I live in Canada but so much media I consume is from the United States that I tend to assume stories take place there by default until told otherwise. Once, I read a book set in England (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime) and I assumed it was set in the United States until the main character went to London. But the other day, I watched the new Frankenstein movie and it dawned on me that I didn’t know where Frankenstein takes place but, because it’s based on an older book, I assumed somewhere in Europe.
That is fair. Even stories that are meant to be realistic usually stretch believability at some point. The show Who’s The Boss expected us to believe that Angela unknowingly was married to two men at the same time. Also, most television series and movies take a long time to produce and by the time they’re released, the world may change in significant ways. At the start of the pandemic, for instance, shows were being released that didn’t address the pandemic because they didn’t know it would happen. Some shows chose to continue ignoring the pandemic.