Dog Adoption Day was the first episode of Superstore this season that didn't really do a lot for me. It wasn't a bad episode or anything. It had plenty of funny moments and I liked it a fair bit, but I don't know. Something just seemed missing for me that I can only somewhat put my finger on. That hard-to-define thing that can take a good episode and make it great. I dunno. Maybe this recap will help me sort through my feelings better.
A lot of my issues stem from the main story being kind of repetitive and not really going anywhere. Essentially Bo (Johnny Pemberton in prime hilarious douche mode this week) and Cheyenne get into a fight in the middle of Cloud Nine and Amy and Glenn intervene and try to help. Cheyenne thinks the solution is to move the wedding up in the hopes that they won't fight anymore after they're married. Glenn thinks this is a great idea and immediately goes to book his church but Amy's not so sure. It's been established from the first episode that Amy sees Cheyenne as a younger version of herself and she doesn't want Cheyenne to go through the same mistakes she went through. This is an interesting character dynamic and there's lots of story potential there. It's also been established that Amy does not have a very high opinion of Bo, which has significantly less story potential so Amy pushing Cheyenne to maybe give things a try with her other romantic option, Cole feel a bit stale and recycled. It then takes a turn for the new and uncomfortable, when Cole turns out to be her middle-aged former teacher. It's a move that could be funny, but comes across as icky more than anything, even with the show clearly showing that Cole's actions are not OK. Amy quickly does a reversal on her efforts to get Cheyenne to leave Bo and that's amusing but we don't really learn anything new about Amy, which feels like a waste. Glenn and Bo do a bit better as Glenn winds up convincing Bo to buy a house for him and Cheyenne, only to panic when the realtor wants him to cosign. Glenn initially does the smart thing and refuses to sign, but all it takes is some choice guilt from Bo describing his ideal family life to get Glenn to sign. So now Glenn is more invested than he wanted to be in Bo and Cheyenne's lives and with the four dogs Bo has adopted, he's definitely not getting his security deposit back. That's something that could potentially pay off down the road. For now though the whole story just winds up feeling unfinished, like a couple of key character beats were cut to make room for the climatic Bo/Cole fight that Glenn fails to get his customers to not film. It's funny but just feels kind of lacking.
The other storylines luckily fair better. Jonah and Mateo's fairly contemptuous relationship gets it's first real spotlight since the Pilot as the two find themselves handling the Dog Adoption Day the episode's title promised. Mateo's competitive nature is a key part of his character and it works well here with his compulsive desire to one-up Jonah in everything. The pair make a surprisingly effective team though when they learn that any dog not adopted is going to be put down and they decide to work together to make sure this doesn't happen. They bond a bit, Jonah admits he used to be competitive until he burnt out hard during business school, and when it's all over and all the dogs are adopted, Mateo returns to have to one-up Jonah. It's a small story but a fairly effective one with a good number of laughs from Jonah and Mateo's team-up and plenty of cute dogs. The best laughs though come from Lydia, the shelter rep who has no qualms about putting down the unadopted dogs and is even dating the injection guy ("He's divorced. Most of them are at my age"). If the show can somehow find a way to keep bringing Lydia back, that'd be cool because she certainly makes an impression here. The only issue I had with this story is Jonah's admission to Mateo about his competitiveness, which was clearly supposed to be the big emotional beat of the whole episode but felt kind of rote, as if the writers realized they should tack on an emotional moment to one of the stories at the last minute and just threw it in. It was fine, but Superstore can usually do better than that.
Garrett and Dina get the last story here with a plot that's reminiscent of the classic Office storyline where Jim keeps track of all the time Dwight is wasting at work. Here Garrett forgets to clock in thanks to Elias' butt distracting him and Dinah refuses to fix the time sheet for the two hours he wasn't clocked in because of the rules. So Garrett becomes a strict enforcer of the rules, refusing to let Dina take more than 15 minutes for lunch or more than one bathroom break even though the first one was a false alarm. By the time she's rushing to buy a stapler after her shift because the bathrooms are customer only and trying to figure out what day they both work so she can get him back, he's more than over the two hours of pay he lost. Garrett and Dina don't get a lot of stories together so this story is nice in how it highlights their dynamic, and while said dynamic gave me serious Jim/Dwight vibes (probably because I still see Dina as essentially a female Dwight), it felt different enough to work here. That's mostly due to Garrett who actually has motivations for his pranking beyond being annoyed or bored, though Dina's refusal to give in and accept Garrett's point also helped.
So all in all I still can't put my finger on why this episode didn't totally work for me. I think it comes down to all of the stories settling for being simply funny and none of them trying to push things on a character level. That can still lead to a great episode if the jokes are solid enough but it didn't quite work this time for me. That's fine though. Even a merely good episode of Superstore is still one of the more enjoyable things to watch on Thursday nights. I also have a feeling I'll enjoy this one more when I rewatch it. For now, I have no doubt this is only a bump on the road to better episodes ahead.
Memorable Moments
-Best interstitial: A woman walks by a mannequin that looks exactly like her down to the outfit and is thrown.
-The cold open where Glenn uses the Dog Adoption Fair job as a lesson that it pays to volunteer and then has the next volunteer job be getting rid of hornet nests (poor Sandra) is great. "That's right. It's not always good to volunteer. That was another lesson".
-Also Dina gets indignant about the lack of volunteers. "I hope someone sets you all on fire, and you need a volunteer to put it out". "It's too much for 6:00 a.m., Dina".
-Glenn tries to break up Cheyenne and Bo's fight with terrible Batman and Joker impressions, but turns out to do a pretty good Bane.
-Glenn gets progressive. "My friend Kathy from church, she's a real estate lady. No, wait, Glenn, darn it. It's 2016. She's a real estate man."
-Bo thinking that Glenn's name is Glem and his "What the hell kind of name is Glenn?!" reaction to finding out that isn't the case is probably the episode's best joke.
-Jonah and Mateo almost have a moment. "Hey, you know, I'm seeing a movie tonight if you want-" "I'm seeing two movies". "OK".
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