December: the most reflective time of year. As the last month, it’s often when people evaluate the past 365 days and brainstorm how they can do better next year. It’s a time to see what’s been gained and what’s been lost, to remember what happened and what we survived.
December, in addition to personal introspection, is punctuated by end-of-year recaps. Google’s Year in Search has revealed popular search queries since 2010. YouTube Rewind summarizes the preceding year by highlighting its top trending videos and creators. Even the most critically acclaimed commercials elicit goosebumps and groans alike, as corporations attempt to offer insight on the year. Such reflections have become an annual American tradition.
As trite as the adjective has become, this year is truly unprecedented. Packed with a global health crisis, social unrest, and political turmoil, 2020 has prompted YouTube to do the unexpected: cancel YouTube Rewind 2020 for the first time since its inception. In its place, Netflix released “Death to 2020” on December 27.
“Death to 2020,” the Netflix original production, is a British mockumentary featuring fictional characters giving interviews in response to the realities of the past year. Characters include a New Yorkerly News reporter, a racist historian, a satirical conservative spokesperson, a self-described “Karen” soccer mom, and of course, an average citizen. The juxtaposition of the footage’s seriousness and the narrator’s sarcasm works to market this end-of-year programming as a dark comedy.
“Death to 2020” had the potential to be a fresh breath of entertainment, a novel satirical discussion of a deeply traumatic year. With the involvement of “Black Mirror” co-creator Charlie Brooker and actors Samuel L. Jackson, Hugh Grant, and Lisa Kudrow, the comedy had every chance to be fresh, edgy, and undoubtedly hilarious.
The film, however, ultimately falls short of expectations. It’s just not funny to call national lockdowns across the planet “the most successful global franchise since the Marvel cinematic universe.” At best, the narrator’s attempts at humor reflect the same memes, Tweets, and TikToks seen all year. Jokes that social distancing was enjoyable for antisocial introverts — as the film’s resident psychologist Dr. Maggie Gravel, played by Leslie Jones, says in the film — have already been made on the Internet.
Moreover, its familiar criticism of the rise in American polarization in response to health, social, and climate crises has grown banal. The mockumentary, for example, shows unrelated, trivial footage — like a woman blindly juggling — over scientist Pyrex Flask’s, played by Samson Kay, explanation of COVID-19 to reflect a popular public sentiment that nobody cares about the facts. But the exhaustion concerning coronavirus news has been felt throughout the entirety of last year, and as such, the joke comes across as obvious and overused.
While its commentary had potential, “Death to 2020” could have made a more clever and original jab at the realities of this past year. Instead, critics agree that “Death to 2020” ultimately fell short, with a score of 37% on Rotten Tomatoes and 41 out of 100 on Metacritic. The film is simply predictable and surprising only in that it is a comedic disappointment.
So why was “Death to 2020” popular? The film’s saving grace is its scope. From wildfires to impeachments, to coronavirus, protests, and national elections, a decade’s worth of events were packed into one year. While “Death to 2020” isn’t particularly good, the film does offer a way to digest this past year, to see a video of a burning forest and remember that time.
“Death to 2020” is not groundbreaking, but it is still valuable in how satirical discussion can help process deeply traumatic and unsettling events. The film portrays the contradiction of feelings felt all year, of feeling safe and even desensitized at home while news outlets announced rising death tolls. Furthermore, this film is indicative of how many Americans handled arguably the most trying year in history: with sarcasm and Netflix. In a time with little retrospective programming, the mockumentary serves as tangible evidence to prove that this year truly did happen.
“Death to 2020” tried to bring a light hour or so of entertainment into an overall dark year. And though its exaggerated portrayal of 2020 might be cringe-worthy, it did give a glimpse of what future generations will think of this time. When the mockumentary shows something that didn’t happen, like claiming COVID-19 was created by Bill Gates, it forces you to consider what did actually happen. Oftentimes, the reality is not any better than the satire.
Ultimately, the film is decidedly unfunny, but to be fair, so was the year 2020. At least “Death to 2020” will serve as a compilation of the year’s most significant moments to look back on and remember their insanity.
“Coronavirus” by Chad Davis is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
