SUPERSTORE Post-Mortem: EP Jonathan Green on The Format-Busting Premiere

[Warning: This post contains spoilers for the SUPERSTORE season 6 premiere.]

SUPERSTORE ended its fifth season prematurely (due to COVID-19 impacting production) with Jonah (Ben Feldman) and Amy (America Ferrera) on the verge of moving to California, but the world was very different when season 6 kicked off.

In “Essential,” the Cloud 9 employees quickly discovered that coronavirus was spreading (shutting down the NBA, Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson were infected, etc), and that they were the new heroes. But rather than stay in the early days of the pandemic, the episode skipped forward through time (covering several months in under a half-hour), showcasing how fast things changed.

“Initially, we were trying to figure out just how to [handle the gap of time],” co-showrunner Jonathan Green says. “There was so much that we wanted to see our characters going through with COVID hitting the store, and how it totally changed the world of retail stores in particular. And so we had talked about whether we are just picking up where we left off and sort of following it [from there], week to week, where multiple episodes cover the early days of the pandemic. [But] we felt like that would end up being some sort of like period piece that takes place in just the early days of the pandemic—a period piece from six months ago.”

“So we decided that we could hit a lot of that stuff, like the uncertainty of it all in those early days,” he continues. “And then jumping to a new stage where, okay, now we’re supposed to be staying six feet apart. And then everyone’s supposed to wear a mask in the store. [We were] seeing the evolution of that and being able to hit a lot of sort of relatability of the fog of those early months as the pandemic was hitting.”

It also allowed the writers a bit more time to delay a pivotal storyline: “It let us see the developments in Amy and Jonah’s relationship as more and more time passed without them moving to California,” Green teases.

SUPERSTORE, Thursdays, 8/7c, NBC; Seasons 1-5 Now Streaming on Peacock

RELATED:

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• SUPERSTORE: Ben Feldman Previews How Jonah is Handling a Global Pandemic
• SUPERSTORE Season 6 Premiere: ‘Essential’ Photos
• SUPERSTORE: The Cloud 9 Customers Cause Mayhem in First Season 6 Footage
• SUPERSTORE: America Ferrera Sets Season 6 Exit
• GREY’S ANATOMY, NCIS, and SUPERSTORE Stars Share Back-to-Work Photos
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• SUPERSTORE Creator Justin Spitzer Looks Back on Very Big, Out-of-Time ‘Olympics’
• SUPERSTORE Bosses Reveal Cut Season 1 Finale Storyline, HAMILTON Near-Miss, and More
• A Beginner’s Guide to SUPERSTORE
• SUPERSTORE Post-Mortem: Jonathan Green and Gabe Miller on the Jonah-Amy Twist and Season 6
• SUPERSTORE Post-Mortem: Did ‘Customer Safari’ Set Up Amy’s Exit?
• SUPERSTORE Post-Mortem: Ben Feldman on Embracing the Horror Tone of ‘Carol’s Back’
• SUPERSTORE: Ben Feldman on Stepping Behind the Camera for ‘Carol’s Back’
• SUPERSTORE: 5 Ways Amy Could Leave the Show
• How SUPERSTORE Nabbed That Unexpected Emily Deschanel Cameo
• SUPERSTORE: Kris Lefcoe Reflects on Making Her Directorial Debut with ‘Cereal Bar’
• SUPERSTORE Creator Explains the Show’s Unconventional Original Title
• Inside SUPERSTORE’s Cloud 9 Pop-Up at Comic-Con
• On the Set of SUPERSTORE: Check Out Props and Costumes from the Comedy’s History
• SUPERSTORE: Colton Dunn Crashes Ben Feldman’s Interview

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