Wednesday, December 2, 2015

My Favorite New TV Show.

This week, "Monday Night Football" featured two of the worst teams in sports: the Ravens and the Browns. I couldn’t decide if I should skip the game or hate-watch it.

Instead, I caught the first two episodes of the new NBC sitcom “Superstore”. It was awesome.

The show is set in a St. Louis Walmart-style store. Furtile ground for a workplace comedy.

There are key ingredients to the success of a sitcom – ensemble cast, juggle three plots every episode – but it simply boils down to good writing. Good writers can make a decent premise great, by crafting every script. There are cutaways between scenes in “Superstore” that only last two or three seconds, but perfectly capture the unintentional hilarity of a big-box store, and society at its worst – like an abandoned baby bouncing happily in a crib display. Or the employee conduct video that promises to “explore RACE, and time.”

The characters tend to be more thoughtful than real-life Walmart employees, but isn’t that what we want in our TV shows? I know I do.

Monday was a soft-launch of “Superstore”, before it kicks off full-time next month. You can find episodes online in the meantime. This is the kind of show I’m going to make. The complete antithesis of Ravens/Browns.

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