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Critic's Notebook
The ‘Superstore’ Season 2 Finale: A Disaster (on Purpose)
Disruption can sometimes be turned into opportunity, and Thursday night’s clamorous Season 2 finale of “Superstore” proved it. The show, a well-written NBC comedy full of exceedingly likable characters, is set in a Walmart-like retail outlet, and by the episode’s end, the store was in ruins, having been leveled by a tornado.
Justin Spitzer, the series’s creator, said wrecking the place was something the show’s brain trust had discussed early in the life of “Superstore” as a possibility for the distant future, but circumstances led him to play the tornado card earlier.
“We hadn’t planned to do it yet,” he said, “and then word came down that the Universal theme park was expanding. They were going to have to knock down our soundstages anyway.”
Fans could be forgiven for spending most of the finale thinking that the storm warnings were just a tension-generating device. The show is nothing if not lighthearted; mass destruction would be decidedly out of character.
“I love it when we can do something that is actually surprising,” Mr. Spitzer said. “Most audiences have seen enough TV that there are few surprises left. So when you hear, ‘Oh, there’s a tornado warning,’ you figure everyone’s going to be trapped, and the tornado will pass ominously close, and it will be about the conversations.”
Among those who were surprised by the turn of events: America Ferrera, who stars as Amy, the store’s floor manager.
“I definitely thought that he would be rewriting the script,” she said, recalling her reading of the first draft.
The episode might have seemed as if it were the kind of season finale a series stages when it’s not sure whether it has been renewed, but that was not the case; “Superstore” already knew it was coming back for Season 3. In fact, attentive fans may have noticed a sprinkling of tornado references in recent episodes, a sort of sly teaser.
The destruction of the store, though, was only the second-most-momentous thing that happened in the finale. Just before the storm struck, Amy and her co-worker Jonah (Ben Feldman), who for two seasons have had a relationship that sometimes veered toward romance but never quite got there, shared a kiss. But it was a kiss born of fear and impending doom, so fans will have to wait until next season to see if anything comes of it.
“I’m excited about where the relationship went this season,” Ms. Ferrera said, “but I’m also excited that nothing is predetermined, and nothing is off limits about where it could go.”
Though the series has an occasional topical streak — it has taken up subjects like transgender rights and gun laws — relationships have become the heart of “Superstore” as it has gone along, with the one between Amy and Jonah just the start. Nutty Cheyenne (Nichole Bloom), for instance, was married in last week’s episode. Garrett (Colton Dunn), who uses a wheelchair, and Dina (Lauren Ash), the assertive head of security, have been experimenting with passionless sex. But Mr. Spitzer said mere matchmaking wasn’t the goal.
“Romantically, I don’t want to just pair off our characters and have that be it,” he said. “I think, just like real life, characters come together and split apart and move on.”
All the relationships, and the fate of the store itself, were left up in the air by Thursday’s dramatic closing images (which, Mr. Spitzer said, were partly the actual semi-demolished soundstage and partly computer-generated effects). For more than three full minutes, the camera wandered across a scene of utter destruction, a somber cliffhanger for a normally jaunty show.
“I didn’t expect at the end to feel so emotional about the store being destroyed,” Ms. Ferrera said, describing her reaction when she saw the scene. “I was quite moved at the end, when they pull away, and you see that everything’s been torn apart for these people.”
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