Superstore: The Real Modern Family I’m Preparing For.
I completed the sixth and final season of Superstore. In case you haven’t heard about it—you are not alone as most of my friends haven’t watched it either—it’s a show revolving around employees who work in a superstore, something like Walmart. The fictitious store in the show is called Cloud 9. It competes with Target and the employees wear blue vests. Take it what you will.
It was a good show. But I was surprised that I wanted to write about it. The idea that nagged at me came from the final episode of the final season. It hit me that Superstore was a show about modern families, far more modern than the more popular Modern Family.
A Workplace Comedy Hits Differently
I’m not saying Modern Family is a bad show. I think it’s a great show. But Modern Family give me a visceral reaction about the idea of true modern families—I’ve watched enough reruns from start to finish to say that with confidence.
Maybe it hit different because Superstore hit a genre of shows I like: workplace comedies. Other shows I love in this genre include The Office, Parks & Rec, Veep, and Scrubs. It turned out, Justin Spitzer, Superstore’s creator, was a writer for both Scrubs and The Office. It appears my taste revolves around a small world.
The final season had a simple COVID theme I don’t think would age well. But I sat, I watched, I conquered. It was an easy two-day shift with interim breaks to wallow in the “What the hell am I doing with my life” guilt everyone else goes through when binging. While much of the final season was filled with light comedy, quick wit and a general feeling of obligation to see something through because of my loyalty to the first few seasons, I came out with a surprising emotion: Gratitude
That word implies many things for me. It pertains to how it ended. But it also pertains to the journey I didn’t realize I was part of and what I felt when it came to the end. The weird lives the characters lived through and the families they build for themselves made me feel understood and normal. It wasn’t like other shows that shunned the non-traditional. It showed how the characters all struggled for being outside the realm of tradition, how they accepted it as normal for themselves and for that, I felt grateful because I felt very normal. I realized they had built themselves truly modern families for the 21st century.
My Modernity
What do I mean by “modern?” Well, it would require an evolution from traditionalism. It would be a state where foreign ideas take root to become common stance, because it makes sense. It cannot be timeless.
What is modern needs to shift over and over again when the populace adopts an idea, for better or worse. Aspirational modernity, the one I hope we all want, would see an evolution towards the collective betterment of our society. I’ll use the example of cities, which may bleed into the realms of organized society, to illustrate.
I think a modern city is one that does not need cars. I think cities that require everyone to have cars are rather primal and not too different from everyone needing a horse to get to somewhere. I think modern cities should have a level of interconnectivity achieved entirely by public transit. In turn, I think a modern society is one where coexisting inside public spaces is upheld by high standards of social conduct. Until the average human can “grow up” to such standards, it won’t be modern.
I know many will disagree with my opinion of a modern city and society. That’s fine. It should free you to take my views of a modern family with tiny grains of salt since you already disagree with my opinions on what is modern and what isn’t. Let me rephrase it, you don’t have to agree with me.
From here on it will be all spoilers. If you don’t care to watch the show, it won’t matter. You might’ve watched Modern Family so there will be one node of comparison for you. Don’t read on if you actually plan to watch all six seasons of Superstore. Here goes.
“I Love Mess."
Superstore was a wonderful showcase of how messy life is. It never goes as predicted. Remember how we make plans to make God laugh?
Yeah, well isn’t the purpose of drama for us as the audience to play God and laugh at the plans of characters shit the bed? Superstore was no different for me. I chuckled and groaned at the misfortunes of the characters.
Yet, I wondered what if drama wasn’t something to laugh at but empathize with. What if I treated a TV show with the level of empathy I gave good novels? After all, aren’t all forms of media produced by people who transpose their experiences into their creations?
Even bad shows could show the experience of writers who would do anything to get paid, to keep the dream alive, were still green at the craft, had no value systems of their own, or would write anything to fit in to be liked. I don’t know. But writing is complicated and I think media that transpose such writing through various mediums have other layers of complexity that shine out a level of humanity.
On the other side, as viewers, the social background we grew up in, was part of and exist in will undoubtedly change how we react to such stories. I came from a social background that aspired for the perfectly planned, linear life. It followed the path of great grades, for a great school, for a great job, for marriage by some age, a house in the suburbs, rising in ranks at a big company, and a family with my spouse.
No one sat me down and told me that was what success was. But the environment around me programmed it as “the way.” Some could say this was the “American Dream” from the 50s-80s when many fled war-torn countries that were grappling with the difficulty of rebuilding society after WWII, a state spared for those who lived in North America.
This life of a white picket fence, a montage with kids, and Sunday brunch now feels traditionalist and out of touch with the evolution of what society is today. Throughout the six seasons, the major cast of Superstore characters built a life that seem to surpass the construct of what traditional views of family would be.
Let’s look at the families.
Glenn & Jerusha
First up is Glenn Sturgis, the devout Christian manager of Cloud 9. Glenn and Jerusha, his wife, have a dozen foster children.
Jerusha is unable to get pregnant. But, they are able to have a child through surrogacy. The surrogacy comes through one of Glenn’s employees, Dina Fox. Dina and Glenn are the kind of friends who share nothing in common except a mutual respect for each other’s steadfast values the other considers irrational. They eventually become co-managers of the superstore.
Dina & Garrett
This leads to Dina Fox and Garrett McNeill. Dina is a lover of guns, birds and trucks without radios. She has my favourite line from the entire show I used in a previous newsletter.
“Herds are for turds.” - Dina Fox
Garrett is video game-loving sneaker head who is troubled by not understanding love despite being 40 years old. The two have a friends with benefits type of relationship, a proper relationship, a blow-up where they become enemies, form a polyamorous relationship while Dina has a consenting partner, and eventually end up together.
