-12-23--Drive-ins were huge in 2020. But can they work for live music?

The only concert I actually got to see in person this year was sold out .
But a sold-out show in a parking lot filled with cars is a much different scene than a typical sold-out indoor or outdoor venue show .
Especially when that show is a drive-in concert held in the middle of a pandemic .
In October , I watched the cult-favorite heavy metal group GWAR perform live in the parking lot of the Diamond , a baseball stadium in Richmond , Virginia .
GWAR is beloved by their fans for their over-the-top concerts , at which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ skits about having sex with babies in between performing singalong anthems like “ Fuck This Place.
” I ’ d never seen the band before ; scatological humor and thrashcore aren ’ t really my thing !
I don ’ t think I ever expected to find myself here — seeing a band known for spraying fake human ( or alien ) blood on the audience , on a pitched-up stage atop concrete , amid honking car horns and a backdrop of bleachers and a giant scoreboard .
Seeing a show in a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dream , one that will hopefully be viable again soon .
But in 2020 , a drive-in show like the one I ended up at was one of my only options .
Grimacing at the teeny stage six rows ahead of us , I surveyed the crowd .
Half of the people in attendance stayed in their cars ; the other half stood by their bumpers or sat in the bed of their pickup trucks or set up chairs right next to their cars .
I chose to stand in front of our @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were great for viewing purposes — I squinted , I stood on my tiptoes , and I still could hardly make out any of the band members ’ snarling faces .
That ’ s one of the most disappointing parts of the drive-in experience : There is only so much one can do to make it easier to see the stage when you ’ re trapped in the small radius around your car .
And compounding the vision difficulties was another element that can ’ t be changed : the weather .
Many @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ rain or shine , ” but it ’ s obvious that they ’ re much more enjoyable if it ’ s not raining .
At the GWAR show , it was raining badly enough to discourage many drivers from stepping out of the car , or for them to only do so with clear annoyance .
It was a thoroughly unpleasant scene for those of us with frizzy hair and glasses that are already prone to fogging up .
( A face mask only speeds up that process . )
I spoke @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for the band to go on , committing some of my thoughts to memory .
“ I ’ m always a pessimist , ” I said , “ so maybe it ’ s not gon na be that bad .
But my glasses are fogging up , and the windshield is very wet , so.
” And by the end of the show , my glasses were no clearer , and the windshield was still full of raindrops .
2020 hit the live music industry hard .
With restrictions on indoor and outdoor @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mention quarantine and lockdown orders due to the relentless unpredictability of the Covid-19 pandemic — attending concerts was nigh impossible this year .
Touring acts canceled their slate of shows for the foreseeable future .
Promoters rescheduled musical festival dates for later in the year , then postponed them indefinitely or canceled them outright .
And any act that dared flout social distancing guidelines to put on a show was quickly admonished for exposing their audiences to the coronavirus .
Instead , artists were relegated to streaming platforms like Instagram , Twitch , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shows .
Meanwhile , labels , venues , and festival promoters tinkered with paid streams of live music performed in empty auditoriums .
Then , several months after most of the country shut down , as various re-openings began , artists and promoters hit on at least one viable alternative : the drive-in concert .
Drive-in entertainment thrived in 2020 .
Drive-in movies , in particular , went from a fun summertime activity to the only way for many Americans in cities where theaters remained closed to see a movie , new or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this year .
Even people in places like New York City , an urban area not known for having much parking space , found ways to get cars to less dense parts of the city and see a film .
And if people were game to watch movies from the car , why not try that approach for concerts , too ?
For music lovers , perhaps the drive-in concert could become as ubiquitous as the drive-in movie , at least in the short term .
That ’ s what the team behind @ @ @ @ @ @ @ least , as they told Vox this fall .
Lucas Fritz and Jessica Gordon are co-owners of the Richmond , Virginia-based company , which promotes and stages as many as 550 concerts in the area each year .
In March , when Covid-19 began to spread , it became clear that the Group — which predominantly books shows for indoor venues , including two Fritz owns himself — wouldn ’ t come anywhere close to staging that many shows .
“ We were rescheduling shows for June and July and August , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ April ] , it was pretty apparent that none of those shows were gon na play , ” Fritz told Vox .
“ And then we were rescheduling stuff for October and November .
… It was more and more apparent that indoor shows were not gon na come back in 2020 in a meaningful capacity.
” It was Gordon who suggested pivoting their venue shows to drive-in outdoor ones .
She was inspired by a local movie theater reopening as a drive-in and by watching a handful of artists perform drive-in-style shows @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been hearing a million ideas that were absurd and ridiculous and not gon na happen , and there hadn ’ t been a moment when I was like , ‘ here ’ s something we can actually do , ’ ” Gordon said .
“ But [ having a band play at a drive-in ] was the first realistic , potential plan that we had come up with.
” The Broadberry Group wasn ’ t the first organization to put on a drive-in concert during the pandemic .
The European shows that inspired @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Aarhus , Denmark , back in April .
The concert series saw singers and DJs perform on a small stage in front of about 500 cars ; the shows were broadcast over the FM dial .
