NBC’s workplace comedy looks back on a long year with humor, heart, and satiric knives out.
Our miseries and transformations have not ended.
January is years away.
NBCUniversal
2020 is material artists will be mining until civilization ends, next week.
And, on Thursday night,Superstorereturned.
Sometimes you just need an episode of television, and I sure needed this one.
Last season hit a COVID wall right in the middle of a send-off.
Amy (America Ferrera) got a fancy promotion, requiring a move out west.
Jonah (Ben Feldman), her work-crush-turned-boyfriend, said he’d move with her.
Viewers knew Ferrera was leaving but Feldman wasn’t.
“Essential” necessarily pauses all plans.
It begins in March, with the Cloud 9 employees expressing vague concern about “this coronavirus deal.”
Customers swarm the toilet paper.
Amy quotes official parent company blather about how the workers are “the true heroes.”
By now, this is familiar trench humor for most of humanity.
Corporate offers no guidelines, so safety has to be improvised.
Everyone starts wearing makeshift masks.
Against all odds, there is a goodTiger Kingjoke.
“That was, like,earlypandemic?”
is how Cheyenne (Nichole Bloom) explains the ravenous fandom for Netflix’s feral-cat docusoap.
“No one really cares anymore.”
Superstorehit a comfortable cruising altitude last season.
Amy tells the staff that corporate has finally,finallysent safety supplies.
A box opens with a flourish, revealing locks, caution tape, and anti-looting procedures.
There’s a giant poster, too: “ZEPHRA BELIEVES IN THE BLACK COMMUNITY.”
Garrett (Colton Dunn) rolls his eyes.
“What are we, ghosts?”
Exhaustion and paranoia are taking a toll, even on ever-chipper Glenn (Mark McKinney).
He’s initially charmed by Zephra’s true-hero messaging.
Then a customer sneezes on him.
By summer, Glenn’s sunny demeanor barely represses internal torment.
“Everything’s fine!”
“In fact, in my panic dream last night, the person clubbing me to death wasTopher Grace.
So… little taste of Tinseltown for y’all.”
There are needles threaded here, real horrors acknowledged without departing from our long-established characters' funny perspectives.
A customer purchases beer for everyone, which leads to a nice after-hours hangout.
It’s a tender work-family moment.
She cheerleads Cloud 9’s big apocalypse earnings spike: “Great job, guys, way toslay!”
Through a fuzzy-freezy connection, Amy begs to differ.
She has no time for anything.
It’s taking a toll.
“You’re in an impossible situation,” Jonah says.
“We all are.
I don’t know.
Something has to change.”
I don’t know either, but something has changed.Superstoreis back.
That’s something to celebrate, and a little less pain to numb.Grade: A
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