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Chapo Trap House host Matt Christman once described The Office as “a show that gave itself Stockholm Syndrome.” While I’m a fan of The Office, Christman’s critique is valid. As one of the most beloved sitcoms in modern television, The Office began with a simple premise — what if you had the worst boss imaginable? Michael Scott wasn’t cruel, but his failure to understand the workplace power dynamic meant his subordinates had to placate his lonely neediness or risk losing their jobs. But as the show continued, Scott grew on audiences and the writers adapted him into a lovable fool. By the finale, Michael Scott had established heart-warming camaraderie with both the viewers and his subordinates, a great departure from the life-immiserating antagonist he played in episode one.
Superstore, which debuted two years after The Office concluded, was very obviously NBC’s attempt to recreate the financial success they had found with a show about the American workplace. I didn’t tune in to its original airing, but after a friend suggested it last year, my partner and I decided to give it a shot. I went into Superstore with low expectations, assuming it was a knockoff that would follow The Office’s blueprint — the employees of Cloud 9 ( a very clear stand-in for WalMart) would comedically navigate working at a dead-end retail store in the same manner their white-collar counterparts dealt with the drudgery of Dunder Mifflin Paper Supply Company. Through their trials and tribulations, they’d find romance and friendship, and eventually, they’d realize they had more in common with their corporate bosses than they’d previously thought.
This was my expectation. But I was 100% wrong.
While the show humanizes employees and managers alike, Superstore never wavers from the unflinching reality facing America’s minimum wage workers. Their bosses are idiots, their pay is low, and their duties are mind-numbing at best and life-threatening at worst. All the while their corporate masters treat them like expendable resources, commanding them to work through natural disasters and pandemics to generate shareholder value.
The main character Jonah, a business school dropout whose upper-class background contrasts with his fellow workers, is a spot-on representation of the guilty white liberal. While he complains about every mistreatment from corporate, the majority-POC characters from working-class backgrounds are more accustomed to the day-to-day exploitation. Jonah spends a significant portion of the show trying to start a union, which the company busts at every opportunity. In one of the most shocking admissions I’ve seen from a network sitcom, Cloud 9, which comically masquerades in the “pro-diversity” policies common in corporate America, calls in ICE to deport one of its own workers in an attempt to break the union. Watching the plot line unfold is surreal. Never would I have thought a mass-market TV show would explore how capitalist businesses use the second-class citizenry of undocumented Americans to suppress labor rights and increase profits. And yet, the relationship between the undocumented Mateo (played by Nico Santos), his employer, and the constant threat of deportation should he resume collective bargaining activity is the most realistic depiction of cutthroat capitalism I’ve ever seen on popular television.
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