In the US , several bigger artists played a special show or two .
The Avett Brothers played at a Motor Speedway in August , and Cypress Hill played a drive-in theater in September .
Snoop Dogg did two DJ sets in October .
On a larger scale , the super-corporate event promoter Live Nation hosted @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Southern cities in July , headlined by country music star Brad Paisley .
And the Flaming Lips played a live hometown show in October , where the band members as well as each individual audience member were encased in gigantic inflatable “ space bubbles ” for social distancing purposes .
Fritz and Gordon sought out a particularly unique choice of act for testing its drive-in concept .
GWAR is an acquired taste , to put it mildly .
The “ concept ” behind the band is that they are aliens who intended to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ way they found and fell in love with heavy metal instead .
While these alien monsters still eat babies and chop each others ’ heads off , they now do that onstage while holding guitars .
It ’ s definitely a premise , whether or not it ’ s a premise you ’ re into .
What made GWAR an interesting test case for a drive-in show wasn ’ t just their devoted , niche following .
GWAR fans love GWAR in large part for the band ’ s absurd set pieces and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said , aren ’ t the kinds of things that would seem to translate so easily to a drive-in show stage .
Cars must be parked at least 6 feet away from each other , so passengers can exit and stand by their vehicles without getting too close to whoever ’ s parked next to them .
And Virginia ’ s Covid-19 restrictions throughout the second half of this year have held that only a maximum of 1,000 people is allowed to gather at an outdoor event ; that meant that the October @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cars , assuming four passengers in each one .
As we waited for the band to go on , I recorded more audio notes : “ There ’ s not a lot of latitude , ” I said , “ because we ’ re not human bodies here — we ’ re large automobiles .
And if I were a human body , I ’ d be jumping around and pushing people out of my way to see the stage better.
” But clearly , that wasn ’ t an option .
Fritz @ @ @ @ @ @ @ perspective : “ You have cars instead of bodies , ” he said .
“ This isn ’ t ‘ open the doors , scan a ticket , walk in , and let people go wherever they want.
’ You have to be very particular about how the cars park.
” The band ’ s perspective , however , was different .
“ This is just gon na be like a festival show , except in cars , ” Bob Gorman , GWAR performer and the group ’ s costume fabricator , told @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
GWAR doesn ’ t often play festival shows , but the comparison made sense : Outdoor music festivals usually host bands on differently sized stages that can accommodate vastly different numbers of people in the crowd .
A drive-in show ’ s stage , ostensibly , is scaled to the size of the parking lot it ’ s held in .
But in the time of Covid-19 , the staging costs , compared to the necessarily limited number of tickets made available , mean that the drive-in show stage has to skew @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stage usually isn ’ t a recipe for success at an outdoor venue — especially when events are intended to take place “ rain or shine.
” It wasn ’ t that cold yet when I saw GWAR , but the weather wasn ’ t great .
Even though there are big parking lots all over the US , venues can ’ t easily put on shows in the snow .
As is the case with every other production element of a drive-in show , the frequent unpredictability of bad weather creates extra @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will be able to hear and see what ’ s happening onstage .
( An FM transmitter was apparently available at the GWAR show so that folks who wished to stay in their cars without opening the windows could tune into their radios to listen .
This , however , was not communicated to the audience , as far as I can tell . )
Regardless of any weather concerns , however , members of GWAR told Vox that no matter what happened , there would always be a crucial element missing from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ve been making a joke that I hope a crash-up derby breaks out because I need to feel that energy from the pit , ” Matt Maguire , GWAR ’ s art director , touring stage member , and a performer in the band , told Vox .
“ When you look out to the crowd and you see a bunch of people sitting there , it ’ s kind of anticlimactic.
” “ You really get the energy of the crowd and the pit from the people that are loving getting covered @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cathartic release , ” said Gorman .
GWAR thrives on a different kind of energy than many artists ; I still weep for the canceled Billie Eilish , Taylor Swift , and Soccer Mommy shows I had planned to attend this year , none of which would have included bloody catharsis .
But the craving for energy is a universal one from the live experience : Live music produces an intimacy or connection unlike that offered by almost any other medium , whether that ’ s through fist-pumping or moshing or singing along @ @ @ @ @ @ @ our cars hardly compared to head-banging in a mosh pit .
The only people who felt any of GWAR ’ s trademark fluids on them were the people who had paid top dollar to park their cars as close as possible to the stage itself .
For the rest of us in the nosebleed parking spaces , the storied spray of blood and guts remained storied .
This may come across as a more negative account than GWAR ’ s premier drive-in experience deserves .
Maguire told Vox ahead of the show that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ give a little escapism ” to its fans instead of dwelling on the have-nots of 2020 : no parties , no mosh pits , no sweaty dancing .
( Also , the topical humor was gross instead of depressing : Dr. Fauci dueled a sentient coronavirus , there were plenty of QAnon barbs , and everyone got their head cut off instead of dying from Covid . )
And from the comfort of the invisibly defined , socially distanced squares around our cars , we all could technically mosh and dance and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
There are few better feelings than that .
But how viable is all of this going forward ?