Amy & Jonah
Next are Amy Sosa and Jonah Simms, arguably the main characters of the show. Amy is a teenage mother, who divorces her husband, has a second child with the divorced husband, climbs the ranks from a floor worker to an executive position at Cloud 9. Jonah is an upper-middle-class socialist who drops out of business school, and works at Cloud 9 as a floor worker for six years because he loves Amy, while lying to his parents he is studying to be a doctor.
Source: https://telltaletv.com/2018/11/superstore-review-delivery-day-season-4-episode-5/
The two date, raise Amy’s children, break up when Amy pursues her corporate job, get back together after Amy admits she made a mistake when she said she didn’t want to marry Jonah, then they have a child together. One perspective is a middle-upper class guy who drops out of business school who marries an older, divorced woman with two kids. Another is a successful business executive with a family depending on her marrying an idealistic guy who spends too much time listening to NPR instead of doing anything with his lofty ideals, who said he didn’t pursue other avenues and stayed as a floor worker because of love.
Mateo & Eric
Then there is Mateo Liwanag, who finds out he is an undocumented immigrant through no fault of his own. It brings light to a situation of what happens to children who had parents make decisions for them and they were shielded from such decisions until they find out the hard way. Mateo eventually marries Amy’s brother.
Cheyenne & Bo
Cheyenne Lee is another teenage mother who marries Bo Thompson, her high school sweetheart and father to their daughter Harmonica. She moves from being a floor worker at Cloud 9 to becoming a floor supervisor, a nice turn of leadership from the teenager who was twerking to Nikki Minaj while 8 months pregnant.
Sandra & Jerry
Sandra Kaluiokalani is a shy and submissive character who slowly becomes one of Dina’s best friends. Her desire for attention leads her to make up a fake boyfriend, until she marries Jerry. The couple then adopts one of Glenn’s foster children, Tony. Tony is a man-sized teenager with a pet shark. It sounds ridiculous but they develop into a very loving family.
An Ode to Diversity
The diversity of casts in Superstore is the Noah’s Ark and a HR consultant’s wet dream. Every single family I mentioned above is interracial. We have White on Black, Asian on Hispanic, European on South American, Pacific Islander on Asian, Blue on Green, blah, blah, blah.
We also see various voluntary identifiers on job applications too. We have disabled, abled, different religions, gay, straight, old, young, documented, undocumented, etc…
I personally dislike such cheap “collect ‘em all” styles of diversity. It’s forced and I understand why people do 'em. Accepting diversity in society is a normal part of life, but it’s another to have it shoved down our eyes.
I’ve seen the highest level of diversity in large corporate parties. More than in sporting events, concerts, school campuses, clubs, and friend groups. Still, I felt the show did a wonderful job making it all so fluid. I didn’t feel this concoction until I sat down to write about it. Maybe it’s because I actually expect to see diversity in a business environment because of how politically correct companies want to be to compensate for something. Who knows. I’m sure this too shall change.
Ridiculous Yet Possible
Each of the families and relationships from the main characters sounded odd, at first. They definitely didn’t fit the traditional paradigm of meeting someone of the opposite sex, same ethnicity, similar age group, similar social background, similar phase in life, and starting a family for the first time together. Yet, maybe thinking this as the norm was old-fashioned.
I think my 21-year-old self would’ve laughed at this show and dismissed the result as comical. That me thought I would retire as the partner of a big accounting firm. That me from nearly a decade ago was interviewed by my university's career centre and I told them there was no point working for a company without a big brand. Thinking back, I do sound like an asshole. But I understand why I thought that way and—turns out—people change and there is no age limit on when you get to grow out from being an ignorant ass.
That me didn’t have the capacity to empathize with how messy and complicated life was. I also didn’t understand how long life would be. I thought it ended after university with the decision I made then.
I lived a while longer, made many choices and lived through the consequences. After working in four career fields, multiple cities, changing friend groups, a nine-year relationship with one person, and pursuing a profession I don’t know how to define into a word, I’m starting to think that part of modernity is accepting there are many ways life can unfold—now more so than ever.
The world became more prosperous and with it came more choices for more people. With more choices came the fear that we were making wrong choices. But we forgot that more choices meant a wider variety of outcomes where the definition of what was “standard" was bound to change and move more into the tail events more so than the congregation to a middle.
While the average family size might’ve been four people 30 years ago because 9 out of 10 families had four people, the same number might result from 5 out of 10 families being single-parent households, to multi-marriage parent households, to families that expand through adoption and shrink through separations. It’s just a possible “for instance.”
More options have introduced greater complexity to the system. That means the modern family is anything that can be feasible from the wide arranging permutations brought about by the globalized world. I don’t think there is an optically “right” family anymore. I don’t know if our dream families can even be defined by traits outside of love and trust.
When I was in high school, I thought I would be married with kids by 26. When I turned 26, I was unemployed. My dream job wasn’t what I thought it would be, and I had to dream again. I wrote a blog post and a dear friend told me I should write a book and I told him I wouldn’t do that. Now, I am typing with a 500 page printed manuscript sitting beside me with red ink everywhere.
With every passing year, life became less predictable and random as I tried staying afloat a tide of changes all around. But, I think the prudent course of action is to prepare myself to have a modern family. A kind of family that can’t be bound to optics, stats, or metrics. I think building for love and trust alone will be hard enough as is.
When Superstore ended, I thought about how wonderful and weird life was and could be. It made me think about all the weird ways we can find happiness in life. It also made the parts I was ashamed with feel okay, understood and normal. If this isn’t modern, then I don’t know what is.