The cast of Superstore reflects on the show’s legacy as a working-class comedy
Image: Graphic: Allison Corr TV Features Superstore
Over a meritorious six-season run, Superstore mastered its comedic voice. The NBC sitcom about the employees of the St. Louis store of big box chain Cloud 9 found its humor in creative visual gags (customers going wild during the act breaks) and fleshing out its ensemble with amusing character traits like Garrett’s (Colton Dunn) sarcastic intercom announcements, Dina’s (Lauren Ash) pet birds, and Jonah’s (Ben Feldman) undying love for The Americans (that one, frankly, is understandable). Superstore dazzles amid TV’s crowded workplace sitcom genre due to consummate writing and a talented, diverse cast. Even as its finale approaches (on March 25) , the series continues to offer distinctive commentary on social and national issues while creating empathy for retail workers with its entertaining yet detailed insights into the working class.
Created by Justin Spitzer and co-produced by Jonathan Green and Gabe Miller (who took over showrunning duties for the final two seasons), Superstore premiered in 2015, ready to offer its perspectives on various issues through a humorous yet grounded lens. This approach became clear with season one’s ending, which triggered a series-long arc of unionization and labor rights, and runs through the current season’s take on how blue-collar workers deal with the hazards of COVID-19. The tagline for Superstore’s sixth and final season—“more essential than ever”—encapsulates the workers’ daily lives during an ongoing pandemic while also speaking to the many larger themes the show has covered, such as wage gaps, cultural appropriation, gun laws, and immigration, transforming Superstore into essential TV viewing over the last six years.
Not every outing was a success, but as it went on, Superstore found its groove and expanded on its critical analysis of various other subjects with episodes like season three’s “Healthcare Fund,” wherein Amy (America Ferrera) and Jonah try to come up with a solution for the company’s terrible insurance plan, or season four’s “Maternity Leave,” in which new mother Amy learns she doesn’t qualify for maternity leave and has to work through a tired, emotionally messy day. Superstore also delved into serialized stories to keep audiences invested long-term, most prominently with Jonah and Amy’s on-again, off-again romance (akin to The Office’s Jim and Pam or Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s Jake and Amy), the Sandra (Kaliko Kauahi) and Carol (Irene White) rivalry, and the effect of Dina and Glenn’s (Mark McKinney) opposing managing styles.
Ahead of Superstore’s series finale, the cast spoke to The A.V. Club about finding their chemistry and the legacy of the show, especially as epitomized in one of the most defining episodes: the season-four finale. The episode, “Employee Appreciation Day,” aired in May 2019, in the midst of the Trump administration and its overtly xenophobic immigration policies. U.S. Immigration And Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers raid the Cloud 9 in search of sales associate Mateo (Nico Santos), a Filipino American undocumented immigrant who surrenders and is taken away after his friends and fellow co-workers attempt in vain to aid him. This finds a comedic balance to the significant ICE raids scene and keeps the humor going with the store workers’ attempts to distract ICE officers and Sandra’s lackluster engagement.
“Employee Appreciation Day” isn’t just an audience favorite–it’s one of the cast’s preferred episodes as well, because of its realism and impact. “I think it opened up a lot of conversations. I’m most proud of that fact,” Santos tells The A.V. Club. This particular angle continued to shape Mateo’s arc and unwrap layers of his seemingly snide personality. “He is bitchy at first glance but as the story builds up, you realize why. There’s so much at stake for him.”
Mateo’s story represents what millions of immigrants in the U.S. are going through, putting a familiar (if fictional) face on a contentious issue. Santos points to a study by Define American, a nonprofit advocacy organization that consulted on the immigrant plot, which found that storylines like Mateo’s can help “compensate for the absence of real-life contact with immigrants.” Santos says, “It’s a great legacy to leave behind.”
Lauren Ash, portrayer of unrelenting rule-follower Dina, shares that “Employee Appreciation Day” is the episode that will stay with her. “I remember at that point, there was a lot of heaviness around the subject. People felt a disconnect or that it was overblown if it didn’t affect them. Mateo’s a beloved character and my hope is that a percentage of the audience could watch this and it would be more personal for them,” Ash says. “If you can present an issue through a TV show without forcing it but showing it as is, it’s a real gift.”