It ’ s hard to say .
The costs can be prohibitive to put on any show at limited capacity , let alone one outdoors , socially distanced , and dependent on parking cars , Gordon said when I checked in after the show .
“ Artists , venues , and promoters have not had much income since Covid began , but the GWAR shows did well and everyone made a little money , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to put on this kind of show , to turn an empty parking lot into a venue , are very high — about three times more than it would normally cost.
” There ’ s also something of a philosophical barrier to overcome with a drive-in show .
A concert is a musical experience , but it ’ s also a kinetic one .
The Instagram and YouTube livestreams that proliferated in the spring to much fanfare faded away not just because of their low-quality aesthetics but because they lack the energy created @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , singing and dancing and listening to the music .
Even now that many artists are putting on much more polished , even exciting virtual shows , streamed live from venues where they are performing without a crowd , the inherent disconnect is still there .
“ Sure , each light flash and drumbeat and bottle price is calculated to excite , to create a mood , ” Vox ’ s Lavanya Ramanathan wrote in August , in a piece mulling the fate of music and dance clubs post-pandemic , “ but people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ what fill venues with energy ; without them , clubs are just cold , dark rooms.
” At a drive-in movie , everyone stays in one place and stares at an oversized screen in a fixed spot , and the relationship is between the viewer and the film .
We may all be staring at the same stage for a drive-in show , but the band isn ’ t just standing there too , looking back at us .
Performers and viewers are meant to feed off each other ’ s energy .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ to do in a car , especially when you might not even be able to see the band so well from where you ’ re parked .
Despite the expense , the unpredictable weather , and the missing mosh pits , Gordon and Fritz say they look forward to putting on more drive-in shows next year .
“ We are gon na end up doing a lot of these in 2021 , ” said Fritz .
It ’ s unclear how far into the future we ’ ll continue doing shows like this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and summer we ’ re planning on [ doing more shows . ]
” Perhaps it ’ s best to think of a drive-in show not as a replacement for live music as we know it but as an innovative supplement : Once it ’ s warm enough to hang out outside again , and with Covid-19 vaccines on the horizon , we have another experience to drive the car out to .
That is the most comforting way of looking at the drive-in concert because there ’ s no telling when anyone @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of large event , vaccine or no vaccine .
The likelihood that anyone will be attending a traditional indoor concert , in a packed venue where we shout and bounce along to the music , still seems low for 2021 .
Until we can all go to a concert together again like we used to , even one good — if imperfect — option for safe concert-going is better than none .

The only concert I actually got to see in person this year was sold out. But a sold-out show in a parking lot filled with cars is a much different scene than a typical sold-out indoor or outdoor venue show. Especially when that show is a drive-in concert held in the middle of a pandemic.
In October, I watched the cult-favorite heavy metal group GWAR perform live in the parking lot of the Diamond, a baseball stadium in Richmond, Virginia. GWAR is beloved by their fans for their over-the-top concerts, at which they wear grotesque costumes and put on skits about having sex with babies in between performing singalong anthems like “Fuck This Place.” I’d never seen the band before; scatological humor and thrashcore aren’t really my thing! I don’t think I ever expected to find myself here — seeing a band known for spraying fake human (or alien) blood on the audience, on a pitched-up stage atop concrete, amid honking car horns and a backdrop of bleachers and a giant scoreboard.
Seeing a show in a proper music venue is now a long-held dream, one that will hopefully be viable again soon. But in 2020, a drive-in show like the one I ended up at was one of my only options.
Grimacing at the teeny stage six rows ahead of us, I surveyed the crowd. Half of the people in attendance stayed in their cars; the other half stood by their bumpers or sat in the bed of their pickup trucks or set up chairs right next to their cars. I chose to stand in front of our car, but none of these options were great for viewing purposes — I squinted, I stood on my tiptoes, and I still could hardly make out any of the band members’ snarling faces. That’s one of the most disappointing parts of the drive-in experience: There is only so much one can do to make it easier to see the stage when you’re trapped in the small radius around your car.
And compounding the vision difficulties was another element that can’t be changed: the weather. Many outdoor shows are advertised as taking place “rain or shine,” but it’s obvious that they’re much more enjoyable if it’s not raining. At the GWAR show, it was raining badly enough to discourage many drivers from stepping out of the car, or for them to only do so with clear annoyance. It was a thoroughly unpleasant scene for those of us with frizzy hair and glasses that are already prone to fogging up. (A face mask only speeds up that process.)
I spoke into an audio recorder as we waited for the band to go on, committing some of my thoughts to memory. “I’m always a pessimist,” I said, “so maybe it’s not gonna be that bad. But my glasses are fogging up, and the windshield is very wet, so.” And by the end of the show, my glasses were no clearer, and the windshield was still full of raindrops.
2020 hit the live music industry hard. With restrictions on indoor and outdoor gathering in place worldwide — not to mention quarantine and lockdown orders due to the relentless unpredictability of the Covid-19 pandemic — attending concerts was nigh impossible this year.
