Grief: It’s What’s on TV

I don’t want to talk about it.

That’s the way grief and loss were handled back on TV in the 1970s with shows like "The Brady Bunch" or "The Courtship of Eddie’s Father." What did we really know about Mike Brady’s first wife? In the show’s first episode, viewers learned that she passed away, and there is a brief conversation between the father and his youngest son about keeping a photo of mom. Meanwhile, the absence of Carol Brady’s first husband remained a mystery. Little Eddie in "The Courtship of Eddie’s Father" bounces back rather quickly as well. No grieving, tears, discussion, or memories of those dead parents around the house.

In recent years, that paradigm has changed, with popular series like "Shrinking,"
"This is Us," "The Bear," and "Afterlife" tackling grief; a recent theater production titled "Sorry for Your Loss" focusing on the loss of a child; and even a podcast hosted by Anderson Cooper called "All There Is," that includes talking and crying openly about grief.

“Grief is the one universal experience that we will all have,” says Michael Cruz Kayne, comedian and author of the play "Sorry for Your Loss," about the death of his infant son.

An article published by the University of Cambridge estimates that for every death, nine people are affected on average by grief. COVID-19 caused a silent epidemic of grief. Right on COVID’s heels, the fentanyl epidemic has created a whole new legion of grievers as well. A recent survey by the nonprofit Rand Corporation found that more than 40 percent of American adults know someone who died from an overdose.

So, basically, the old “I don’t want to talk about it” has become something we all seem to be talking about because we want and even need to talk about it to get through life. If "The Brady Bunch" were rebooted today, the kids might be speaking to a grief counselor, and Mike and Carol would have at least one photo of their deceased spouses around the house.

In Apple TV’s "Shrinking," co-written, produced, and starring Jason Segel as a therapist grieving his wife’s death and trying to understand his daughter’s grief process, viewers watch a very realistic experience of grief unfold.

“More shows are starting to tackle the complexity, the anger and the lashing out that comes with grief,” said Litsa Williams, co-founder, along with Eleanor Haley, MS, of the online grief community What’s Your Grief? “They aren’t just sitting at home crying. Everybody in Shrinking, for example, is grieving different things, and it’s a comedy. In just a half hour they do it all brilliantly.”

Netflix’s "Afterlife" takes the audience on a messy emotional ride with recent widower Tony, played by Ricky Gervais (who also wrote and directed), laid low to the point of considering suicide in the early stages of his grief. And, surprise—Tony doesn’t “get over it” or “move on” by episode two. His grief journey is the show. He is sad and cranky and depressed for the whole season. It’s raw and real and grief counselor Sharon Greaney-Watt of Babylon thinks it’s great.

“Afterlife speaks to the importance of connection as human beings, especially in such grief,” she said. “I think the show speaks to the process of integrating and managing one's grief, to be able to ultimately carry the grief as one moves forward.”

Kim Roots, managing editor of TVLine, a website devoted to all things TV, agrees that grief has come out in the open. And that TV series have come a long way since Carol and Mike Brady’s former spouses just disappeared with little explanation.

“I do feel that now it's a little bit more out in the open and used a bit more as a thread throughout a show's run,” she said.

While Roots doesn’t claim to know exactly why the “grief plot thread” is more popular these days, she agrees that it seems easier to talk about feelings now than maybe it was 30 or 40 years ago.

“Maybe we’ve all had a little bit more therapy and we take a little bit more comfort in talking about these hard things in public,” she added.

Or maybe cable and, more recently, streaming have spurred an evolution toward more high-quality TV, without censors, that’s aimed at an audience willing to talk about almost anything. With cultural energy being directed at TV, the door is now open for massive changes in how everything is covered, from gays to complicated relationships to criminals to all kinds of angst. And grief.

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Then there are the modern-day societal challenges, like the fentanyl crisis, that have brought grief front and center for far too many people in “real life.”

Claudia Friszell, who leads a weekly support group for those affected by addiction and grief, says that she believes the alarming rates of drug-related deaths, especially from the recent fentanyl epidemic, could be the impetus for the emergence of grief as a plot thread.

“It’s incredibly healing and comforting to see yourself and your situation on TV. Watching a character behave a little bit crazy due to grief makes me think ‘Hey, I’m not crazy after all. I feel the same way,’” said Friszell.

So, a weekly TV show can become a therapy session, in a sense, for a grieving viewer. And now it seems that Hollywood and the entertainment industry are on that same well-traveled path.