Superstore is the TV show best equipped to tell coronavirus pandemic stories

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https://www.vulture.com/2020/04/supe...ronavirus.html

"There will be dozens and dozens of coronavirus stories on TV once productions start up again — it’ll show up on medical dramas and police procedurals, it’ll surely turn into a metaphorical foundation for science-fiction epics, it’ll spark even more dystopian fiction and get filtered down into oddball comedy treatments," says Kathryn VanArendonk. "But as my colleague Matt Zoller Seitz put it, Superstore is 'the only TV series I would trust to deal directly with this period in history.' There are a scant handful of other shows that’ll approach the pandemic in thoughtful ways — I am especially curious about how The Good Fight will weave the coronavirus into its signature mix of seriousness and absurdism — but nothing feels as capable and relevant as Superstore." Sure, medical dramas like New Amsterdam, Grey’s Anatomy and Chicago Med will tackle the pandemic from the perspective of doctors and nurses, while shows like Law & Order: SVU, Blue Bloods and The Rookie will approach the virus from a law enforcement perspective. "But we already expect police and medical dramas to be intense and sad," says VanArendonk. "Medical dramas are good at telling stories about citywide catastrophes, high-drama disasters, and apocalyptic anxieties that sweep over everyone all at once. It’s not that Grey’s Anatomy won’t be able to convey the overwhelming sadness of the coronavirus death toll but that it’s a show perpetually steeped in tragedy. Nightmarish calamity is bread and butter for SVU. For shows like these, the pandemic will be the story du jour, but it’ll also be what we’re used to seeing." But because of Superstore's premise, it's in "a unique position to tell pandemic stories from an especially poignant position," says VanArendonk. "Medical and police dramas treat their doctor and police characters like heroes because they do dramatic, lifesaving things but also because the world has already given them that status. (Heroism has never been as widely associated with nursing, though, which I hope the medical shows will address.) The stockers and checkout clerks and cleaning crew on Superstore, meanwhile, have always been essential employees in our economy, and Superstore has always treated them that way. Goofy and inept and strange though many of them are, Superstore’s ensemble cast of retail employees are people who deserve dignity and compassion. If the show does choose to take on the pandemic, they will be going to work under new, unknown, life-threatening circumstances. It will change Superstore in ways that will feel massive, irrevocable, and terrifying. It’ll feel more like our actual lived experience of these last few months."

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Superstore showrunners' biggest worry the week of the coronavirus shutdown was whether a crowd scene would be marred by rain

But as the week continued and the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 an official pandemic, showrunners Gabe Miller and Jonathan Green said during their Comic-Con@Home that they came to the realization that they wouldn't be able to film the season finale at all. Green said that he and Miller were "down to the wire" figuring out the logistics of those crowd scenes, but "it became clear it wasn't going to be possible to shoot anything for that final episode."

Superstore bosses: "We knew early on that COVID would be an important part of the season"

The NBC workplace comedy will deal with coronavirus when it returns tonight for Season 6, its first episode since shutting down production early on Season 5. "We realized we wanted to see how our characters dealt with the early days of the pandemic: the uncertainty and changing information, the panicking hoarders, being called 'essential workers' but not really being treated as essential," showrunners Jonathan Green and Gabe Miller said in an email to EW. "Superstore has always been a show that tries to reflect what real people are dealing with in the real world, and COVID has obviously had a huge impact on the daily lives and work of store employees. So we knew early on that COVID would be an important part of the season, in big ways and small. Like real stores, everything will look and function a little differently. It’s an opportunity to put a spotlight on a group of people on the frontlines who often go underappreciated."

ALSO:

• Ben Feldman says Superstore couldn't ignore coronavirus: "We all decided that it would be crazy irresponsible of us, a show that is tackling hot-button topics and the public and political and zeitgeist-y interest, if we just pretended that this massive, global, life-defining pandemic didn’t exist,” he says.
• Superstore bosses were thrilled that America Ferrera was doing two more episodes so she could exit with Episode 100: "I'm really glad that those things ended up lining up because it only felt right that America should be part of our 100th episode and celebrating that milestone," says co-showrunner Gabe Miller. "We were really excited when we found out we were going to be able to get her for two episodes this season and that she would be able to be part of things. Once we found that out, that that could be her farewell episode, it just became clear: Well, that is going to be the big event of the episode."
• Superstore show runners kept a Google Doc filled with coronavirus events, news items and policy changes that they could incorporate on the show

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

"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