-This week Superstore got renewed for a 3rd season, which is terrific news! The show has really stepped it up this year to coalesce into something special and the ensemble has proven they can handle anything thrown at them. The show has been on a real hot streak as of late and tonight's episode really turned up the heat, literally.
-There's something about extreme temperatures, heat in particular that make us lose our minds. Small annoyances seem bigger, tempers run hotter, and it's just easier to lose total control. That's the thrust for the action in Super Hot Store, which finds a malfunctioning thermostat heating up the store to unbearable levels and setting the stage for some hilarious madness.
-Amy has to put up with a lot in her life. Between wasting her potential in a dead-end job that cares more about the bottom line than people and her ongoing marital issues, it's shocking that she's able to keep it together as well as she does. It's also very not shocking when a large yogurt spill, some warehouse laziness, and a couple choice misogynistic remarks from new Warehouse Manager Marcus are enough to send her over the edge and into a rage. Amy has snapped before but never like this and America Ferrara plays her indignation very well. Ben Feldman is also great going from trying to keep the peace to quickly jumping into the madness when Marcus insults him as well. It's a lot of fun watching Amy and Jonah go "cray cray" (As Mateo reluctantly puts it) and the way things quickly get out of hand is a masterpiece in comic escalation as they fire Marcus (Something they can't actually do not that Marcus realizes that) and the entire warehouse walks out in support, causing them to try and get the store staff to unload a truck that none of them are qualified to unload.
-The whole unloading sequence that leads to Amy flying down the conveyor belt herself is gold but the highlight is Sandra who gets herself trapped behind boxes, which she tries to bust out of after Amy's fall only to be hilariously ineffective.
-The Store Workers V.S. Warehouse Workers could feel like a carbon copy of something The Office perfected over the years (Before forgetting how to do warehouse plots once Daryl was in the office proper with everyone else), but the dynamic is different here thanks to the presence of Marcus, everyone's favourite clueless numbskull. Jon Barinholtz has quickly gone from being a minor presence to one of Superstore's better recurring characters and moving him over to the warehouse (Following a promotion he got so he wouldn't sue over that time he sliced his thumb off on store property) is a strong move because it gives him a defined role that lets him be an antagonist, albeit a hilariously ineffectual one. His conflict with Amy and Jonah works because while he's annoying and clueless and a misogynist (That Amy didn't punch him after he told her to smile was impressive), but he's not trying to be actively harmful. He's easy to root against, but you also don't hate the character.
-Once Amy and Jonah literally cool off, they quickly realize how insane they'd been acting and decide to go beg Marcus to come back. However Marcus beats them to the punch and begs them to rehire him (Despite the fact that he was never actually fired.) first. It's a satisfying conclusion to the plot that gives Amy and Jonah (But mostly Amy) a well-deserved win and lets us actually get to see her light-up-the-room smile.
-Meanwhile feeling frustrated with corporate and after some manipulation by Garrett to get him out of his cool, A.C.-controlled office, Glenn sets out to try and fix the heat himself with Cheyenne's help. Of course when he gets to the roof and gets a look at the system, it's immediately clear that he's in over his head and he starts spiraling. Glenn is one of the saddest characters on the show, a cheerful guy who's life has been an endless series of disappointments that he's pushed aside and buried deep. So there's something poignant about his roof breakdown about being a "useless, pathetic, old man" even if the whole thing is ridiculous.
-Glenn and Cheyenne don't get a whole lot of stories together but they make a good combination, with Nichole Bloom's sweetness playing off of Mark Mckinney's increasing desperation nicely as Cheyenne tries to get Glenn through his existential crisis. Cheyenne reluctantly going along with Glenn's idea that the two of them are going to travel the world together is funny, but it's also very sweet. As is the moment when Cheyenne realizes the heat has been fixed, and is able to get out of the trip by convincing Glenn that this proves the store does need him, even though they didn't actually do anything.
-Garrett and Dina spend the episode holed up in Glenn's air-conditioned office and repeatedly having sex because they can't stand talking to each other. There isn't much to the story but it's funny and Colton Dunn and Lauren Ash continue to be one of the show's best pairings. By the end it looks like Garrett and Dina having casual sex is going to be a recurring thing, which can only end in beautiful disaster.
-The one false note in Glen and Cheyenne's story was Cheyenne's inability to think of any time when Glenn had helped his employees. The man literally got fired for fudging the system so that Cheyenne could get some paid maternity leave. How has she forgotten that?
-Corporate's ongoing carelessness quietly returns tonight as the representative Glenn speaks to about fixing the heat is quick to assert that it has to be a manager error since the computers don't make mistakes. Later while Glenn is on the roof trying to fix the problem, the representative calls back to inform Dina's Glenn impression that there was a computer error and it's fixed now, never once admitting fault or that they were wrong. It's a quiet beat but a very funny one that underlines the many ways in which Corporate lets down the stores they're supposed to be helping..
-Best Interstitial: Brett triggers the automatic doors to open so he can get a quick blast of cold, eventually getting joined by the security guard.
-This week in Mark McKinney is a treasure: Glenn slipping and struggling to crawl out of the spilled yogurt gets increasingly funnier the longer it goes on and the more desperate that Glenn becomes.
-Last week Glenn learned that the way he got his wife to go out with him back when they started doing was some serious sexual harassment. This week he realizes that his ancestors who "built the ships that brought the very first African-Americans to this country" were definitely slave-traders.
-Marcus really took offense to Amy telling him to go to hell over the intercom. "I'm Catholic. That's the worst place we can go".
-Glenn works on his and Cheyenne's world tour itinerary but can't decide whether to do "London, Atlantis, Hong Kong", or "London, Hong Kong, Atlantis".
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