-With three episodes left in the season, Spring Cleaning feels like a breather episode of Superstore. It touches on and advances a couple ongoing storylines (Jonah dating Glenn's foster daughter and Cheyenne's upcoming wedding to Bo) and sets up a significant new one to carry us through the last two episodes, but it's main concern is letting us have a good time with the characters we've grown to love over these past 31 episodes. This results in an episode that doesn't reach the heights of the season's best episodes, lacking the emotional resonance and comedic chaos those episodes have and containing one story that doesn't really work, but Spring Cleaning still has plenty to like about it as it sets the stage for a big finish.
-Let's start with the story that doesn't really click, Bo's day working at Cloud Nine. Johnny Pemberton's Bo is a character who works best in small doses. He's funny for a quick pop-in now and then, but he's such an over-the-top, broad character that the more he's on screen, the more it becomes impossible to understand why Cheyenne puts up with him (She's not the brightest bulb, but she's a genius compared to Bo), making the standard "he really does love her in his own crazy way beat" they put into every Bo storyline feel false and unearned. That's basically what happens tonight though it starts off on a promising note as Bo sets out to quickly make 5000 dollars and is almost immediately confronted with the realities of a minimum wage job. There's lots of fun to be had in watching Bo clash within the restraints of a real job but once the story shifts to Bo planning to rob the store, the character becomes too much to take. Yes it's funny learning that only half of the security cameras work and the security guard is basically blind (More Reggie in the future, please), but Bo's actions take his character too far, crossing the line from "likeable dope" to "insufferable moron" even if there's no real chance that he'll actually rob the store. The story redeems itself a bit with the ending where upon learning Cheyenne doesn't need a fancy wedding he immediately quits and tries to steal the vest he's wearing, but it still rubs me the wrong way that Cheyenne lets him off the hook so easily. Maybe this whole thing is building to Cheyenne breaking up with Bo, which would justify the storyline more but for now the story's basically a wash.
-Also here's hoping that Nichole Bloom gets more to do in season 3. Cheyenne has probably been the most underserved of all the main characters this season and the show often seems at a lost about what to do with her now that she's had her baby, but Bloom is a lot of fun to watch and always makes the most with what she has.
-Luckily the other two storylines more then make up for the weak Bo storyline by focusing on two of their stronger comedic duos: Jonah/Glenn and Amy/Garrett. Jonah and Glenn have a complex relationship that alternates between Glenn attempting to impress and be a mentor for a disinterested Jonah and Glenn transferring his inferiority complex onto Jonah and trying to compete with him. Spring Cleaning flips the script a bit by following up on Glenn's conflicted feelings about Jonah dating his step-daughter. People pleaser Jonah is used to having the parents of his girlfriends like him (He still hangs out with Naomi's dad apparently) so when he sees Glenn seeming unsure of him, he decides to start spending time with Glenn in an effort to put him at ease. This leads to a delightfully awkward lunch at a Mexican restaurant where Glenn doesn't seem to have any concept of what Mexican food is or what traditional getting to know you questions are ("Do Jewish people like snow?", he asks a baffled Jonah). Of course spending time with Glenn is easy but ending the time together is hard and before long, Jonah has agreed to become Glenn's assistant and Glenn is faking a draw for Cardinals tickets so he and Jonah can attend a baseball game. The whole push and pull between an oblivious Glenn and an increasingly desperate Jonah makes for a delightful series of increasingly absurd sequences until Jonah is finally honest with Glenn (to an extent), which is what Glenn wanted all along. It's a low-stakes storyline, but one with a lot of great jokes and interplay between Glenn and Jonah, which is just what an ideal breather episode needs.
-Amy and Garrett meanwhile find photos someone apparently forgot to pick up and after Garrett looks through them (to try and find nudes of course), they realize they both know the woman in them from somewhere and start going through their former co-workers to try and figure out who she is. Initially things start in familiar territory as Amy gets obsessed about identifying the mystery woman and Garrett stays detached and snarky about the whole situation, but when Amy points out that the photos show a former Cloud Nine employee has ended up in a house with a million dollar kitchen and a french press, Garrett becomes just as obsessed as Amy about tracking down the one woman who came out of her Cloud Nine experience OK. As the two characters who least enjoy their jobs, they latch onto the idea that one day they'll be able to leave this place and not end up in prison or addicted to meth or fused to the couch. This anonymous woman becomes a symbol of hope for the pair. Of course the whole thing has a somewhat poignant twist when it's revealed the pictures are reference photos for the large signs that hang in various sections of the store. Garrett and Amy have spent a day chasing a false fantasy and are going to need to look elsewhere to find their hope that things can be OK after Cloud Nine. It's a very funny note to end the story on, with just the right hint of darkness to it.
-Smartly, the show decides to let us learn the truth about the photos a few scenes before Amy and Garrett do, adding a nifty layer of dramatic irony to their scenes and making the moment where they learn the truth even funnier.
-The really clever thing about the Amy/Garrett storyline though is how it quietly lays out the stakes for the "forthcoming lay-offs" cliffhanger. By showing how poorly off so many former Cloud Nine employees have ended up, the episode reinforces that has poor as the working conditions at Cloud Nine can be, the employees there really don't have a lot of other options available to them and leaving could put them in a really bad spot. So even if it's unlikely that we'll lose any characters we care about to the lay-offs, we understand how devastating they could potentially be, which helps a great deal in getting us emotionally invested in the storyline.
-Best Interstitial: Not really an interstitial but Sandra finding and putting back a dead rodent was the perfect Sandra joke.
-This Week in Mark McKinney is a Treasure: "What is the biggest dog you've ever seen and why?" It's his delivery of "why" that really sells the joke. The runner-up is his relieved reaction to Jonah asserting that he and Kristin really did got to a gas station for breakfast at 4 in the morning.
-I also could've watched an episode worth of Glenn at the Mexican restaurant. "Do you have a Mexican version of the churro?"
-Between Bo's blurred-out Middle Finger Penis shirt and Jonah's assistant attire complete with cloud tie (And Garrett's endless delight about the tie), it was a great week for clothing-based humour on Superstore.
-Oh Jonah, if you wanted to make up a lie about a 4 AM breakfast place, why didn't you just say Denny's? The story reason is probably because going to a gas station for breakfast at 4 AM is a funnier, more transparent lie and Jonah was thinking fast but as someone who works the graveyard shift at Denny's, I see this as a big oversight.
-With Marcus rising this year to fill the "obnoxious moron" role, we haven't seen a lot of Tate, who fills a similar role, but with more arrogance and surprising frankness about people's medical history. Tate was out in full force tonight though and Josh Lawson clearly delights in playing up the character's casual sliminess. Pairing him up with Bo for a scene and having them hit it off was inspired, especially when Tate admits how jealous he is of Bo's terrible moustache. Even better is his genuine interest in the Cardinals tickets Glenn is trying to sneak to Jonah. I like to think that he and Glenn did ultimately go to that game together.
-As tiring as Bo's storyline got, his "I contain multitudes, yo" response to Dina telling him she thought he was only a worthless dirtbag is a terrific line.
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