Superstore was adept at issues-based storytelling, but the sitcom was never just about taking on real-world grievances. It focused heavily on evolving its characters along with their unique brand of humor. “Season one Dina would have never helped Mateo during the ICE raid,” Ash says. Dina’s progression into a multi-dimensional character outside of her initial archetype is a testament to the talent of Ash and the writing team. Ferrera, whose charged performance lit up the (small) screen, was undoubtedly the lead, but Superstore excelled when its ensemble took center stage, as when the cast interacted in the store’s break room or warehouse. These scenes usually thrived on one-liners and quips from guest stars and supporting characters like Marcus (Jon Barinholtz), Justine (Kelly Schumann), and Sayid (Amir M. Korangy). These scenes helped form a deeper understanding of not only all the characters but also the weird world of Cloud 9, a retail store setting that itself allows for a barrage of jokes. Kaliko Kauahi, who plays Sandra, says her favorite bit was the appearance of random feet in the store throughout the years: “I like that we mention it so casually in meetings when, in fact, it’s so odd and scary. You can see it’s become a normalcy for the people who work at that store.”
The strength of Superstore’s ensemble was tested early on in season six, as Ferrera’s exit from the show was announced. Like Steve Carrell leaving The Office, Ferrera’s departure raised concerns about whether the show would still be able to pack the same punch. Fortunately, the chemistry that had arisen organically among the cast kept the team together on screen; as they have leaned into each other’s vibes and specific mannerisms, their on-screen dynamic mirrors their off-screen bond.
The Superstore set has also been home to a few pranks, including a recurring one inspired by Feldman’s revelation that he often went up for the same roles as B.J. Novak, with whom he shares a considerable resemblance. Ash, who initiated the pranks with Dunn, reveals, “It started when Ben was directing his first episode. We had the crew change the name on his chair to B.J.’s and it took him three days to notice… We kept amping it up every season to larger things like trailer doors, parking spots, watermarks on his side. The pièce de résistance came in season six when we had our PA Elizabeth change the name on his COVID testing card and it wasn’t until he saw the nose swab package that he turned and said ‘They made an honest mistake.’ That was it for me, that even in his mask he thought someone mistook him for B.J.” Feldman, who shared that he became friends with Novak after bumping into each other during auditions (the two both recurred on The Mindy Project), says that the prank was too well-executed to be mad at in retrospect.
The collaborative spirit of Superstore encompasses the cast and the creative team, as performers are encouraged to imbue their roles with their own personalities. Kauahi initially joined Superstore for just one episode as a timid punching bag in the first season, but her tremendous comic timing urged the creator and showrunners to keep her on as a recurring star until season four, when she was promoted to series regular. Now, as her co-star Nichole Sakura (Cheyenne) also suggests, some of Kauahi’s assertiveness has seeped into Sandra, who has battled a frenzied co-worker, gotten married, and adopted a son. “That transition was gradual but felt right,” Kauahi says. “I would’ve been happy with Sandra just being told to ‘shut up’ by everyone. I did not foresee her personal and professional journey, but she’s always wanted to be part of the gang and now she finally is. She’s still going to be picked last for the kickball team but at least she’s in the group now. She’s happy with that and especially in this final season, it really shows.”
Mark McKinney, who plays store manager turned floor worker turned co-manager Glenn Sturgis, says the collaboration with the writing team helped him focus on the process of filming and not just on his character. “I felt, ‘Oh, this is a real TV show’ during the second day of shooting the pilot when Lauren and I just riffed on the spot for a break room scene in which Dina and Glenn are not getting along. [The writers] went with it,” he shares. “We were allowed more and more to discover corners of our characters and that got used in the scene.” McKinney adds that he loved expanding on Glenn’s quirk of belonging to a compromised church. “He thinks he’s got it right but everyone around him hasn’t absorbed the lesson of the gospel.” Ash notes she improv-ed a line early on about Dina’s father leaving her at a gas station, and it turned into canon. In season five’s “Myrtle,” Dean Norris guest starred as Dina’s dad as the two attempt to reconcile in a moving story.
Superstore mixing its comedy with some emotionally heavy moments led to well-rounded performances from everyone, including Feldman, who delivers some of his finest work in the series finale. Feldman tells The A.V. Club that he appreciated how his own character attributes or those of others, including Glenn’s traditional views, weren’t necessarily mocked but given room room to grow. “Idiosyncrasies are naturally funny and with a team of lazier writers, it would’ve been easy to belittle or poke fun at them, but it was presented as a reality and with empathy and compassion.” Feldman is also proud of the unionization storyline, in which the union tries to topple the draining corporatization of the retail sector. Mateo’s arrest and the purchase of Cloud 9 by soul-sucking juggernaut Zephra only fuel the organizing efforts of Jonah, Amy, Sandra, and the rest of the employees. “We are a TV show owned by a parent company owned by a parent company,” Feldman says. “We have corporate overlords and have felt their presence. So it was just rare to see the professional dynamic of workers with the people upstairs play out in a comedy. We were around for the Obama to Trump to Biden administration[s]—what a time in America to represent the working class and culture.”
