Superstore dished up a double helping of box store comedy with an hour long back-to-back look at holiday shopping. First up was “Seasonal Help” followed by “Black Friday.” The first episode was all about new temporary employees for the season and Amy’s husband working at Cloud 9. The second was about food poisoning and dealing with the seasonal surge of customers.
These two episode’s managed to combine a comic look at the unsung heroes who work in retail at the worst time of the year with a more personal glimpse at Amy’s home-life. It also shows the lengths that some Cloud 9 employees will go to win a bet…
“Seasonal Help” sees Adam get hired as a temp after Jonah suggests he apply. While this is funny, this episode serves a dual purpose of showing the cracks in Amy’s marriage. It also shows that Jonah may have a gambling problem.
Cloud 9 hires a lot of extra staff and after a few quit within moments of being hired Garrett and Dina start betting on which temporary employee will quit next. They invite Jonah to take part and when he wins, he goes over the top and starts a pool where every temp is bet on.
Jonah pushes his favorite to quit and the battle begins in earnest as all the full time Cloud 9 employees try to force the new hires to leave. Jonah wins but then feels bad when he learns all the temps are “Last Chance” people from Glenn’s church.
He then takes the money he won on the pool to Issac; the temp whose quitting allowed him to win. As he walks away he hears the man ask how much crystal he can get for $200.
Glenn has problems getting a “Santa” for the store. It becomes harder when he explains that the position is not paid. Amy tries too hard to prove that her marriage is okay by having sex with Adam at work and the stage is set for “Black Friday.”
“Black Friday” begins with all the staff taking part in a pot-luck meal in the break area before opening the store. Glenn offers a motivational speech and the customers break the door in.
Glenn is taking some pain medication that his wife had left over, for stress, and gets high. Amy gets nauseous and fears that her “office sex” with Adam has resulted in a pregnancy. She gets a test kit from the pharmacy just as Jonah arrives with his video camera. He has been filming his first Black Friday experience.
Amy is not pregnant, it is food poisoning from the pot luck meal. All the Cloud 9 staff have been affected and they are lining up for the toilet. Garret and Dina go to war over her ordering him to man a till. This feud continues throughout the episode and has an amazing result:
Both these Superstore episodes were funny but the second, “Black Friday” allowed Mark McKinney to steal the thunder from everyone in terms of broad comedy. His character, who is feeling no pain. swears at everyone in the break room.
He then goes on to drive a forklift through Cloud 9 to chase customers out at closing. The highlight of the episode was when normally good natured Glenn runs down a child’s doll. When the child’s mother points out “You accidentally crushed my little girl’s doll.” Glenn answers, “Not an accident.”
Just brilliant.
There were a number of comic highlights, as shown in the above video clips. Curiously enough, Mateo and Cheyenne have bonded, mainly over their larcenous approach to Black Friday and these two seem to be heading to BFF territory.
However, the biggest and most interesting thing about these two episodes is the Amy and Jonah story line.
Clearly Amy is now seriously questioning her marriage. The Jonah and Amy dynamic has moved up a notch or two so it will be very interesting to see where these two characters end up.
The Garrett and Dina “hook-up” was not a total surprise after the Halloween episode. Garrett was very impressed by Dina’s cop outfit and those “Boobs man.” Looks like Cloud 9 may have to stock up on breath mints before Christmas…
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 – Mateo
- Kaliko Kauahi – Sandra
Guest starring Ryan Gaul as Adam and Steve Agee as Isaac.
Mikes Film Talk 