Superstore: Back to Work – Strawberry Jam (Review)

This week on Superstore everything is “back to normal” as the staff return to work. Dina is, unsurprisingly, unpopular with her co-workers and Glenn is trying to change his image. Mateo works overtime to impress the corporate rep and Amy makes a mistake.

The strike is officially over and all the employees are back on the floor.  Jeff the corporate troubleshooter tries to sort out the issues that Glenn and his team have with the company. He also is a fly in the ointment for the store as he is everywhere.

Dina has trouble reasserting her authority and Jonah attempts to help her become a friendlier assistant manager.

The episode follows the usual template, Glenn trying to be something he is not, and failing miserably, and the usual Cloud 9 gags.

However, the show kicked everything into high gear with the severed thumb. As Amy relays the day’s tasks to several employees, she finds the deli unmanned. A long line of annoyed customers means that, as supervisor, she must step in and get the section running.

Amy enlists the aid of Marcus. She takes on buns, veggies and condiments and tells Marcus to handle the meat slicer.  The poor guy has no idea what he is doing and when he turns the device on, manages to slice off his thumb.

Cue comic gold.

As the young employee is in complete denial about losing his thumb, Amy is beside herself.  While Marcus refuses to check and see if the appendage on the floor is his, Amy dances about arms flailing.

The camera pulls back and the point of view is now through the deli door window with no sound.

Brilliant.

Soon after, Amy gathers herself and puts the thumb into a cold guacamole container. She rushes to get Marcus to the hospital so he can have it reattached.

Jeff and Glenn stop the two as they are leaving and Amy puts the guacamole with the thumb on a display basket of chips.  Moments later a Cloud 9 employee picks up the container and puts it in a trolley.

Amy gets away from the rep and Glenn. As she and Marcus start to leave, she realizes the thumb is missing.  The supervisor must now find Marcus’ thumb before it is too late to have the thing reattached.

Orchestrating a store-wide search while not alerting Jeff is amusingly  difficult. Amy tells Garrett if the missing appendage is found to say “strawberry jam” over the tannoy. The whole thing comes to halt when a customer complains about a thumb in his guacamole.

As this is Superstore there were subplots galore.  Cheyenne returns to pick up some things for the baby and winds up working.  The pay off comes when the new mother  is singing to her newborn.  A customer yells at her for being on the phone and Cheyenne puts her cell in his bag.

Glenn spends the entire episode working to impress Jeff. He believes the corporation sees him as a weak ineffectual boss. Turning himself into a “hard arse” does not go overly well.

Mateo does his sycophantic best to be noticed by Jeff. Accosting  customers and stalking the corporate representative. The busy troubleshooter is not, it seems, overly impressed or observant as he gets Mateo’s name wrong and calls him Ma-tay-toe.

Dina tries to get her fellow workers to accept her after Jonah tell her it is important to be liked.  She fails abysmally and finally gives up. It turns out that Dina is not a bully after all. She is just a social inept in charge of people. In other words she is atypical management.

After the thumb is found, Amy is in trouble for putting an untrained worker on the meat slicer.   Dina overhears that her coworker may be fired for her mistake.

The assistant manger finds Jeff who is about to send his report off to “corporate” and Dina asks what might happen to Amy.  “Suspension or termination,” Jeff replies before stating that he really needs to send his report.

Dina mentions that she too has a report to file.  One that points out that Jeff was “in charge” when Amy made her mistake.  Jeff decides not to file the incident report and tells Dina that he really does not like her.

“And I really don’t care,” is her reply.

As Jeff goes to leave the store, Mateo stops him and complains that the corporate rep never noticed him. Jeff assures Mateo that he did.

Superstore  managed to make a point while presenting the funny side of human dismemberment. As much as the corporation was less than supportive of their staff, the workers also had room for improvement.

Neither side is sin free, although the staff could claim March 14 as their one “perfect” day.

Superstore airs Thursdays on NBC.

Cast:

• America Ferrera  –  Amy
• Ben Feldman  –  Jonah
• Lauren Ash  –  Dina
• Colton Dunn  –  Garrett
• Mark McKinney  –  Glenn
• Nichole Bloom  –  Cheyenne
• Nico Santos  –  Mat

Guest starring Matt Bunin as Jeff and Jon Barinholtz as Marcus