Superstore did reflect working class struggles while also casting an eye to rising inflation, an inequitable gig economy, and the vanishing middle class. The show managed to relay the difficulties of surviving on minimum wage through all its characters, including sales associate Cheyenne Lee (Nichole Sakura), who starts off as a newly engaged, pregnant teen. When she goes into labor, she delays leaving the store because she needs to clock in more hours for the money. Sakura says she was drawn to this aspect of the show’s realism. “It’s not something you see on network comedies. It’s not even a funny thing, but we find the humor in the seriousness of it,” she notes. “I grew up watching sitcoms where everyone led nice lives in beautiful homes, so it’s nice to see what the lives of those who are limited by their income looks like.” As the show nears its end, Cheyenne has matured into having more confidence and getting promoted to the floor manager position. “It feels like a similar progression for me as an actor who started out green and new to it and now I’m more comfortable,” Sakura says.
Superstore leaves a distinct mark on TV, one that sets it apart from even fellow NBC comedies like The Office (U.S.), Parks And Recreation, The Good Place, and Brooklyn Nine-Nine (previously on Fox). Even though the comparisons to The Office exist and will likely continue in the series’ streaming afterlife—in part because Spitzer, Green, and Miller are also alums of that series—Superstore has already established its own legacy. Santos acknowledges that there were always some similarities between the two workplace comedies, but a diverse cast and showcasing an authentic slice of everyday American life makes their series stand out. “[Superstore] resonates because all kinds of people can see themselves in it,” Santos says.
Dunn says that while some of the biggest TV shows come with interesting hooks that can dominate the conversation around them, Superstore eschewed “extravagance” and convoluted storytelling to “[excel] at relatability.” While echoing Santos’ praise for how their topical storytelling fostered greater empathy in viewers, he sums up the lasting appeal of Superstore: “Everyone can just have a good time and laugh, so it was interesting to explore these moments of beauty—to borrow a quote from the pilot—of this very ordinary space.”
46 Comments
If you enjoy this show, AVOID rewatching Season 1. Some of the plot lines are incredibly cringy, and there’s a nasty multi-episode arc where Jonah is disgusted by the fact that Dina might be into him.That being said, it’s clear that Sandra, Mateo, Cheyenne, and Dina went from minor characters to stealing the show (originally centered around Jonah). I sure hope there’s at least one more appearance from Bo!
Season 1 is rough. The supporting characters haven’t gotten any layers yet and everyone is just one character trait over and over, where characters like Dina get surprising sides and moments of humanity later on.
The point where I went from “OK, I guess I’ll keep watching because it’s a good time waster” to “APPOINTMENT TELEVISION IS STILL A THING” was Cheyenne’s dance when they were all locked in the store overnight. Which I *think* is season 1, but yeah, most shows have to find their footing is those first several episodes, and this was no exception.
I have not seen any of s1 and generally have not thought I was missing that much but now I want to see Cheyenne’s dance. Maybe I can find it on youtube. (And yes it was the first thing that came up when I typed her name on youtube)
I was wondering why I couldn’t get past the first few episodes when I tried to originally binge but it became a must-see for me when I picked it up again at the beginning of, I think, season 3(the hurricane aftermath episode)
What is it with the new breed of “nice” socially-conscious sitcoms? Parks and Rec had to completely rewrite every single character after the first season. Brooklyn 99 dropped that plotline with Boyle’s unrequited crush on Rosa and Jake’s unrequited crush on Amy pretty fast. Even with The Good Place, in the first season you could tell they were making Tahani a foil for Eleanor and part of a love triangle with Chidi, and then they realized how sexist that was, dropped it, and Tahahi was just the rich socialite version of Jason for the rest of the show.
What do you mean by “nice”? I’m frankly bored of the love triangle arcs, so I assumed it was a recognition of how tedious they are.
I’m not saying it was the wrong decision. I’m glad they dropped the love triangle even if it left Tahani with nothing to do. Mike Schur gave an interview where he said love triangles are boring and sexist. But it’s funny that the instinct is a love triangle, one set up to make Tahani the typical shallow mean girl and Eleanor the typical rough around the edges tomboy who doesn’t know how pretty she is, and Chidi the typical hot guy with no agency who has no idea what’s happening.