Touring acts canceled their slate of shows for the foreseeable future. Promoters rescheduled musical festival dates for later in the year, then postponed them indefinitely or canceled them outright. And any act that dared flout social distancing guidelines to put on a show was quickly admonished for exposing their audiences to the coronavirus.
Instead, artists were relegated to streaming platforms like Instagram, Twitch, and YouTube to host their own DIY shows. Meanwhile, labels, venues, and festival promoters tinkered with paid streams of live music performed in empty auditoriums. Then, several months after most of the country shut down, as various re-openings began, artists and promoters hit on at least one viable alternative: the drive-in concert.
Drive-in entertainment thrived in 2020. Drive-in movies, in particular, went from a fun summertime activity to the only way for many Americans in cities where theaters remained closed to see a movie, new or old, outside of their own home this year. Even people in places like New York City, an urban area not known for having much parking space, found ways to get cars to less dense parts of the city and see a film. And if people were game to watch movies from the car, why not try that approach for concerts, too?
For music lovers, perhaps the drive-in concert could become as ubiquitous as the drive-in movie, at least in the short term. That’s what the team behind Broadberry Entertainment Group hopes for, at least, as they told Vox this fall.
Lucas Fritz and Jessica Gordon are co-owners of the Richmond, Virginia-based company, which promotes and stages as many as 550 concerts in the area each year. In March, when Covid-19 began to spread, it became clear that the Group — which predominantly books shows for indoor venues, including two Fritz owns himself — wouldn’t come anywhere close to staging that many shows.
“We were rescheduling shows for June and July and August, and then maybe a month later [in April], it was pretty apparent that none of those shows were gonna play,” Fritz told Vox. “And then we were rescheduling stuff for October and November. … It was more and more apparent that indoor shows were not gonna come back in 2020 in a meaningful capacity.”
It was Gordon who suggested pivoting their venue shows to drive-in outdoor ones. She was inspired by a local movie theater reopening as a drive-in and by watching a handful of artists perform drive-in-style shows in Europe.
“We’d been hearing a million ideas that were absurd and ridiculous and not gonna happen, and there hadn’t been a moment when I was like, ‘here’s something we can actually do,’” Gordon said. “But [having a band play at a drive-in] was the first realistic, potential plan that we had come up with.”
The Broadberry Group wasn’t the first organization to put on a drive-in concert during the pandemic. The European shows that inspired Gordon in the first place took place in Aarhus, Denmark, back in April. The concert series saw singers and DJs perform on a small stage in front of about 500 cars; the shows were broadcast over the FM dial. In the US, several bigger artists played a special show or two. The Avett Brothers played at a Motor Speedway in August, and Cypress Hill played a drive-in theater in September. Snoop Dogg did two DJ sets in October. On a larger scale, the super-corporate event promoter Live Nation hosted a nine-show tour in a handful of Southern cities in July, headlined by country music star Brad Paisley. And the Flaming Lips played a live hometown show in October, where the band members as well as each individual audience member were encased in gigantic inflatable “space bubbles” for social distancing purposes.
Fritz and Gordon sought out a particularly unique choice of act for testing its drive-in concept. GWAR is an acquired taste, to put it mildly. The “concept” behind the band is that they are aliens who intended to take over Earth, but along the way they found and fell in love with heavy metal instead. While these alien monsters still eat babies and chop each others’ heads off, they now do that onstage while holding guitars.
It’s definitely a premise, whether or not it’s a premise you’re into. What made GWAR an interesting test case for a drive-in show wasn’t just their devoted, niche following. GWAR fans love GWAR in large part for the band’s absurd set pieces and outfits — which, it must be said, aren’t the kinds of things that would seem to translate so easily to a drive-in show stage. Cars must be parked at least 6 feet away from each other, so passengers can exit and stand by their vehicles without getting too close to whoever’s parked next to them. And Virginia’s Covid-19 restrictions throughout the second half of this year have held that only a maximum of 1,000 people is allowed to gather at an outdoor event; that meant that the October GWAR show had room for about 250 cars, assuming four passengers in each one.
As we waited for the band to go on, I recorded more audio notes: “There’s not a lot of latitude,” I said, “because we’re not human bodies here — we’re large automobiles. And if I were a human body, I’d be jumping around and pushing people out of my way to see the stage better.” But clearly, that wasn’t an option.
Fritz shared a similar concern from his own perspective: “You have cars instead of bodies,” he said. “This isn’t ‘open the doors, scan a ticket, walk in, and let people go wherever they want.’ You have to be very particular about how the cars park.”
The band’s perspective, however, was different. “This is just gonna be like a festival show, except in cars,” Bob Gorman, GWAR performer and the group’s costume fabricator, told Vox in an interview before the show. GWAR doesn’t often play festival shows, but the comparison made sense: Outdoor music festivals usually host bands on differently sized stages that can accommodate vastly different numbers of people in the crowd. A drive-in show’s stage, ostensibly, is scaled to the size of the parking lot it’s held in. But in the time of Covid-19, the staging costs, compared to the necessarily limited number of tickets made available, mean that the drive-in show stage has to skew toward the smaller side.
