For two months, John Krasinski looked on the bright side. Beginning in late March and ending in late May, the actor served as the anchor for eight episodes of a YouTube show he called “Some Good News,” or “S.G.N.” for short — about 20 minutes, each week, focused entirely on feel-good content. The show was a never-ending D-block, as if that final, uplifting section of a news broadcast had been stocked with dancing health professionals and put on an endless loop.
It was intended as relief for a pent-up nation, an antidote to the country’s depressing reality: the increasing Covid-19 death toll, the rising unemployment and food insecurity, the social isolation. Krasinski enlisted his best-known friends to cheer people up. Lin-Manuel Miranda serenaded a little girl who missed a performance of “Hamilton” in Florida. Oprah Winfrey gave advice to a graduating college student. Nurses in Boston tossed out the “first pitch” in an empty Fenway Park. Millions, sheltered in place, tuned in every week.
There was a “Sesame Street” quality to the production. The set had the aesthetics of upper-middle-class quarantine — a single room, decorated by Krasinski’s young daughters with handcrafted posters — and the segments, while often mawkish, could be genuinely sweet. Krasinski could be amusing, too, leavening the sentiment with a bit of Ron Burgundy in his voice. He even developed a signature signoff, a running gag. Each episode found him seated and wearing — as far as anyone could tell from above the desk — a suit. But before the credits rolled, he would stand up to reveal he wasn’t in the proper trousers. “I guarantee you the bottom half of what you have on does not match the top,” Steve Carell said, appearing in the first episode. He was right: Krasinski was in swim trunks. After hosting a virtual wedding, Krasinski unveiled a “Just Married” sign tied across his waist. After a Zoom prom for a group of high schoolers, he rose to reveal that what had seemed to be a pink shirt was actually a flowing dress.
And then, in the eighth and final episode, Krasinski stood to reveal, finally, the matching pants. He buttoned his jacket. The suit was complete. And a few days later, it was announced that he had sold “S.G.N.” to ViacomCBS.
The arc of “S.G.N.” parallels, in its way, the path of the nation over those same eight weeks. The show started out offering a charming break from bleakness — a sign of a nation improvising new ways to help one another through a crisis. It ended as a reminder of how little had really changed. Soon, there would be fire in the streets.
When the first episode ran, the United States was close to a full-on lockdown, warily bracing for the pandemic’s impact. The crisis wasn’t entirely partisan yet. Homebound optimists stepped out each night to applaud essential workers; they looked for ways to be together, apart. If we were careful, if we kept washing our hands, we could defeat the common enemy. Yes, the pandemic was further exposing so much we already knew — that generations of young people would be left in financial ruin, that inequality and racial inequity were expanding. But perhaps things had to get bad before they got better. “S.G.N.” fit perfectly into that padded narrative: Good would prevail, love would conquer all.
By the time Krasinski managed to get his pants on, though, the old order of things had firmly reasserted itself — and not just in the easing of restrictions in many states. The coronavirus, it turned out, had reshuffled very little about how we do things. It had taken Americans mere weeks to arrange themselves into vocal, ideological and occasionally armed factions over it. Corporations that had briefly gone silent figured out how to advertise their way through a pandemic, crafting sentimental commercials about honoring front-line heroes — the same workers who, in many instances, were speaking out against their unsafe working conditions. “S.G.N.” was no stranger to this phenomenon: By the third episode, AT&T had swooped in to provide free cellphone service to nurses and doctors, and in a display of gratitude, Krasinski’s daughters drew the company’s logo, a product placement as cute as it was blatant.
Eventually, the homespun quarantine-relief show would become an ordinary corporate property. The sale was clearly a disappointment to the community Krasinski had fostered, or at least to the many who commented to accuse him of selling out. The actor said previous commitments, and the unsustainable cost of production, meant he had never intended to make more than a handful of episodes.
Whatever the reason, Krasinski bowed out at the most opportune possible moment. It is nearly impossible to imagine how “S.G.N.” would function right now. Cities have erupted in protest against police brutality. Curfews have been instituted; the National Guard has been deployed. Federal agents laid a path of tear gas so the president could have a photo opportunity outside a church. Iconic image replaces iconic image: journalists shot with rubber bullets and arrested on live television, peaceful protesters doused with chemicals, looters busting into stores along Fifth Avenue. What would it look like now for Krasinski to show us Brad Pitt cameos and cooped-up families playing household sports? We have some idea: He recently tweeted a video of a child singing and protesters embracing police, reminding us about the power of learning and growth. It doesn’t land as the broadcast did.
The difficulty of imagining another “S.G.N.” exposes what was nagging about it all along. It was a well-intended distraction, but it was, as with so much else, insufficient to the circumstances. When civil unrest is worsening, it’s difficult not to become keenly aware of when, and how often, we’re choosing to soothe ourselves and bury our heads in sand. This even felt true early in Krasinski’s run. Each night’s applause for health workers was dogged by the knowledge that we could not seem to provide them with basic protections. We could improvise ceremonies for our graduates, but we could not help them with the colossal burden of their student debt. So often the sentimental gesture, deeply satisfying on the surface, only covers our inability to act. By early this month, for instance, many Instagram users were eagerly expressing their solidarity with protesters by posting blank squares — an action that ended up drowning out actual information about the demonstrations. The same day, Nancy Pelosi rebuked the president’s waving a Bible like a prop by reading to reporters from her own.
There was only ever one outcome available to “S.G.N.”: Krasinski was always going to put on his pants. Because before the good news, we may have to hear all the bad, and act on it.
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June 11, 2020 at 04:48PM
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The Hollow Inspiration of ‘Some Good News’ - The New York Times
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