Grief and What TV Can Teach Us
From Anderson Cooper to 'General Hospital', what lessons come from watching others deal with loss?
Grief will be easy to write about…said nobody ever. I found that out the hard way when I was ending last week’s post on The Chosen and thought since the subject of grief has been fascinating me lately, why not write about it? Easier said that done since there’s nothing simple about grief.
My interest kicked into high gear on December 31 with an Instagram post of Anderson Cooper’s segment on grief on CBS Sunday Morning. It’s come up in a big way recently for the CNN journalist because, as he’s publicly shared, he’s been going through boxes of his mother’s (Gloria Vanderbilt, in case you had forgotten) who passed away in 2019. On top of that, he’s also finding things of his brother Carter (who died of suicide in 1988) and his father, Wyatt Cooper, who died when Cooper was 10 years old. As anyone who has dealt with grief knows, that old saying about time passing heals all wounds does not apply to all.
Like a lot of us, I have thought of grief as something you deal with and then you put it to bed. And I’ve seen people grieve differently from those who openly wail and fall apart to the ones who quietly grieve. Neither is better or worse, mind you, and neither is easier than the other. From what Cooper has shared in his CBS segment and in his current podcast All There Is, he admits to having pushed down a lot (or most) of the grief in his life beginning with his father’s death. Only now, as he’s going through his family’s boxes and realizing he’s the last family member left, it’s come bubbling up in a big way.
“It is a bond we can share, but we rarely do. Instead we shroud grief in silence. Why is it so hard to talk about? Why must we keep it hidden away - crying in private, speaking the names of our loved ones in hushed whispers only we can hear? I've done that my whole life, and the price I've paid is high,” Cooper says in the CBS segment.
But grief is not a new subject but it’s that shared experience as we watch someone else’s pain unfold in a story that draws us in. The loss of a relationship is the driving force of the new Netflix film Good Grief, where Dan Levy (who wrote, directed and stars) plays Marc, a man dealing with the grief of his husband Oliver (Luke Evans). However, after trying to push through the emotions and pain of his loss, Marc finds out his marriage wasn’t what he thought it was as secrets are uncovered.
One of the most honest moments in the film is when Marc talks about his past avoiding dealing with his mother’s passing and how those feelings have come back as he’s had to deal with the death of Oliver. In fact, in the course of the film we find out that Marc is a talented painter but stopped painting because it reminded him too much of his mother.
And while the most recent season of Peacock’s thriller Dr. Death deals with death in a more criminal sense with a corrupt doctor (Edgar Ramirez), it also has Mandy Moore as the journalist pulled into his world. But I’ll never forget Moore in her last series, NBC’s This Is Us. That celebrated drama spent six seasons and 106 episodes digging deep across the past, present and future of the Pearson family and how they each were impacted by the death of patriarch Jack (Milo Ventimiglia) and, in later seasons, the impending death of matriarch Rebecca (Moore) in her older years.
Despite the heavy subject matter, This Is Us succeeded because it fully embraced grief with siblings Kevin (Justin Hartley), Kate (Chrissy Metz) and Randall (Sterling K. Brown) navigating their lives after Jacks’s death, which happened when they were children and shaped their lives. Anyone remember the powerful fight Kevin and Randall had at the end of season four that was about the care for Rebecca’s Alzheimers care? It also was deeply filled with lifelong emotions enveloped in the pain they still held onto over their father’s death.
What is there to learn from grief whether it’s in fictional portrayals or a real journalist sharing his emotions on loss? One thing is learning from others in how they’re dealing with their own pain. The recent death of Bobbie Spencer (Jacklyn Zeman) on daytime’s General Hospital was a great example of how the coming together of family and friends can help heal. We saw rivals choosing to put their differences aside during the services and a beautiful tribute to the character’s legacy in the Port Charles cafe Kelly’s being renamed Bobbie’s as a way to honor and keep Bobbie ever present in the future.
Anderson Cooper’s sharing of his current grief is impactful not only because he’s making this particular story about his own life. There’s an abundance of genuine humanity that comes out in his words. It’s heard in every painful crack in his voice as he asks people like Stephen Colbert and Ashley Judd on podcast episodes to share their experiences with grief on his podcast.
He’s not only acting like a journalist here but leading with his curiosity and interest as he waves through his own grief. Also, since grief isn’t something to just work on and get over, Cooper has made a commitment to confront it like he never has before, which is as compelling as it is admirable. “I'm not a fan of New Year's resolutions, but this year I'm going to try and give up carrying my grief in silence,” he said at the end of his segment. “I've been doing that since I was 10 years old … and the weight of it is just too much to bear.”
What’s a TV or film portrayal of grief that impacted you in a big way and why? This Is Us was clearly one of mine. Share yours in the comments below.
Watch Cooper’s CBS Sunday Morning segment here and the current season of Cooper’s All There Is podcast here.
Next week I’ll be in Los Angeles for the Television Critics Association (TCA) Winter Press Tour in Pasadena so expect some news about new and returning shows coming up in the coming months. And, to be honest, it’s been a good writing exercise for me to write about things I’m curious about these days but I’ve been missing doing interviews so expect more of those to come, too!
Until the next cup of coffee and some TV talk…
Grief is hard & I’ve clearly been avoiding mine. I’m going to try to deal with mine thanks to this perspective.