‘Superstore’ Season 5 Cements It as the Most Vital Comedy on TV

Superstore has grown a lot since I called it the millennial successor to Cheers in May 2018. The show has rapidly evolved beyond the Cheers connection I originally saw, but it remains similar in one key way: it’s showing no sign of decline. In fact, Season 5—just going by the stellar season premiere—could very well be the best, most impactful, and important season of the show’s run.

Let me reiterate that: Season 5. The fifth season. In an era when streaming services tap out of a show after two or three seasons and the major networks bail after one (or less), this NBC workplace comedy has defied all the odds to not only get better with age, but more vital.

Set in a Walmart-style store in the Midwestern metropolis of St. Louis, Superstore spent the first significant chunk of its run alternating between being a fun hangout comedy and an incisive take on what it means to work in the unglamorous world of modern retail. Things started to shift in Season 4, as the show began to focus more on the actual issues facing Americans living today—and I mean ripped-from-the-headlines today. Slow burn plots about Mateo’s (Nico Santos) undocumented status and Sandra’s (Kaliko Kauahi) attempt at unionizing the store converged in the Season 4 finale which produced quite possibly the most gut-wrenching development of the series to date. Mateo was detained by homeland security and store manager Amy (America Ferrara) said screw it and joined the unionization attempt. How could Superstore top those emotional stakes? The Season 5 premiere shows how.

Superstore has the kind of confidence you rarely get to see on TV today. It’s not the critical darling confidence of The Good Place or the A-list confidence of Veep, or even the kind of Big Bang Theory confidence that comes from being the most popular comedy on TV. Superstore’s confidence is that of a show that has been allowed to mostly fly under the radar and spend seasons laying the kind of foundation a tornado couldn’t mess with. This is the best kind of confidence, the kind that results in a show that’s able to get better and better with every season.

Now in Season 5, the show is working with a cast that knows their characters inside and out and a writing staff that’s never met a joke too weird to include; there are gags from recurring employees Marcus (Jon Barinholtz) and Justine (Kelly Schumann) that will absolutely wreck you, and to even tease them in the slightest would ruin them as non sequiturs. But even if I did ruin those lines, Superstore still has plenty more fresh jokes in stock.

That’s where the show really struts its stuff with that mid-series Cheers confidence, in the scenes where a half dozen or more characters stack zingers and callbacks on top of each other. No matter who is on screen, be it a minor character like the droll Sayid (Amir M. Korangy) or America Ferrara herself, there are laughs. There’s not a weak link in the cast, and the show keeps pairing characters up in ways that surprise and entertain—like how the pilot makes an unlikely dynamic duo out of no-nonsense Dina (Lauren Ash) and all nonsense Marcus, or the sideways father/son pairing of Glenn (Mark McKinney) and Jonah (Ben Feldman).

Then there’s Cheyenne (Nichole Bloom) and Mateo, a pair that have the kind of friendship that only a snarky gay and a Generation Z girl could have. Mateo’s detainment in the Season 4 finale adds new depth to Cheyenne, a character usually played for laughs, and acts as an entry into what will certainly be the main storyline of Season 5: Mateo’s detainment and immigration fight.

A lot of sitcoms have worked in deportation storylines, most notably The Conners and the short-lived Murphy Brown revival. Unlike those shows, the effects of the current administration’s actions have a direct effect on a series regular, not a recurring character or guest star. Remember that confidence I was talking about earlier? This is it, right here. This is where Superstore knows exactly who its representing as a working-class Midwest sitcom and exactly the right tone to strike.

Yes, there are scenes of Mateo in a detainment center and yes, he talks bluntly about how awful the conditions are. It’s not a joke. It’s not played for laughs. And this topic, without question, belongs in a sitcom that has—from episode one—repped for the majority of Americans that are working so hard to just get by. It belongs here, possibly more than in a drama, because viewers connect to characters that make us laugh differently than those that make us think, cry, or scream. It’s why sitcoms are described as comfort food. And because they make us laugh, we really think of the characters like friends and family. This familiarity, this closeness, one forged over four seasons of watching Mateo live his fully-formed life, makes what’s happened all the more real, and all the more painful.

This is important. Superstore may be the very first time millions of privileged Americans get to feel a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of what it feels like to lose someone to an ICE raid. I know it sounds wild and borderline insensitive, but I mean it. Look at how TV—shows about characters we love watching weekly for years—has always pushed culture forward. The Mary Tyler Moore Show inspired a generation of women (including Oprah) to fight for a career. Before their namesakes justifiably dimmed their reputations, The Cosby Show and Roseanne permanently redefined what a family on TV could look like. Will & Grace literally changed the minds of politicians that ultimately made gay marriage legal. Modern shows like black-ish and One Day at a Time humanize the politics of today, no doubt inspiring young viewers in ways we can’t yet know.

Superstore knows that sitcoms can change the world. Superstore knows that Mateo’s storyline is one that needs to be told right now in the right way in front of as large an audience as possible. Superstore is up for the job, and with Season 5, Superstore gets to work.

Stream Superstore on Hulu