SUPERSTORE Bosses Jonathan Green and Gabe Miller Preview Cloud 9 Confronting Systemic Racism

SUPERSTORE returns on Thursday, January 14, as the Cloud 9 bosses reverse the decision to lock up Black hair products…leading the employees to contend with the systemic racism and microaggressions occurring in the workplace.

“The idea stemmed from the real decision that Walmart made after George Floyd murder and the Black Lives Matter protests,” SUPERSTORE co-showrunner Jonathan Green shares. “They suddenly announced that they were no longer going to be locking up their Black hair care products and requiring customers to ask for an employee to open the case for them…which came as a shock to a lot of people that they had ever had a policy like that; [it] definitely implied they were afraid that those products were going to be stolen. And we saw that as an angle that naturally applied to our store setting, and something that was a way to get into talking about some of these issues that would feel organic to our world.”

“So at the beginning of the episode, Cloud 9 has made a similar decision, and the episode goes on from there,” he continues. “As we see, Garrett and others in the store react to that decision and the idea that that had ever been done in the first place.”

With Glenn (Mark McKinney) quarantining at home after being exposed to someone who was sick with COVID—but giving his input via video chat—Garrett (Colton Dunn) is put in charge of rooting out the racism at the store.

“We have Garrett leading a meeting for the first time, to talk about racism in the store,” co-showrunner Gabe Miller previews. “And people end up putting the burden on him to do the work. And that includes Glenn, who just feels terrible about these racist policies and wants to make it up to the store’s Black employees, but doesn’t know how. And Jonah is trying to help, and de-center himself, and figure out the right way to be an ally.”

Adds Green, “It’s an episode we’re really proud of for talking about these issues, but it’s also a really funny episode as we see our people trying to grapple with this big stuff. We end up talking a lot about how to go about doing this work of antiracism, the little steps can be taken, even at the store level and interpersonal level with these issues.”

And while the show has never shied away from tackling difficult, timely topics, the writers are prepping to handle something new: the end. With SUPERSTORE officially ending this season, the team is hard at work arcing the final batch of episodes.

“In general, toward the end of our seasons, we like to sometimes shake things up and cause interesting problems for our characters that will will give us something juicy to dig into next season,” Miller says. “And we had some of those things in mind that we were starting to work towards. But when you’re tying up the series, you want to leave your characters in a place that that feels satisfying and good. It’s a different set of criteria for what those final ending points are for the last episode.”

“It is a little bit of a different process where you’re not [just] trying to, obviously, tie up one season,” adds Green. “We’re really trying to step back and look at the series as a whole and think, where do we want these characters to end up based on everything that’s come before? So it’s a huge task. We’ve got a big list of things that we want to try to incorporate.”

And the team has brought in a familiar face. “We’ve got Justin Spitzer, working with us again back in the room,” Green says of the SUPERSTORE creator, whose AMERICAN AUTO was just picked up to series at NBC. “Obviously, it means a lot to him to finish the show in a satisfying way. So that’s been great having him back. We’re all just trying to make sure all of our characters end up in a good place and it feels satisfying.”

SUPERSTORE, Thursdays, 8:30/7:30c, NBC

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• SUPERSTORE’s Ben Feldman on Reaching the ‘Really Special’ Episode 100 Milestone
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