Defintiely got that, was just curious what “nice” meant in this context. But yeah, seriously, what a weird instinct. I love that Eleanor is *very*, arguably too, aware of her hotness.
I recently started watching this for the first time, initially putting it on in the mindset that I wanted something fluffy and feel good after a long day. It didn’t take me long to realise that was a very stupid assumption to make about it.
This show is DARK in some really surprising ways.
I’m currently at the start of Season 4 and can’t believe how great it is.
We got into this show during the beginning of the pandemic. I looked all over here assuming there’d be reviews for episodes and was sad to not find any. I’m glad that AVC is covering it, even as it leaves the air.
Better late than never, I guess, but I think that Superstore would have been exactly the sort of sitcom that would have warranted episodic AVC coverage.
I thought they used to, but it got dropped in the overall Spanfellerfication of GMG
Yeah, you’re right, the first two seasons were reviewed. I miss AVC doing reviews of shows. They still do but it seems to me to be way fewer.
I’m convinced it’s an editorial mandate, that they have to recap shows that have huge viewing populations instead of the shows that people here on AVC actually watch
If you’ve ever worked in major retail or really, in the on-your-feet service industry at any level, I believe you will find this show incredibly accurate, charming, cutting, and maybe even a little mournful all at the same time. I hate the way this word is overused, but it feels authentic to that experience, for me at least. The multiethnic cast was a necessity given the show’s desire to capture and comment on what it’s like to be working class in America. Not a ton of belly laughs here, but lots and lots of strong situational, relationship-based, and character-driven humor.
When I started watching The Good Place, I’d catch parts of Superstore, which I think was in its 3rd season. So I went to Hulu and watched all the episodes up to that point. I knew the series was ending, but I didn’t realize they would air the last two episodes in one night. I wish they just gave them the full season order or just get them to 20 eps this season. It already feels like they just dropped the major bomb last week about the state of Cloud 9.
Ben Feldman has always reminded me of a young Andrew Keegan. I don’t immediately see the BJ Novac comparisons, maybe because Feldman always plays characters with that laid-back west-coast vibe, and Novac never plays that character.
Sad to see Superstore go, although maybe it’s for the best so it doesn’t grind itself into mediocrity à la The Office. As time went on and she got promoted to a regular cast member, Kaliko Kauahi was hands down our favorite. Really hope some smart showrunner snaps her up for something else.
I’ve really enjoyed Superstore since the beginning, but the last couple of years have been a definite drop in quality. For all the praise they got for the unionization and Matteo immigration status plotlines, both of them have been quietly dropped since Justin Spitzer left. Now it’s more wacky stuff about how weird tech companies are, or how Jonah fucks up everything.
Nevertheless, let’s all take a minute to mourn the passing of Dina’s traditional Halloween costume:
It has become very unpleasant to see Jonah get kicked around so much. The show used to be really good at mocking his privileged wokeness without losing sight of his genuinely good intentions.
I was really hoping that after America Ferrera left the writers would spend some time fleshing him out some more. He’s a bright guy with a good heart who’s still working a minimum wage retail job in his mid 30s, so you’d figure there was a story to be told there about how he ended up that way as well as how he feels about it. Instead we get everybody trashing him for the stupidest of reasons.As someone who worked in a big box store, the only unrealistic thing about Superstore is the fact that nobody there has any interest in actually leaving to find something better.
I agree. We’ve seen Jonah get ribbed for his upbringing and good looks, and we’ve seen countless interactions where his heart is in the right place but he picked the worst moment to spew talking points to coworkers who don’t give a crap. I had hoped that losing Amy would make him realize that it was also time for him to move on, but instead we’ve had to watch him re-integrate into a coworker group that he has outgrown in many ways. For a show that did a good job of incorporating covid, it’s odd that Jonah never looked into finishing business school remotely.
I dunno- i pictured it more like my local Fred Meyer; everyone seems to have been there for more than 10 years (i asked one of the employees why they stay and he said they get profit sharing and are treated well…?) So I pretend to think it’s like that and not the obvious Walmart
Love this show, but still find it kind of weird how it’s so often compared to The Office or Brooklyn 99 (“Nine-Nine!”) since it’s always been VERY obvious to me that it’s much, MUCH, closer to being “Scrubs in retail”.Which is no bad thing, FYI, and I’m aware that both The Office and Brooklyn are more recent/current, but, still…
Well, unlike The Office, Superstore is actually funny.
