Superstore captures the coronavirus pandemic's uncertainty with a fresh perspective and humor

The Daily Beast

"To be fair," says Kevin Fallon, "it’s not a tall order, with the efforts from new shows like Social Distance and Love in the Time of Corona to the recent premiere of This Is Us ranging from instantly dated and twee to emotionally manipulative and overwrought. But a caveat like that doesn’t properly celebrate how the NBC sitcom managed not only to capture the uncertainty and unprecedented nature of that moment, but actually add perspective and something new to take away from it. In other words, where these other shows stopped at merely recounting what it was like in the early months of the pandemic, hoping that was enough to stir some sort of emotion, Superstore made sure there was a point in revisiting it all. It also proved in ways that none of these other shows have that we are actually ready to laugh about things, provided the jokes are smart enough and coming from the right place. 'Essential Workers,' the title of Thursday’s Superstore season premiere, was very funny. It’s hard to decide if it makes sense that the best go at pandemic plotlines thus far is on a series that takes place in a grocery store and from the perspective of its essential workers, or if that may have actually posed more of a challenge; these other shows simply regurgitated talking points about Zooms and masks and social distancing while Superstore zeroed in on how all those measures exacerbated the daily lives of those who had to deal with them while also facing customers on a daily basis, and with no support. How do you add humor to that experience without making light of it? On the other hand, what better way to understand it than by poking at it with humor? Even under the glossy lights of a sitcom set and through the zaniness of the ensemble of outrageous characters, the episode illuminates how being forced to spend so much personal time and money on health and safety is affecting the morale of employees who are already scared."

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• Superstore has to grapple with mask-wearing characters: "Another, more practical, issue for pandemic-era comedies is the mask, which is a problem for human interaction in the real world, but exponentially more so for a form that relies on the expressiveness of the human face," says Rebecca Onion. "After it becomes clear in the course of the first episode that masks are necessary, the cast wears them in the store when interacting with shoppers but not in the break room, stock room, or offices. There’s a gesture toward the idea that they’ve spaced out the chairs in the loading dock to achieve distance in the new 'break room,' but savvy October viewers will know that’s probably not enough to keep a passel of maskless co-workers from infecting one another. Looking at the way the masked actors try valiantly to make the comedy go over with only their eyes and brows in the front-of-house scenes, I can see why the show made this decision, but still: Two raps on the knuckles from Dr. Fauci for that one."
• America Ferrera says Superstore fans should have their Kleenex ready for her final episode next week: "It's an emotional one for sure," she tells People. "The show is a comedy and most of the times, stays very true to that DNA. But this episode of Amy leaving is definitely a tearjerker — was for me, was for me on set, was for me while we were filming. So, I think people should people who are fans of the show and fans of Amy and Jonah, in particular, should have the Kleenex nearby."
• Superstore bosses preview Ferrera's goodbye