A small stage usually isn’t a recipe for success at an outdoor venue — especially when events are intended to take place “rain or shine.” It wasn’t that cold yet when I saw GWAR, but the weather wasn’t great. Even though there are big parking lots all over the US, venues can’t easily put on shows in the snow.
As is the case with every other production element of a drive-in show, the frequent unpredictability of bad weather creates extra anxiety because it can affect whether fans will be able to hear and see what’s happening onstage. (An FM transmitter was apparently available at the GWAR show so that folks who wished to stay in their cars without opening the windows could tune into their radios to listen. This, however, was not communicated to the audience, as far as I can tell.)
Regardless of any weather concerns, however, members of GWAR told Vox that no matter what happened, there would always be a crucial element missing from the drive-in atmosphere.
“I’ve been making a joke that I hope a crash-up derby breaks out because I need to feel that energy from the pit,” Matt Maguire, GWAR’s art director, touring stage member, and a performer in the band, told Vox. “When you look out to the crowd and you see a bunch of people sitting there, it’s kind of anticlimactic.”
“You really get the energy of the crowd and the pit from the people that are loving getting covered in blood and screaming and getting the cathartic release,” said Gorman.
GWAR thrives on a different kind of energy than many artists; I still weep for the canceled Billie Eilish, Taylor Swift, and Soccer Mommy shows I had planned to attend this year, none of which would have included bloody catharsis. But the craving for energy is a universal one from the live experience: Live music produces an intimacy or connection unlike that offered by almost any other medium, whether that’s through fist-pumping or moshing or singing along or crying en masse.
Standing by our cars hardly compared to head-banging in a mosh pit. The only people who felt any of GWAR’s trademark fluids on them were the people who had paid top dollar to park their cars as close as possible to the stage itself. For the rest of us in the nosebleed parking spaces, the storied spray of blood and guts remained storied.
This may come across as a more negative account than GWAR’s premier drive-in experience deserves. Maguire told Vox ahead of the show that the group’s goal was to “give a little escapism” to its fans instead of dwelling on the have-nots of 2020: no parties, no mosh pits, no sweaty dancing. (Also, the topical humor was gross instead of depressing: Dr. Fauci dueled a sentient coronavirus, there were plenty of QAnon barbs, and everyone got their head cut off instead of dying from Covid.) And from the comfort of the invisibly defined, socially distanced squares around our cars, we all could technically mosh and dance and party to our hearts’ safest content. There are few better feelings than that.
But how viable is all of this going forward? It’s hard to say. The costs can be prohibitive to put on any show at limited capacity, let alone one outdoors, socially distanced, and dependent on parking cars, Gordon said when I checked in after the show.
“Artists, venues, and promoters have not had much income since Covid began, but the GWAR shows did well and everyone made a little money,” Gordon said. “The expenses to put on this kind of show, to turn an empty parking lot into a venue, are very high — about three times more than it would normally cost.”
There’s also something of a philosophical barrier to overcome with a drive-in show. A concert is a musical experience, but it’s also a kinetic one. The Instagram and YouTube livestreams that proliferated in the spring to much fanfare faded away not just because of their low-quality aesthetics but because they lack the energy created by everyone being in one space together, singing and dancing and listening to the music. Even now that many artists are putting on much more polished, even exciting virtual shows, streamed live from venues where they are performing without a crowd, the inherent disconnect is still there.
“Sure, each light flash and drumbeat and bottle price is calculated to excite, to create a mood,” Vox’s Lavanya Ramanathan wrote in August, in a piece mulling the fate of music and dance clubs post-pandemic, “but people — ideally lots of them — are what fill venues with energy; without them, clubs are just cold, dark rooms.”
At a drive-in movie, everyone stays in one place and stares at an oversized screen in a fixed spot, and the relationship is between the viewer and the film. We may all be staring at the same stage for a drive-in show, but the band isn’t just standing there too, looking back at us. Performers and viewers are meant to feed off each other’s energy. And that’s not so easy to do in a car, especially when you might not even be able to see the band so well from where you’re parked.
Despite the expense, the unpredictable weather, and the missing mosh pits, Gordon and Fritz say they look forward to putting on more drive-in shows next year.
“We are gonna end up doing a lot of these in 2021,” said Fritz. It’s unclear how far into the future we’ll continue doing shows like this, but at least for the spring and summer we’re planning on [doing more shows.]”
Perhaps it’s best to think of a drive-in show not as a replacement for live music as we know it but as an innovative supplement: Once it’s warm enough to hang out outside again, and with Covid-19 vaccines on the horizon, we have another experience to drive the car out to.
That is the most comforting way of looking at the drive-in concert because there’s no telling when anyone will truly be comfortable with any kind of large event, vaccine or no vaccine. The likelihood that anyone will be attending a traditional indoor concert, in a packed venue where we shout and bounce along to the music, still seems low for 2021. Until we can all go to a concert together again like we used to, even one good — if imperfect — option for safe concert-going is better than none.


vox--2020-12-23--The Mandalorian is falling in love with its big moments. That’s a problem.

For most of the second season of The Mandalorian , Disney+ ’ s hugely popular Star Wars series about a bounty hunter and the Baby Yoda who loves him , I caught up with episodes a few days after they dropped each week .
