Sitcoms are something that I have enjoyed most of my life. The ones that really stand out as being fantastic and come to my mind without even thinking about it too much are Friends, Seinfeld, Brooklyn 99, and Family Ties. There are of course others that are just as good and even better than these I guess, but that's just what I come up with without thinking about it at all.
I've seen a lot of sitcoms over the years and I am willing to give almost any of them a fair shake, which is exactly what I have done with Superstore. I'm 15 episodes in or so and I do return to it from time to time but overall I think it is just a "meh" kind of show that unless there isn't anything else on or on offer at the moment, I usually will choose to just leave it alone. It will likely remain in my "continue watching for" section of Netflix forever and I'm ok with that.
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There is one thing that I am really happy about when it comes to this show and that is that there is no laugh track. Even good shows like Seinfeld or Friends had laugh tracks and even though I love both of those shows, I cannot stand laugh tracks. It seems like a product of a bygone era and that is where they should remain. I don't need to be told when to laugh and the shows that don't have laugh tracks but are still funny such as Modern Family tend to appeal to me a lot more in modern times. Worse shows that aren't even funny AND have laugh tracks are the ones that are the most annoying to me. I will usually give up on these shows rather rapidly.
That being said, Superstore is reasonably funny and carries on in a way that kind of suggests that the show could continue forever if it remains popular enough and this is because the show isn't really about anything that has a start to finish type thing going on. It is just a series of events about how a store like Target or Wal-Mart is run and the people that are employed there. The possibilities for storylines are virtually endless, although a few of them are pretty evident right out of the gate.
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For one thing - and this is the most evident one - are a couple of people from very different backgrounds that are obviously on a track to some sort of romantic something or other. I haven't gotten far enough into the series to see this actually happen, but I don't think you need to work for CSI to realize that this is exactly what is going to happen.
The show mostly is just silliness about what it is like to work in a retail environment and some of the more funny aspects of the show are actually making fun of current life issues such as the fact that the entire staff is required to watch extremely long safety videos just because one person drops a can of beans on their foot and injures themselves. Another fun aspect of it is the manager of the entire store "Glenn" who doesn't understand PC culture but is aware he is required to adhere to it. He also is a bit of a moron, which is an angle that they borrowed from The Office but I don't care, it works so why not use it?
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The show kind of pokes fun at the fact that Glenn is a staunch Christian but isn't allowed to even hint at his faith because of sensitivity laws or something like that which definitely does exist in modern society. There is another character that mixes things up a bit named Dina Fox. She is extremely serious about her assistant manager position and is almost militant in the way that she implements store policy. Again, this is kind of borrowed from The Office but again, I do not care, because it is fun.
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So now that I've said a few good things about the show, lets talk about why the show is basically just "meh." I think that these days it is very difficult for anyone to make any sort of sitcom because of the overly PC nature of the world and especially the United States where this show takes place and is presumably a majority of their viewership. People are so damn sensitive today that it simply isn't possible for any series to take a chance at being hilarious because the cancel culture mob is just around the corner on Twitter. Therefore, a lot of the jokes that could exist in the show don't because I believe the writers are being a bit too careful.
The cast is diverse as hell as you would expect these days and they play it extra safe by making one of the funniest people in the show a black man in a wheelchair. That's a lot of diversity boxes that got checked right there.
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Garrett is a great character and actor Colton Dunn nails the role.
What this show truly suffers from though is the fact that it quickly ends up running around in circles since there are only so many scenarios that can be created in the interior of a single retail outlet. It's funny, but even just halfway through season 1, we find ourselves in extremely similar plot sequences episode after episode.
Apparently the seasons get better as they go on into the later ones and it managed to push out 6 years of episodes, so it must be good enough to have appealed to enough people to keep it going.
To me, it is extremely formulaic and doesn't really do anything fresh or new but as I said before, I do not think that this is necessarily because of bad writers, I think it is from writers that are being extremely cautious since anything risque could potentially invoke the wrath of the cancel mob that exists in internet-land.
Should I watch it?
I think it is worth a glance but I believe that about 50% of people out there are going to tire of it pretty quickly. The good news is that you can start anywhere you want since the back stories of the characters aren't really that important nor is there any sort of long-running narrative that is going to result in you being lost if you don't start at the very beginning. If the internet rating systems are to be trusted at all, a good place to start according to critics would be season 3 which is where viewers and critics alike suggest that this is the point where the series found its legs.
For me, this is something I will put on in the background while I am doing something else like cleaning the house. It isn't something that I am super excited to see the next episode of though, and I don't think many other people would feel differently.
