It's true. I watched superstore a lot, and when the pandemic was raging, they had some pandemic episodes. They were pretty good, and kinda smart, because they could still film them because they were wearing masks in the show, which us pretty rare i think. But after just two or three episodes i got kinda sick of it and stopped watching, because the whole mask no mask debate was annoying enough irl. But going back is even worse, because now it feels outdated.
Maybe i'll watch it when the next wave hits or something
Episodes of shows couldn't be made during the pandemic, so as soon as they were able to film them, they were already far too late. Pandemic episodes at their core are flawed.
I liked the twist of anger being the virus, but felt like the satire was pretty muted compared to what they could have done with the concept.
The sharpest jab, I think, was subtle. That was when Hermes narrated the typical scifi/magic mumbo-jumbo that comprised the solution (like, reverse the polarity of the dark matter tachyon field in the SIF and feed it into the spacetime rift through the deflector array), but in this case it was an accurate description of a real vaccine. Dressing up the vaccine with the language of shady miracle cures might have worked in the real world, if it weren't for those pesky medical ethics.
There are infinite ways to change the specific virus for a parody. That doesn't really change that it's parodying a situation that was already parodied to death by 2022.
I think it's mostly well written, and there are some good subtle and non-subtle jokes, but it came way too late.