By the time I got around to watching , I typically knew almost everything that happened in the episode , thanks to my perpetual Twitter scrolling .
I rarely found my enjoyment of the episodes affected by this .
For me , The Mandalorian is all about escaping into a very specific presentation of a famous @ @ @ @ @ @ @ particularly excited to watch the plot unfold .
But I always found it interesting how quickly each episode ’ s one or two biggest moments would filter out into the pop culture consciousness writ large .
Spoilers for the show ’ s second season follow from here .
Often , I would find , the episode really was its one or two biggest moments , with most other elements taking a back seat to a major action sequence or a guest star appearance from a well-known Star Wars character .
The Mandalorian is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ atmosphere than finely tuning its plot or character arcs , so it uses its standout sequences and guest stars to keep from becoming an endless download of Star Wars lore .
It ’ s easier to remember an episode where Boba Fett is at the center of an amazing fight sequence than if it were just an episode of the Mandalorian wandering around , hearing people talk about Star Wars stuff .
Structurally , “ big moments ” storytelling also befits the genres The Mandalorian tends to operate within .
The show is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Lone Wolf and Cub , which is also about an expert warrior who fights his battles alongside an adorable child .
And like many samurai films ( and Westerns , an American genre with a lot in common with the samurai film ) , The Mandalorian builds itself around those battles .
There ’ s typically one per episode , to give the series a sense of momentum .
The Mandalorian also bears a number of similarities with American animated shows aimed at slightly older kids .
Think of , say , Batman @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The Last Airbender , or Star Wars : The Clone Wars — where Dave Filoni , one of the two masterminds of everything Mandalorian , first overlapped with the Star Wars universe .
These series tend to run 22 minutes per episode , and as such , have to be incredibly economical with their storytelling , making every beat count .
Characters reveal who they are not just through their own actions but through action itself — fighting styles , strategic decisions in battle , etc .
— and the storytelling follows those @ @ @ @ @ @ @ run a bit longer than an average Clone Wars episode — most are in the 35- to 40-minute range before the ( extremely long ) credits roll .
But Filoni and creator Jon Favreau haven ’ t really chosen to use that extra space to add more plot .
Instead , they ’ ve added more arresting glimpses at forgotten corners of the Star Wars universe and weird little grace notes that fill in the world of the show .
( My favorite of these was a long , amusing argument between two @ @ @ @ @ @ @ . )
These choices are what make The Mandalorian so compulsive a watch .
Each episode features a single mission the characters have to complete ( similar to the aforementioned animated shows ) , and the storytelling is never overcomplicated .
It proceeds from point A to point B to point C in more or less the manner you ’ d expect .
When the end of the episode approaches , a new problem presents itself ( the Mandalorian ’ s ship is in disrepair ! )
that leads immediately to the mission @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to get it fixed ! )
.
It ’ s solid , meat-and-potatoes TV serialization .
The Mandalorian ’ s narrative sparseness and emphasis on luxuriating in the world it has built sets it apart from many other TV shows , ones that are frantic and over-plotted in the hope you won ’ t turn them off if they keep throwing new things at you .
But relying on a single exciting event per episode ties into a TV storytelling trend I ’ m increasingly wary of when I see it start to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , on the shows I enjoy .
And in a series set in a popular , well-known fictional universe , as The Mandalorian is , that storytelling trend seems particularly hard to resist .
I first started trying to define this trend as it related to HBO ’ s Game of Thrones , a series I had greatly enjoyed until the second half of its run .
At that point , Game of Thrones ’ storytelling became so entwined with its biggest , most brutal twists that it eventually abandoned the things that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ going in an effort to chase after the next surprise .
By its end , it was working so hard to make everything so spectacular that it largely avoided coming up with connective tissue to make sense of its spectacle , to its detriment .
The 2010s were littered with shows caught up in a search for the spectacular , from American Horror Story to Stranger Things .
When it ’ s harder than ever to stand out from a massive glut of TV series to choose from , having some water-cooler-ready moments @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
These moments even offer free promotional opportunities thanks to all the excited tweets and social media posts that are sure to result .
And increasingly , we tend to treat all TV shows as products of this kind of storytelling , even when they aren ’ t that .
The Queen ’ s Gambit , for instance , has been reduced to “ that show about chess ” with lots of Anya Taylor-Joy gifs popping up on Twitter , when it ’ s just about the opposite of a big , moment-based @ @ @ @ @ @ @ show about a young woman playing chess , for goodness sake ! )
So far , The Mandalorian hasn ’ t fallen into the worst tendencies of this sort of storytelling , the ones that felled Game of Thrones .
It doesn ’ t try to hide its characters ’ motivations in the name of a big twist , nor does it sacrifice logic in favor of getting to a big moment .
Its stripped-down style gives it plenty of room to build to its big moments properly .
But across season two @ @ @ @ @ @ @ myself increasingly disconcerted by the series ’ reliance on Star Wars favorites , culminating in a cameo by Luke Skywalker himself ( played by a badly digitally de-aged Mark Hamill ) in the season finale .