There were a lot of chuckles on The Office, but it did get people onboard with the notion of ‘cringe comedy’. Happily enough, the confusion that ‘laughs’ and ‘douchechills’ are the same thing seems to have subsided.
I haven’t liked Season 6 as much, but there have definitely been some highlights. The episode when they flood the store was hilarious.
Probably one of the most important TV shows of the last decade. Gf and I both worked retail back in the day (at verrrrry different stores) and there are moments that we just know happened in real life; in the most recent ep, a customer at one point is sniff-testing the various masks for sale
I’ve long suspected they troll /r/talesfromretail or people of walmart for inspiration for all of those customer interstitial scenes.
America Ferrera did a great job with her character, but I could never quite like Amy as much as I liked all the other characters. It might have been the lack of defining quirks in an otherwise very memorable bunch. Amy could’ve had more spark to her, and Ferrera would’ve run with it and been her usual amazing self. The show’s general tone and pacing improved once they started bringing the ensemble characters into sharper focus (Sandra and Glenn are always standouts). I could often do without Jonah, though he does provide the sort of schmuck straight man that the others play off of so well. I’m sad the show is ending and I’m going to be watching reruns for a long time.
I never liked Amy either. For someone who was supposed to be the lone competent character, she really did mess up on the job a lot. It was hard to root for her sometimes.
Huh was she supposed to be competent? I always thought it was more kind of confident. I mean she has a bunch of relationship screwups (including with her daughter).
I thought she was supposed to be the competent employee, but definitely not the competent adult.
The moment when they learn that the company has given into their demands because they’ve been bought out and their agreement is worthless is one of the bigger gut punches I can remember on a sitcom. Just so brutally realistic.
The first couple of seasons of Superstore mean a lot to me. I was a Jonah- a really bright guy who for some reason became depressed and struggled to finish college. While I was doing so I worked retail. I came into it pretty arrogantly and left it quite humble. Part of me still wishes I had those years of my life back, as I was miserable most of the time. But I met a girl that I was crazy about for a while (she left the store) and then I just sort of wallowed. Hell, even like Jonah, I couldn’t get promoted. I was even threatened for talking about unionizing once! I worked with people very much like the people portrayed on this show- most of them pretty good people, a few useless or store snitches. Anyway I finally worked out my issues, got my head cleared and finished up and straight through to my masters and into my actual career. As a result I really related to early Jonah.And then he and Amy got together and they turned him into a walking idiot. I just hope the show ends with him realizing Amy isn’t for him and being happy with the smoking hot red head attorney he’s currently seeing.
Part of the finale really does have to address that Jonah’s stalling on moving on from Cloud 9.
yeah it really, really does. Like maybe when Amy left Jonah secretly started taking online classes to finish his degree (they’ve always been fuzzy about whether it was his BA or MBA) and finally finishes up and moves on. I mean, presumably, the store is going to close right? Then again maybe it will come “full circle” and Glenn will buy it (as in this location only), just as his father was bought out.
Glen seems like the kind of person who’d have been squirreling away pennies for the entire time he was working for Cloud 9.
“Business school” is something that comes up a lot in TV/movies but no one in real life says it. I assumed jonah was getting his MBA.
I did too based on his presumed age but then there have been times where they’ve implied he has no degree at all…not that it matters that much at this point!
Working retail in a big box store is quite the humbling experience….!
I have two opposite thoughts. One is that in terms of NBC maintaining any semblance of being a comedy juggernaut, isn’t Superstore departing going to leave a massive hole. Young Rock and Mr Mayor are both promising but thy’re only in their first season. Next year could be one of the worst comedy years for then network.
I feel like reviewers gloss over how awkward and bumbly this show was at first and how even Glenn and Dena rarely ever got past those awkward stages of their characters being cariacatures.
I do also appreciate a lot of what Superstore does (especially the Matteo being deported storyline or the young pregnant couple) but sometimes I feel like it’s inaccurate to my experience working in retail. I worked at a tea shop that paid close to minimum wage and within ten months, I was the 2nd most senior employee in the store because the turnover was so high. Then again when I worked at Papa John’s the retention was better.
I think for the show to have been more realistic there had to have been a lot more leaving and coming
They should not be going off the air. There are so many stories to tell!
Pretty solid finale, IMO. Not too sad, not too saccharine.The Amy/Jonah resolution was pretty predictable, but overall, not much to complain about.Hoping the Bo/Cheyenne spinoff takes flight!