If you’re a TV fanatic like me, the chances are that you most likely have that one comfort series that you hold so near and dear to your heart that you would undoubtedly defend it with your entire being until you quite literally can’t anymore. If you do, and that show is called Superstore, then congratulations, you’re in the right place; I am about to give you the Superstore rant of a lifetime.
Superstore is a series set inside Cloud 9, a fictional Missouri chain big-box store. The show follows Jonah Simms (Ben Feldman), a Business school dropout who takes a job at Cloud 9 after feeling that his life was reaching a halt; with a pile of crushing student debt and parents he was afraid to disappoint, Jonah sees Cloud 9 as a way to start over and build his way back up. It is there where he comes to meet Amy Sosa (America Ferreira), a floor supervisor at Cloud 9 who’s unhappily married to her high school sweetheart, Adam, and who, a 19-years-old, fell pregnant with their daughter, Emma. Amy sees Jonah as a self-centred try-hard and immediately sees his hiring at Cloud 9 as a punishment. She quickly grows fond of him when he lights up the store’s ceiling with glow in the dark galaxy stars to show her not every day has to be just like the last, thus creating a quote-unquote “moment of beauty” and launching what was soon to become one of the greatest love stories ever told on TV.
#Simmosa for life and all, but enough about Jonah and Amy—
To tell you how my love for this show began: Superstore is a show that really hit home for me. I spent two years of my life as a floor worker in a big-box store while trying to fund my way through high school. I accepted the minimum wage, the straight 8 hour shifts of standing, and the daily 3 hours of being a verbal punching bag for angry white women who don’t understand that we can’t process a refund without a receipt or a rewards card as evidence of purchase. So when I tell you that Superstore was the one show that made me and my friends from that line of work feel represented, I mean it because the majority of stuff you see on Superstore that gets passed off for comedic value does, in fact, actually happen. From children climbing up three tiers of industrial shelving units to having to form a task force made up of you and your co-workers dedicated to shooing birds out of the store’s automated doors after they get trapped inside; there’s legitimately not a thing Superstore did that I haven’t seen with my own two eyes in person, and that’s what I loved so much about it.
Superstore contained the perfect mix of workplace comedy crossed with the soul-crushing struggles that came with being nothing but a minion in a massive corporate machine. The show always made sure to cover everything in a way that was not only respectful but also authentic; from standing up to corporate to forming what feels like a found family bond with your co-workers in a nightmare (quote-unquote, “fast-paced environment”).
Believe me when I say, everything Superstore did, it did right.
(Disclaimer: I quit my job as a retail worker in December 2019 ahead of the COVID-19 pandemic after getting mistreated by corporate one too many times to count.)
So, when the sixth and final season premiered earlier this year, we all knew without a doubt the writers of Superstore were going to be portraying what it’s like to be an essential work in the middle of a global pandemic. While most people continued to work from the safety of their own homes throughout COVID-19, floor workers in retail stores weren’t awarded that luxury. Instead, they had to go out every day from 9 to 5, crossing paths with up to hundreds, sometimes thousands, of people each week.
From the anti-maskers to the contaminated, retail workers were out there doing everything they could just to make ends meet, all while keeping the shop doors open throughout the chaos just so you could have somewhere to come in and stock up on all your self-quarantine needs. Retail workers were doing some of the most unappreciated work throughout the entirety of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the writers on Superstore made sure to highlight that with each passing episode because that’s just the kind of show it was. It shined a spotlight on these people who work in such a usually unappreciated career field and made it into something so entertainingly beautiful. Superstore captured the utterly raw moments of what it’s like to be an essential worker through what’s possibly been the toughest of times we’ve come to face.
Something I adore about the series is that it was a show that didn’t make you believe it was anything more than it actually was. It was a show that was so grounded in reality that you could quite literally send a camera crew and editors to your local big-box store and get similar results to that of a Superstore episode, which is not something you could say the same for when it comes to shows like Brooklyn Nine-Nine or Parks and Recreation.
Pictured: Lauren Ash as Dina — (Photo by: Tyler
Golden/NBC)
It managed to hit the nail on the head on every aspect of what it’s like living the retail worker life and did it in a way that was so rightfully executed compared to other renditions we’ve seen throughout other shows and movies that tend to go about portrayals in a way that feels like straight-up mocking what these people do.
Spoilers ahead… you’ve been warned.
NBC made the unfortunate decision to cancel the series during the airing of its sixth season but thankfully gave the showrunners enough time to give the series a proper ending. The series finale proved yet again that corporate America can’t be trusted, with Cloud 9’s parent company, Zephra, shutting down the majority of Cloud 9 stores in order for them to become fulfillment centres for online orders, putting a majority of our beloved characters out of work, thus proving, yet again: Corporate does not care.
When it comes down to it, do I believe Superstore to be the greatest workplace comedy of all time? Absolutely. It was raw, it was real, and it gave you an inside look behind the scenes of what goes into the making of your weekly 15 minute trip to your local department store. Even though its short six year run on NBC didn’t prove to be a massive success, it has since garnered a cult following of fans from its arrival on streaming, finding its rightful audience after all this time.
Superstore is a show that will continue to age like a timeless classic. It has immortalised what it’s like to be an essential worker through a global pandemic and delivered to us, what I believe, to be the greatest love story of all time with Jonah and Amy. Will there ever be another show like it? Probably not, but there doesn’t have to be; because no matter what comes next, there’s nothing you can do that could possibly perfect what was already done to perfection.