What does our investment in the relationship between the Mandalorian and Baby Yoda ( who is technically named Grogu , but c ’ mon ) matter if the show gets almost even more audience excitement from having Boba Fett pop up for a few episodes ?
To be clear , I ’ m talking about a saturation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The Mandalorian , just one that seems inevitable to me , as someone who has seen lots of series chase their biggest , most promotable moments over a cliff .
It ’ s really not hard to imagine the series gradually becoming taken over by these servicing impulses , instead of using them to offer a sprinkling of cool cameos for the fans .
I ’ d even argue that the second half of season two already succumbed to these desires .
Even if The Mandalorian ultimately makes it work , prioritizing moments @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of what made the show so arresting in the first place .
Where once it seemed to take place in a backwater , under-explored corner of the Star Wars universe , by the end of season two , the show has featured some of the franchise ’ s most familiar characters , right up to Luke Skywalker himself .
It only enhances the sense that the entire Star Wars franchise has become a closed ecosystem , with little room for new growth .
It ’ s becoming a lot harder to watch The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a central hub for much of the Star Wars television universe , especially since Disney has already revealed plans for spinoff series for several fan-favorite heroes , like Boba Fett and Ahsoka Tano .
If the second half of season two felt like a collection of backdoor pilots — an episode of a show that introduces new characters in the hope of spinning them off into their own show — that ’ s because it basically was .
Indeed , upcoming spinoff The Book of Boba Fett will take The Mandalorian ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2021 , though Mandalorian season three will likely follow sometime in 2022 ; the season two finale even ended up with a teaser for the Boba Fett show likely designed to get fans chattering .
There are plenty of good reasons to keep watching this show .
Pedro Pascal has managed to use only his voice to make the Mandalorian a compelling protagonist , Baby Yoda is still the cutest , Ludwig Göransson ’ s score is among TV ’ s best , and the atmosphere remains impeccable .
If you just want @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for a few weeks every year , this show is really , really good at giving you that experience .
But its increasing reliance on cameos from all your favs is a reminder that the gigantic , franchise-based cinematic universes that have come to define too much of big-budget filmmaking are increasingly taking over TV as well .
We haven ’ t even gotten to Disney+ ’ s Marvel TV series yet , which will begin debuting in 2021 and will surely feature many , many cameos of their own .
The Mandalorian @ @ @ @ @ @ @ its best when it charts its own course .
Unfortunately , it ’ s so much harder to take the backroads when you could just get on familiar highways and go all of the places you ’ ve already been .

For most of the second season of The Mandalorian, Disney+’s hugely popular Star Wars series about a bounty hunter and the Baby Yoda who loves him, I caught up with episodes a few days after they dropped each week. By the time I got around to watching, I typically knew almost everything that happened in the episode, thanks to my perpetual Twitter scrolling.
I rarely found my enjoyment of the episodes affected by this. For me, The Mandalorian is all about escaping into a very specific presentation of a famous fictional world; I’m not particularly excited to watch the plot unfold. But I always found it interesting how quickly each episode’s one or two biggest moments would filter out into the pop culture consciousness writ large. Spoilers for the show’s second season follow from here.
Often, I would find, the episode really was its one or two biggest moments, with most other elements taking a back seat to a major action sequence or a guest star appearance from a well-known Star Wars character. The Mandalorian is more concerned with creating a sense of atmosphere than finely tuning its plot or character arcs, so it uses its standout sequences and guest stars to keep from becoming an endless download of Star Wars lore. It’s easier to remember an episode where Boba Fett is at the center of an amazing fight sequence than if it were just an episode of the Mandalorian wandering around, hearing people talk about Star Wars stuff.
Structurally, “big moments” storytelling also befits the genres The Mandalorian tends to operate within. The show is most similar to the six-film samurai epic Lone Wolf and Cub, which is also about an expert warrior who fights his battles alongside an adorable child. And like many samurai films (and Westerns, an American genre with a lot in common with the samurai film), The Mandalorian builds itself around those battles. There’s typically one per episode, to give the series a sense of momentum.
The Mandalorian also bears a number of similarities with American animated shows aimed at slightly older kids. Think of, say, Batman: The Animated Series, Avatar: The Last Airbender, or Star Wars: The Clone Wars — where Dave Filoni, one of the two masterminds of everything Mandalorian, first overlapped with the Star Wars universe. These series tend to run 22 minutes per episode, and as such, have to be incredibly economical with their storytelling, making every beat count. Characters reveal who they are not just through their own actions but through action itself — fighting styles, strategic decisions in battle, etc. — and the storytelling follows those reveals.
The Mandalorian’s episodes run a bit longer than an average Clone Wars episode — most are in the 35- to 40-minute range before the (extremely long) credits roll. But Filoni and creator Jon Favreau haven’t really chosen to use that extra space to add more plot. Instead, they’ve added more arresting glimpses at forgotten corners of the Star Wars universe and weird little grace notes that fill in the world of the show. (My favorite of these was a long, amusing argument between two Stormtroopers that opened the first season finale.)
