Luckily for everyone, I had a slow week at work, so I was able to watch Superstore live and get this recap up for timely discussion!
In the cold open, Jeff and Mateo disclose their relationship and that Jeff’s left Cloud 9; Glenn encourages him to visit anytime (“Our food court is very popular with unemployed people”), and so Jeff tells him he got a job at Target. This ends up spinning into a number of other stories (as well as some pretty flagrant product placement for Target).
The biggest and best story is that Garrett asks Glenn for a raise, and in negotiating for one attempts to leverage a nonexistent offer from Jeff. This leads Glenn to become upset that Jeff is “pooching” his employees, so he asks Jeff to come in for a meeting to try to talk him out of it. Glenn gets aggressive, though, including some great action spraying a water bottle in his face, and Jeff then decides to start recruiting Cloud 9 employees out of spite.
Meanwhile, the Amy-Jonah-Kelly love triangle takes another turn. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to write about the major developments the last two weeks, as Amy realized she had feelings for Jonah, everyone saw the security footage of their tape from “Tornado,” and then made a hostile work environment for the three of them last week. At the end of that episode, Jonah asks Kelly to live together, in a clear and desperate attempt to paper over his feelings and/or make up for the situation with Amy. He spends this episode dithering about it, though, with specious excuses, and Kelly figures him out before too long (check another episode with a plot of “Character tries to prove something that isn’t true is”). But this takes an interesting twist when after another scene of Jonah and Kelly together, he asks her to move in, genuinely. An intriguing twist to what seemed like it was heading to the inevitable Jonah-Amy pairing.
Meanwhile, Amy agrees to go on a double date with Dina and the pet store guy (has he been mentioned before?) and his friend; the friend turns out to be hilariously old, and Amy notices their beverage distributor at the restaurant, so she takes the opportunity to get away from the date under the pretense of having to talk to him about work, and they hit it off. Dina pulls her back eventually, but he drops by Cloud 9 the next day, and it sure seems like we’re going to see them together soon.
Meanwhile, Glenn decides to return fire and “pooch” Jeff’s Target employees– accompanied by Garrett, who has taken offense at Jeff’s assessment of his competence. They don’t have any success, but they run into Cheyenne, whose periodic absence from recent episodes is suddenly explained: She’s pulling double duty to save money, and Target has some benefits that are better for her and Harmonica. Glenn’s frustrated and defeated– and if you were wondering if this was product placement, he clarifies that Target is definitely a better store than Cloud 9– but then Cheyenne introduces him to a co-worker, who immediately recognizes him from all the stories she tells about him, and Glenn’s spirits are lifted again. (The co-worker did not recognize Garrett.)
Oh, and Jeff didn’t actually work at Target after all, he just didn’t want to say he was unemployed. Poor Sandra.
ATTENTION CLOUD 9 SHOPPERS:
- Jonah and Kelly set up a living room display to figure out how their shared living space would work. When Mateo sees it, obviously not knowing the real reason, he asks why Glenn would give Jonah that job and not him. “Is he mad at me?” Jonah, offhandedly: “Yes.” When Jeff runs into Mateo, he’s setting up a living room display to get back into Glenn’s good graces.
- Glenn to a Target employee he’s trying to recruit: “You’ll have a shorter commute!” No, he doesn’t know where she lives.
- This show, of course, shares a lot of DNA with The Office, and the spray bottle is reminiscent of the all-time classic “The Injury.” “You can’t fire me, I don’t work in this van!”
- My favorite line by far, Dina to Amy the next day after she tells her she’s got another date with pet store guy: “Do you want me to describe the sex to you tomorrow, or show you a QuickTime?”
- QUICKTIME!
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