HowSuperstoreleaned into a pandemic it couldnt ignore.
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In March 2020, the people who make the NBC sitcomSuperstorewere staring at a series of problems.
Some were the same problems facing many American TV shows that spring.
Are we sick of it?
Do we hate them for shoving COVID in our face when we just came to TV to escape?
Is it comfortable to see on TV?
Is it something we expect because we need to see something we recognize?
Those were the big universal questions, butSuperstorehad its own particular set of challenges.
This was a show where going escapist just didnt make sense,Superstorewriter Owen Ellickson told me.
Our characters would be people in a very interesting, tough spot.
So the question both inside and outsideSuperstorebecame, How do you make a sitcom in 2020, about 2020?
Should they skip ahead to the fall?
We definitely wanted to have an episode where we saw [the pandemic] start.
I was wrong, Feldman conceded, which is usually the case.
I think were all embarrassed we cared in the first place, Sandra tells him.
That was a joke that we cottoned on to very early, Ellickson said.
The first few episodes ofSuperstorehad yet another complication to wrestle with, though.
It was almost like, All right, and now well film the big face-licking episode, Ellickson said.
It was so diametrically opposed to anything you could ever do [now, because of COVID protocols].
So we had to throw out most of it.
There was no way people were not going to hate the episode where Amy left, Ellickson said.
Theres almost this guilty feeling, Feldman said.
Contextually, we were going into a sixth season, No.
In a lot of ways, we felt like it was pretty fertile ground for us, Ellickson said.
If were a show about day-to-day life, day-to-day life just got fucking ludicrous.
SoSuperstoretook advantage of how ludicrous it all became.
There was an initial discussion that was like, The masks are the problem, Feldman said.
But showrunners Green and Miller knew they had to make masks work somehow ignoring them was impossible.
(It turns out theyre a lighting issue and show reflections of all the cameras.)
Fuck em, Feldman told me when I asked about viewers who might be offended by the masks.
Its creators are less worried about politics and more worried about sheer exhaustion.
Their constant presence just felt so brutal, he said.
In some ways, COVID fits in pretty naturally with that, he said.