These choices are what make The Mandalorian so compulsive a watch. Each episode features a single mission the characters have to complete (similar to the aforementioned animated shows), and the storytelling is never overcomplicated. It proceeds from point A to point B to point C in more or less the manner you’d expect. When the end of the episode approaches, a new problem presents itself (the Mandalorian’s ship is in disrepair!) that leads immediately to the mission for the next episode (he has to get it fixed!). It’s solid, meat-and-potatoes TV serialization.
The Mandalorian’s narrative sparseness and emphasis on luxuriating in the world it has built sets it apart from many other TV shows, ones that are frantic and over-plotted in the hope you won’t turn them off if they keep throwing new things at you. But relying on a single exciting event per episode ties into a TV storytelling trend I’m increasingly wary of when I see it start to pop up, over and over again, on the shows I enjoy. And in a series set in a popular, well-known fictional universe, as The Mandalorian is, that storytelling trend seems particularly hard to resist.
I first started trying to define this trend as it related to HBO’s Game of Thrones, a series I had greatly enjoyed until the second half of its run. At that point, Game of Thrones’ storytelling became so entwined with its biggest, most brutal twists that it eventually abandoned the things that made it so good in the early going in an effort to chase after the next surprise. By its end, it was working so hard to make everything so spectacular that it largely avoided coming up with connective tissue to make sense of its spectacle, to its detriment.
The 2010s were littered with shows caught up in a search for the spectacular, from American Horror Story to Stranger Things. When it’s harder than ever to stand out from a massive glut of TV series to choose from, having some water-cooler-ready moments to lean on creates instant audience engagement. These moments even offer free promotional opportunities thanks to all the excited tweets and social media posts that are sure to result.
And increasingly, we tend to treat all TV shows as products of this kind of storytelling, even when they aren’t that. The Queen’s Gambit, for instance, has been reduced to “that show about chess” with lots of Anya Taylor-Joy gifs popping up on Twitter, when it’s just about the opposite of a big, moment-based spectacle. (It’s a show about a young woman playing chess, for goodness sake!)
So far, The Mandalorian hasn’t fallen into the worst tendencies of this sort of storytelling, the ones that felled Game of Thrones. It doesn’t try to hide its characters’ motivations in the name of a big twist, nor does it sacrifice logic in favor of getting to a big moment. Its stripped-down style gives it plenty of room to build to its big moments properly.
But across season two’s second half, I found myself increasingly disconcerted by the series’ reliance on Star Wars favorites, culminating in a cameo by Luke Skywalker himself (played by a badly digitally de-aged Mark Hamill) in the season finale. What does our investment in the relationship between the Mandalorian and Baby Yoda (who is technically named Grogu, but c’mon) matter if the show gets almost even more audience excitement from having Boba Fett pop up for a few episodes?
To be clear, I’m talking about a saturation problem that hasn’t yet overwhelmed The Mandalorian, just one that seems inevitable to me, as someone who has seen lots of series chase their biggest, most promotable moments over a cliff. It’s really not hard to imagine the series gradually becoming taken over by these servicing impulses, instead of using them to offer a sprinkling of cool cameos for the fans. I’d even argue that the second half of season two already succumbed to these desires.
Even if The Mandalorian ultimately makes it work, prioritizing moments over the big picture also diminishes some of what made the show so arresting in the first place. Where once it seemed to take place in a backwater, under-explored corner of the Star Wars universe, by the end of season two, the show has featured some of the franchise’s most familiar characters, right up to Luke Skywalker himself. It only enhances the sense that the entire Star Wars franchise has become a closed ecosystem, with little room for new growth.
Related Welcome to the Star Wars zoo
It’s becoming a lot harder to watch The Mandalorian as its own thing instead of a central hub for much of the Star Wars television universe, especially since Disney has already revealed plans for spinoff series for several fan-favorite heroes, like Boba Fett and Ahsoka Tano. If the second half of season two felt like a collection of backdoor pilots — an episode of a show that introduces new characters in the hope of spinning them off into their own show — that’s because it basically was. Indeed, upcoming spinoff The Book of Boba Fett will take The Mandalorian’s place in the Disney+ schedule in December 2021, though Mandalorian season three will likely follow sometime in 2022; the season two finale even ended up with a teaser for the Boba Fett show likely designed to get fans chattering.
There are plenty of good reasons to keep watching this show. Pedro Pascal has managed to use only his voice to make the Mandalorian a compelling protagonist, Baby Yoda is still the cutest, Ludwig Göransson’s score is among TV’s best, and the atmosphere remains impeccable. If you just want to hang out in Star Wars land for a few weeks every year, this show is really, really good at giving you that experience.
But its increasing reliance on cameos from all your favs is a reminder that the gigantic, franchise-based cinematic universes that have come to define too much of big-budget filmmaking are increasingly taking over TV as well. We haven’t even gotten to Disney+’s Marvel TV series yet, which will begin debuting in 2021 and will surely feature many, many cameos of their own. The Mandalorian — like most shows — is at its best when it charts its own course. Unfortunately, it’s so much harder to take the backroads when you could just get on familiar highways and go all of the places you’ve already been.